Tang Dynasty - ElectroProg (Seismic Activity)

[seismic1]

After an extended recording hiatus of 14 months, punctured by occasional frivolity and frolic, here is my first full-length beat-driven piece in way too long. It could be the third part of a Chinese-themed trilogy, which began in 2009 with Felonious Monk, and continued in 2010 with Drown - or it could be be the third of a series of Berlin-fluenced pieces additionally comprising Fruit No Object, and Tom Re-Armed.

It could also be co-incidence

[blackivan]

Nice work :-)

[Thought Experiment]

That's a great piece of music Tim, love the slow-burn intro with a real oriental flavour - both instrumentation and note choices are spot-on. Good to hear new work emerging from chez Whatsisname

[seismic1]

Nice work :-)

Cheers, Ivan. Glad you liked it.

See you next month

[seismic1]

That's a great piece of music Tim, love the slow-burn intro with a real oriental flavour - both instrumentation and note choices are spot-on. Good to hear new work emerging from chez Whatsisname

Thanks very much for checking this one out, Mike. Glad you liked it

To tell you the truth, I was quite nervous about this. Having written so little music in the last three years, I was wondering whether I could still put a tune together. I deliberately stalled on the the two tracks I really wanted to work on, for fear of "not getting them right", and instead forced myself to complete this. I think I was trying to put myself into a pressure situation.

Something I've noticed about my mixing recently is that I'm regularly flipping the audio from my computer between interfaces. Most of my mixing is done via the UX2/Rokit combo, but at the end of each stage I'll re-route the audio via the rWave to the Arcam A19/Missions so I can hear it on the HiFi. It's much easier to make major mixing decisions with this setup. I can jack up the volume on the HiFi and sit back on the sofa about 12 feet from the speakers. I find that music sounds more exciting when a significant volume of air molecules is being re-arranged. It helps when you can feel the bass too.

I tend to use the phones only for a final QC these days.

[Thought Experiment]

Take it from me, you can still put a tune together :D

Sounds like you have an ideal mixing setup (no pun intended) - your mixes are always crystal clear and punchy, no matter how many elements there are. Do you actually mix at high volume, or do you only allow yourself to whack the volume up occasionally, to check the mix so far? I can't mix at high volume at all, I very quickly lose all sense of proportion and end up stacking compressors on everything, until every channel is in the red :steam:So of course I have to zero all the faders and start again...

[Synthetic Aurality]

Listening now - this is good stuff! It sure as heck doesn't sound like you had any kind of a hiatus at all. It's well balanced, everything is clear, I love the instruments and the whole Chinese theme. Kicks butt!

[seismic1]

Take it from me, you can still put a tune together :D

Sounds like you have an ideal mixing setup (no pun intended) - your mixes are always crystal clear and punchy, no matter how many elements there are. Do you actually mix at high volume, or do you only allow yourself to whack the volume up occasionally, to check the mix so far? I can't mix at high volume at all, I very quickly lose all sense of proportion and end up stacking compressors on everything, until every channel is in the red :steam:So of course I have to zero all the faders and start again...

Thanks for the great comments, Mike

My regular mixing is performed at low to medium volume on the computer. Much of this is visual anyway, so I don't require any volume for some parts of the process. Obviously, I have to actually listen when applying FX and playing with the panning, and, to some degree, when making relative volume changes and setting up the individual channel EQ settings. A lot of the EQ work is visual. I use T-Racks metering when tweaking the HPF/LPF settings and normally work with each instrument track individually, only performing a quick before/after comparison once I have my settings roughly where I want them. If I'm applying a notch filter, I can't rely upon the visual metering. Once I have arrived at a convenient break-off point, I'll whack up the volume to make sure that I haven't broken anything. If I'm happy with that I'll beam it over to the big system (again at high volume) to see what's shakin'.

So, I think the answer to your question is that I mix at a comfortable volume, with occasional loud interludes.

[seismic1]

Listening now - this is good stuff! It sure as heck doesn't sound like you had any kind of a hiatus at all. It's well balanced, everything is clear, I love the instruments and the whole Chinese theme. Kicks butt!

Thanks very much for the great comments, and thanks for listening

I'm always a little nervous when putting a track on SoundCloud, but after such a long period of inactivity, I think I was more apprehensive than usual, particularly as I hadn't had this one in my WIP folder for 3 years ;), as opposed to most of my previous tracks.