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Nathan Baker
Jeez, I guess I haven't written in here in awhile. Time is flying and I've been really busy lately with a new job and visitors and all else. Mostly just the full time job. Fills so much time and steals your energy and your soul. The last few lessons have been less than new info to me. But it's always good to hear and read more about what you already think you know a lot about. EQ, reverb, delays, midi, and automation is nothing new, but I still tried to approach the mix assignment as if I was new to all this. It was funny to only get the levels correct, and then only focus on eq, and then only focus on reverb, because usually you do a little bit of all of that over the course of a few hours. I did jump ahead and compressed one of the lead vocals early on just because I couldn't stand it's inconsistencies in the mix. I had to have it at an even volume just to listen to it. I chose the electronic song and so mixing it was quite different than a song full of real instruments. Fake drums and synths don't really need compression, and very minor EQing, and that bass line was inpossible tomdo anything with, so I focused on the vocals and guitars mostly. The drums some. Since there was no real guidance or anyone critiquing this I wasn't sure what I was or wasn't allowed to do or not do. If it was my actual mix, I would've cut some of the extraneous synth noises and changed a couple drum tones, but I left it all as is and tried to find everything a place in a rather cluttered tune. I did mess with the structure of the intro just so that it all came in in a tolerable fashion. It seemed really haphazard as it was.
Today in the studio I got to run a session completely alone! It was a simple one, just a guy playing a grand piano, but it was rad because of its simplicity. Abel was going to show up but he never did. So I opened the studio up, got it all rolling, all the setup, a little bit of editing, and closed it all down and locked it up as if it was my own studio! It's pretty damn cool to be able and confident to go in and run a professional recording studio! We got to piano songs tracked in 4 hrs. The guy was having some chord issues with a Nat King Cole song because he is mostly a guitarist, so that burned up a lot of time, but he was very happy with the results. Next Friday he will come in and do the accompany guitar tracks and vocals. Then I will mix it all on my own as well. Abel is giving this guy a super cheap deal just to give me this opportunity. I'm damn excited. I've never recorded a grand piano before! Easy enough when you have a really nice piano and really nice mics!
Thismidi assignment is cool, but I'm having issues with getting it to sequence. I've messed with it twice during tired evenings after a long days of work but I can't figure it out, so I do believe I am going to have to call this protools helpline I keep seeing in the ebook. Usually I can figure shit out on my own, so it's frustration when I can't. Although I had very little energy either night and it was hard to really focus when all I wanted to do was go to bed. I do like the world of midi. I'm ok with fake music to some extent. When you don't have a drummer or access to drums or a kick ass organ or whatever, then midi is great. And the range of synths and the interchangeability is also nice. But all in all you definitely have to know your way around in that world nowadays. It's a very useful tool of this futuristic world we are now in.
