What's happening September 2021

Made time to record Something by The Beatles which took quite a few takes and required a bit of audio editing before I was happy with the sound.  I recorded in a different room (oh to have a dedicated music studio) so the mic levels ended up a bit low - the mic position wasn't great - I tried it placed a bit further out, yeah nah.  Don't do that. I ended up adding a bit of compression to compensate (in addition to my usual EQ balance of boosting the bass and trebles a bit).  I feel that compression is only when you want your audio to be LOUD, to fill all the frequencies as much as possible. Like glam rockers from the 80's.  But as much as I like dynamics, there is hollow/pale/wispy/far away so compression it had to be.

I still don't add reverb.  The room has already shaped a natural reverb, adding any more is "hiding in the mud".  Maybe because I've never mastered the use of reverb?  I was going to get my eldest daughter to help me with the sound mix, she's done some sound engineering study and has done sound for many live shows, she has a good ear.  After I had recorded this and punched out some missed notes and fret buzzes (I think I counted 8 I was not happy with), alas, she was doing a thing, I just wanted to get it done and posted, so we didn't review it together.  Next time maybe, while I kinda know what I want to hear, that's me, a different ear perspective would be interesting...or it might just create arguments :-)

Speaking of good sound, on youtube I follow Kent and he just blew me away with Sledgehammer. What a great ear for arrangement of a song (although his additional guitar layering from recent videos - I'm not a fan - solo fingerstyle, just let it stand alone, if you want to have a band that is fine, but I'm looking for solo fingerstyle.)  I wonder how much "cleaning up" of his audio he does?  I would say not much, I have listened to live recordings and it is clean as a whistle.  That's what 40 hours of practise a day gets you.  Seems like a lot of pressure to me!

Interestingly, like Kel Valleau, he is doing most of his arrangements in open tuning, that one he said was Db G Eb G Bb Eb so -3, -2, +1, 0, -1, -1  Would we call that an open Eb dominant 7th? Open tunings really fill out a song, so much body in there.  Are people able to keep in their minds where they are or are these songs being played as just muscle memory?  I imagine that with enough mastery of standard tuning, and then some dabbling in alternate tunings like Drop D where you start to "know" where you are for just those simple tuning changes, eventually you can build to actually knowing what you are doing in all these crazy alt tunings!

Proper musicians who know what they are doing.  My hat is off to you all.