The Mumbler

Here's what I remember. I remember plans being made in the driveway and the thrill of anticipation. I remember Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" playing on the radio as we wound our way up the Sea-to-Sky highway. I remember a crackling fire in the fireplace, as soothing a sound as you'll find in this world. I remember hiking and exploring. I remember letting my friends go alone. I remember a soft voice when nobody was speaking. I remember terror. I remember the Mumbler.

"The sun shining at this time for a few minutes afforded an island which, from the shape of the mountain that composes it, obtained the name of Anvil island."

~ from the journal of Captain George Vancouver, June 14, 1792

On a small island in Howe Sound named Anvil, my grandfather built two cabins, both nestled (one above the other) under the shoulder of a Bible camp. The one down by the rocky beach was for him; the one above, on a steep rise, for his sister Jean.

The cabins in Winter

Anvil Island seems to exist in two different worlds. In the memories of many, it's sunshine. Its warmth and brightness can make a person glow for long afterwards, almost like the effect of radiation in a comic. In the real world, it's an island of cold dark shadows, moist with the memory of rain that never quite goes away, surrounded by mountains that steal most of the few hours of sunshine that might persuade its dank forest to surrender its water to the sky. Around some 90% of its shoreline bare cliffs plunge directly into glacier-fed, mercury-stained waters. It looks less like an anvil than a grotesque molar, lonely in the mouth of the sound. Welcoming, it is not.

Ah, but it is well-loved, despite its somewhat fierce mien. As a child, it was my real home. Civilization was a baffling, noisy and unfriendly place. As a teenager, I merely waited out the school year to return to it for those blissful few weeks of socializing that made sense to me. It was in that between time of adolescence that I went there and finally saw past the brightness into its dark, dark shadows. Something was there, looking back at me.

Sounds Get Squished, Sounds Get Gooder

One of the first things I learned about working with music on computers is that the most important effect you can use is compression. The next thing I learned was that it's the least understood effect. Lord knows I didn't understand it. I'm not entirely certain I do now, but I feel confident enough to blather about it in a blog post. I'm pretty sure that I know it well enough to describe it, even if my own application of it would make proper audio engineers point and laugh. But why worry? Nobody reads this blog. And if anyone ever does and they happen to know where I've gone wrong, maybe I'll finally learn!

Original, compressed and final side-by-side-by-side

Quick 'splain
[1] Because of peaks, levels can only be increased so far using just volume controls.
[2] Compression squishes the peaks down.
[3] Now volume controls can raise the levels more effectively.

That's a quick overview, but I'm going to go into more detail about each stage. Read on, if you care.