As announced, I firstonce generally stopped the work on video projects in order to fully concentrate on the release of the Willma Poppen album "Willma im Wunderland". And regarding to this, contrary to the first try, I take my time. I should already know that it is not particularly fruitful, but rather ends terribly, when I put myself under too much pressure actually ;).
So what actually happened regarding to Willma Poppen album then? For this I need (or I want) to tell you about my approach to the release of an album. You hopefully know all those pre-release versions that I upload to SoundCloud. These are more or less elaborate song ideas. They are sometimes closer to and sometimes a little farther from the final release versions. Generally I assume that corrections to both structure (composition / arrangement) and the mix have to be made. And that's what happens first when all the tracks are ready for an album in the pre-release version. In general then for each track the following steps are taken:
- Create a final composition / a definitive arrangement. Here, all parts of the song are again placed under the microscope, imperfections are repaired, some things get improved and generally a version gets completed, that I regard as suitable for publication, regarding to the structure.
- Export all mixer channels (dry and without compression) at 192 kHz sample rate in WaveAudio at 32 bit float resolution.
- Import the audio tracks in a project (the mix) with exactly the same mixer channels and effects. For short: The generators, such as Synthesizers, are replaced by rendered versions in WaveAudio.
- Now I mix the different channels, so that I get a good mix peaking at -6 dBFS. This mix is rendered as a so-called. PreMaster in 192 kHz WaveAudio in 32-bit float, of course without any compression.
- This PreMaster is imported into a completely new project. There I am doing what I call mastering. The result is then the final release version.
So far, so good ... How far am I with the 13 songs for the album? It may sound just like a little, but currently I have the final composition / the final arrangement ready for almost half of the tracks. For each of those tracks I have already exported each mixer track and created an approximate, but not finished, mix version. Not a single track is "mastered" yet. Regarding to this I must say, however, that a good mix reduces mastering almost to the task of increasing the volume to peak at 0 dbfs. So probably for many of the tracks, there's not much to do at the mastering stage.
Why does it take so long? As I said, I take my time and as I said, creating a good mix simplifies everything. So I currently put a lot of emphasis on that the arrangement almost delivers a good mix. Furthermore, I have experienced unpleasant surprises when I opened the project files of some of the older tracks and had to do some unexpected work in creating the final composition / arrangement of the tracks.
Well, and so that this blog post does not entirely come without sound and images, I embed 2 excerpts of the progress at the end as a small video. Well, at the moment this is all what I can give you. I would say that in one month it all will look better :D
