To beat or not to beat
Now I am actually to the part of the operation where I am doing the initial mixes for the project. I started with a song that features some unusual percussion, by which I mean not a standard drum kit, and lots of modulations on the drums.
I went thru my usual procedure, by just doing a mix on the bass drums first, then the other percussive elements. Part of the problem is that I have what four? different bass drum sounds, and they are somewhat all over the map, what with the modulation and the panning.
What I realized at one point is that, unlike any of my other songs, there is no snare drum at all. This became apparent as I did a quick mix of another song that had a “real” drum kit in Battery. In that song, all I did was use the PSP compressor, and almost instantly it sounded just great. Of course, I am going for the real drum sound there, so that makes a big difference.
This raised a concern with me about the original song I had been working on, since if you listened to them one after the other, the song with the Battery drums just sounded so much more powerful. Thus I spent some very unproductive time last night trying to sex up the drums on the song with the unusual percussion. Long story short, it just didn’t work well at all. After listening to it again, later in the evening, I think I have decided not to add any more percussion on this song. Its not like it is at a loss for drums by any means, not just the standard sound drum kit. After all that was what I built this piece around, the different sounds of the drums, so why should I change it?
I know that I should be looking to have some consistency on my CD, but one of the things that I seem to do on every song is start with a clean slate. I seldom use the same synth sounds twice, although I have a fondness for things like a piano with a string section blended in with it.
There is not much consistency in how I record stuff either. Most of the synth parts from the XL7 go direct to digital, thru the preamp, and that works great, but the EA1, ER1 and DX200 don’t seem to benefit from this. And I don’t always record things like guitar in mono, sometimes its to stereo even though I don’t have a stereo mic. Call me crazy, but I can hear the difference recording a mono signal and copying to another track as opposed to recording in stereo from a mono mic.
In the song I have been speaking of I tracked all the guitar and sax parts in mono and then copied the tracks. I then mixed the tracks slightly differently, such as putting delay and reverb on only one track, and just reverb on the other track. Gives a spatial quality I think, not quite like stereo. Someday I hope to get out of the trial and error stage!
I also am always concerned with the amount of stuff I have going on at any one time. Right now I am listening to a piece by Andrew Bird, and he has many fewer elements at any one time in his music than I ever do, and yet it works. Thing is, I don’t try and write complex music, it just comes out that way, where I have lots and lots of textures and elements coming at people every which way. If I am trying to be true to what I think is good music, I suppose I will just have to live with second guessing myself every step along the way. Not the fastest way to compose, for sure. Maybe my boredom threshold is just too high, or I have listening to operas or symphonies for too many years. None of those classical guys every worried about having too many instruments or sections, did they? Of course, they weren’t writing 4 minute songs either.
All during the process, I know I will keep saying to myself, as I can’t find the right software plugin, if I just had that other piece of gear (like a UAD-1 or a decent set of monitors for instance) that I would be able to get the sound I want. But it just isn’t going to work that way. Any money I am saving up has to go towards the manufacture of the CDs, not towards more gear. I hope working hard makes you smarter, cause that is what I am having to do. And I have to remember that 20 years ago, I couldn’t do this at home at all, and even pretend to get record (remember those, before CDs, they were black and shiny……) quality in any sense of the matter. So, back into the breach my friends, until I have more mixing stories to impart.