DrScythe Recording Blog - Part IV: My mixing philosophy

I wanted to do a blog about EQing and then noticed that I didn’t explain my approach to mixing so far. And that would leave you with my tips for using EQs without knowing why I do use them in this way. So my mixing philosophy boils down to this:

Keep it as natural as possible but do whatever necessary to make it sound good to your ears.

This leads to several consequences.

1. My mixes will never sound as modern as most of the others.

This is pretty obvious. Modern mixes sound everything but natural and are pushed to the max in terms of usage of limiters especially the releases of mainstream artists or the big players of some genres. Of course this doesn’t apply to every major release…but the ‘plastic sound’ as I tend to call it is a standard at the moment. A standard I chose to avoid for matters of taste. I know that some of my songs would profit from an overly processed sound (Calling The X for example) but I prefer to keep learning how to achieve a fat but also warm sound that keeps the character of the originally recorded tracks. It seems that gluing the tracks together is a little bit more complicated this way but I will keep on learning and improving.

2. My mixes will never have a constant volume.

If there is a more quiet part in a song I won’t use the tricks of modern loudness to eliminate the overall dynamic of it. What you might have noticed is that I am very cautious when it comes to compression so far and that’s something I am working on. Controlling the dynamics on track level so that I don’t need much compression on the sum. I think it’s becoming better. Compression works a little counterintuitive so that I think most of the people will struggle a little with that when beginning to mix music.

3. Very few effects.

Well…I had a POD XT Pro, POD X3 Live, POD HD and a Vetta II Combo for years and used all the effects extremely rarely. I like effects when just fiddling around but not really in a finished song. A little chorus on an arpeggio here and there and the almighty duo of reverb and delay. But that’s it. Bit crusher, phaser, flanger, ring modulators…nice to play with but nothing more to me so far. We’ll see…I am not against them by default (although ‘natural’ seems to suggest no effects) but it’s basically just not my style.

4. I don’t care about competitive loudness.

Seriously. I just don’t care. I don’t think it’ll ever have to compete on airplay so I can just keep it at a normal level.

5. You wouldn’t normally…too bad.

You wouldn’t pan the drums from the drummer’s point of view – I do because it sounds and feels right to me. One of the most important things I took away from reading and watching interviews with well-known mixing engineers: they really don’t care about things like ‘normal’ or ‘regularly’. They are called if someone wants their style of mixing applied. Try out their tricks and tips, try out the standards but be honest with yourself and ‘mix it your way’ if that’s what you want the music to sound like.

6. But your mixes sound really cheap so far.

What a surprise I am still a beginner. I am not even able to achieve the things I want to but that’s part of the whole learning process. And instead of ruining other people’s hard work I am practicing with my own and will be able to easily remix everything later on.

Well this was a shorter one as I am busy getting two tracks out to you this month. And I am pretty sure that only few will like both songs. And owls won't like either of them.

Guaranteed displeasure if you're an owl

So long,

DrScythe

DrScythe Recording Blog - Part III: Plans and projectmanagement

As the planned release of my latest song was heavily delayed I wanted to write something about plans. And as a “Bachelor of Science E-Government” I even can add some professional stuff about project management.

Songs, albums etc. as projects

When people refer to something as a project they often want to emphasize that it’s a one-time event or not as important as the main-thing (like a ‘side-project’ of a band member or refurbishing their garden shed). There are several definitions for what a project is and it depends on what you are doing which one applies. Check out Wikipedia on this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project

Temporary, permanent, reoccurring – if you want to you can call anything a project and treat it like one. But the more objects, people and tasks are involved the easier it will be to actually finish something if you plan it properly. No matter what and how you’re going to do it: listing all the said things will already improve your workflow as you’ll try to organize everything a little bit automatically. After you’ve done that you can just go on with your regular procedure but not forget something this time. Or you can sort the tasks chronologically and use a waterfall model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model for this project. It also helps to connect the required resources with the tasks to make sure that the equipment or person is available.

For more modern approaches you could learn everything about SCRUM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29) and apply it to whatever you’re doing…

Back to recording: in contrast to many business projects the waterfall model is still usable for your (home) studio. You record track after track, instrument after instrument, then mix, then master, done. Even the “checkup loops” can be planned on fixed points. The most critical point is to plan backwards and with a lot of “headroom”. So from your deadline to the starting point and add about 30% of the time needed. For critical elements add 50-60% or if there is enough time double it.

For most bands the drums would be the most critical element as the other members need those for their recording sessions. So the finished task ‘drum recordings’ is a requirement for the other recording sessions etc.

Adjustments

One flaw of this method is its lack of flexibility. If you need to insert a task or change the duration of one then the entire plan has to be changed. So if the drummer can’t do the recordings for whatever reasons and there is no one to replace him – bad luck.

Or if you’re a one-man-project doing everything yourself but your grandpa dies and you got a lot of other stuff to do you find yourself jettisoning the entire plan. I initially planned to release two songs this month and now I am happy that I can finish one. And I am way more flexible than a regular band. For example I do not depend on a drum recording – I can record all the instruments using a really dull basic drum track. But that didn’t help this time. I invested several hours of work in both tracks but due to the lack of time I had to drop one song for now and finish the other one within the short period of time. So I had to redo the plan to maximize the time and it is just on spot. If I had to visit more family members on Easter I wouldn’t have been able to finish everything.

So the next time I try something more ambitious I am going to plan it with even more headroom. There are only few reoccurring tasks in recording and mixing so there’s no help to find in the modern tools of project management – except for the knowledge of projects being doomed if not planned and executed with the most possible carefulness.

This is this month’s result:

So long

DrScythe

PS: tables are great for planning, especially if you use automatic coloring.

0, red, not even begun

1, dark orange, rough idea, not ready to record

2, yellow, ready to record

3, green, recorded

4, grey, bounced with FX

5, blue, do not touch again

DrScythe Thoughts - Part II: Tutorials about writing hits are nonsense

Last week I stated that every artist’s dream is to make a living by his art. There might be some exceptions but overall everyone wants to do things he/she/it loves and not being forced to do something annoying all the time (but most of us have lame jobs…).

That’s why I asked myself: why are there so many tutorials and books about ‘The hit formula’ or ‘101 reasons your photos aren’t selling’ or ‘The secret of Blablabla and how to make money with it’. Of course there are some basics you got to learn first for almost every hobby. Playing an instrument, know your camera and some stuff about exposure and apertures or which needles to use for knitting. And of course there are some principles and patterns that you can find in the successful songs, photos, pictures, etc. Be it some harmonic movements, arrangements, mainstream-stylistic stuff (guitars, amps, focal lengths…) – you get the picture.

But you got to ask yourself: aren’t you sacrificing self-expression for some sort of “success” using formulas? Using a specific sequence of chords for the sake of a higher chance to become famous? Framing a motif to comply with a set of rules but ignoring that you’d like it to look differently? There is an obvious difference between creating something and analyzing the reasons for its success later and forcing yourself to use a given framework.

It kind of contradicts the ‘make your dreams come true’-theme that’s behind the dream. There is always work involved in producing something. For my songs I had to learn the instruments, some knowledge about theory, vastly improve my language skills, mixing, mastering…video editing (and as you keep learning it’s a continuing process). But most of the time you enjoy that part as you just improve your ability to express yourself. Knowing how to get a result you can hear or see in your head before you begin is the ideal. It will save you a lot of time if you reached the point of ‘knowing what you’re doing’ and you can focus on the creativity.

And basic knowledge of the non-technical aspects might also be helpful just like music theory, typical elements of your favorite genre of photography, typical spices for your favorite cuisine. Depending on you, on your very own mind it’s more or less difficult to ignore all the rules sometimes to create something truly amazing, truly representing you or just find a path out of a dead end. But what those books about the “ways to success” do is reinforcing the borders. It will become more difficult for you to break through the walls of your knowledge. Your subconscious kicking in in the worst of moments: using this and that could make this a hit! It’s still up to you to decide against this then but the more facts you read and know the thicker the walls will be.

My way of writing music is pretty much impossible to be spoiled by this as I randomly play stuff and then improvise fragments of lyrics and work on from there. But I bought such a book years ago and it definitely would kill my relationship to a song if I’d go ahead and said: let’s write a I-V-vi-IV song. It wouldn’t even work for me if I had complete lyrics, used said chord progression and tried to sing as I always have a melody ‘in my head’ when I write lyrics. For photography I couldn’t resist looking for the perfect color contrasts, using the golden ratio and ‘correct’ exposure – although I never cared for “success” as a photographer. But for music it’s a completely different story.

Basically using such theories as the foundation of your creativity is like playing puzzle games with some blank areas for you to fill in on your own. It does not mean that you and others won’t like it. It’s not just the same level of being creative like coming up with it yourself (to me). Creating stuff is a quite personal matter so if you’re happy with something like that keep going. But to me it’s the completely wrong way. And I would feel really bad not creating ‘by accident’ but instead just try to force a hit song that has no meaning to me.

The question ‘why are there such books/tutorial?’ is easy to answer but why people believe that using formulas instead of just living their passion will help them is beyond me.

That’s it, I’ll release a new song this week, so long

DrScythe