01.23.07
Posted in General at 10:30 pm by Steve
It’s always tough when you begin to feel that pull to move on…but life is an adventure and when you get too comfortable in any one area of life you risk missing out on some of that adventure by settling in one place for too long…and that is where I am right now. I find myself ready to move on. I seem to be getting signals from all around me that change is in the air, but I falter. Why? Because I question the timing. And because of that I wonder if I may be resisting my path.
I think I may have gotten my best piece of advice this evening, “follow your heart”. Anyhow, I’m not one for keeping things the same for too long. I seem to thrive on change…which might be character flaw or it might just be my adventurous nature…that may be something I will never be sure of. I recall a dream I had a while back and the message that was given to me in that dream “ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt”.
As I write this I realize that deep down I know what I need to do…but that is only a small part of it. Now I must take the first giant step and begin doing. All this is even more potent with the recent events that have been unfolding. The promise of new life on one hand and the inevitable conclusion of another life on the other.
And with that I must begin the next leg of this journey..even though I am unsure of what may happen tomorrow. But, in some ways, isn’t that the most exciting thing about life - the new experiences. When we’re young we thrive on new experiences. Then we grow and become wary of the unfamiliar…I refuse to let time dull my sense of wonder. What good is life if you become a robot…a shade, acting out the same charade day after day…week after week…year after year.
And with all this I recall a quote from Shakespeare’s King Lear, “in striving for better oft we mar what’s well”.
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01.17.07
Posted in Friends & Family at 11:02 am by Steve
James R. DeMott
James R. DeMott, 89, a resident of Wilton for the past forty years (formerly of New Canaan and Norwalk), beloved husband and family man, died at Norwalk Hospital on Monday, January 15, 2007.
Mr. DeMott, born February 17, 1917 in Stamford, was a son of the late Michael and Josephine Camparata DeMott. He was the popular proprietor of Esquire Barber Shop in Wilton, which he founded in 1959, and from which he retired in the early 1980’s. Previously, Mr. DeMott had been principal caretaker of the New Canaan estate of world famous illuminator and political artists Arthur Szyk.
Mr. DeMott, whose interests included wine making and gardening, was an avid follower of the New York professional sports teams, especially the Yankees, Giants, and Rangers, and was also a lover of opera. He was a parishioner at Sacred Heart Church in Georgetown, and long standing member of the Sons of Italy Order in America.
Mr. DeMott is survived by his wife of 67 years, Colletta; a son, Robert of Athens, Ohio; a granddaughter, Elizabeth of Miami, Florida; a brother, Joseph of Darien; and numerous nieces and nephews. Mr. DeMott was predeceased by six brothers and sisters.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Friday, January 19, 2007 at 10:30 AM in Sacred Heart Church, Church Street, Georgetown. The interment will follow in Hillside Cemetery, Wilton.
There are no calling hours.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in James DeMott’s name to the Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital, 24 Stevens Street, Norwalk, CT 06856.
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01.05.07
Posted in Music at 6:36 am by Steve
Here’s a cool tip for smooth background vocals. This can be done in just about any DAW or on an analog console, as long as you have a stereo compressor available to you. As always, there are no hard & fast rules in mixing but these setting should give you a good starting point.
Step 1: Pan
Start by panning your background vocal tracks so that they are not right on top of your lead vocal. I tend to keep the lead vocal centered and pan the background vocals no closer than about 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock, but will also pan them as extreme as hard left & hard right. Just try to place each voice in its own space.
Step 2: Low end management
Once you have tracks panned properly, bring the levels to about where you want them to sit in relation to the lead vocal. Now place an EQ on the track insert for each background vocal and engage a low shelf filter set at about 80Hz and start with -9dB gain. With the tracks playing move the frequency higher until you hear it begin to thin out the vocal part. Back it off just a bit to just before you really noticed it. Do this for the remaining background vocal tracks. This insures that the vocals do not interfere with the instruments that belong in the low end (like bass & kick drum).
Step 3: Submix
Now you want to add a stereo Aux track to your mix and set the outputs of all your background vocals to this track. This is how we set up a submix for the background vocals. This fader will now control the overall volume of the background vocals.
Step 4: Automate (ride those faders)
Now, you are going to want to go one background vocal track at a time and automate your volume levels. Listen to the track in its entirety and get an idea where you think it’s too quiet or too loud, and then go through and automate the fader levels to balance out those sections. I like to enable the automation record on the mixer and then have it memorize my fader moves as I play the song. Then I will go through and smooth out my automation by adjusting the automation in the volume track view with the pencil tool. Just to be clear - this is being done to the actual individual background tracks & not the aux submix fader.
Step 5: Add some gel
Now that we have the tracks all going to our aux submix fader, the low end is nice & clean and we have the levels where we want them we need to get these tracks working together. For that I like to add a small amount of compression on the Aux (submix) track. Insert your favorite compressor on the background vocal submix. Set the ratio real low (1.6:1) and the threshold at about -20 dB. Set the attack to about 10 ms and the release about 100 ms. Now play the song and watch those meters, you want a maximum of 3dB of compression. Adjust that Threshold setting until you get that to happen. Then play it through again and adjust the release point until the compression sounds smooth.
Step 6: EQ
I know we added some individual EQ to each track to tame the low end. Now what we want to do is affect the background vocals as a whole and keep them out of the way of the lead vocal. Place an EQ on the background vocal aux track just after the compressor and engage a peaking (parametric) filter. Set the mid-frequency at about 3kHz, the bandwidth (Q) about an octave and the gain at -3dB.
And there you have it. The great thing about this trick is that you can apply it to other elements in a mix, like guitars or percussion. Plus, the submix technique is very useful for keeping large mixes manageable.
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