Working for the King
the mixing process has been keeping me busy every day of this summer and the main goal this time is to learn a higher level of mixing skills. for my first two albums my skills limited to mainly recreating a live performance, but this time i’m ‘the studio’ to create a unique sense of space and sound for each piece. the big change for me occurred this spring when i became more interested in photography and finally realized that photo editing programs like photoshop and aperture were just sophisticated equivalents and extensions of the traditional darkroom in which creation of a photograph didn’t end when the shutter clicked.
with that in mind i have been learning new techniques that are far beyond the limited mixing strategies i have used in the past (using mainly volume and reverb automation), and with the help of a few pros looking over my shoulder i’m learning to embrace the mixing process as an extension of each composition. please don’t think i’m attempting to create a george martin/phil spector/brian wilson production and the best way to describe my approach is that i’m using audio software (protools) as my darkroom to create a collection of music that is not a simulation of a live performance but really a ‘heightened reality’.
in the big picture i know this isn’t a new or earth shattering accomplishment (many rock bands have been doing this for years), but because all this music was created (composed, rehearsed, performed, recorded, and mixed) outside the usual channels of art-music presentation and the fact that i didn’t have to ask for ‘permission’ (through grants, commissions, and fundraising) shows that there are other ways to make art music outside the current long-running tradition of patronage and ‘working for the king’ the main example of why i’m calling the album ‘alt-classical’
