Issue #34 — Wednesday, March 3, 2021
Times have been busy and chaotic since I sent my last newsletter on October 17, 2018, but I’m back to doing music now. In that last newsletter, I said this:
Those of you on my mailing list will continue to receive news of Kharlie M as it occurs: upcoming shows, album releases, and the like. The emails will not be too frequent, and sometimes there may be a long time between them, but I will not leave you “in the dark.”
Going forward, the newsletter will mainly deal with Kharlie M and not other musicians, as they do their own promotions. A link to the Local page on Kharlie.com will appear at the bottom of each newsletter, as before.
The new logo reflects this change; instead of “Local Music News from Kharlie M,” it now reads “It’s Kharlie M, Still Hummin’ Along,” which goes with the title, The Mmming Report. The “Still Hummin’ Along” can be taken either literally or figuratively, as “still moving, not stopping, still making progress.”
My latest release, a 10-song, 37-minute album entitled, Umm…, is not new; it was first released in June, 2007 using my given name, as I didn’t start using Kharlie M until years later. It’s now on Bandcamp, Spotify, SoundCloud, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and Deezer, as well as Kharlie.com. What follows is a history of this album from 2006 to 2021.
All of the instruments on that album were done on the computer but were made to sound as real as possible; most listeners thought I did this well. Vocals were recorded in 2006. Audio processing was a huge learning curve, so I actually produced four versions of this album:
A pre-release edition in December, 2006, given as gifts to family and a few friends. One song, “When I’m Away,” was not ready at that time, so this album had only nine tracks. I was timid with tone correction, so the album lacked treble and sounded a tad dull, though the overall balance was good.
The April, 2007 edition got an extra treble boost which proved to be too much; the vocals sounded as if they were pasted over the accompaniment, giving a karaoke effect. This was meant to be the final version, but the tone and mixing convinced me that it needed more work.
The June, 2007 edition became the officially registered version which is in the Library of Congress. A custom tone-control setting improved the vocals, allowing them to blend better with the accompaniment. Some peak limiting was applied in mastering to make the CD play louder, but this was gentle by 2007 standards.
A self-titled edition in October, 2007, prompted by a failed radio promotion, wasn’t as good as the official version. Heavy peak limiting done during mastering produced a louder record with some audible distortion in the loudest passages, effectively destroying some of the music. Adjustments made to tone and mixing did more to hurt than to help most songs. Amended track order didn’t flow as nicely as the original.
I have tried numerous times since then to improve the sound on these recordings, all with little to no success. I planned to reprocess the whole album and release it under the title, Umm… It’s Me, but this never materialized.
On February 18, 2021, I randomly listened to some of the official version on my iPhone and was surprised to hear that the audio was at least as good as my later albums! I played it on a boombox and also on my computer with good headphones and came to the same conclusion: the audio quality works well for the music and vocals as recorded at that time. I decided that day to reissue the record as is, with the original audio.
If ever you have asked me for a copy of Umm… and were told that it was up for reprocessing and was unavailable, please accept my humble apology. You can now get one at The Exclusive Company in Janesville or from me directly, or you can buy a digital version at Bandcamp.
© 2021 Charles Dwain Petitt and Ummamum Music.
Links to local musicians: www.kharlie.com/local.
Read past newsletters: www.kharlie.com/newsletter.
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