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Oscar Galvan
I showed up on this week armed with the stems for one of my songs. I've had this song, unreleased, on the shelf for several months because I simply was holding it back for when it was perfect. It was finished, but I have wanted to refine it in post-processing.
Enter John. Given the 22 stems of my track, all systems were go so he started treating each track individually with extreme scrutiny. I could tell he was enjoying it too. He was really enthusiastic about helping me mix my track (the right way as opposed to my home-brew way). I'm thinking that since he deals with rap and hip-hop day in and day out (from what I've observed), my track became a much needed change in weather. My music is on the EDM side. This particular track is hard for me to assign a genre to, but it's a mix of electro, trance, with some slight dubstep influence, and a bit of a nod to orchestral instruments.
There were no artists/clients scheduled that morning until noon, but I started at 10AM so John suggested we dive right into the track and mix it. He heard the reference and then started working individually on the stems, like I had stated earlier. He had me set up anything that I was already familiar with, or was easy enough for me to handle to keep me involved and engaged. And anything that seemed beyond me, he would explain in detail so that I knew what he was thinking and the purpose behind his decisions. Two hours in, the artist scheduled to show up at noon never arrived so John kept chipping away at my track, polishing it. Every now and then Ricky would show up to give John a quick task, which John would expediently handle and get right back to my track. It was really cool to see him with this enthusiasm for my track. I could tell he liked it, which is high praise coming from him since I know his expertise far outweighs my own. He would occasionally ask me how I did certain effects, or created certain synthetic sounds. He was seemingly both amused and impressed by my methods.
At some point, one other student showed up and John just told him to observe (which is why he was there in the first place) so he observed what John was doing to my track, little by little. I was slowly hearing the transformation from my good, robust mix to the potential for a professional polished mix. John spent almost my entire session there (about 3 to 4 hours) just working on my track and there is still lots to do to it, according to John. The mix as it stands now still needs some balancing and automation, but we ran out of time because I had to head back home. But we'll continue next week. I'm looking forward to it. I've always wanted to see the mixing process for an engineer on a track that I made myself, because as the artist I know the intracacies of the track so I am more sensitive to the changes the engineer makes. It is wonderful to see that. I learn a lot from watching John mix other people's tracks, but I learn VOLUMES by watching him mix one of mine. And he explains everything as best as he can, so long as I have the foundation to understand it, which for the most part I do.
I can't wait to get my copy of ProTools so i can get used to the interface and start porting my many, many plugins on Logic to ProTools.
Looking forward to next week's session. This whole experience of this latest lesson was really enlightening, thanks to John's dedication.
