Days Are Numbers

"When every moment seems to be
A race against the time
There’s always one more mountain left to climb

Days are numbers
Watch the stars
We can only see so far
Someday, you’ll know where you are"

- the Alan Parsons Project, "Days Are Numbers (The Traveller)" from the album Vulture Culture

Okay, I have to admit, that little countdown on the right is really starting to bug the hell out of me. The days remaining until the album is supposed to be done recently clicked under 200, and I don't feel that I've made that much progress since it clicked under 300. A healthy chunk of my frustration can be attributed to the fact that recording an album like this one is pretty much like having a money pit, where it seems that the only solution to every problem is to throw more money at it.

The most recent expense came about while I was mixing the first song from the new album. I've known for years that when you're mixing a recording, it is in your best interest you use the highest quality professional monitors that you can get your hands on. "Monitors" is just a fancy way of saying "really expensive speakers." Yet, the decision-making process for buying monitors is different from the process of buying speakers, as the two serve distinctly different purposes. Consumer-grade amplifiers and speakers tend to color the sound a little bit, even if all of the settings are set "in the middle." The duty of a home stereo system isn't really to merely convey the information of the recording with the greatest possible accuracy, but to sculpt the sound in a way that is appealing to the user. If you think that Sony equipment sounds better than Toshiba, but Bose sounds better than both, it has more to do with the manner in which the systems present their own sculpted version of the waveform of an audio source than anything else. They aren't designed to be accurate per se, but to be popular. And in their efforts to design equipment that is appealing to the greatest amount of people, the truthfulness of the recorded information is compromised. Even the most expensive stereo or home theater speakers that you've ever seen - the ones that audiophiles drool over in the back rooms of high-end consumer electronics stores - are completely inappropriate for mixing.

Why? Bear with me, this can be a little bit difficult to understand. If the amplifier or the speakers that you're listening to while mixing an album color the sound in ANY WAY AT ALL, it compromises the sound of your mix. Those big Sony speakers at Best Buy that sound so amazing in the store will effectively ruin your recording. If, for example, the system generally nudges up the bass a little bit, then you are mixing up the proper amounts of bass that sound good on those speakers and those speakers only. If you burn a CD of that mix and then play it on another system, your recording will sound completely different. If you play it back on a system that doesn't nudge the bass up like the Sony system did, then all of a sudden your bass line will be thin in the mix. That great big beefy bass line that you worked so hard to record is now a pale shadow of its former self, and the entire song suffers as a result. That kick drum that hit you right in the center of the chest when you were listening on the Sony speakers now sounds like some lame clunking noise. Played on yet another system that nudges the bass up even more, and your bass and drums sound like some low-frequency sludge that muddies up the whole song. Consumer equipment colors the sound. It just DOES. And while that may be great for the listening experience (as individuals tailor the sound to their own taste), it can make the mixing process unpredictable if not completely impossible.

And I knew this. I did.

But I tried anyway. After all, hey, if I can save a couple of grand by mixing off of my consumer-grade equipment and still get a good recording, all the better for me, right? And I have some really good speakers. And I have more than one system to listen to the mix on, so I should be able to come up with a mix that sounds generally pretty good on anything, right?

Well, not exactly. The mix that I generated on my home equipment sounded amazing in my studio. On headphones it was pristine. I could pick out every detail. Every instrument occupied its own sonic space. I was thrilled. I couldn't wait to share my song with the world. So I burned a CD and prepared to go on a little victory drive, listening to my song on the car stereo and celebrating accordingly.

Within five seconds I knew that I was in trouble. The bass was almost completely absent and my chorus of electric guitars seemed to be missing half of its members. And fiddling with the audio controls in the vehicle only made things worse. My song sounded nothing at all like what I had heard in my studio. To use the proper jargon, the recording wasn't "translating."

Could it be the disc itself? I was in troubleshooting mode now, anxious to discover some explanation other than the painfully obvious. When I played the CD in my studio, it returned to sounding incredible. Okay, so maybe it was just a problem with the system in the car I was in. Yet, after listening on every system I could get my hands on, it was apparent that the mix that sounded so great on my consumer-grade amplifier and speakers ONLY sounded good through that particular amp and those particular speakers and sounded absolutely horrible on EVERYTHING ELSE.

Yet I still wasn't ready to concede defeat - especially if it meant shelling out more money and delaying the completion of my album even further. Maybe, I started to wonder, if I could adjust the mix a little bit here and a little bit there - even if it meant that it wouldn't sound as great in my studio - I could figure out how to compensate for the amount of coloring that the consumer gear was adding to what I was hearing, anticipate the amount that anything needed to be boosted or minimized, and...

ugh. After all this effort, now I was going to use GUESSWORK to mix my album? Who did I think I was, the Amazing Kreskin? Well, I took a couple of stabs at it, and the results were abominable. I might as well have been using dowsing rods instead of speakers. Marlee Matlin may as well have mixed the damned thing.

And that is the story of the most recent reason why production of the new album has ground to a halt. Like the saying goes,you really do need to have the right tool for the job, and I was missing the very tools that I needed to generate a high quality, consistent mix. Monitors designed for professional mixing are evaluated on the basis of how LITTLE they effect the sound. Monitor quality can vary, meaning that the many of the cheaper models are still guilty of coloring the sound somewhat (and get criticized harshly for doing so), but with a good set of monitors what you hear is pure. You're hearing the music instead of the amp or the EQ or the limitations of the speakers and/or electronics. Greater purity in your monitors means greater purity in your mix. What ends up being burned to CD is TRUTH, and truth translates to other systems no matter how screwed up they might be.

So now I've got some professional-grade monitors on the way. Good ones. And I'm fine-tuning my studio in order to do everything I can to ensure that my mixes translate.

So while the irritating countdown continues, I'm sort of thinking of it more along the lines of a guide than a hard and fast rule. If I was hoping to motivate myself to push harder to finish the album, then, hey, mission accomplished. But since completion of the album relies heavily on obtaining some expensive equipment that I didn't realize I was going to need (or was naively hoping I could maybe live without), then I'm not going to beat myself up too badly if I don't make the arbitrary deadline that I set for myself. I'm not trying to have an album that "sounds as good as other amateur recordings." I'm not trying to compete in the minor leagues here. I'm trying to create something that can pass as professional, and that can compete against the big kids. I'm tired of apologizing and making excuses for why my stuff might not sound up to par. I want to clear away anything that could serve as an obstacle, effectively preventing my potential audience from hearing the music on its own terms. People will decide for themselves whether or not they actually like any of it, but it is my job to do everything I can to ensure that they are actually hearing it the way that I meant for it to be heard. Admittedly, I might not make it there. I certainly don't have access to professional engineers and producers, and I'm essentially learning as I go. And the learning curve is steep. But to quote Robert Browning, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

Would I like to be finished by mid-March? Certainly. Hey, I would have liked to have been finished with this thing two decades ago. But, as Billy Joel once said, "we are only what our situations hand us." I am making slow but steady progress. Occasionally some obstruction shuts me down for a while, but eventually I am able to dust myself off and get back to work. This album is going to get finished.

And no, I'm not going to have some melodramatic garage sale on March 16th if I don't make it. I'll be too busy recording and/or mixing.
I'm cutting myself some slack. I really like what I'm hearing, and the progress that I'm making, and I guess that I'm just not self-destructive enough to throw it all away if I don't meet some self-imposed arbitrary deadline.

One of the benefits of attempting to create a work is that an artist tends to learn a little something about himself/herself (and the world we live in) in the process. It can be somewhat of a voyage of discovery. The challenge is to remain receptive to the lessons life offers us while they are being taught.

The speakers are a metaphor.