I mulled over some ideas for 303 day but alas-

Now I’ve had this idea shortly before lunch to explore loudness as I’m finally closing in on finishing some bootleg projects. I feel pretty satisfied with how they are mixed but I have yet to reference them. And if I have learned anything about myself since making music that’s old enough to drive now, it’s that nothing will kill a project faster than finding a technical obstacle that stammers the creative vision. Or this case, bouncing a track I’m excited about that sounds flat and lifeless compared to similar tracks. So, in preparing to send these private bootlegs out into the wild, I want to revisit my process of achieving loudness during mastering. This seems like a great thing to write about because I need to have goals and ideas instead of aimlessly tweaking knobs until my brain smooths over.

So, here’s the plan.

I’m going to master some pink noise and see what happens. If I am able to achieve good balance across the spectrum and a loudness that matches good reference tracks, I am thinking there is another level to this exercise. I’m curious what it might be like to mix a 4/4 kick with pink noise to get a sense of dynamic loudness too. Pink noise alone is good for the aural palette. But it’s lacking in that it really only models a more pleasing frequency response and not a realistic dynamic response. If you analyze the waveforms of dance music, especially club tracks, they are full of huge peaks and valleys (if it’s not some lazy redliner festival sausage). So, I’m curious if providing the kick and then using volume automation to mimic this kind of dynamic loudness what the results might look like.

With 30 minutes left of lunch time remaining, I’ll report back with any interesting finds.

Happy tuning