Dear friends,

Paul Haworth here. I am sat on a bench, staring at the River Thames. The sun is shining, robustly, but it is the end of the day and soon it will fade. 



My reason for writing is to promote this week’s single but I am not sure I can do that. Desolate questions are echoing through my mind.

Earlier this afternoon, as I walked along the river, I passed the Southbank Centre and, in search of answers, I visited the Poetry Library to read some Allen Ginsberg poems.

Hot heart within

open blue eyes—

a hard cock never lies

•

O Thought, now you’ll have to think the same thing forever!

•

Two molecules clanking against each other require an observer to become scientific data

Oh come on, Paul, suck it up! Promote.

This week’s single: ‘Paint Your Favourite’.

‘Paint Your Favourite’ is about painting. Whether selfie-sticks and Sunflowers or wheeling dying relatives before della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ, it is fascinating what we want from painting. And in the face of so many forces, expectations, I adore paintings’ endurance.

My favourite painters are John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert and Edgar Degas.

Mine are Rembrandt van Rijn (NL), Vincent van Gogh (NL) and Hans Hoekstra (NL).

Whisper it, as I know that Sam will not approve of my saying this, but ‘Paint Your Favourite’ marks the turning of the album, where where the illegal Side A ends and the emotional Side B begins.

‘Paint Your Favourite’ was first released in July 2013. The first song of what would become Illegal Emotions. The current version is identical but for one thing: it was mastered. By this man.

Who really knows what mastering is? Sam talks and talks about mastering but I never really know what he’s on about.

Alright Paul, I’ll explain it one more time. Let’s start from the beginning.

After I’ve made the basic beat and you’ve written your lyrics, we record your vocals while you lie down on your single-person mattress. A dynamic microphone goes into an analogue preamp; the signal from the preamp is converted to digital by an audio interface and goes into my computer.

Usually we record five to ten vocal takes per song. I then go through them all and assemble a composite vocal track, trying to maintain a consistent volume, tone and energy. I clean up overly present breaths and S-sounds.

Then the mixing can start. I make sure individual elements don’t get in each other’s way. For example, the kick drum and the bassline cannot occupy the same bass frequencies, and melodic samples need some mid frequencies attenuated in order to not clash with your voice. I use harmonic saturation plugins to add colour and grit. I use reverb and delay plugins to create space and depth. I use compression plugins to control the dynamic range.

This stage is heaven for obsessives: you can worry endlessly whether it’s worth it to upsample to 192kHz, how to acoustically treat your room, whether or not to use linear-phase EQ... Much home-recorded music is eternally trapped in this purgatory. Every minute spent on Gearslutz is a minute spent not making music.

For better or worse, in a lot of music these days arranging and producing and mixing have become a hybrid process, all done by the same musician/producer in the same environment. This is very different from the classical model of the mixing engineer as a hired professional, offering a new perspective as well as dedicated skills.

The most interesting mix decisions are musical rather than technical: shouldn’t the drums sound far more distant for these eight bars? This fairydust delay on the vocal sounds great, but does it make the song too romantic? As the song takes shape, certain aspects of the original beat need to be revised, and new ideas pop up.

I send you drafts of the song. You reply with lengthy Word documents full of criticism. I send new drafts. We finetune suspense and release, pokerface and slapstick.

So far, so good.

At parties, on elevators and in alleys everyone kept asking: “I do hope you’re getting it mastered... you are, right?”

For many, mastering holds a magical promise. Wise men with decades of experience and three mortgages worth of Neve equipment will make your music glow with professionalism.

On 14 April 2015 I took the 5.50am train from Amsterdam to Brussels. With trembling hands I turned over my harddrive to mastering engineer Alan Ward. I was going on a single hour of sleep, having kept myself awake wondering whether I shouldn’t still put a glitchy robot stutter on all of your raps, and realizing maybe there should have been more than three basslines on the album.

“Alan,” I asked, “can you make us beautiful?”

“This song here has a dreadful spike at 12kHz. The hissy hi-hat. I can’t bring it down without compromising the vocal.”

“Erm, I think I meant the hi-hat to sound dreadful.”

“All in order then!”

So Paul, Alan used subtle compression and EQ in order to round out some rough edges within songs, and to make the songs sound more consistent across the album. The songs are exactly as moving and memorable as they were before, but everything definitely sounds 1% better.

Most important, though, is that mastering acts like varnish; the point of no return. It’s time to let this go into the world, Paul.

Sorry, Sam, what were you saying? I got distracted by those aforementioned desolate questions.

Why bother? What’s the point? Are you not a bit old for this? Isn’t it time you quit?

These are questions which arise in all artists but lately their voice has grown louder and more insistent. Sometimes it feels like making art has brought me only heartbreak and despair.

And yet I keep coming back. Each time – with each project – telling myself this could be the one – only for each time to reply... this is not the one.

Spiralling into depression. Invariably I turn to Franny and Zooey where I land on the quotation from the Bhagavad Gita:

You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no rights to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working.

Once these words could revive. Now I am punch-drunk. So many rounds of defeat, I am unsure I can pick myself up again. I am terribly, terribly melancholy. 32 years old, my dreams have come to nothing. Working in cloakrooms, calling myself an artist. What could be more hopeless? Sometimes it feels like in no sphere of life am I succeeding. #TRUETRUETRUESDAY seemed a good idea at the time but it has become a weekly reminder: yours is a life of diminishing returns.

Diminishing returns? You’re right, Paul. Your first book has sold 743 copies, your second 580, your third 386 and your fourth 130. But man up already! Life is a valley of tears for all of us. Remember that making and releasing art is by definition a defiance of—

I had what I suppose you would call a dream. I have never told anyone this, not even Sam, but I dreamed the album’s success would fund my hair restoration. (On another bench nearby, there is a man. I would estimate he is in his mid-fifties but he looks much younger. Wearing shades, his hair is long and it is pulled back in a ponytail. This man does not stare forlornly at the passing river. He laughs into a mobile phone. I wish I was him. I wish I had what he has. A thick, taut ponytail.) Because if am honest with you, when I trace my downfall to its source, it is when I began to lose my hair. I really believe therefore that if I could reverse this trend, things would be different.

And perhaps my dreams of a ponytail are not totally mad. For Sam has an inspired £$€¥-making venture.

Which is where the T-shirt comes in.

A quality screenprint on organic sweatshop-free cotton. It will suit your sparkling eyes and downcast lashes. €25 plus shipping. Order now.

Our songs belong in the world of saliva, drunken doubt, broken arms, unmade beds, dusk and laughter.

It’s 2015, and music mostly resides in the world of 128kbps streaming and Facebook likes.

I don’t believe in a vinyl renaissance, but the sterile Big-Brother-lite approach of online music distribution does feel rather cold.

Which is where the T-shirt comes in.

As the Bard said:     I might like you     Like I like your face     The way it plays on my feelings     Come on, come in

Every minute spent looking at Google Analytics is a minute spent not flirting. Go outside and please take us with you.

Sam de Groot

Amsterdam, 19 May 2015

In my Thames-aggravated anguish, I come to wonder: Are the Parents of the World right? Retrain, Paul. Become a solicitor. Put your life’s work behind you. Put it on a USB stick, under a bed, in a box which eventually you lose but who cares? That person bears no resemblance to Paul Haworth QC. (In Alternate Reality I succeed, progressing rapidly through the legal ranks.)

Sinking Thames, sinking feelings rising again.

On the bench someone has written: Everyday is good cos of being alive!

Paul Haworth

London, 19 May 2015

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