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Nathan Baker
Plug ins. Effects have perhaps always been a necessary part of music, and plugins are the most modern version. I've always been a fan of tremelo, vibrato, synchronized delay and saturated reverb, and eq's have appealed to me since I was a kid messing with my dads stereo. All my favorite songs as a kid had some sort of effects to them. Good Vibrations, Crimson and Clover, "If" by Bread, Hurdy Gurdy Man. So naturally I've gotten into music that involves synthesizers and effects. But in the general recording world, and especially during the learning process, effecting things is kept to a minimum. This is something so basic, that I need to remind myself often. Even though I've known for many years that its always best to take stuff away than to add, I'm still always a fan of adding more. And so this is the time in my life where I really fully get to practice doing less. My problem has always been starting with an inferior recording, and so you have to eq the hell out of it, and delay and thick reverb also make most bad recordings at least sound weird, which is better than bad! Anyhow, like I've said before Abel is a minimalist, and so it is with effects and plugins. Over all he doesn't like plugins because he has a good deal of analog gear to run the signal through which almost always sound better. That makes perfect sense when you have the outboard gear to,make use of, but when all you have is a laptop and an interface, you get plugins. The few basic plugins that protools comes with are not very satisfying, but that is fine because it will force me to use them sparingly. The eq's are good, reverbs are to rich and digital, delays are way to digital. I really haven't spent a lot of time with them but a few full days of messing around has shown me what is in there. Makes me want to start building up a good outboard rig.
Abel and I are just starting to get into mixing of this six song ep. I'm kind of overwhelmed with his process. It really seems that he is alway making more work for himself. He says that he runs full mixes with plugins, and then starts over with analog gear once he knows what he wants. It makes sense, it just seems so complex and it overwhelms me thinking about how in depth and time consuming this entire process is. I do like mixing, and I know how long even the simplest things can take, but to make full mixes just to scrap them doesn't make sense. That's alright, I'm here to learn and I'm sure it'll make sense soon enough. Once again I'm feeling overwhelmed by the amount of audio information that my brain has to process and I'm truly wondering if I have the proper discerning ear and mind for it! Like any ability my senses will improve like muscles or reflexes. A lot of time spent doing it is the only thing that gets you stronger.
