Can’t believe it’s March already – time flies when you’re often drunk (I mean having fun, of course… : )

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been doing an audio production/mixing course which is now sadly nearing its conclusion, just two weeks to go. It’s been great learning the technical reasons why you intuitively do certain things in mixing (and do certain things just because you think you should), and I’ll definitely be able to make more informed choices now, backed up with hard pyschoacoustic science. It’s really made me think about the way I listen to music and how I can relate the work of other mixing engineers to my own – I’ve realised that overall EQ balance and the illusion (or reality) of space in a mix are really very important things for me to concentrate on. Andy Diagram (a.k.a. Andy Perkins) is a knowledgeable guy and a good teacher.

I went to see a film earlier this week called The Ghost of Piramida. It’s about how a band, Efterklang, travel to an abandoned Russian coal mine in the middle of nowhere and immerse themselves in the environment, making field recordings and getting to grips with the fascinating history of the place. I thought it was ace, both in terms of how it looked and how it sounded. It’s only a matter of time now before I shell out on a (semi) decent portable field recorder and start attempting to sample the ‘vibe’ in my local woodland area. I will be doing this, and also listening to the Efterklang album which, judging by the songs in the film, is very good and makes interesting use of the sounds they gathered at Piramida. Rather than just background atmospherics, they’ve integrated the sounds, especially percussive samples, and made use of in-situ reverberant spaces -something I’d really like to get into.

Blathering on a bit now… slow Friday…. suffice to say that everything is going nicely and I’m happier than ever with the mixes I’ve done recently. Getting really into Ableton again at the moment, finding it much quicker in terms of workflow than Logic – although sometimes the interface is annoying for recording and editing audio. Hopefully Live 9 will take care of this – either way I think I’ll have to buy it.

Anyone want to buy me an English Reed Harmonium? Played one recently and they have a lovely sound, but good ones are pretty expensive. If my ears aren’t deceiving me, a harmonium was used to great effect on the King Creosote / Jon Hopkins album.

That is all.

P.S. If you get a chance have a look at Waltz Time Records. We’ve got some lovely releases coming up from Chin of Britain and David G Cox, as well as a full-length from Firestations before too long.