It's very complex, difficult, expensive, interesting and fun to be an independent music producer. Volume three covers my attempts to: make acoustic improvements to the studio; cut down my production times; learn the art of mastering in-house ad muc...
In an effort to get the whole album remixed and ready for mastering before Christmas I made a schedule (last week) with a series of S.M.A.R.T. goals covering the next couple of months. I wrote down in my calendar that I will allow myself no more than two weeks per song. And, if I am not done by that time, I will move on to the next song and only allow for 1 hour of overtime per day, (at most), to continue with the song from the week before that I missed the deadline with.
I missed the first deadline
Rising came close to being done last Friday. I have referenced it to a major hit, listened in various speaker systems, shared it with a reference group of new listeners and jotted down the things that are left to fix in the mix, but at the end of Friday, I found that I hadn't crossed the finish line. The vocals were not loud enough and the bass, although clear and loud, was a little too loud compared to the other instruments. There are some points where I need to automate down certain things before the choruses to give a great big bang when they drop. But, all in all I can do this with a 1 hour a day limit.
The strategy for continuing with the album is this: Rising is now the "1 hour a day overtime song". I have until next Friday, October 4th, (our 33 year wedding anniversary), to submit Rising to the mastering studio.
But, from today onward, during the next two weeks), I'll move on to prioritising the song Those Eyes, mixing it for about four to six hours a day. It will be great working on a simple country ballad after months of the funky intensive "Rising". I am going to take a look at it today and jot down on Wunderlist what needs to be attacked/changed and added to make it a beautiful song. Then I will dive in.
I have a rule that I don't add new instruments or loops anymore to the remaining songs on the Change My Mind album, I just enhance what is there and add new stuff that replaces old stuff only when the old is damaged or wrong. I am trying to limit the perfectionist in me.
Wish me luck.
Loudness tip in Logic Pro X (mastering)
I also got an email about increasing loudness using the Multipressor in Logic Pro X to parallel compress the sum of all the tracks and then blend the result into the main stereo output. In his written explanation of the video,
" Load the stereo bounce of your track into Logic; send your track to an Aux channel to use in parallel; set the Multipressor to "smash"and then blend the parallel aux channel to taste". That will make it hit harder and seem louder. Everyone who is anyone uses that technique but they use different plugins in different DAWs to get this result. In Logic you can use this as a way to add punch.
I want to give this a try in the mixing stage. Hi hi.....
Until next time. ....
htps://linktr.ee/ekitzing
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From our recent walk along the Snogeholms Lake in Southern Sweden.
