Compromise
Jun 28, 2008 Waiting
I finally got things sorted out. I was making bad judgments about this whole mixing process, the kind I think we all make. I worked on these mixes for a while, and I enjoyed the process, and I liked what I heard, so I said “These mixes are good.”
Then when my friend suggested I should get a pro to mix the whole thing, the switch immediately flipped. “These mixes are bad!” “I can’t release them like this! They don’t do justice to the music!”
Blah blah fucking blah. Yes, there are parts of each mix that I would like to improve. Yes, the general character of the Far Side mix is duller and less clear than I’d like it to be. BUT. There’s plenty of good in each one. The way that the snares pop out during the second half of each verse in Far Side – I put some thought into that. The balance of the harmonies in the final chorus of La Da Da Dee – I sweated over each .5 dB gradation in each part to get that just right. Sure, I could hand that over to a pro, but he’d have to recreate my creative decisions, or I’d have to live with his.
So here’s the compromise. My mixes are neither globally good, nor globally bad. There are good parts, bad parts, and parts in between. Over the next few weeks (it would be sooner, but I’m relaxing this anti-social lockdown I’ve been under), I’ll aim to eliminate the bad parts, improve the in-between parts, and not fuck up the good ones.
I might still enlist the help of a professional, but I’d like to find someone who can come into my studio, listen to the parts I can’t fix, and then tell me how to fix them. I think that’s much more valuable than having someone do it for me, no?
The Other Side of the Coin
Jun 24, 2008 Waiting
Or not. The dissenters have finally found their voice.
The other day, I linked to an old blog entry. It’s too bad that, at the time, I didn’t actually bother to read it. It was about looseness, the importance of flaws, and, at the root of it, the difference between greatness and perfection. (Hint: strive for the first, the second only leads to crap.)
I think that the heart of my desire to get this EP mixed by someone else is a desire to make it sound “professional.” To be able to put my album up next to other albums, and declare that it fits among them. To put out something that, ooh maybe, please please, fingers crossed, might get played on the radio, or, do I dare to dream, on the television.
And goddammit, that’s a bunch of bullshit. This is not some sonically pure, big studio effort. I didn’t go to some fancy engineer who knows about the best mic placement to avoid phase problems. I didn’t record in a well-treated room with bass traps in every corner. You can hear me take breaths because I left them in. You can hear the hi-hat bleed from the headphones on some of the vocal tracks, because I left it in.
Back before I was part of FLS, I remember going to a bar with some of the boys and their college friends. We were all just hanging out, and of course, someone suggested that they start freestyling. So we all crowded around, I banged out a beat on the table, and they went at it. The rest of the bar was still talking; I think there was even music playing from the speakers. But it was awesome. Because it was real. No tricks, no smoke, no mirrors, just crazy talented kids doing what they do in the middle of a bar for shits and giggles.
Why should I blow my savings on some hotshot to make this record sound like chocolate pudding with fresh organic strawberries in a golden bowl? I want it to sound like your stupid friends banging on the table and singing on a Saturday night, with the fan blowing, and people talking, and cars passing in the street. But they’re really, really good.
Because that’s what I do. I make real music. It’s not shiny. It’s not professional. It’s not perfect. But it’s fucking great. And I need to respect that.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t lead me to a decision. But it’s a start. More as it develops.
Doin’ It
Jun 22, 2008 Waiting
Thanks for all your advice, everyone. At final count, I had 7 votes yes and 0 votes no. So I spent Saturday figuring out how to export tracks for La Da Da Dee so that they still have all my little tweaks, and they don’t take up too much room.
5 hours, and 1.5 GB later, I realize I shouldn’t have used a song with 30 vocal tracks. Oy. So back to the drawing board; I’ll probably put Far Side up there later today. Well, all the individual instrumental/vocal tracks, and then just a snippet of the full song. I don’t want to leak my own stuff!!
In other news, I know I haven’t been adhering to my usual standards of blogging excellence recently. Not enough of the slightly self-indulgent deep digging I’d become so fond of. Hopefully, things will return to normal soon. In the meantime, thanks for reading!
The Contest – ?!?!?!?
Jun 21, 2008 Waiting
I have been mixing this record for quite some time. A couple months actually, because it’s so hard to put enough time in every day. I’ve been neglecting my friends and family, working alone in my lair to revise and recolor something that I put together myself in the first place. Going a little stir-crazy. Nonetheless, I thought it had been going pretty well.
Until I got home last night from a great meeting with Mec, who runs Rock Slinger Incorporated, and Rick, who is designing the art for If We Were, and found a CD waiting for me in the mail. I’d sent my final mix of Far Side out for a “ballpark master” from the mastering engineer I’d been planning to use, to make sure I wanted to go with him.
I popped in the CD. I put it up next to my final mix. I listened; I compared. I was not happy.
Right at that moment, as if I’d summoned him with my mind, my friend the record producer popped onto Facebook chat to tell me he liked our Radiohead cover, and I sent him the two versions. He reminded me of something I’d forgotten:
No amount of mastering can save a bad mix.
There’s a relevant idiom I can’t quite remember, something like: You can put makeup on a horse, but it won’t make him pretty. (Isn’t there something like that? If not, well, you’re welcome.)
So record producer friend tells me he is going to change my life, and he makes a suggestion:
Take one song, put all the individual vocal/instrumental tracks in a zip file together, and post it on renowned sound engineer forum gearslutz.com as a contest. Throw it up on Craigslist NY and LA as well, and anywhere else I can think of. Whoever gives me the best mix of that song within a limited time frame gets to mix the whole EP with the money I was going to pay for mastering, plus some extra. But they have to turn it around in a week, so I can still make my deadline.
He thinks the promise of a nice wad of cash with a quick turnaround, given the current state of the big studio system, will entice much better engineers than I would expect. They will certainly be better than I. And a well-mixed song with passable mastering will sound MUCH better than a passable mix that’s well-mastered.
I like the idea, but I’m not sure. The idea of relinquishing any measure of creative control, even to a pro who I’ll choose because I like his/her work, and who I’ll constantly be giving commentary to, is scary. But it seems to make so much sense!
This is where you folks come in. What do you think? Should I do this?!?!?!
T minus 96 Days
Jun 11, 2008 Waiting
I really was planning to post once a week. I have all kinds of drafts in a folder called “Blog” on a variety of insightful topics ranging from the Dirty Projectors show I saw in April, to the unreleased classic Stevie Wonder snippets that have been floating around the blogosphere recently and the general “Woe to the music industry” reaction around them, to a list of the albums I love from the 21st century, and why I love them. But there just hasn’t been time to polish anything off. Why?
I’m in what I like to call “lockdown mode.” I have been mixing my ass off, to the neglect of basically everything else. Every day, I go to work, come home, take a nap, and mix. Dinner, sleep, repeat. Weekends, I wake up, mix, go out at night. It’s a good time, but I don’t think I could do it for very long.
Luckily, I won’t have to, as my mixing deadline is June 30th. From there, I send it out for mastering and duplication, and release If We Were on September 16th through Rock Slinger Incorporated.
The release show with the Geniuses is planned for September 20th19th. And if lady luck will have me, I’ll be off to Barcelona the following day on the 21st for Red Bull Music Academy (cross your fingers!!).
That’s where I’m at for the next few. What’s up with you?
