The Producers Thread: Production Tips, Tricks, Techniques & Questions

It is! Have it! :banana

Daniel is my favourite Producer of all time. He ain't trying to kill the room to save the music
like so many Producers and Engineers assume you must. :wat He also follows his own instincts
and hunches. He's willing to do everything wrong in order to maybe stumble upon something
novel and unique that the Rulebook Followers will never understand.
He's definitely my favorite too. I could just listen to him talk even. Cool cat.
 
That's a great question!
There have been some points made about this earlier in the thread, but I think this may have been missed: some commercial/retail listening environments may have their systems summed to mono in ceiling installations etc., so would make sense to check mixes in mono before distribution.
 
It’s mix day here…

Not looking forward to it… I enjoy the process, but after a little saddle time, you’re heading into diminishing returns territory.

And then there’s your ears…

But if you don’t spend the time, it won’t translate and sound remotely accurate from your system to another.

And I want people to experience it like I do as close as possible.
 
It’s mix day here…

Not looking forward to it… I enjoy the process, but after a little saddle time, you’re heading into diminishing returns territory.

And then there’s your ears…

But if you don’t spend the time, it won’t translate and sound remotely accurate from your system to another.

And I want people to experience it like I do as close as possible.
Wish I could say I've been mixing lately, but I've barely picked up a guitar even, and I'm away from my gear atm.
 
He ain't trying to kill the room to save the music
like so many Producers and Engineers assume you must. :wat He also follows his own instincts
and hunches. He's willing to do everything wrong in order to maybe stumble upon something
novel and unique that the Rulebook Followers will never understand.
I think the goal of any producer is to create the conditions to allow the magic to happen. Trying to kill the room would be career suicide.

What I like most about the Springsteen example is he is prepared to try all kinds of different approaches and is humble and objective enough to go with what is best. It's easy to point at Nebraska working the the way it does, but lets not overlook the albums done at Power Station/A&M/Conway/Record Plant/Westlake/Hit Factory/etc or working with people like Bob Clearmountain and Bob Ludwig which are not really what most people will be working with.

Mixing it up and breaking habits, or doing things different to how you normally approach them can be very inspiring. I think TONS of great sounding albums have been made by trying to use things in the "wrong" way or pushing them beyond what they were intended for. On Disney+ there is a documentary about the history of Abbey Road, and Paul McCartney talks glowingly about the "boffins" at Abbey Road who are always trying to facilitate the artists weird requests with the goal of landing on something new and inspiring.

Imposing rules and doing things the same every time probably isnt the best for creativity, although sometimes that could be the thing that's different and offers a new perspective (depending on the person). Some people work best in really old school studios (like Toerag) where all the equipment is old and it forces you to be creative in different ways to what you may be used to. It may make you focus on the songs more. Sometimes imposing some boundaries can help focus on what's actually important. Sometimes.
 
Wish I could say I've been mixing lately, but I've barely picked up a guitar even, and I'm away from my gear atm.

I wrote something this week just to get away from all the fucking noise brother … 🍻

The learning just takes me to another place.

IMG_2538.jpeg
 
Enjoying this thread, lot's of good views and thoughts to ponder! As for "photoshopping" music, scary time IMO. Take what has always been an endeavor which is hard to make a living at (music) and add automation being able to do it faster and better than many, well you can see the future. Real music (i.e. composed and played by musicians) will become a cottage industry I predict, with corporations using all automated stuff based on algorithms that sell the most product. I HATE cutting and pasting in my music creation process, and I would say of the 60 or so songs I have released, less than 10% have any such action in them. I always want to create a take for any track that is good from beginning to end. I literally spent days (718 takes) to get my first ever slide guitar solo right. Granted, I was trying to learn how to play slide as well as compose the solo simultaneously, but I could have cut and pasted my way to what may have been perceived as a "better" solo after take 50 or so. Can't do it! Just not in my playbook. I feel like if I can not play it "good enough" from beginning to end, maybe I should think twice about even using it. I am by no means on some high horse about this, to each his own. For me though, I want the satisfaction of full takes in my work, it just tastes better to me ;~)) Trying to get a new song released tonight/tomorrow morning in honor of the full moon (as well as in memory of a personal event related to this date), let's see if I make the deadline!
 
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OK, cool reverb EQ trick I learned yesterday… Many of you might already know it. I’m just slow…


I was mixing a tune yesterday… And caught a great video on the Abbey Roads reverb EQ.

EQ on Reverb Aux:

High pass around 500-600 Hz; -18 db slope
Low pass around 10,000 Hz; -18 db slope
Mid cut of ~2k, Q.7, -3dB


Like this… Not my photo
View attachment 11329

Definitely cleaned things up quite a bit. In a good way.

DEFINITELY pepper your reverb to get the good parts only. Everything else is waste and clouds your other elements.


I use a LOT less reverb on things since I came to the understanding a lot of bigness I was hearing was compression, not verb. BIG drums = compression. BIG drums being played in a canyon= reverb.
 
IMG_2543.jpeg


closer … but made an arrangement change late last night so need to “fix it” … but getting there.

Added “punch and clarity” to the mix yesterday; plus, there’s a TGF forum anecdote behind the genesis of the tune.

From this post: https://thegearforum.com/threads/getting-a-tone-and-a-groove.3078/post-108793

Did something very different … 😬

Hopefully I can drop it Sunday when the new TGF challenge effort begins. (yes… I started one week early … therapy lol 😆 )
 
@la szum you might be interested in this, they breakdown the songs individually in podcast format. Around the 35 minute mark they start talking to Syn about the production. The whole thing is kinda talking about the production really. He also gets into how much of a bitch the solo was for this song and he’s not ready to divulge exactly how he programmed everything to make it happen. :rofl

 
I think the goal of any producer is to create the conditions to allow the magic to happen. Trying to kill the room would be career suicide.

What I like most about the Springsteen example is he is prepared to try all kinds of different approaches and is humble and objective enough to go with what is best. It's easy to point at Nebraska working the the way it does, but lets not overlook the albums done at Power Station/A&M/Conway/Record Plant/Westlake/Hit Factory/etc or working with people like Bob Clearmountain and Bob Ludwig which are not really what most people will be working with.

Mixing it up and breaking habits, or doing things different to how you normally approach them can be very inspiring. I think TONS of great sounding albums have been made by trying to use things in the "wrong" way or pushing them beyond what they were intended for. On Disney+ there is a documentary about the history of Abbey Road, and Paul McCartney talks glowingly about the "boffins" at Abbey Road who are always trying to facilitate the artists weird requests with the goal of landing on something new and inspiring.

Imposing rules and doing things the same every time probably isnt the best for creativity, although sometimes that could be the thing that's different and offers a new perspective (depending on the person). Some people work best in really old school studios (like Toerag) where all the equipment is old and it forces you to be creative in different ways to what you may be used to. It may make you focus on the songs more. Sometimes imposing some boundaries can help focus on what's actually important. Sometimes.

That Disney+ Doc is pure gold.... for a thousand reasons. I loved it. :love

May have to watch it again.

One of the things that bowled me over was how alienated from the control room the Beatles
were. It was a separate domain where some kind of mysterious magic happened that they
felt clueless about, and maybe incompetent in relation to. Kind of weird to look back on that
time given what we know now, and think about the fact that a group of bona fide musical
geniuses would think the "control room" was beyond their ken. :idk

20231003_220612.jpg
 
Enjoying this thread, lot's of good views and thoughts to ponder! As for "photoshopping" music, scary time IMO. Take what has always been an endeavor which is hard to make a living at (music) and add automation being able to do it faster and better than many, well you can see the future. Real music (i.e. composed and played by musicians) will become a cottage industry I predict, with corporations using all automated stuff based on algorithms that sell the most product. I HATE cutting and pasting in my music creation process, and I would say of the 60 or so songs I have released, less than 10% have any such action in them. I always want to create a take for any track that is good from beginning to end. I literally spent days (718 takes) to get my first ever slide guitar solo right. Granted, I was trying to learn how to play slide as well as compose the solo simultaneously, but I could have cut and pasted my way to what may have been perceived as a "better" solo after take 50 or so. Can't do it! Just not in my playbook. I feel like if I can not play it "good enough" from beginning to end, maybe I should think twice about even using it. I am by no means on some high horse about this, to each his own. For me though, I want the satisfaction of full takes in my work, it just tastes better to me ;~)) Trying to get a new song released tonight/tomorrow morning in honor of the full moon (as well as in memory of a personal event related to this date), let's see if I make the deadline!

Saw this and thought of your post.

 
Saw this and thought of your post.

Good read! Lot's of nuggets of wisdom in that article from the legend!! Thanks for sharing!!!
 
Saw this and thought of your post.


Great last bits of knowledge…

On Staying Young​

“I’m learning all the time, and I anxiously learn new things to do, and new things not to do. There’s no such thing as stopping learning unless you just cut off – you know? If your antenna just falls over, you’re not going to pickup the station. But, as far as I’m concerned, my antenna is up, and I’ve got 50,000 watts.”
 
It appears that Izotope figured out their upgrade price for a Ozone11 Advanced $189 bucks. Pulled the trigger.

Will be interesting to try against Waves AI since I still have the one free credit to use over there. I think I’m still gonna prefer to fiddle the knobs myself.
 
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