6 Jan 2010
2 CommentsMixing and Mastering My Sound
The sound of my recordings have been a major problem for me for a while. I record my audio in my room, not a studio. I try to mix it to the best of my abilities, which are, admittedly, non-existent in this area. I suffer from a deaf ear to musical nuance as well as a lack of proper equipment, such as a good set of monitors. Any engineers
out there in need of a friend?
I have some monitor headphones, but the stuff you hear in the cans don’t sound anything like they do in the car or on the stereo. What I really need is an okay pair of studio monitors…or a damn studio :)) but neither of those things are in the budget at the moment.
Case in point: I took two of the tracks that I recently blogged about – GunSpeak and WhereDoWeGo – and burned them to a disc to play on my way to work today. Both tracks sounded extremely hollow when I turned them up in the car, which upset me no end.
These problems I have with the sound are due to my inability to properly mix and my complete lack of any sort of mastering on my tracks. There are many services available to do both of these things on a per track/album basis no matter if it was recorded in a studio or not. However, at this point in time, I can’t justify the costs (since I don’t have an actual product to sell) nor can I even afford the costs.
This is a big reason why I don’t like to share a lot of tracks. It’s also one of the reasons that I get highly frustrated with a lot of the music I work on, causing me not to finish as I just can’t get the sound right…or even close to right :)) But I guess I have to just say fuck it and keep moving forward. That’s the motto for the O-10 folks 🙂
I guess I said all that to say this: sorry for the sub-par audio quality. I try 🙂 I’m going to try to upgrade over the course of this year.
And as always, I’m open to suggestions and advice. Leave a comment.
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9 Sep 2011
5 CommentsBullet2Heart – Test Track – Mixing and Mastering my Sound 2
So, I hooked up my microphone for the first time in this new room just to see how it sounds. I had the urge to wanna start recording again so I made this test track using some old lyrics on an old Big B beat.
The result? Well…terrible. But I expected that. The problem is, the room is kinda cavernous, plus, it’s untreated in anyway. The next problem is something I never really stopped to think about too much: the fact that I’m recording over low quality mp3’s – Now any studio engineer will tell you that they dread when an artist comes in and hands them the track they are going to be recording over as an mp3, already mastered, already deadened by the conversion process etc. – They have a few tricks that help, but I’m not so musically inclined. I just don’t have the ears.
So after this next batch of songs, I’ll only be recording over beats I can find tracked out, uncompressed or at least in .wav format. Barring that, the mp3 has to be 320kbs, no less. Something I have to tell Big B since he tends to send me mp3s in the 128-192kbps range. It especially hurts because I tend to record at like 88k/32bit :)) Upconverting an mp3 to that just so I can rhyme over it is kinda overkill.
Another problem is mixing…I have no monitors! So all of my, ahem, mixing (or close proximity thereof) is done in headphones…which is a big no-no. I try to play the tracks on different devices to see how it sounds (usually terrible) but it’s kinda pointless and tedious without the monitors.
Anywho, here is the track. Keep in mind it’s a test track…using lyrics from a thousand years ago :)) You should probably listen to it through headphones, and for the love of Saint Cecilia please don’t attempt to turn it up loud! You’ll regret it :))
See Mixing and Mastering My Sound part 1 for more complaing 🙂
https://silenciobarnes.net/music/mixing-and-mastering-my-sound/
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