New Monday 45
Happy Monday and Happy Holidays!
Last week I wrote about setting levels and promised to go into the details of doing this on our plug-ins. So I did that. But it’s long, it’s a link:
An Overview of Setting Audio Levels, Part 1
And... here is some music you can listen to while reading. This is...
National Sweetheart
More psychedelic fun, although this time it’s mostly all instrumental, sitting somewhere between The Shadows and some sort of early moody Neil Young album. It’s lush, well-recorded and played, and is lovely to have floating around in the background while you read about setting plug-in levels or how amazingly evil Spotify is.
National Sweetheart has a good YouTube channel. These guys have a lot of creativity and a definite theatricality, which makes sense because they also write music for a bunch of major brands out of their studio, Blue Deer.
Evil. Necessary?
If you don’t want to read about level setting while listening to National Sweetheart, you can read this article about how evil Spotify is. Spotify is gaming their own system against artists and, in some ways, against listeners. Every time I post a Spotify link I wish I hadn’t, but streaming has become a necessary evil I suppose.
In the mood for something more joyous, especially considering that it’s the holiday season? Here’s a thing on Slade’s big Christmas hit.
For me, it ain’t Christmas if I don’t hear Frank Sinatra’s A Jolly Christmas Album, also called...
The Sinatra Christmas Album
We had this on eight-track when I was a kid. The damn thing would loop non-stop starting mid-December until the first week of January. My siblings and I were brainwashed by this, similar to how Frank himself was brainwashed in the movie The Manchurian Candidate. Here’s a scene. This is one heck of a strange scene.
'O Jolly Christmas' was recorded July 1957 at Capitol Studios A in Hollywood. This album was cut totally live, with an orchestra, background singers and of course Frank himself, basically all in the same room, in four-hour sessions across four days. Unbelievable musicianship and audio engineering. The skill set required to pull something like this off...
NOW- IT IS TIME TO CRY!
Here’s a John Lewis Christmas commercial. It’s gorgeous. I cry thinking about it.
In Montreàl and New York it’s cold and there’s some snow. The year winds down and a new one comes creeping in. Dan and I wish you a wonderful holiday, whatever you might be celebrating.
Very Warm Regards,
Luke
