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I am just worried about what's going on in the world. Right wing populists are popping up everywhere and threatening the freedom of us and bringing the world closer to darkness...

So I had to write a song about this

DrScythe Thoughts - Part VI: How good feedback can be demoralizing

I already posted something about feedback and critique but I've got to add something: good feedback can be demoralizing. Don't get me wrong here: I absolutely LOVE the good feedback I receive. It was necessary to give me the confidence to launch Project 100. But I recently had to think about life and stuff again...

I soon will release my 10th song and it's a little more ambitious than the ones so far. Not in terms of the music but in terms of the lyrics and setting. But while working on this one I also was thinking about what I achieved so far..more than doubled my subs on YT, got the attention of a company (although that's mostly due to my reviews on a forum) and a relatively large number of "great song(s)!" "you're talented" "keep going!". While this is incredibly uplifting for the artist half of me, it's really frustrating for the rational part.

I am struggling to find a job at the moment so money is a big issue. I studied something very different from music because I always was (and still am) ridden by the idea that my songs and abitilies will never be good enough for people to like them. So I chose to do something more solid (IT management). Apparently companies are looking for people with my knowledge according to their advertisements but not me. So with every positive comment about my music I am now closer to cursing myself for wasting my time with this degree. And also cursing the whole internet for being so cluttered that it seems to be impossible to be noticed by more than one or two persons every time I try to promote my stuff.

It would be a completely different situation if I would've got a job (or a mysterious source of income..). I could just be happy about every single nice word and keep on working towards the 100 songs. But now I am always split between the two parts of my psyche which kills motivation for both things - the 'real world' problems are killing the creativity and the declined applications kill the motivation for applying again and again. It sometimes feels like everything is absolutely pointless. To have these feelings again (last time I was 16 or 17, now I am 28) is worrying me even further...

I have to admit that this blog was one of the first things I couldn't do anymore at the moment. So I figure that this will be one of the last posts for a while until things are back on track again...sorry for that...

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 I: The internet, final frontier between musicians and freedom

Theoretically the internet should’ve helped bands and musicians a lot. Direct contact between the essential ends of the ‘business’, cutting away the industry nonsense…

And while it is slowly crouching towards this utopic situation it’s actually a huge mess. A really huge labyrinth and no one knows where the exit is. And the entrance is long gone. Now we’ve got sites for bands to sell their music, streaming sites for industry, streaming sites for hobbyists, mixed streaming sites, networking sites for bands/bands, networking sites for bands/industry, live streaming sites, video sites, all the different social networks, blogs, vlogs,  forums and maybe even more stuff…

Promoting your band? How and where?

This leads to small and unknown artists (like me) struggling for any attention at all, slightly larger artiAdd captionsts (let’s say ‘known regional’) struggling for enough attention to make the next step, large artists struggling between making money and being hobbyists while the largest ones are still connected to the promotion machinery (I guess mostly because the ‘mainstream listener’ doesn’t bother with discovering new music and just jumping on the band wagon when the industry (or music enthusiasts) found something new to like).

So we’ve got dozens of places flooded with thousands of musicians who want the attention of the world which they can only get by convincing a few enthusiasts that their music is the next big thing or at least good enough to enjoy (the standard may vary). It would be chaotic on a single platform it is even worse now. On top of this it’s not even easy to promote yourself. Rules and restrictions on some pages, technical barriers on others are all in the way of saying ‘hello, I’m here’. It’s understandable that no one likes the typical promoting account: registering, posting once or twice and never logging in again. But if you would spend hours with posting and commenting in groups there’s not a lot of time left for making music. If you’re a band of five one member could easily be working full-time solely on the promotion nowadays just for a few likes and clicks on all the different sites.

I know that this is nothing new to many but I am experiencing the problems first-hand now so that I am actually involved in it instead of just being an observer. Especially since I am getting mostly positive feedback (everything else being mixing/mastering critique so far) from family to random people to some professionals I am really eager to reach more people. No matter what a musician you know tells you: secretly she/he is dreaming about making a living by making music. Even the trvest Black Metal band would love to spend most of their time with music. The reasons might differ: reaching a higher level of art, learn more instruments or be better at the one they’re playing, releasing more music, play live more often, just leaving the hated regular job…but in the end it’s the ideal of doing what you love and still being able to pay your bills. Not a large house and concerts in huge stadiums. That’s the gold flakes on the sprinkles on the whipped cream on the best icing ever on the best cake ever made. Or so.

What would be ideal: a site like a crash between bandcamp, OLD myspace and 500px. Bands could present themselves in their own chosen style, people could buy the stuff and a ranking system. And to keep the big ones from blocking the upcoming artists: a ‘hall of fame’ for those having a rank over 95% longer than 3 months straight. That’s just scribbling ideas but something like that would be great. Maybe YouTube is heading this way now after acquiring bandpage.

So long,

DrScythe

DrScythe Recording Blog - Part I or What do you pay studios for? (2016)

For most of the time that the modern music industry existed you’ve paid for the equipment they’ve got and for the experienced engineers. But nowadays you can build and setup your own small studio for 1k and achieve an amazing quality. And it doesn’t even take the thousand bucks if you already got a decent computer (no matter if win or mac) and let’s say a mic and an interface. Freeware sounds excellent nowadays and so you just need to learn how to use it. If you already got money to spend, no matter if you’re a solo artist or a band it might be better to buy some recording equipment instead of just ‘renting’ the stuff. You don’t need a 128 track mixing console to get good results. Owning the stuff yourself will pay off when you want to record another song/EP/album.

Recording and mixing music isn’t that hard to learn (but to master – which is another story). Basically it boils down to this:

-       Adjust your ears to the overall sound instead of just your instrument

-       Understand what which piece of equipment does (EQ, Comp, Gate, Verbs...)

-       Know your hardware (adjust ears to monitors, know your plugins)

-       Practice repeatedly

Throw in some diligence while editing and you’ll be able to produce a nicely balanced mix of your songs. The ‘old masters’ weren’t born mixing engineers – they learned a lot ‘on the fly’. New technologies popping up all the time back then, tons of analog hardware with different characteristics (even if it’s supposed to sound the same) and so on. If you read The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (by Bobby Owskinski; no ad here, just a reference) you will notice that the most valuable part of this book is indeed the one containing the interviews. You’ll notice that almost all of the engineers are very vague about rules and fixed settings. They just know what they want and how to achieve it. Years of practice may come in handy if you want to get a certain result. And that’s what you’re paying for. Their experience and understanding of (your) music. So if you know a studio or engineer that repeatedly was involved in the making of records whose sounds you love and don’t have the time or interest to learn – go for it. If you have a very precise idea of the result yourself – learn how to achieve it.

I am not bashing studios here. If no one in your band (or you as a solo artist) is interested in recording and mixing then using their services is fine. If you got an album prepared and never recorded or mixed before you shouldn’t consider ruining your creative work by practicing on it. But if you are a/the songwriter/composer and if you can hear the final song ‘in your ear’ while writing it then you might be better off learning to record and mix yourself – at least in the long run.

What do you need to begin is a PC or Mac (tablets can do the trick but for handling more than say 6-8 tracks I wouldn’t bother), some sort of interface and a DAW (recording software). There are a lot of ‘recording beginner buyer’s guides’ and as they change constantly due to new hardware I suggest that you just search for those or head over to sites like gearslutz.com 

As soon as your system is up and running and you grabbed all the free plugins (e.g. vst4free.com) you need/want you should begin recording and mixing. Not the full tracks but riffs and parts. Try a little automation. Get used to your monitors. You don’t need a pair that costs 2000 bucks and is the most neutral one can buy. It’s more important that your ears know what they’re hearing. So listening to your favorite tracks (sound wise!) isn’t a bad idea. If your first mixdowns sound like you want them, choose the song with the simplest structure and fewest instruments involved to practice. There are many small traps ahead. I will let you know for which ones I fell in a future blog.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. It is right if it sounds right. Of course there are many ‘ideals’ you can aim for (‘hear everything clearly’, ‘punchy and tight sound’ or ‘warm and vintage’ etc.) and there are some basic qualities which separate the ‘decent quality’ mix from the ‘well-I-placed-a-mic-and-pressed-record’-mix. But the ‘sound’ of a song (or a whole album) is part of what the listener experiences so it might as well add some character (your character) instead of being a generic production. Just to clarify that: a studio will (should) add character too. But it might not be what you originally intended. That’s another reason why I chose to do everything myself. It might not be the best possible quality in the ears of some but it’s closer to what I want than any mixing engineer could ever achieve. The only thing I would give away is the mastering. A second pair of ears for the final polish cannot be that bad.

So long

DrScythe

PS: I mostly trained on soundsamples I made. Just like this one here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvEV8QcL0Q

Or this one (for a competition):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raMqbQRgXYA