The Architecture of Music
Dec. 3rd, 2008 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseOh wow, making music is back in my life and it's so wonderfully tumultuous!
I'm recording not only my own songs (brief bitter harangue to my friends who mostly ignored my request for feedback on the last one), but also working on songs that Snake is singing. The last time we made music together (7, 8 years ago), we had to stop because we were outdoing Queen or the Police in terms of in-studio fighting. However, this time, we're really working to play nice and the results are good.
See, we work differently. I follow bizarre, individualistic paths through any piece of art, whereas he is incredibly methodical. STRANGE FACT: I cannot read down a list. My eyes will refuse to go from A to Z. So, we may be working on getting the right reverb decay on a phrase, but I will suddenly want to go off and fix the glissando on a bass line. In fact, because he's pushed me to stay focussed and complete thought processes, I've discovered new techniques instead of falling back on my old habits.
God, mixing music is weird. If you asked me before, I would have said that when a vocal is fairly exposed, you don't want to over-compress it. However, on one very low-in-the-register part of his vocal, massive compression saved the day.
I'm back to sitting in front of the stereo listening to favourite music, my mouth hanging open as I do full-body concentration, appreciating the height and width of the music, the physical effect of each production decision. Sometimes there are so many decisions to make that it seems impossible for a human being to actually get a final mix on three minutes of music. It's massive. It's humbling.
I love it.
I'm recording not only my own songs (brief bitter harangue to my friends who mostly ignored my request for feedback on the last one), but also working on songs that Snake is singing. The last time we made music together (7, 8 years ago), we had to stop because we were outdoing Queen or the Police in terms of in-studio fighting. However, this time, we're really working to play nice and the results are good.
See, we work differently. I follow bizarre, individualistic paths through any piece of art, whereas he is incredibly methodical. STRANGE FACT: I cannot read down a list. My eyes will refuse to go from A to Z. So, we may be working on getting the right reverb decay on a phrase, but I will suddenly want to go off and fix the glissando on a bass line. In fact, because he's pushed me to stay focussed and complete thought processes, I've discovered new techniques instead of falling back on my old habits.
God, mixing music is weird. If you asked me before, I would have said that when a vocal is fairly exposed, you don't want to over-compress it. However, on one very low-in-the-register part of his vocal, massive compression saved the day.
I'm back to sitting in front of the stereo listening to favourite music, my mouth hanging open as I do full-body concentration, appreciating the height and width of the music, the physical effect of each production decision. Sometimes there are so many decisions to make that it seems impossible for a human being to actually get a final mix on three minutes of music. It's massive. It's humbling.
I love it.
