Introduction & request for guidance

C

CWatkinsNash

New member
New here, sort of. I lurked for a while before joining and now I'm finally posting. I'm not new to music, and I'm not really new to recording, but I'm new to doing a proper job of things. :D

I've got a decent little budget-friendly setup going now, as much as I can afford. I think most of my gear is in my sig. I just ordered two new XLR cables because the ones I have are old and have just about been gigged to death. I'm going to build a rack soon, because I can't see how adding rack rails to a cheap laminate box suddenly makes it triple in value, putting it completely out of my grasp. (You would think living in Nashville, Craigslist would be a treasure trove, but everyone seems to be delusional about how much their beat up gear is worth.)

I'm loving Reaper. Best $40 I've spent, without a doubt. I was using Bremmers' MTS until a couple of weeks ago. I was running into walls with it and realized I needed more flexibility, and saw several people on here mention Reaper. My roommate (also a musician) thinks I'm nuts, but assigning colors to the tracks makes a HUGE difference for me. Funny how something as simple as "assign random colors" can battle mixing fatigue. And good news: I seem to do really well with waveforms. It's like art. (Okay, stop laughing back there. :D)

Wow, I'm just rambling all over without making much of a point. Blame it on yesterday's wine. Anyway, I've been recording off and on for years using other peoples' analog castoff equipment, but could never get the stuff to sound good together. I'm a songwriter and former performer, and I really want to make a go of it this time. I've got the basics down, but I still have so much to learn about mixing. I really feel like I've never done this before because I've never been fully digital before. (Which is kind of strange, since I'm such a geek I'm rarely not in front of a computer.)

I also want to learn more about MIDI with the hopes it will become less painful over time.

I think part of my reticence until now has been my terror of anyone hearing me. But I miss music. I miss making it and sharing it and just getting lost in it. I know I'm just a hack but music still means the world to me. And I want to make MY music sound as good as it deserves. I took the first step last night. I put a video on Youtube for the first time ever. Not a first class mix by any means, but I made the video funny and my friends have been stroking my ego all day. I won't lie - it's what I needed. I need the pressure of someone wanting more from me. Thanks to the internet, I can have that drive without ever setting foot on a stage. I'd prefer that I'm never onstage ever again.

So for anyone who made it through the tl;dr mess (or who wisely skipped ahead):
Other than scouring forums like this one (so much great info here!) where should I look first for more thorough mixing and MIDI knowledge? I've gone to many of the links recommended here, but I feel like I'm lacking focus and I'm trying to look at everything at once. I hate to feel like such a clueless noob but I really need a few "start here!" orders.

I can afford a few books as long as they are good enough to be an investment.

Thanks in advance for any advice. :)
 
Hey CWatkins, welcome!

I bought this Mixing Engineer's handbook and found it to be very good.

Amazon.com: The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Second Edition (0082039532516): Bobby Owsinski: Books

And I see now that the same author has put out a book called "The Recording Engineer's handbook" which has gotten a higher rating by readers at Amazon. The two books must cover different things, but I'll betchya there's some overlap.

Amazon.com: The Recording Engineer's Handbook (9781598638677): Bobby Owsinski: Books


In any case, one of the moderator's on here "WhiteStrat" really knows his stuff when it comes to recording and producing. I know him personally, and he's helped me, and taught me things. If you have live samples to hear, get his opinion.

When it comes to MIDI, see me and the gang over in the Keyboard thread, or MIDI thread. Some of us have been doing MIDI almost as long as the protocol has been around. Myself, since 1985.
 
Welcome. Best thing I can say to you is just keep recording and practicing your mixing. It might help to start with simple mixes - a couple of instruments and voices and work your way into more tracks and more complex stuff. It takes time.
 
Thank you for the welcome and advice! :)

Toddskins said:
In any case, one of the moderator's on here "WhiteStrat" really knows his stuff when it comes to recording and producing. I know him personally, and he's helped me, and taught me things. If you have live samples to hear, get his opinion.

When it comes to MIDI, see me and the gang over in the Keyboard thread, or MIDI thread. Some of us have been doing MIDI almost as long as the protocol has been around. Myself, since 1985.
Click to expand...

I'll definitely check out those book recs. When I give my ears a rest for a bit I'll go back and look at what I tracked Sunday, do some adjustments with fresh ears. I'll track down WhiteStrat and by then I should have enough posts to post in the Clinic. I want to do a "what I think is wrong" vs "what's really wrong" comparison to see where I'm going wrong in both the listening process and the resulting balance.

I'll definitely check out the Keyboard and MIDI areas. I first tried MIDI waaay back when it was still akin to Rocket Science and required hardware units and... It intimidated me, probably because I was pretty young at the time and not yet a full-fledged geekling. I've kept up in the sense that I know how things work these days. I've got everything hooked up and working, I've even recorded some MIDI tracks and edited them but it was painful. There's a part of my brain that is making it way harder than it has to be. But I'm determined to get past that.

mjbphotos said:
Welcome. Best thing I can say to you is just keep recording and practicing your mixing. It might help to start with simple mixes - a couple of instruments and voices and work your way into more tracks and more complex stuff. It takes time.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what I'm doing. I'm keeping things fairly simple so far - really just drums, bass, guitar or keys (but not both) and my vocals. I'm using canned rhythm and lead instrument tracks at the moment (via Acid). Now that I have a big enough loop base, I have plenty of nice, dry samples that I can chop and rebuild. (Laid out a bass section of individual notes the other day and was so proud I could have wept - though all of that would be sooo much easier if I'd get over my MIDI fear.) I'm set up for guitar, I'm only lacking a short mic stand or similar.

It's kind of sad - I know some of the best musicians in town, but I can only work alone for now.

I'm learning when to rest my ears, when to switch to the speakers, when to get up and walk away for a while. The hardest is knowing when I've got 5 tracks of crap that just need replacing. I've worked in film off and on for over 10 years, and I need to apply some of those principles here - primarily "Fixing it in post is rarely an viable option and NEVER a goal". If I start with crap, the most I can hope to end up with is shiny crap. So I need to learn to recognize the crap as early as possible.

I'm going to have some more coffee and then browse the forums a while. Thank you again! :)
 
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