oh man. apple is coming out with a new tablet computer. well, at least that's the rumor. all i know is that thing better mow the lawn or something cool cause between my iphone and laptop i'm not sure why i'd need one. but apple has a good track record of not only coming up with gadgets that we need, but new stuff that we didn't even know we needed....and i use the word need very loosely. i mean seriously, is it necessary that i check my facebook 12,390 times a day?
i've been thinking a lot lately about mixing. for those of you who don't follow the audio world, there's been a battle raging for about the last 15 years called the Loudness War. to make a long story short, every band out there wants their record to be louder than the other guys. but there's a ceiling on a CD of how loud it can be. so the only way to make it seem louder is to compress the snot out of a song. compressing evens out the peaks and valleys so that the loud parts are quieter and the soft parts are louder. on first listen, a louder song may seem better, but it's not. it fatigues the ear and takes away a lot of the energy in the song.
to check out more on the issue, go to youtube and just search "loudness wars" and there's plenty of video/audio examples. Here's one:
Anyway, i did a lot of mixing in the last half of 2009 and the more i think about it, the more the loudness war seems ridiculous. i know how to get a bands' track loud. it's not that hard. but what is hard is knowingly degrading the sound that i worked so hard to achieve. what is also frustrating is that the bands respond to it even when they know nothing about it. i've sent mixes back to a band when they couldn't quite say what they didn't like about it. but as soon as i smash it and compress it they LOVE it. although that's probably partly due to the fact that it's loud rock music. i imagine that if i mixed a three piece jazz outfit then it might be different.....emphasis on the MIGHT. i'd absolutely love to work with a band that would have the courage to let their record be a little softer than the others yet pack a crisp dynamic that doesn't make your ears tired when you turn it up. a band that wouldn't mind if the listener just turned the volume up a little more to really experience the dynamics. whenever i mix a project now the first thing i ask is if it's going to be mastered by anyone. if it is, then the burden of compressing it and making it loud is on them. i mix without bus compression and even though you can drive a mix a little into the red without distorting, i give the mastering guy plenty of headroom to work with. but i'll be honest. it's scary. maybe they'll never use me again or tell their friends' bands that i suck at mixing because i didn't make it loud enough. blah.
ok, on another random note, there's this girl:
if you aren't living under a rock, you've probably heard her song Tik Tok all over top forty radio. what's crazy is that she used to live in nashville. many of my friends and i used to see her all around town. she was just kesha. i knew she was trying to do music, but what the heck, everybody in nashville is. and she never played any shows. then she moves out to LA and a couple years later all of the sudden she's huge. what the heck. i dug through my old archives and found this:
click to enlarge
this was taken at my old apartment at birthday party for ben harms, current bassist for the glorious unseen and lifelong friend of mine. we made fliers with his face on it and called it the Guy-apalooza because everyone called him the GUY back then and we were copying Mitch-apalooza from the movie Old School. there are two things that are funny about this. the first is that all my friends look so young. the second is the fact that the girl in the background all the way to the left is Kesha back when she used to dress like a hippie before she became a pop sensation.
anyway if any of the girls happen to see this photo, i hope you enjoy. haha....ok i'm going to bed.
i've been thinking a lot lately about mixing. for those of you who don't follow the audio world, there's been a battle raging for about the last 15 years called the Loudness War. to make a long story short, every band out there wants their record to be louder than the other guys. but there's a ceiling on a CD of how loud it can be. so the only way to make it seem louder is to compress the snot out of a song. compressing evens out the peaks and valleys so that the loud parts are quieter and the soft parts are louder. on first listen, a louder song may seem better, but it's not. it fatigues the ear and takes away a lot of the energy in the song.
to check out more on the issue, go to youtube and just search "loudness wars" and there's plenty of video/audio examples. Here's one:
Anyway, i did a lot of mixing in the last half of 2009 and the more i think about it, the more the loudness war seems ridiculous. i know how to get a bands' track loud. it's not that hard. but what is hard is knowingly degrading the sound that i worked so hard to achieve. what is also frustrating is that the bands respond to it even when they know nothing about it. i've sent mixes back to a band when they couldn't quite say what they didn't like about it. but as soon as i smash it and compress it they LOVE it. although that's probably partly due to the fact that it's loud rock music. i imagine that if i mixed a three piece jazz outfit then it might be different.....emphasis on the MIGHT. i'd absolutely love to work with a band that would have the courage to let their record be a little softer than the others yet pack a crisp dynamic that doesn't make your ears tired when you turn it up. a band that wouldn't mind if the listener just turned the volume up a little more to really experience the dynamics. whenever i mix a project now the first thing i ask is if it's going to be mastered by anyone. if it is, then the burden of compressing it and making it loud is on them. i mix without bus compression and even though you can drive a mix a little into the red without distorting, i give the mastering guy plenty of headroom to work with. but i'll be honest. it's scary. maybe they'll never use me again or tell their friends' bands that i suck at mixing because i didn't make it loud enough. blah.
ok, on another random note, there's this girl:
if you aren't living under a rock, you've probably heard her song Tik Tok all over top forty radio. what's crazy is that she used to live in nashville. many of my friends and i used to see her all around town. she was just kesha. i knew she was trying to do music, but what the heck, everybody in nashville is. and she never played any shows. then she moves out to LA and a couple years later all of the sudden she's huge. what the heck. i dug through my old archives and found this:
click to enlarge
this was taken at my old apartment at birthday party for ben harms, current bassist for the glorious unseen and lifelong friend of mine. we made fliers with his face on it and called it the Guy-apalooza because everyone called him the GUY back then and we were copying Mitch-apalooza from the movie Old School. there are two things that are funny about this. the first is that all my friends look so young. the second is the fact that the girl in the background all the way to the left is Kesha back when she used to dress like a hippie before she became a pop sensation.
anyway if any of the girls happen to see this photo, i hope you enjoy. haha....ok i'm going to bed.
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