When I started, there was no "they". There was no internet, no forums, and only the most rudimentary beginnings of dial-up BBSs at 300 baud - *if you were lucky enough to have a computer *and* a modem. I had no access to any pro studios. There was no Guitar Center or Sam Ash, just a local "custom house" that sold recording gear and a music instrument store, both of which, as a teenager, I had to talk my way into by my own wits (you actually had to be buzzed into the recording gear departments, they were not just open to the average Joe Public.)
No EQ mag, no MIX mag, no Sound On Sound mag, no "_____ for Dummies." There was a recording magazine, I forget the name now, but it had nowhere near the kind of detail you can find on one day of searching this BBS alone. There were a couple of Alton Everest books on building and operating recording studios, but that was about it...and even those were usually special order from the publisher (no Amazon.com, you know
).
It's amazing, miro, when you have no external crutches to help you along, with nobody to tell you what to do, how easy it really can seem to figure things out on your own. The only "nudges" I and my compatriots at the time got were from the music itself. And the reason it seemed easy to us was two reasons; first because it was the only way to do it we just took it for granted, and second - and this is the important point -
because it was just a continuation of what we had already been doing up to that point.
Sure, sometimes we just flew by the seat of our pants, starting with a riff here, or a concept there, but that how most songs get started, even today. Then as you progress, you start building an image in your head. It will be incomplete for most of the time, sure, but the more you work on it, the more you add to it, etc., the more complete the image becomes.
You lie awake at night imagining you're playing the song for your friends, or for Betty Boop next door, who's skirt you want to get into, and you start imagining just what that finished song will sound like - what will sound best to you and to Ms. Boop, and you can't wait until after school or work the next day to get back into the basement and try your ideas in action.
Sometimes they'll work, sometimes they won't; that's life. If they don't, then you'll try something different until you find what does work. *THAT* whole process *IS* the music itself guiding you, nudging you. It's already doing it. And the next time/song you'll be that much more experienced and smarter, and so on; before you know it, what you imagine in bed the night before works the next day far more often than it doesn't.
Now, what you seem to be saying, my friend, is to just start with a specific formula, and if that doesn't work, then try something else from there. That is bypassing and even ignoring the whole creative process that *is already happening* in one's head the day and night before. I just don't see the point in that, especially since those are the very skills that one will need to mix their music as soon as they do want or need to try something else. They need to learn, and learn early on - not later - that mixing music requires using their head and building their creative and analytical skills.
They already have a natural tendency to do that, I'm just giving them that "nudge" in the same direction, that it's not only OK to continue what they are already doing, but that they need to continue what they are already doing, and not expect to get an "easier" answer from a bunch of goofs like you and I, because when that "easier" answer *is* wrong, then coming up with the right answer will actually be much harder, not easier. And when it just coincidentally happens to be right, they'll have learned nothing about how or why it's right, or what true mixing actually entails.
G.
