Brought to You By Taxi!

I’ve noticed a paradox here… See, these individuals are asking for help to swim out from under all this excess stuff, but are’nt willing to do whats neccessary in order to simply navigate through their homes…. Which is of course organize and eliminate excess junk that they for some reason aren’t able to part with or maintain in an orderly fashion.

While watching this MESS, my brain naturally contrasted the relative message of this scenario to an aspect of music production… One that i’ve been guilty of… More than once… Cluttering my mixes with excess parts and ideas! (Usually my mind likes to harmonize messages to different aspects of my main passions, songwriting and music production)

I’ve learned over time that less is usually more… Ok… Now although the extremity varies quite a bit from not being able to see the floor in their own homes for example… The correlation i’m drawing here is in terms of mentality, which seems to fit well.

See, if we try to save every take; every new chord progression idea, every lick, every blah blah blah; because we think it will be better to have more options for each track in the mix, and save all those decisions until the final mix phase…. Then, well, first, we’d be mistaken. And second… We’d just overload our mix with to much stuff… It’s taken me a good long while to realize this.. But again, in mixing, less is usually more.

If you’ve never overcomplicated your mix or song production, then i applaud as well as congratulate you. If you are struggling with what i call “idea overload”, and has resulted in 12 part counterpoint…. Overwhelm… and headaches in finishing up your mixes… Try this little exercise:

On your next song mix/composition/music production/practice project, limit yourself to 8 tracks, not including multiple tracks for each drum part, & 16 if you are layering multiple parts.

This is an exercise in quality vs. quantity!

Configure your parts for the production/composition, and label each track. (of course)

For example:

-Drums
Kick
Snare
HH
Toms
Cymbol

-Bass

-Rythym Guitar

-Lead Guitar

-Lead Vox

You get the idea…

Focus on the “TONAL” and “TIMBRAL” characteristics of each “part” and their relationship together to create a cohesive sound sculpture and mix.

In other words… Play around with the tracking techniques of each recording track, and audition different virtual instruments, patches, and plugins to fill your mix with well polished sounds.

Make a decision for each part, and stick to that. Do NOT rely on the faulty paradigm of “well, i’ll fix it in the mix…” You should be mixing as you record and compose as much as you can.

After all… Applied knowledge, trained ears, commited decisions, and effective workflow are all key components in finding clarity and balance in your music productions.

Lastly, share your results! I LOVE to hear your productions, comments, pitfalls, and other’s could learn a lot from your experiences as well!

You are the reason we are here, and your feedback and response is ultimately what is going to allow us to give you more targeted information and better tailored content to help you produce great music!

Happy mixing, now get to it…
Jamie

Just so you understand… please know there are no “silver bullet secrets”… Or any of that non-sense i see people selling others on, everyday.

When it comes to tracking/recording a great vocal. There are certainly, however, many tried and true mic placement techniques, tips and tricks, to treating your room so it will play nice when you need it to… which can be had on the cheap, too!

The “Home Recording Mastery” Program goes very In-depth with tips, techniques, concepts, as well as good gear that performs as well as big name brand equipment for 2-5x the pricepoint.

Here are some tips and techniques. (Feel free to let me know if you’ve heard all this stuff before, and/or if you know and use all this stuff too) Im still trying to get a better grasp on your knowledge and experience.

As i always say, pre-production pays!

If you are the producer and the singer; take extra time to warm up your voice, try to get relaxed and comfortable.

Setup your daw and the project you will be recording in.

Get yourself a good headphone mix — critical!

Choose the mic that works best for the particular sound or song you are working on.

Make sure you are using a pop filter… (i know, i know, i hear you say… like, duuh.)

But what if i only have one good mic that i use for vocals?

I hear you. Well one thing you can do is to test out the placement of the mic and angular direction that your pickup pattern points at. Flip it upside down, if its already down, flip it back up… you will hear a difference… Use your judgement and move stuff around until you’ve found what works best for the particular goal.

The whole body resonates with sound not just the mouth, i like to angle the microphone downwards toward my throat at times, and also sing slightly off axis at others. mic placement and positioning really depends on a number of factors. But essentially, whats most important is knowing and defining the tone, texture and sound parameters for the target goals of the individual project, and then making it happen… even if it takes getting a bit creative.

Practice mic technique. Practice mic technique. Practice mic technique. and… Ok thats enough, you get it. But really, this is a very good skill to learn and will serve you and your mixes well.

mic technique will be easier with a dynamic mic in most cases… but can definitely be done with a condenser all the same.. Just be careful about picking up unwanted bumping noises from wiggling the stand and mount.
*Which must be SECURELY fastened by the way.

Thats all for today, time to try to sleep…. Which im terrible at doing. Yup, chronic insomniac….. right here.

Happy Easter Folks.