강호중 <Self-titled>

Kang Ho-jung's self-titled album corresponds to the singer-songwriter's proper full-length work. Bearing his own name as the title, this was the baseline work revealing the artist's identity, and handling planning, arrangement, recording, and mixing meant our goal was designing a sound color his subsequent discography could reference.

The arrangement placed acoustic guitar and piano at the base, taking a restrained approach of adding only one instrumental layer per track. Vocal recording invested time in finding the proximity and articulation pace where the artist's natural delivery emerges. With many long-breath sections, we secured multiple takes of long continuous performance and selected the most stable-grained take as the main in editing. Harmonies were layered only thinly in a single line so the main wouldn't waver.

In mixing, track-to-track sonic consistency was prioritized. EQ curves were matched so no single track would stand out when the album plays start-to-finish, and reverb characters were kept within two broad categories for unity. Mastering stayed conservative relative to typical loudness standards for the singer-songwriter genre, preserving dynamics.

The finished album pairs well with quiet-environment late-night listening. A work whose value emerges most when listened to with attention, following the lyrics and melody closely.