From Sepia to Technicolor
Birdsong At Morning began as an attempt to resurrect the musical impulse that each member had relegated to the past. The first tentative moments gained focus and momentum as songs began to emerge from my subconscious after a dozen silent years. Gradually, Greg, Darleen, and I reclaimed our musical selves while exploring new avenues of expression. Feeling over the hill in my early 40s, the songs I wrote reflected my more adult, world weary existence, with tempos slowed and dynamics geared more to the whisper than the scream.
When we began to record these new songs, we had not yet completely honed our new identity. The decision to add a string section to many of the arrangements helped to distinguish our music from that of our contemporaries. The possibilities were compelling, and each successive record saw us explore and extend those ideas. But the sheer “newness” of it all also undermined my confidence. This was most apparent in the flatness of the mixes, especially the positioning of vocals, not exactly buried, but certainly not featured. Greg and Darleen often pointed this out, but I was unconvinced.
As the years passed by, those early Birdsong recordings were a bit embarrassing for me – after a time, all I heard were the flaws, the lack of faith in what we were doing, in particular my vocal performances. By the time we made A Slight Departure, I felt much more convinced of the value of what we were doing and often considered it our first real album. But a curious phenomenon became more apparent, especially as I went out to perform solo – the majority of the set lists was drawn from those early albums. While I may have been unsure of the recordings, the merits of that initial batch of songs became much clearer to me. If only the recordings reflected those strengths…
In a parallel development, I became obsessed with music in surround sound rather than stereo. Beginning with A Slight Departure, all of my subsequent recordings were conceived in this manner and were issued in 5.1 as well as stereo. The early recordings were outliers in this regard. As other like-minded music fans began to embrace our work, there would be occasional calls for giving the back catalog the full immersive audio treatment. At one point I began to give this serious consideration only to be stymied by technological issues in trying to upgrade/open the recording files. And so I let it go.
But years later, I came upon information on how to retrieve such files and the possibility of reclaiming the audio and creating new mixes became a reality. Ostensibly, this reclamation was in the service of creating surround sound versions. But as a standard workflow process, I always begin with creating the best stereo version I can muster, then expanding that in more immersive soundstages. All of which is to say I now had the opportunity to correct the demur stereo mixes of the past. Indeed, I approached these mixes with some trepidation, even considering re-recording all of my vocals. But when I finally got to work, I realized the performances held up. Perhaps not as nuanced as I might wish, but certainly not embarrassing. I just needed to make them louder.
And so I have done. I’m much happier with the new stereo mixes, and the immersive mixes really allow all of the performances and arrangement elements to come through. And of course, in the intervening years, new technologies have emerged, most notably Dolby Atmos. I have since learned that Atmos requires a completely new approach to mixing, necessitating that I unlearn much of the skills I have spent a lifetime mastering. The process has been terrifying, frustrating, mystifying. But as my old dog brain grapples with the new tricks, I have begun to see the intriguing possibilities inherent in the process and am excited by the notion that many listeners can now experience the joys of immersive audio without a significant financial investment.
If you are already a fan of these early recordings, I hope you will appreciate them even more deeply in the new versions. And if you’re new to immersive audio, perhaps these versions will introduce you to new realms of musical experience. Like Dorothy opening the door into the land of Oz…
Available to stream now:
https://ffm.to/bound2023