THE BUILD 003 — Catalog, Not Chart

Every record I make wants to over-fill 200 to 500 hertz. Every one. It’s where the warmth lives, and it’s where texture goes to pile up when nobody’s counting. I know this about my own hands the way you know which way your car pulls.

Which means the question isn’t whether it sounds good. It will sound good. Full in that band always sounds good in the room, on the night, to the person who just made it.

The question is whether it belongs with the others.

So the reference isn’t a chart. Matching whatever’s charting tells you how close you are to somebody else’s decisions on somebody else’s record. Useful to them. Nothing to do with me.

The reference is the catalog. Six albums, and the new one has to sit next to them without announcing that it was made later. That’s a harder target than the charts and a more honest one, because it can’t be met by imitation — there’s nothing to imitate except yourself.

The cost is that you lose the reassurance. Nobody hands you a number that says you’re close. You check the band, you check it against your own work, and you decide.

It pulls left. It has always pulled left. You steer.

— Bolie Jackson, Mix & Master

Start the arc: THE BUILD 001 — The Meter Was Sure