June 23, 2015

Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am (Ps. 39.4).

8.00 am. A review of, and response to, my inbox. 8.40 am. Off to the School …

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… for a 9.00 am PhD tutorial with Veronica. To begin a PhD in fine art one must, first, not so much pose a question as determine a problem. The question will arise out of the problem, later in the research:

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10.30 am. Back at homebase, I reviewed emails and tweaked several sound files before returning to the last lap of postgraduate research monitoring, while reviewing tracks for possible inclusion on The Aural Bible II: The Bible in Translation sound CD.

1.40 pm. Into the sound studio to listen to this morning’s tweaking on close-field monitors. One edges the track towards the tipping point of betterment, whereafter it begins to deteriorate in quality. 3.30 pm. A request from the editor of a book  — to which I’m contributing a chapter — asking for higher-resolution versions of several illustrations that I’d submitted. Fair enough! Better quality is always worth striving after. 5.15 pm. Dun’em!

7.30 pm. I acted upon that principal in relation to a composition entitled ‘Amen Amen’. Discontent with the sound clarity, I extracted the centre channel of the recording’s stereo field. With some moderate equalisation of the same, the overlaid elements of the piece were separated more distinctly and enhanced considerably. I have my back against the wall with this one. The source was recorded, at a distance, on a poor micro-cassette device in the early 80s. One cannot restore what was never encoded. The sound quality ‘is what it is’ (as is too often said). A recorder captures not only what it’s hearing but also itself: variously, the sensitivity of its microphone and medium, tonal bias, the quality of the drivers, preamps, and sound card, and the intrinsic noise of the device. 8.30 pm. A final review of yesterday’s recordings before their dispatch to the vinyl manufacturer. In the accumulation of small adjustments one can improve the overall effect considerably. I’ve great difficulty judging the comparative loudness of a female voice and male voice when heard together.

9.10 pm. Finally … onto the turntables:

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