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Category Archives: Thoughts

Why Your Home Studio Might Be Bloated (And Why That’s a Bad Thing)

It’s the day after Thanksgiving here in the US. And most of us are feeling bloated from all the eating yesterday.

I suppose it’s human nature. There’s all this food just sitting there, waiting to be eaten. Everyone else is stuffing their faces, so why not join in, right?

Is your studio like a bloated, post-Thanksgiving food coma? Do you fill it up with gear just because you can? Do you fill up your hard drive with the latest software? Do you always upgrade to the latest version of Pro Tools as soon as it’s released?

Your studio might need to go on a serious diet.

by Joe Gilder in Thoughts • 26 Comments - Leave a comment!

Charging for your Work

In honor of Labor Day, let’s talk about work a little bit. (What, you thought I’d take the day off?)

I’m not talking about crap-I-have-to-go-to-the-office work. I’m talking about work in your studio, work that you (hopefully) love.

Do you ever get paid for your recording skills? Do you ever charge your clients? Perhaps you don’t, but you’d like to. Or maybe you’ve started charging for a few projects here and there, but you really don’t know where to start.

Let me see if I can help.

by Joe Gilder in Engineering, Thoughts • 29 Comments - Leave a comment!

Listen Your Way to the Top

This week I had the privilege of interviewing Brent Milligan for my VIP members. He’s a professional producer/musician here in Nashville. Over the course of 45 minutes, he said so many things that I thought were just fantastic. I told him we could do a separate interview on EACH of those topics, there was so much good information.

Towards the end of the interview, I asked Brent if he had any final advice for aspiring producers. He told us a couple of things, but one thing particularly stuck out. He said, “Always be listening to good music.”

Now, you may be thinking to yourself Umm…yeah. That’s a no-brainer. But I’m always surprised at how little I focus on listening to good music as a way to get better. I still think of the music on my iPod like most normal people do — entertainment, something to listen to while driving, at a party, or mowing the lawn.

by Joe Gilder in Music, Thoughts • 4 Comments - Leave a comment!

Are You the Weakest Link?

Nobody’s good at everything. Whether it’s the work that you do for a living or your work in the studio, there are some things that you’re better at than others. That’s no surprise, right?

But what are those specific things that you are really good at in the studio? And what are the things that you’re not-so-good at?

If you remember that old TV show called “The Weakest Link”, at the end of the show this British lady would stand up and say, “Joe, you are the weakest link. Goodbye.”

That poses an interesting question. What should you do with the weaknesses that you have in your studio, in your abilities as a recording engineer? Let’s think about that.

by Joe Gilder in In the Studio, Thoughts • 5 Comments - Leave a comment!

Rules for Recording

You know how they say there are no rules in recording? Well, that’s kind of true.

In college, one of my favorite classes was music theory. I took piano lessons as a kid. I learned guitar as a teenager, and I knew the basics of chord structure, sight-reading music, harmony, etc.

However, I never knew the deeper reasons behind all of these things. I didn’t know why I liked to go from a five chord to the sixth minor chord. I never knew why the five chord likes to resolve to the one chord, and so on.

One of the things we learned in that theory class was the “proper” way to write a choral arrangement. We studied the great composers like Bach and how he would take a single melody and develop a four-part choral arrangement around it. What was so interesting is that all of the choral arrangements of this particular period followed a certain, fairly strict, set of rules.

by Joe Gilder in In the Studio, Thoughts • 8 Comments - Leave a comment!

Listen to the Artist, Not Just the Music

Telling an audio engineer to listen is like telling a doctor to heal. Of course we’re going to listen! How else do we get a great-sounding recording?

You’re good at listening to the music, but how well do you listen to the artist?

I’m producing an EP for a really talented singer-songwriter named Whitney Winkler. She asked me to play acoustic guitar on the project. Once we had the guitar and scratch vocals recorded, she went home and left me to add various elements to the songs to fill them out.

Her songs have a killer groove to them, so I naturally thought some light drums would be perfect. I worked for a couple hours, programming a quirky little drum groove and recording some extra percussion.

She had mentioned that she really liked the song “I Won’t Fly Away,” from my album, which features a very unique blend of acoustic instruments with a hip-hop-sounding drum loop/percussion. So I thought I’d take this song in that direction.

The song quickly took on a very different feel. I kinda liked it, but before I dove in and booked a bass player and really committed to the arrangement, I emailed Whitney a bounce of what I had done so far.

by Joe Gilder in Production, Thoughts • 5 Comments - Leave a comment!

A Drowning iPhone – Thoughts on Removing Distractions

Two weeks ago I wrote about some thoughts on vacation. I wrote that post from the beach with my iPhone.

The very next day, I decided to go into the water…with my iPhone…in my pocket.

Bye-bye iPhone.

It’s like ten thousands spoons…

Here’s the ironic part. That day I had started reading a book about productivity and…get this…eliminating distractions. I think I subconsciously took that section to heart and promptly drowned my iPhone a few minutes later.

What now? I have no internet in my pocket wherever I go! I can’t access my email every 3 minutes! I don’t have GPS! I can’t get on Facebook and Twitter!! I can’t run my business!!!!

Umm…false. It’s been two weeks. I still don’t have an iPhone, and I’m still alive.

In fact, I’m really enjoying this new-found freedom. I used to think of the iPhone as this awesome way to stay connected to everything and everyone at all times. At the same time I killed my iPhone, I started limiting my email usage by only checking it twice a day.

I discovered something.

by Joe Gilder in Productivity, Thoughts • 8 Comments - Leave a comment!

Thoughts from Vacation

I’m typing this on my iPhone…from the beach…

See, a good blogger would have prepared several posts ahead of time and scheduled them to go live on the site while he was away on vacation. Not me, apparently.

I didn’t want to leave you completely stranded, though. So i thought I’d at LEAST post once and let you know I haven’t disappeared or anything.

First off, I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who joined OneHourChallenges.com last week. It’s exciting to see so many people getting fired up about getting things done in their studios.

Vacation

I’m obviously on vacation. But I was thinking about how it applies to us home studio folks.

Why do we take vacations? For a change of scenery, a change of routine…to mix things up.

Do you do this in your studio? Chances are you’re just struggling to find TIME to record, but are you feeling stuck in a rut? Perhaps a change of scenery is in order.

Here are some suggestions:

Try a one-hour challenge. You don’t have to be a member of my latest course to do a one-hour challenge. Pick a task. Set a timer. Get it done in an hour.

Record something you’ve never recorded before. Maybe you only record rock music. Try recording a classical tune. Maybe you’re a country guy, try producing a hip-hop track.

Work with someone new. Whether it’s an artist you haven’t worked with before, or an engineer you haven’t collaborated with, try mixing it up.

Changing up the way you do things can really help get the creative juices flowing. You’ll face new challenges, an you’ll be forcing yourself to think outside of your little box.

Share your ideas by leaving a comment. I’m off to go play in the waves.

by Joe Gilder in Productivity, Thoughts • 5 Comments - Leave a comment!