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Couple of questions that ive gotten and need your help on answering. (pg. 3)
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mazin_A
If you just stopped being a retard and read the first post i made in this thread you would get why i posted these questions in the first place. We tried to get other producers views on these questions. The answers may be basic or straight forward or whatever but for people who are beginners, they can create some clarity and actually help them develop their skills.
Now that you've fed your ego with your previous posts drop the attitude and contribute something of value or none at all.
sick with this kind of behaviour, grow up. |
Om, nom, nom.
And since we're on the subject of ego, let's talk about the hubris it takes you to come in here with your questions about a website of your making and not expect to have some people busting your chops. Your questions are silly (i.e. analogue vs. digital - a topic banned because of the rancor it caused without having any actual solution or, in the end, relevance), most of them are resolved by a quick perusal of the forum's FAQ sticky, and if they're not answered there, they approach the music making process from such an unorthodox stand-point that to answer them is to lead the unsuspecting into a rabbit hole which goes no-where.
The answers which Eric J gave you are the best answers you're going to get, in part, because you're asking the wrong questions. Now I realize that these are questions submitted by potential/current users of your website, but the second set, in particular, was made obsolete by Eric's reply and/or lacks sufficient contextual background to come up with an answer that applies to it. Very simply, you can't let the students decide the curriculum. It's somewhat akin to letting a medical student apply the Montessori method to learning medicine.
Because they are what they are, your questions read a bit like the trouble-shooting section of a technical instruction manual, but producing music doesn't resolve itself on the sort of trouble-shooting Booleans being proposed. One person's solutions are going to be the other person's fiascoes.
A mix, for example, can sound flat for a variety of reasons, some of them in direct contradiction with one another. There's no quick way to completely answer that question without answering many of the other questions you've already asked. |
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| Atlantis-AR |
| quote: | Originally posted by ken_lee
oh and I did NOT joke about getting better monitors. Theres no such thing as "getting better ears", you ears are at best when you are 13-14 years old. rest is experience, knowledge and the sound quality. seriously monitors are your most important gear, anyone who doesnt understand that are out of hope.
edit: this was a reply to atlantis btw. |
I respectfully disagree. When I was 13-14, even if I could hear fully up to 20 kHz, my ears weren't "developed". It's the years of practise that counts, noticing the subtle details in frequency and dynamics etc. When I first got my monitors, and compare what I hear now to what I heard then, I can definitely say that your ears are your most important piece of equipment. The monitors only help your ears to hear what is there, and it's definitely true that this part shouldn't be overlooked at all, I agree. I also agree that cheap monitors won't help you hear what is there very easily (or at all), but without good ears you won't hear anything (and they can be trained). I hear you're saying all this too but I still think that buying the best monitors won't help you get a better sound. |
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| ken_lee |
| you can train your brain (yourself) to be a better listener (from experience, know what to listen for) but your ears stays the same or worse. its not a muscle, its like your eyes, they gradually get worn out to the point that u need glasses. but its a pointless discussion. my point was that monitors are really ing important and buying the most expensive one WILL help you even if you are 50% deaf. |
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| derail |
| quote: | Originally posted by ken_lee
seriously monitors are your most important gear, anyone who doesnt understand that are out of hope. |
I have to second Atlantis-AR on this: seriously EARS are your most important gear, anyone who doesnt understand that are out of hope.
I can hear way more now when I listen to music than when I was 13 or 14. The more years of mixing experience I have, the bigger it seems my ears get.
Yes, quality headphones/monitors do make a difference, but even with the best ones it'll still take a fair bit of time for your ears to be able to pick up everything they're telling you. |
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| DJ Robby Rox |
Hmm I think you both raise valid points. Although I am serious about my analog defense in the end it really doesn't mean much of anything.
I tend to think what Atlantis talked about its prob one of the most elusive and significant advances a person can make in production. But first you should have a quality pair of monitors I think they kind of go hand in hand.
Even as I get more "deaf" in my later years my hearing also becomes much more in tune to things I could not hear before. And if I can hear things that I could not hear years ago, I would definitely consider my ears somewhat of a "muscle". Ok well the ears aren't really a muscle in themself, its your brains ability to use your ears.
And its one of the more motivating things about production. Although you can hear the same sounds, you percieve them in totally different ways. You associate certain things as "harmful" to a mix that you never even focused on before. I remember I had a friend over once who is not deaf by any means and it really opened my eyes on this. I was cleaning up sounds and explaining to him what I was doing, and he kept saying "your crazy I can't hear what you're talking about". Or "don't you think you're being a little obsessive about it?". He was able to hear really obvious problems, but the more subtle ones that seem to be more prominent in mixes he could not lock his ears on.
I don't know how you teach this to anyone I think as the brain is exposed to it year after year you just gain the ability to hear those finer variations between sound.
I mean when I downloaded my first vst my ears were sooo "ignorant". It was vanguard and I kept telling myself "wow this synth is awesome! It sounds so bright and analog" lol. I had NO IDEA what the word analog even refered to back then. And then I later came to percieve that metallic/plasticy character of vanguard and started hating it for it. I went through that phase for a long time where anytime I got a new synth it was the best synth I ever heard (even making threads here about it and getting made fun of) and it took me months to hear the actual weaknesses.
Now that happens much faster and I can't really say if its my ears or programming knowledge. I go in and tweak knobs to see what they do to the sound. And then I derive specific inferences about specific strengths/weaknesses of the synth. So it really is a combination of a lot of things. But I love that fact that my ears are always improving. I just wish instead of waiting another 5 years I can make those changes more instant, but I'm not sure it works that way. |
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| Atlantis-AR |
| When I say "train your ears" of course I do mean train your brain. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox
I went through that phase for a long time where anytime I got a new synth it was the best synth I ever heard (even making threads here about it and getting made fun of) and it took me months to hear the actual weaknesses. |
Ahh, but we love you for it. :D |
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| ken_lee |
| quote: | Originally posted by Atlantis-AR
When I say "train your ears" of course I do mean train your brain. |
agreed then :) |
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| Richard Butler |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mazin_A
3. I get feedback that my mixes are sounding flat (in a bad way), what does this mean and how can i approach fiddeling with them?
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Well think about a painter. What makes one painter average and another great?
Answer when you boilt it all down is this > each tiny brush stroke relies upon a choice and these choices are a constant stream. If you make the wrong choices...
So what does this choice actualy look like in the everday life of a producer?
Well these could be millions of them, but it comes donw to each minute decision being critical.
Even getting a kick right may come down do dozens of little choices - and the most important choice is getting the right sounds to start with and then often hacking away at them - is 1nthe legnth of each kick layer right / are those eq cuts right / does the high portion njeed a little verb / is the verb eq rught / is the verb legnth right / is the verb type right / does the kick need more snap and drive etc.
Like any chef - make the right minute choices = sucess / make the wrong minute choices = room for imrpovment.
Face it though a lot of people do not have that peculiar attention to detail required to be a good chef / painter / producer. I find all top producers / chefs / painters are devastaintingly painful when it comes to minucea.
So forget nthe 'press this knob to get the right result' approach and instead teach your freinds to become masters of minucea. |
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| Richard Butler |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mazin_A
3. I get feedback that my mixes are sounding flat (in a bad way), what does this mean and how can i approach fiddeling with them?
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Well think about a painter. What makes one painter average and another great?
Answer when you boil it all down is this > each tiny brush stroke relies upon a choice and these choices are a constant stream. If you make the wrong choices...
So what does this choice actualy look like in the everday life of a producer?
Well there could be millions of them in the context of production - infinite choices, but it comes down to each minute decision being critical.
Even getting a kick right may come down do dozens of little choices - and the most important choice is getting the right sounds to start with and then often hacking away at them, for example; - is the legnth of each kick layer right / are those eq cuts right / does the high portion njeed a little verb / is the verb eq rught / is the verb legnth right / is the verb type right / does the kick need more snap and drive etc.
And remember this is the case for each perc element - and all need tuning invariably too.
Even in a really decent sample pack I find only a few kicks have potential.
Like any chef - make the right minute choices = sucess / make the wrong minute choices = room for imrpovment.
Face it though a lot of people do not have that peculiar attention to detail required to be a good chef / painter / producer. I find all top producers / chefs / painters are devastaintingly painful when it comes to minucea.
So forget nthe 'press this knob to get the right result' approach and instead teach your freinds to become masters of minucea. |
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| derail |
| quote: | Originally posted by Richard Butler
Well there could be millions of them in the context of production - infinite choices, but it comes down to each minute decision being critical. |
I think we agree overall, I'd just like to add a few things.
There is no "perfect" combination of sounds, EQ settings etc which result in the "perfect mix". If you're listening to a song by your favorite artist, you'll listen to it and it'll sound great just the way it is.
Would you notice if the size of the main reverb was changed from 45 to 46 metres? Would you notice if the main lead had low end cut off below 120 Hz rather than 125 Hz? I think not - when we hear music from our favorite artists, it sounds great, it sounds right. But that doesn't mean that every single decision had to be "correct" (whatever "correct" is in an infinite array of creative choices). This is art, and we choose how large our reverbs are, and which sounds we use and everything else about our songs.
Yes, there are millions of ways to make songs sound terrible (don't we all know this!) but there are also many ways to make things sound great. It's good to focus on making things sound as good as possible, but that doesn't always involve getting obsessive about the minutiae. If experience tells you that the kick sounds fine just dropped into the mix and sitting at it's present level, then you don't need to spend extra time obsessing over it.
Of course, a lot of this experience of knowing when something sounds great and doesn't need to be touched comes from years of obsessing about the minutiae. It could well be something that's very beneficial for people to go through. It gets easier the further along you get. |
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| Seandroid |
Just going to throw this out there, why has nobody posted a blind test where you can listen to 5 analogue samples and 5 digital samples from a synth that has a digital "version" like the Odyssey VS Oddity synths and see if anybody on here can actually do well.
Then again there are too many tards who insist they can hear the difference even though they can't and they'll just do the test 100 times until they get it right and pretend they did it on the first try.
It's Coke and Pepsi. You can claim that one of them tastes WAAAAAAAAAAAY LYK BETTER all you want but technically they're so ing similar it's essentially impossible for you to objectively hate one and like the other, and 99% of people can't tell the difference but they claim they can because they're slaves to marketing.
But you know, I digress.
So hows about them MUDKIPZ? |
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