Scratch Your Own Itch
tags: blogRecently, someone sent me this page.
It made me think about how I have improved in music over the years. I am by no means someone who makes professional quality music, but comparing my current work to how I started shows a huge leap in progress. One of the biggest breakthroughs was probably the same concept listed here: tailoring your work to your own needs and taste.
I actually started adding less instruments, less playing at once, simpler melodies and harmonies. As I did this, each of these qualities ended up mattering more, and it was easier to put more effort into making them sound good to my taste. One of the biggest impacts this had was on mixing and mastering. I think a lot of the internet now tries to market expensive plugins to you, and as such it makes hobbyists think their mixing and mastering is the issue, that everything can be fixed in post and that not doing this step perfectly is what makes or breaks a track.
But now I only do things explicitly if I hear a need for them. I probably do way less than I should, only EQing a couple of the tracks, maybe compressing the drums, and putting glue compression and an event horizon limiter on the master track. Many tracks in my recent pieces don’t even have any processing put onto them. Is this the best approach? Probably not, it would probably be improved if I found the right way to process more of my sound.
However, this is exactly the nuance. I am changing what I can hear. As I learn to mix and master properly, it will be by ear, and will be infinitely more useful than just trying to compress the hell out of everything because someone on youtube (who got sponsored by the $600 compression plugin) told you to.
This might not be the right way to think about it, but it’s how I have been approaching music lately, and it has made me improve faster than I was before. If you have any insight, Contact Me!