Record ALL the genres!

Recently Mike (guitarist/roommate/guy with long hair) and myself have been doing a lot of recording/mixing/production work and I’ve got to say, it’s been going awesome. I really think the key to how awesome this whole thing has been is just the diversity of stuff we’ve been working on.

The majority of the time we’ve been living together we’ve been working on our own stuff which obviously is amazing to work on and I feel blessed we get to do this ourselves everyday, but we got into formulas. I have a certain way I like to do drums for us. Mike has certain way we do guitars and so on and so on. But lately we’ve had hip hop tracks (Vinnie 1000 shout out) and we’ve had indie tracks and metal (more metal than ourselves) tracks. Trying all sorts of new styles of mixing and editing have been incredibly rewarding so far and I definitely think they will continue to be.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Dave, I hate [insert the genre you hate here, probably country] and I NEVER wanna work on that.” I then will say, “Hey guy, I hear ya. Or at least I did and now I think you should stop whining and try it.” Yeah you may hate that style (if it's country, I agree, can’t stand it) but that certainly doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer you from a learning standpoint. OR lets think best-case scenario, you bring something to a country mix that you learned recording hardcore yodel punk (probably not a real genre) and it’s the coolest thing anyone in country music has ever heard. BAM! Your album goes platinum. Don’t hold your breath, but hey, it could happen.

Regardless of that ridiculous scenario, everything’s worth doing once because if nothing else, you’ll learn something from it. 

Finished Projects and You

So recently my band Gunpowder Temple finished our first full release (you can find it here). Since then surprisingly, I haven’t been able to listen to more than one song in a sitting. The idea of going back and listening to these mixes is just an awful thought. Something about finishing the EP was so satisfying, but now that it’s done, it’s not so much. After talking to a few other engineers, I realized that this is not an uncommon phenomenon. I busted tail for a month before the release, editing and mixing and going over every detail of each song and basically all it did was completely ruin my own work for myself. So I wanted to address this issue in my blog because as I’ve recently come to find, this is a good thing.

A mix engineer’s job is never done. You could mix forever and never truly be happy with what you’ve put out. This could be because of your mood or just how you feel that day. Either way I’m here to say, “it’s okay.”

Just last week we started recording drums for a set of three songs we plan to put out in a few weeks. The drums tones and workable tracks are so much better than anything we got on the EP and of course this makes looking back on the EP even harder. If only we knew then what we know now.

I’m a firm a believer that every 5 years you will look back and realize how stupid you were 5 years ago. This philosophy applies to everything, even mixing, and honestly can help keep you grounded. I find that knowing this, when I listen to the EP and can’t stop knit picking and wishing I did things differently, what it really means is, I’m growing as an engineer.

Recently I was forced to sit down and listen to our EP all the way through on a home theatre system (ouch!) and thought the whole 30 minutes was pure torture. But looking back I’m glad I had to do it and have learned every time I now re-listen I can think of new techniques and ideas for new projects. Anyway, despite the rambling, the lesson here is, don’t sweat your old mistakes.