yeah. the first part is done. it will be done tomorrow.....

i've had to stop and start mixing all day to rest my ears. this is not something you want to listen to on repeat at high volumes unless you're using earplugs, but i want to make sure i'm not getting the sound of being dulled to the room reverb on the guitar amps. the effect is in the sudden onset, so listening to it over and over again as one normally would when mixing is simply the wrong approach - i'm going to get used to the roar as it cycles, and end up with the wrong output. so, i have to listen to it loud, stop, adjust, wait and repeat. it's just about there. i think the next run through could legitimately be the last one...

well, for the first 7 minutes, anyways. but that's the hard part. the last 18 minutes is going to be minor tweaks.

nah. i could only get the acoustic out clean. the other files had components that weren't saved. like, the big buildup was pasted over top of itself at least twice, but i only saved the final version, so i can't possibly get it out. i can turn the bass down but i can't take it out. the classical part seems to have been cut up, which is leaving ugly relics. and neither synth part wants to come out at all...

i also tested it with the reverb i wanted to use and realized that the sound i wanted to reverberate was a mix of the effect pattern i'm trying to isolate and the bottom end of the acoustic guitar. i think i'm better off playing with the plugin...

takeaway: i'm not *actually* close to being done this, and it's almost the end of the day...

i need to go back to the start and do it slowly, one section at a time. at least i know now that i have a few options that i didn't think were available to me.

the key thing is that i need to mix it for high volumes. that's what's wrong; that's what needs to be focused on.

it's actually not in a bad state. tomorrow. maybe.

i seem to have succeeded in cleverly removing the acoustic guitar part from the base file by using the technique of phase inversion. this adds a whole new level of complexity to the remix, but it also allows me to reverberate the electric guitar parts without making the acoustic part tinny.

if i can get the rest of the mix out, i'll be able to do this cleanly....

i'm being schizophrenic. it seems to have to do with very subtle changes in the master volume level on the receiver out. but that's going to be true of anything - nothing sounds the same loud as it does quiet. i just need to dial into the sweet spot and not touch it until the master is done.

it also seems to have to do with the dulling effect of listening to something loud. i think that's the key thing i've confused myself with. when i was mixing the power chords, i was doing it at a high volume. then, i came back the next day and it didn't sound the same. sure - my ears weren't ringing anymore.

i find it sounds better if i sort of put my ears into a state of shock by blaring it for a few seconds, then turn it down a little. that's a realistic way to do it, too, because the end point of this is for it to be headphone music.

i tend to mix at high volumes, but mixed this at a lower volume because the input file was already floored. that is, i got the high volume effect without having to turn the volume up. now, it's doubling back on me.

what was freaking me out was not understanding *why* it was changing sounds so apparently randomly. i think i'm getting a handle on the factors. i may have to tweak a few things, but grasping the factors is the key part...

i think it'll be done today.

the fact is..

no matter how closely i study it,
no matter how i take it apart,
no matter how I break it down...

it remains consistent.

then why the fuck does it keep sounding differently? like, it's changing on a play-by-play basis, here. it's driving me berserk...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr70ttkMoHE

it still sounds wrong. i don't get it. but i need to rebuild it.

....no. wait. it makes more sense to deconstruct it. the only thing that makes any sense to me is that, as i've loaded more effects, i've increased the processor load and it's having an effect on the way the sound is going through the plugins. it might be the pre-amp i put on the bass. i can test this by taking the bass part out. if it turns out that this is the problem, i may have to mix it down and then add the bass parts in to a new mix.

i could also try and render some of the effects, but i've had mixed results with this in the past.

it's an older processor, now. i bought it in early '07. it was on it's way out even at the time. but what i wanted was the fastest single core i could get because i knew a lot of the software couldn't use multiple cores. so, i got a double running at 3.6 each, which was on sale because there were more efficient processors running at lower clock speeds. the version of cubase i'm using is from 2005. if you ask it to use a quadcore, it can't - it uses one of the four processors. but there are reasons why i prefer sx over newer versions of cubase. what i'm getting to is that i'm not going to accomplish anything getting a newer processor, even if i had the cash, because it's about as fast as a single core gets and none of the software i'm using can interpret multiple cores.

but it's certainly possible that some of the plugins might make compromises on the edge of the spectrum if the processor is being asked to compute too many things at once and this is why i'm getting a tinny sound. i can't prove this, but i can test it. i can't understand this, otherwise....

i promised this would be done today, but the mix is sounding weird and i don't really know what to do about it. i'm considering starting from scratch, but really don't want to. i've just somehow lost a lot of bass and gained a lot of treble and don't understand what's causing it.

i've also developed a headache, probably from the stress of it not sounding correctly. so, i need to sleep it off.

this has happened before and it's sounded "right" when i woke up. hopefully, that happens this time, as well.

you know, sometimes i'm legitimately convinced that there's somebody else at the mixing console - that the computer is being controlled remotely, and there's some dipshit with a bag of doritos on his lap staring at a mixing board muttering to himself "no, no, no. this is all wrong. she wants to do it like this...", who then proceeds to fuck up everything i'm doing for the purposes of conforming to some stale concept of what is deemed to sound "correct".

i'm convinced of this because the mix tends to randomly change. and, so i curse at the ceiling and plead that this intervention ends, to various points of success. it's almost like they're on shift work, and my problem is with the overnight guy, because it seems to generally ease once the sun comes up.

i repeat the same things over and over again: you have no prerogative to fuck with my mix, no right to invade in my space. so, kindly fuck off.

but, for whatever reason it seems to be a temporary reprieve. whatever or whomever is in charge continually decides that i really don't know what i'm doing, that they're really helping...

not helping. not possible to help. only possible to interfere.

the more reasonable explanation is that i need to reboot the board from time to time.

but the perception is hard to shake....

and if i ever find the bastard, i may very well bash his head in with a shovel - if i can find a shovel in the moment, which is not likely to happen.

schrodinger's swan

this seems like the best thing on youtube to crosslink this to...

i put a five-year listening period on my serious reviews in order to ensure that the music can sink in and be put into context. sometimes, it's a matter of convention. with something like swans, it's really necessary to make sense of it. i've been a swans fan since the late 90s, and share a certain artistic approach with them, so i'm coming into this very, very familiar with what they are and what they're aiming for. i'm extremely critical but i need to point out that gira is one of a handful of living artists that i have legitimate respect for, as an artist. i'm not ready to write a full review yet, but i think i'm ready to provide a general impression.

oddly, not many people seem to be spilling much ink on the absence of jarboe. sure, it's not like there's any real chance that she's coming back to the band. but it's sort of remarkable how totally she's been written out of the band, as though she never existed in the first place. this strikes me as indicative of most reviewers coming to the band after their breakup period looking for a seminal doom act, and sort of skipping their psychedelic 90s phase. but, see, i think there's a dominant argument that what made swans' 90s work so remarkable was the interplay between gira's dour bluntness and jarboe's lighter, more airy presentation. you could think of it as tension and release. but it's just the juxtaposition of it...

gira's tried to compensate with the use of various female vocalists, but it's clear that it's on a guest vocalist level rather than a collaborative level, meaning it just doesn't capture the juxtaposition on as organic of a level.

in a sense, maybe it's unfair to draw the comparison. everybody knows jarboe isn't in the band any more. but, if you have an understanding of what swans is, the more recent material just seems like it's missing an important ingredient.

putting that aside, one needs to review a record for what it is.

the core of this disc is as strong as anything else swans has put out, but i get the impression gira is being driven a little too strongly by expectations. i'm all for long records, but a long record is something that needs to develop out of an overriding concept or simply a lot of material. neither of these things seem to apply to this. it seems like this record is long simply for the sake of being long, and is loaded with tons of filler to get to the point of being long. i don't think we really needed nearly as much aimless jamming (and a lot of it is aimless jamming) or damo suzuki impersonations.

i'm not walking away from it with the sense of it being the kind of masterpiece that gira has previously been involved with creating. rather, i'm walking away from it thinking it's a little tedious and that large amounts of it are simply rather grating.

i don't think this record is going to hold up as well as his other major works. it might be partially as a result of trying to fit perceived expectations of an epic double record. but i think it might be a bit of pretension getting into his head.

this could have been a strong 9 if pared down a little. as it is, i have to give it a 6 or a 7.

Zack Fishley

I envy people who lived through Swans' original run and are able to see those albums as Gira's masterpieces. While I like them, I feel like albums like Soundtracks For the Blind lose focus quickly when they hit disc 2. Just not as memorable.

deathtokoalas

they're more abstract records; they explore a wider scope. memorable is a subjective thing. but, you can objectively state that they require a deeper attention span and greater focus on the actual music. i find his newest work has more aspects of his oldest work in that sense; they're great if you want to listen to one or two things for three hours. soundtracks is more variable, and so is more immersive. but, you have to be looking for that, otherwise you're going to trail off, like you said.

what i was trying to get across here is that it isn't that gira has lost a step. what's amazing is that he really hasn't. it's more that he's lost a layer of self-criticism.

i'm still fighting with the bass, but it's the last thing to do. it's actually mostly cut up, it's just about levels. and i'm nodding off so it will have to wait until i wake up...

it WILL be done tomorrow.

i'm almost done remixing my fourth symphony, which is a long time coming. i finished recording the parts in 2002 and have been messing around with it every few years since 2006, but i could never get it quite right because i didn't really have the right tools to do it. what i needed to do was separate it into parts, but what i had was a wave file that i pasted parts into rather than anything i could recreate in a traditional multitracking environment. trying to figure out where each of the parts began was very hard without being able to line the parts up...

trepanation nation (raw guitar mix) (initial upload)

around the middle of 2007, i sat down and tried to just paste some guitars over top of a half done mix i had. in the process, i created a guitar collage that i found interesting in it's own right and put aside for possible release as a remix one day. this is an entirely new mix, but it's based on that idea.

the idea was created around july 30, 2007. final mix was rendered on november 29, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/09-trepanation-nation-raw-guitar-mix

i was hoping to catch animals as leaders last night, but i ended up passing out. i'm not sure how exciting a live show it would have been. great guitarist, but it's headphone music.

i've got a new map up that organized things a little differently. as you can see, this is just loaded with guitar overdubs, a lot of them doubled or quintupled through separate effects paths. it seems like i'm hurtling towards 70 tracks. three more things to do there, down at the bottom.

...although i'm starting to wonder about maybe doubling a few more parts later in the song. we'll see how this goes....

it's almost there, really. i've just had to restart a few times, mixing different aspects in in different orders. i eventually concluded that i had to take the bass right out to mix the rest of it, after a few tries of trying to build it on the bass. the bass is important in the track, so i wanted to get the sound in first so it wouldn't cut anything else out, but i was just flooring it repeatedly. i've got almost everything else in - i now just have to set the levels on some power chords, mix the synths in and play with the bass compression until it's at the right volume. it's hard to say if it'll be done by noon or not; if it is, it'll be done today. otherwise, i need to do some real life things this afternoon and it will have to wait until tomorrow for finalization.

20,000 views

here's the final map (i think). considering this is a 25 minute track, 44 tracks is actually pretty minimal - even if the base and drum files are composed of several tracks. there's a lot of doubles, as a relic of the mixing process, so it probably balances out to around 45 as an accurate estimate. that said, i may actually end up paring it down as i mix it. but i'd need more than a 32-track board for this if i were doing it the old fashioned way...

i think this should be mixed by the time the sun comes up.

rabbit is jaguar?

wish it was a wolf....

it was a pun.

rabid is wolf.

rabit is wolf.

rabbit is wolf.

i like the monty python shot, but that would be much cooler if i could find it......

i'm not really skilled with photoshop like apps. i don't even have one installed. but i could surely figure that out.

maybe a back panel, if the disc sells any copies.

alright, i've finally got this thing lined up into components, split into very close approximations of snapshots in april, may, june and july of 2002 - as well as snapshots in 2007 and 2009. what that means is i can build up each snapshot mix by successively activating each folder.

now, i just need to mix the parts.

but i seem to have not slept well last night, so it'll be when i wake up. i think i'm only a few hours away from getting this, though.

it's probably because i spent four hours walking through london, and four hours on the bus. long day yesterday....

obligatory "influential on the song of the week" post...

this redefined epic for me. i kind of grew up with a certain strain of prog, so the pumpkins made a lot of sense to me at the age when i was starting to feel the power of punk rock. they kind of acted as a bridge between my childhood and adolescent years, in that sense. there's still not much quite like this out there and there may never be.

(relevant files: screwed up, idiotic, first movement, too cold, to spin inside dull aberrations, others; everything, in some sense)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzZh4fdaUpk