As on every Monday morning, I parcelled out the week’s hours to modules and tutees, endeavouring to efficiently cram as many as possible into a period delimited for this activity. One must constrain teaching (and admin, for that matter), otherwise it will leak into every other dimension of one’s existence.

On with the revision of final mixes for the second of The Bible in Translation CDs. Several imperatives confronted me: (a) removing the brittleness of the sound; (b) regularising the tonal and volume level from the beginning to the end of each track; (c) checking the stereo balance and breadth of field; (d) scrutinizing for, and deleting, aberrant artefacts; and (e) equalizing the loudness (which is not the same as volume) of each track. To do this, I needed to hear the recordings on other than my usual mixing equipment. (The ear get’s accustomed to the same configuration of software and hardware.) The Focusrite Virtual Reference Monitoring system provided a more than reasonable simulation of a variety of studio set ups:

Every once and while, I stopped to give my ears some relative silence, and my mind something other than decibels to fix upon. For the remainder of the morning I executed what I’d hoped would be a final mix of all the tracks.

In the afternoon, and in tandem with the morning’s activities, I calculated the individual and cumulative track lengths. Presently, ‘Image and Inscription’ comes in at 43 minutes, while the other tracks sum up to 53 minutes.

During the evening, I widened the stereo field on the ‘Image and Inscription’ tracks and reviewed this morning’s and afternoon’s mastering. Small changes effect significant outcomes. But someone really needs to take this composition off my hands, now.

I relinquished my grip, knowing that I’ve done my best.