Bleeding ears

Another day of mixing in the studio, and I've officially lost all sense of what we're doing, why we're doing it, whether it's any good, and more crucially who I am! It's par for the course at this stage in any album mix: the ears get tired, and all objectivity flies out of the window. I start to listen to a track, but find myself simply hearing the noise of a perpetual yawn, peppered with the terrifying screams generated by one's ear honing in on the tiniest mistake, which becomes an epic sonic disaster. "Cut the strings", I shout, "cut all synths", "cut the guitar..." At this stage, of course, I realise that everything's been cut, and that we have to start the process afresh. 

Of course I'll soon fall in love with the music again, no doubt when I hear everything mastered, or when my ears have stopped bleeding and vibrating to the endless mush of the suspensions flying through my compositions! I remember this stage on the requiem all too well. At one point I wouldn't have cared if I never heard another bar of my own music again.

The problem with being a writer is that we spend our lives striving for perfection, but perfection always eludes us. There's always one note more out of tune than the rest, one note which is played too fast, another which is too loud... A song's energy dips in the middle; its melody doesn't reach the most sonically rewarding place and so it goes on. We strive. We fail.

My biggest worry is my tendency to over-score. Every time I record something I realise I've not quite taken into account the inconsistencies and eccentricities of real musicians and players, and as a result, haven't quite left the space for my melodies to breathe. I perpetually try to limit my orchestrations - reduce and reduce - but I find there's still always a little too much going on! I tell myself it will be different with the next project, but something always crops up; the BBC doesn't want dark music, they want joyodfanfares, the choir won't be able to sustain such long chords, you have one week to write 30 minutes' music and are therefore simply throwing anything at the manuscript that will stick...

I can, however, well see why genius artists like Picasso had their "periods", why some extraordinarily talented creatives are always too scared to finish their magnum opus and why the most wonderful of all rip up the rule book before starting each new work. Note to self; be braver! Scale and ambition sometimes play second fiddle to profound simplicity.