yeah its all a quickly done scratch demo. is not exactly a 3 yr long DefLep project
it just gets mega discouraging and one wonders if its even feasible for one person to try to make music in the first place. Its a pretty large skillset to do everything required (writing, playing the instruments, singing, mixing) and in the end you know someone will still say it sucks
mixing seems to be the worst part because evidently its 99.9% voodoo and some form of magic balancing act. And we can put a Beatles or Prince mix up and people will still destroy it. So its hard to learn because u never know the legit criticism from the internet bs
No matter what I do, seems to never be enough. Now I am supposed to buy expensive monitors and sound treat my apartment? Seems hard to believe since I listen to ALL my music on phones anyway. Whitesnake and VanHalen dont suck on headphonesā¦so neither should I
I think you are exaggerating the negative side of the feedback you are getting. Being told that something is wrong doesnāt feel good, but man is it the best thing that you can do.
There are issues, but thatās very different from saying the whole thing sucks. Getting good at this gig requires patience and recognition of our tendency to focus in on certain aspects while ignoring others. Itās the kind of thing you just get better at with practice.
Yes, it is a large skillset, and it takes time to develop. But getting discouraged that everybody doesnāt love a mix is not going to help you develop that skillset. It doesnāt matter what you do, somebody will not like the mix. Thatās just a fact of the game.
But it is imperative that you learn how to take criticism and learn from it. Thatās another thing to add to the list of required skills. People are usually giving feedback because they want to help, even if it sounds like harsh feedback. Itās up to you to decide if you want to take that feedback as a personal attack or a list of things you can work on to get better. Or you can decide that you disagree with the feedback and ignore it. Thatās fine too.
10 people can present feedback of any sort and its okay, even if its negative feedback. Why? because they dont talk down to you and try to come off as some superior being
then one person can replay and it just goes downhill from there. Just because someone claims to know how to mix doesnt mean they have any people skills at all
AJ113 and I clashed on RR and we will clash on here. Its a personality clash thing. No way around it, I dont need to be talked down to.
he can kindly ignore my posts and that will solve that. AFAIK I dont think ive had issues with anyone else
I did, that was after u jumped in on the thread in the first place. i was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt but leopards dont change their spots do they?
Iāll go take some mixing classes u go learn some manners
I invited you and a few others because this was a spin off from another thread
its not personal, but just go away. you and I dont mesh. You always want to come across like you are some all knowing Yoda or you are the pope. But you are not. To me you are some dude on a forum with zero tact
[quote=āJon-Jon, post:41, topic:1486ā]
No matter what I do, seems to never be enough. Now I am supposed to buy expensive monitors and sound treat my apartment? [/quote]
Do you want to hear things accurately when youāre mixing? (Thatās a redundant question). We keep telling you room treatment isnāt something you can sidestep for a reason. And youāll continue to struggle with it (as everyone else here does) until you have the budget to build a several million dollar facility (which none of us do). No one here (that Iām aware of) owns a āproperlyā treated room. All you can do is improve it and upgrade it as the resources become available. And educate yourself on it. The first step to solving a monitoring problem is admitting you have a problem.
[quote]
Seems hard to believe since I listen to ALL my music on phones anyway. Whitesnake and VanHalen dont suck on headphonesā¦so neither should I [/quote]
What!?? Dudeā¦that just isnāt how it works. If I only ever ate meals cooked by Thomas Keller or Jean-Jorge, am I suddenly able to cook like them? Umā¦no.
Headphones fuck up a master in a way that makes the mix sound bigger and clearer to the END USER. They are designed to make the finished product sound better, NOT to get the mix engines TO the finished product. You need accuracy. Not exaggeration. Wrong tool to evaluate a mix by.
@Jon-Jon, if you want to do this for a living as youāve mentioned, youāve got to get used to harsh insensitive people, because this business is full of them to no end. No one is doing you any good if they lie to you and tell you that vocal is on key. Iām in complete agreement with @AJ113, that the pitch accuracy of the vocals wanders quite a bit. In short, theyāre not really on key.
Reading through some of the dialogue with AJ, I think the issue is that your ears arenāt developed enough to hear the discrepancies in the pitch. Usually, as someones ear develops, their voice gets more accurate too. Weāre NOT talking about being able to hear frequencies as in low-mid-high, weāre talking about the ability to tell if a pitch is a semi-tone or micro-tone flat or sharp. Some people have to work harder at this than others. I was not born with perfect pitch. But I have developed an outstanding sense relative pitch. Some people are not born with extraordinary natural rhythm. Same deal. Theyāre still good musicians, they just have to work harder at developing that one specific area.
This is really only something that develops with experience. Thereās no way to teach it or train yourself. You just sort of get better as it as you grow as a player, singer, songwriter, and all around musician.
This is exactly correct. If you get a chance, listen to your mix on any set of speakers you can. There will be dramatic differences, some due to simple room interaction that you just donāt hear with phones. I know you know this already. Part of my problem has always been not wanting to make noise in the house, and being able to hear a loud mix without disturbing anyone.
I found out the hard way that headphones were to me at least, a waste of time and not productive for much more than tracking. What sounded decent on the phones was lousy on speakers due to buildups, panning mistakes, eq botches, etc. etc.,. Every time I posted, there was always mud, a lack of high frequency āairā for definition, and the bass that was blowing my head off in the phones was either gone or just farting away with no impact on the speakers. There are less people on this forum than you can count on one hand who consistently present good mixes that use only headphones, and to me they are miracle workers. Thereās a seat on the bus for you with the rest of us. I guess the moral of the story is donāt get too critical with yourself about the house you are building until you have the right set of tools.
My advice has always been to do your best with what you have. Rome wasnāt built in a day. Just realize that there will be drawbacks from the headphones, accept it, cut your losses and move on. Then when you have the cash, buy an inexpensive set of reference monitors. Yamaha HS series are wonderful. KRKs are not as horrible as some people would make you think. Then when you have a chance, upgrade your room. One step at a time. But mixing with headphones and getting frustrated is arguably better than not mixing at all
huh?? Ive never said or even implied that I wanted to do this for any kind of living. Not sure where that comes from lol. Its never entered my mind.
I DO think that I should be able to produce my own music and have it be 99.9% as good as what I heard when growing up. VH, Led Zep, Ozzy, etc.
As far as AJ, it has nothing to do with this thread per se. That die was cast a while back. If u want to read back thru dialog then go all the way back to RR and start there. Straight up clashā¦it is what it is. Whatever āhelpā I receive from him isnt worth the hassle IMO.
Terribly sorry. I glanced back at my emails and I just realized that wasnāt you who I thought was talking about thatā¦my mistake.
Why? Arenāt you being a little hard on yourself? Those guys that produced that stuff had years and years and years of practice producing, mixing and engineering before they made those records. And they were trained and mentored by some of the best talent in the world. On top of that, they had state of the art gear, and the investors that fronted the bill for those recordings had very deep pockets.
Donāt kid yourself into thinking because you have plugins and a DAW you can replicate that quality. Thereās sooooo much more going on there.
Lookā¦Aj can come across as an asshole and so can I at times. But Iāve never known him to be condescending for the sake of doing so, and he rarely if ever ad-hominims (thatās attacking the person instead of the subject matter) when he disagrees with people.
Hereās my trick for dealing with AJ (and Iām well aware he can read this): Pause, take a breath, then remind yourself that his comment is not directed at you personally. Then remind yourself that heās as equally entitled to an opinion as everyone else, and that this IS an forum which means if you post it, everyone can comment on it.
ā¦I find his comments to be a valuable contribution to dialogue here, regardless of weather I disagree with half them or not. Iām much happier to see someone present a view I disagree with, than see this place die of boredom and apathy.
okay, let me borrow your fingers and ill snap them and have a fully decked out and treated studio. and a drummer. and a singer. and a bass player and an in house engineer
oops, back to reality, I see its only me and my apt lol
there is a flip side to that. having crusty old assholes run off all the new blood doesnt exactly make for a healthy forum either does it??
its never the opinion presented, its the WAY its presented
The way its coming across is that this is a āpro onlyā forum. Which is odd because pros wouldnt really need much feedback.
Im not a pro, nor do I have a pro studio. so it seems i need to step aside and maybe in 10 years, when Im 60, ill be good enough to play with the adults
