As a musician or any other independent creative, not only are you an artist, you’re also a marketer, content creator, and business owner. As such, education should be one of the main ongoing investments you make. That’s what going to help you avoid the pitfalls most of us fall into when building our business.
Let’s not beat around the bush. You probably got stuck at home for a long time due to the virus which shall remain nameless. So maybe “on the go” is an ironic thing to say, but the concept of mixing outside of the normal studio setting is what we’re talking about here.
Let’s not beat around the bush. You probably got stuck at home for a long time due to the virus which shall remain nameless. So maybe “on the go” is an ironic thing to say, but the concept of mixing outside of the normal studio setting is what we’re talking about here.
It wasn’t long ago that you could spot an amateur a mile away by the cheesy sound of their fake drums and lame piano samples. Back in the dinosaur age – aka 15 years ago – you couldn’t make a record if you didn’t have a bunch of great players, instruments, and a tricked-out studio to record them in – unless you were specifically making “synthy” music.
Delay is one of those staple effects. No DAW is without at least one delay plugin, and most mixes utilize this bread-and-butter effect in some way. Not to mention, hardware delays are a lot of fun too. There’s a good chance you’re using it regularly, perhaps to create a repeating effect, make a ping-pong happen, or any number of creative things. There are, in fact, a whole host of useful things you can do with a delay, so we thought we’d go over five creative ways you can use delay in a mix.
It’s one thing to have a good idea. But ideas are a dime a dozen. What you really need if you’re trying to make something of yourself as a songwriter is finished songs.
If your studio is lacking the low-end punch you need to hear what you’re doing with the bass frequencies, you might want to add a subwoofer to your setup. You may have even picked up something like Carvin Audio’s TRX3118A active subwoofer, but what you may not have thought about is how to set the level of your new sub.
The days of every record being made in a commercial studio are long gone. In fact, some producers weren’t even born in those days. Now, productions are made everywhere from multi-million dollar studios to bedrooms to airplanes. With so many people making recordings on laptops and without high dollar monitors or proper acoustic treatment, it makes sense that more and more mixing is being done on headphones.
Not everybody has the luxury of a multi-room studio complete with control room, recording space, and booths. Many great recordists make do with one room which serves all these purposes and more. Some people even prefer it that way. After all, who wants to run back and forth between two rooms every take? Other than fitness buffs, that is.
Still, while it may be true that a most recordists work in one room, when we talk about acoustic treatment, we usually talk about specialized rooms such as mix rooms or live rooms.
So, we thought it’d be good to talk about acoustic treatment for multi-purpose spaces – the kind of space most people actually record in.
This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk! Black Friday will be upon us soon and you’ll be inundated with discount offers tempting you to buy while you can. But unless you’re filthy rich, “discounts” …
