Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Ridin' the Coaster

Music production is an emotional roller coaster.  For any young person thinking of getting into music production, or any person of any age, for that matter, I'd just say prepare for riding a constant roller coaster of ups, downs, feelings of devastation, and then minor triumphs.  It just seems to be the way that it works, at least if you're more or less doing it yourself.

In the olden days, the days of MWP, you were more or less simply the band that showed up with songs, hired somebody to help you shape them and ultimately lay them down to tape, and then the mix was handled by some third party that you may or may not have had any say in whatsoever.  A month later, the magic mix shows up, you listen to it, I'd imagine there's some sort of approval process, and then the record label takes it from there.

This, of course, is not the way of the home studio or independent artist.  Instead, you go into doing a recording knowing that you want it to sound like X album that you love by X band, and then start the process of falling on your face, over and over, until you hit a wall and realize that you can't overcome the bizarre issues that you seem to be working against.  This was pretty much my experience through the entire "...Opsimath" album, except that I don't believe I really had many "minor triumphs" whatsoever.

All that aside, I do really believe, after all of this time, these countless years, and definitely endless hours, that I'm finally getting some triumphs.  If I continue on this path, I'd dare say that I might even be comfortable with charging for my mixing services and opening it up to other projects, not that that's my priority, mind you.

I listened to my mixes last night that I did over the weekend and they pretty much went as expected.  I can't tell you the joy I experience when I go into listening to a mix and a) things work that I think will work and b) I can more or less suspect where potential issues are beforehand.  In the past, it was all blindsiding, meaning you had no idea what issues would be thrown at you, etc.  This has really changed in the past year...thankfully.

For example, I have been fighting with the song "Scapegoat" from the Defrost Nixon material for quite some time.  I felt I had it...and then the next mix sounded much worse and I couldn't figure out why initially.  In looking at it over the weekend, I noticed that I had a plugin on the mix buss that even by wording sounded aggressive in nature.  So, I switched it to something calmer...and what do you know?  That was in fact the issue.  I also spent a good hour adding some "spice" touches to the mix, thinking it would work, and by george...it did.  So, this trouble child mix went from being the biggest blocker to now the first one basically done.  I dare say that 10 years ago I probably would have fiddled for another 10 years on this one and only mix, desperately looking for the issues.

Actually, all the mixes sounded as expected, most of them fairly close to being done.  Two of the four are ready to be locked down but unfortunately are on different releases, meaning I still have trouble spots in the other tracks.  I'm still struggling with "Only With You" from the "Mirror Land" EP, mainly with making the vocal sound consistent and normal.  This has been a bit of a thorn in my side but I have quite a few ideas on how to fix it.  "The Effects of Connection" is pretty close but just needs some minor mods.  I haven't been doing much mixing over the past month because of my ear but I have at least been really pleased with the little work I've done.  Another way that I know that I'm getting better is that the new Jazz Machine tracks sound pretty good right out of the gate, something else that would have been completely unheard of a decade ago.

I'll be heading off to my Moh's appointment shortly.  I'm unfortunately fairly convinced that my graft is not taking on my ear, after doing some online research and putting 2x2 together based on what they told me yesterday.  Sigh.  If I need another graft taken, etc., this is really going to be pure ick.  And so, I don't really know what I'm headed into today and I'm doing my best to brace for pretty much anything.  Talk about being agile.

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