the glamorous life

... of an international record producer! studio move completed last week now the acoustic hell begins ... spent most of last week listening to reference material and carrying out real-time (frequency) analysis on the space from which I deduced I should throw the laptop out the window. then got down to DIY, hanging up acoustic panels, baffles, diffusers, bass-traps, clouds, blankets, laundry and finally myself all in a desperate attempt to leverage the best sound out of our new mix room. finally got there but in the process realized that my original vision for the property (i.e: minimalist & open plan) does not = a great mixing environment. hey-ho! live and learn and spend a shit load. at least now it sounds like my old studio and not like an aircraft hanger. an unexpected side-effect of working in Chai Wan are the models. as in lanky young girls. more than once this week have I had a knock on the door from a confused waif looking for some photography studio or other ... unfortunately (for them) all they find is a hoary old gweilo mumbling on about room modes with loud industrial techno playing in the background.just one last paragraph for the day - there are very few occasions when hong kong pisses me off, but last week was full of them. HK is a shoppers paradise when you wanna buy the every-day stuff ... like LV handbags or china branded DVD players. but as soon as you try to buy something esoteric or specialized then forget about it ... hours are lost and nerves get frayed. take something as mundane as rack rails ... seemingly dull enough that every shop in Sham Shui Po uses them & has equipment on display bolted to them, but no-one can remember where to actually buy them. Eventually I managed to source a shop thru a friend but my initial "I'll just pop out and pick these things up" turned into a three day long "did I dream these things up?" quest of epics. yes, you can pay for overpriced plastic boxes in the music shop but I prefer to make my own studio furniture ... I use it every day so why not design it as well. I can barely wait for the week when I start purchasing new AD/DA convertors, boutique outboard, high-end EQs and signal processors and am expected to drop hundreds of

thousands of dollars on gear I can't even demo. gah ... annoying.right, enough faffing about on the interweb ... back to making music.