I love a good challenge.
And I’m giving myself a whopper of a challenge later this month.
More on that in a second…
Limitations.
You’ve heard me stress that limitations in the studio are REALLY good for you. But that can be hard to believe.
More is better right?
“I don’t think so, Tim.” (anyone?)
Yesterday was a Monday.
So I tweeted out: “Happy Monday, folks. (I love Mondays.)”
I really do love Mondays. New week. New challenges.
And the first challenge of the week for me was unexpected…and awesome.
I’ve been getting back into running. I go with my wife, and we take our son Owen in a jogging stroller.
We woke up and decided to feed Owen breakfast then head out for a run. First thing in the morning, Monday morning. Good idea.
We tend to think of EQ as “makeup” for our tracks.
We use it to make things purdy.
But EQ can be a pretty handy tool for faking out your listener. And sometimes those fake-outs can be kinda cool.
Here are a few:
1. Fake Depth
Sometimes tracks are recorded so cleanly that they sound too “up front” no matter how much you turn them down.
I’ve got a secret for you.
You might already know this, but in case you don’t, here goes.
I’m not a magician.
There, I said it.
When I’m recording guitars, I rarely just “know” how I’m going to be recording it that day.
In other words, I don’t magically know what mic to use and what mic position to use. Sure, I have an idea of where I want to start, but I honestly never know what I’m going to do until I set up the mics and start listening.
Too simple?
Yeah, probably.
Got an email from a customer the other day.
He bought Understanding Compression. He loved it, but he was writing me to tell me that he thought I should have gone more in depth into attack and release, that my technical definition of how attack and release work wasn’t as in-depth as he would’ve liked.
He thought I oversimplified how the attack and release settings work when the signal is actually above the threshold.
I thought he made a GREAT point, and it makes for a good lesson for all of us.
Here’s my response:
Are you a perfection junky?
Do you agonize over every single detail of every part of the recording process?
One of my subscribers sent me this quote. (Thanks Evan!) It’s about the lie of perfectionism.
“We never tell ourselves, ‘The land of perfect is about a year away.’ We never think perfect is impossible. Perfect always glows from right around the corner. We just need a little more work, a little more time and we can share our work with the world.”
- Jon Acuff (from his book Quitter)
Last night I was listening to a song off of my latest album. (I know, I know…who listens to his own music?)
Anyway, I was listening to the final song on the album, which was a slower, intimate tune. The instrumentation is just piano, a little acoustic guitar, and some background vocals.
Then there’s the lead vocal.
The lead vocal on this track stands out from every other track on the album, so much so that my mastering engineer asked what I did on that song to make it sound so good.
Here’s the skinny…
What do zombies and audio engineers have in common?
Both can be terribly stubborn and mindless.
Zombies have a pretty good excuse. (They can’t really help themselves, you know?)
We, on the other hand, CAN change things, if we start using our brains a little more.
Tell me this. When you reach for an EQ plugin, do you usually just start randomly boosting stuff? Are you an EQ zombie? Mindlessly turning knobs without any sense of direction?
There’s hope, I promise.
