Getting From Good Song To Great Song


by Deron Daum - Date: 2009-03-21 - Word Count: 1074 Share This!

Getting a good mix is not that hard. There are thousands of bands doing it on their own, hundreds of "hobbyist" studios doing them, and plenty of professional studios doing good mixes. And they sound good! So what's the problem? The problem is: good is not good enough.

The death of physical music media has been hard on brick and mortar record stores and major record labels are scrambling to adjust. But there has never been more music out there for audiences to sift through. The general public are saturated with tunes - more than they can ever listen to. The major label "quality control" or "filtering" is no longer in place for those seeking music on-line. The new music business is much more Darwinian - survival of the best, all others play the local club scene on weekends and keep their day jobs.

So how do you get noticed when there are so many good songs out there for people to discover? The answer is you have to be better than good - you have to be exceptional. Your song has to be exceptional (touch people emotionally), your performance has to be exceptional, your production has to be exceptional, and your mix has to be exceptional.

The reality is that many musicians have no concept what it takes to be better than good. I was in bands where we went in the studio, threw down two takes and said "sounds good". It did sound good. Good is a LONG way from great.

Now there are always those .001% of the population who are naturally gifted and everything they do comes out great. If you think you are one of those you are probably wrong, but if you are congratulations and I'll expect to see you on the Grammys next year. For the rest of us, it takes dedication, attention to detail, and the ability to be extremely self critical. If you are in a band, it is even harder because you need to be critical of each other and raise each other up without tearing the band apart. Egos have to be put aside for the sake of the music. This is where a good producer (with good people skills) is invaluable.

In my view, there are two strategies to making a great recording without breaking the bank: 1. spend 90% of your time in pre-production so when you get in the recording studio you just nail it, or 2. do the recording yourself. There is a hybrid which is really powerful where you record rhythm tracks (especially drums) in a pro studio and do the rest yourself at home. This takes even more time since you need to do all of the pre-production prep before you go in to record rhythm tracks. The common theme in these approaches is TIME. You need lots of it, and you don't want to be on the clock while you are discovering your bass and guitar parts clash or your super cool phased sound effects don't work with the busy conga pattern. As you are writing and revising, record everything, play it for as many people as you can (especially musicians or producers you trust to give honest and helpful feedback) and keep finding ways to make it better.

BTW, some songs just aren't going to cut it as you go through this process and you need to be willing to let them go. If you can't make it great, move on and don't waste any more time on it. Be super critical at every step of the way.

So now we get to mixing (my favorite topic). Getting a great mix takes time too - attention to detail, critical listening, and willingness to keep trying new things to make it better. Try to get a great mix in an hourly studio and you'll run out of money on the first song! But getting a great mix at home is a challenge even if you have the time and creativity. You need to have great monitors in a great room, and you need to really understand frequencies and phase.

A room built for mixing is critical to achieving a great mix. If you are mixing in a 12'x12' room with an 8' flat ceiling, you are not hearing anything close to what others will hear when they play your song. It is hard to conceive how much a room affects the sound coming out of the speakers. After all, you are using near-field monitors and you listen to music in all kinds of different rooms and it doesn't sound that different. The reality is that room modes can boost or cut frequencies you are hearing by as much as 20db in the critical low frequency range. To put that in perspective, +3db would be doubling the power at a given frequency. Using near-field monitors reduces the effect, but even with near-fields 20db swings at the listening position are more common than not. So why don't we notice this when we listen to CDs in different listening environments? Why don't they sound very different from room to room? Because they are great mixes! A great mix translates well to various systems and sounds great anywhere. The bass has the right amount of upper harmonics to be heard on tiny clock radio speakers. The highs are clear but not overly bright and can survive the "smiley" curve put on many playback systems without sounding peircing.

Understanding frequencies and phase is the key to creating these mixes that translate well in any environment. Have you ever completed a mix, burned a CD and then played it in your car and it sounded terrible? This is because the frequency curve is not right. (And if you are in a room with mode issues you will never know it.) So once you have a flat room, you need to master the frequency spectrum. You also need to "hear" when something is out of phase. This takes many hours of ear training, studying frequencies and delays and applying them to mixing. Dave Moulton's Golden Ears CDs are a good way to get this training. Reading through the resources on this website is another way to pick up important tricks and tips.

Once you have a great song with great production and a great mix, you will stand out in the crowd. You'll still need to spend a lot of time marketing, but that's another story. Give yourself a fighting chance by striving for greatness!

Related Tags: music mixing, music production, audio engineering, music recording, how to mix

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