I'm a mixing engineer at a world-class studio that is shutting down in a month. Since I'm losing my workspace, I'm drunk and sad and on blow and here to answer all your burning engineering questions while I work on mixing my solo EP. If there's enough interest I'll post some more pics of our gear, it's pretty fucking rad.
AMA, Sup Forumstants
Other urls found in this thread:
soundcloud.com
dropbox.com
clyp.it
soundcloud.com
soundcloud.com
soundcloud.com
www61.zippyshare.com
clyp.it
youtube.com
youtube.com
twitter.com
Studio having gear auction?
boomp
how did you get the job?
What those teeth for?
Nah, it's a pretty small operation and hopefully my boss will be opening up a new space soon. We have a couple of tape machines that might go if we find buyers in the area but he's gonna keep the consoles/mics/our super badass compressors. I'd have tried to buy the guy out otherwise
Ambience
to clarify:
Soon = like a year down the line minimum, so I'm gonna have to find something else until then
what do if graduate hs in one year, and want to become audio engineer? parents would ideally like me to go to college but berklee is veryyy competitive and i havent had experience in recording arts type stuff since starting high school. should i be cold calling studios or what to set up an internship? just general first steps out of school
'preciate it, and good luck in future studios of course
So I actually started out as an intern here, scrubbing floors and making coffee and shit, and worked my way up to full mixing engineer with my own clients. I got very lucky, I worked a little with Pro Tools in college & have been making music in Ableton for a while now, and my boss was kind enough to take me under his wing.
He said I'm the only intern he's ever had that didn't flinch when he asked me to scrub out the toilets.
>world-class studio
>it's a pretty small operation
Make up your mind
Also post pics of your mics. Lets see some Telefunkin or U67s
Yeah so definitely if there are any studios in the area, especially smaller operations, it is always worth calling in and just asking. If they say no, show up at the studio and ask again. Also, if you can play an instrument well enough to pull off a good audition, you can get in to Berklee for an instrument and then transfer to studio engineering (that's the route my best friend ended up taking)
thanks a ton for the advice, will be visiting those studios in the future then
No worries, my boss slept outside a studio for three days annoying people to get an in. That probably wouldn't work today, but just make sure you're willing to bust your ass for little to no money for a while. If you prove you're dedicated you'll move up.
fuck you, we recorded HBO's fall push, commercials for sprint, and other ADR for major companies with a 4-person operation. Plus half the audiobooks on Audible, and worked on vocaloid.
Pics of mics incoming.
This is a Neumann M149. It's the mic that the U67 wishes it was, but nobody buys it because it's too expensive.
This is our prototype ribbon mic that was custom built by AEA in California, we use it mostly for acoustic instruments.
as an audio major, do you think its a good idea to try to find a studio job or is it a dying business? I feel like live sound would be easier to get into.
These are Sennheisers, MKH40 and 50, that we use for drum overheads.
Shall I continue?
yep
What are your prefered mic placements for a kit?
I mean you're talking to someone working in a dying studio. I think there will always be a need for studio engineers but it is definitely not the 80s any more. Also live sound is a fucking blast, I love studio work but you don't get the adrenaline rush.
It's really up to what you prefer, but I think there is definitely more of a market for live sound engineers right now.
Why are you guys shutting down? It sounds like you've been really successful.
What's your stance on the loudness war?
How do you think a hobbyist should try to approach mixing and mastering to avoid falling into the over compressed brick of loudness?
So I'm lazy. I like to do a simple split overhead like in the picture shown and then basically I close mic everything else to avoid phasing, we have a neumann km100 that sounds great close on the hihat and a groovetubes GT57 i like for the low tom. I'll clip mic the high tom and let the overhead mics handle the cymbals.
OK. I'm having trouble getting a kick drum sound that I like. Any advice for mics and mic placement for good kick drum sound? Looking for something with low end and punch, Bonham-like.
Let's say I want to record vocals for synth pop or trap tracks. Each track is around 3:20 and has let's say around 90, 100 lines plus ad libs. How many hours should I book for each song? I have zero studio experience.
Also, I think I have a pretty clear idea of what I want my vocal chain to be, U87 into an Avalon VT-737 and a 1176 compressor, but again I have no experience. Should I let the engineer decide that by himself? Would it look bad if I tell him I want to try recording like that, especially since I have no experience?
I'm mostly an EDM guy so the loudness war has kind of permeated my music since the get go. That said, I have started to appreciate a little dynamic range in my tracks (Daft Punk and Deadmau5 are great examples of good, dynamically variable EDM). Also, especially with outlets like youtube and spotify normalizing everything to a certain dB level I think the loudness war has become less of a factor.
as far as your personal mixes are concerned, I'd say you should stick with coming up with a great sounding mix with a wide dynamic range and send that shit to a professional mastering engineer to ruin it for you.
If you're just a hobbyist, don't worry about mastering or the loudness war, just focus on sounding good. When you're ready to release something send it to a pro; two sets of ears is always better than one anyway.
I'm strictly a mixing engineer, I don't do mastering. I know my way around a couple microphones but I don't really consider myself a "recording engineer" yet either; Recording, Mixing, and Mastering are three completely different skills that each take years to fully get a grip on.
Yes! so one thing you can do to get a really punch kick is a three mic setup (which, again, I don't do, because I'm lazy)
However here's the theory behind it. First thing is you want to mic the beater head. That will give you a midrange "click" you can mix in to compete with all the electro pop bullshit going on today. You should put one mic inside the kick drum with some muffling, and one about three inches from the outside head. If you're familiar with layering drum sounds, just treat each mic input like a different drum, EQ them, and then run them through the same compressor.
Monitors are out of the question due to living arrangement, and I have nowhere to listen to my music (like a car or something).
How do I get the most out of headphones?
I'm currently dirt poor so for the past 5 years I've been doing everything on $10 earbuds. What's the bare minimum I should get to be able to not suck completely?
Are the ATH-M40x good enough?
Thanks, appreciate it
Hmm OK wouldn't that sort of violate the 1:3 Rule though? Also would you recommend like a 57 on the beater or some other dynamic?
That really depends on a lot of things, including the skill of the artist recording. In general you're probably going to need at least 4 hours to get a track like that done top to bottom (but, again, that depends on some shit, like how many channels of audio you're bringing in as stems.) If your guy is gonna come in and nail everything in one take, maybe three.
In general, it's better to let your engineer do his thing, because he knows what kind of gear he has available. E.G., instead of a U87 -> VT-737 -> 1176, we'd use our Neumann M149 -> MPC100A Tube Pre -> Teletronix LA-2A,
Which would sound better anyway because it's just better gear.
If you know the gear available going in to the studio and you have a little spare money to play around with though, definitely talk to your engineer. It's our job to do what you want, and if it ends up sounding like shit, you can always say "okay, that didn't work, I'm going to back off and let you do your magic"
I constantly hear that in music production there are no secrets and it's all a matter of refining the widely available techniques and skills, but then you hear certain producers who have really unique stuff that others can't replicate (particularly in sound design).
Also the fact that when a new producer comes into the circle of those unique-sounding producers, they too gain similar chops in no time, so it's obvious that there is some information that they share among themselves.
Do you think it's common for these producers to have "secret weapon" techniques that nobody else has?
Ive been a hobbyist producer for like 15 years, but i still can't make my tracks sounds good dynamically. Like my kicks are always flat or lack bass, I always have some weird frequency conflicts. I still feel like i'm wondering in the dark on what frequencies to reduce vs focus on for each sound.
any advice?
I'm not familiar with those headphones actually, but I have a pair of Sennheiser HD598SEs I got brand new for about $160 that are just fucking excellent. The main thing is to make sure you're using a pair of open-back cans if you're going to use headphones. Just don't buy Beats or any other closed back cans that are going to trap bass.
Yes and no. For example, this guy Tipper who is one of my favorite engineers and sound designers, has such an insane grasp of reverb and delay that he can use it in a manner that nobody else I've heard can. But it's still just reverb and delay. That's mixing though, if you're talking specifically sound design, then yes, I think most really good producers will have at least one or two pretty unique sounds in their back pocket.
As far as information sharing goes, I think it's a matter of once you get to the highest level of sound design, you can start breaking apart how certain sounds are made. Like you'd hear a sound and say "oh that's definitely an FM synthesizer, probably using these waveforms and whatever type of filter" and then you have a starting point you can then refine.
Are closed backs that bad?
Minimizing leaks is very important to me, but if it makes a drastic difference I guess I'll have no choice.
Right. I get that the engineer will know better but I still want to try out the ideas I get even if they end up sounding like shit, may end up booking an extra hour. Nice to have someone who knows his stuff in here once in a while, cheers
One of my favorite tricks for bringing out bass frequencies is, counterintuitively, rolling off the bass at about 40Hz. Anything below that you really don't hear or even feel, and a 40hz wave is fucking huge and will eat up so much of your headroom. Try rolling kicks off at about 30Hz and Bass off at 40. Also if you aren't using sidechain compression that will help you avoid phasing between the bass in your kick drum and the bass in your bass, which it sounds like may be an issue for you.
Don't worry about minimizing leaks bro, you actually want to hear the room, trust me.
Once you've heard the difference I promise you will never go back.
Also putting a little EQ bump in the high mids of a kick drum will give it that "punchy" sound you're looking for. Don't boost the bass of the kick too much or it will just sound woofy and bad.
in general, you're gonna have better luck with a condenser than a dynamic, although the SM57 is such a workhorse mic you can really use it for anything and it will sound okay.
But honestly, again, I'm a mixing engineer, not a recording engineer. I would recommend some kind of small condenser mic, I'm not actually sure which mic my boss uses when he does that setup though.
True, I've always been amazed by Tipper's reverb and use of space, but that's not what I mean.
I'm talking about things that people can't replicate for years, like the Warp guys's stuff in the 90's or the Ed Banger stuff in the mid 2000's, or more recently those Sophie sounds, etc.
All have had thousands of copycat attempts and very few got close.
This isn't a matter of doing one thing well (such as Skrillex's growls at the time SMANS came out), but a matter of making something new.
Do you think it's common for them to have such secret weapons, or it's always a matter of refining the usual stuff so much that it sounds completely new?
And, yes, it would violate the 1:3 rule, but that rule relates specifically to the fine art of avoiding phasing. If everything's close-mic'd and you're gating out the bleed, it just doesn't matter because nothing will be out of phase in the mix.
>But honestly, again, I'm a mixing engineer, not a recording engineer. I would recommend some kind of small condenser mic, I'm not actually sure which mic my boss uses when he does that setup though.
OK fair enough. Thanks anyways
Not a fan of close-mic'd drums. I'm more into a natural, open sounding kit.
I need minimal leaks due to my living situation, not for technical reasons.
Anyway, I get that it's pretty drastic so I'll see what I can do, thank you very much.
Well I mean you look at people like Tipper and Deadmau5 that design their own softsynths and FX, obviously they will have sounds nobody else does. That said, I'm sure you've noticed that certain sounds come in and out of vogue especially in EDM, and people rush to jump on the bandwagon. What that says to me is that there is no such thing as an irreplicable sound design. I mean I remember when Flume was a completely unique sound and now I can't find a future bass track that doesn't sound like Flume.
I don't think it's as much a matter of "refining the usual stuff" because I don't think the Skrillex Growl (TM) actually evolved directly out of Noisia's 20005-10 DnB shit, but I think that synthesizers are very versatile instruments and occasionally people stumble on something completely new while using them. I mean Massive has like, what, a thousand wavetables?
As far as being a producer is concerned though, I'd say it's definitely better to try to develop your own style rather than downloading some Ill Gates Serum patch off Splice.
Right, again, I'm an EDM guy and a mix engineer.. I'd rather fake the room after the fact rather than spending hours on a mic setup :P
oh dude there are no close-back cans that will be loud enough to bother anyone around you while you're working. You should be fine, man. I think the minimum investment you're looking at for a pair of mixing cans should be about 150 bucks, which should hopefully be manageable.
*open back
mb
But Tipper, Flume, and especially Deadmau5 only have an overall unique sound, not a crazy unique sound design like Aphex Twin had at his peak, or Sophie had in Product.
what are you doing from here user? Any advice for aspiring engineers who want steady employment?
Will they wake up someone sleeping next to me while I use them at normal volume?
Would someone at a distance of one or two feet know what song I'm listening to?
>Would someone at a distance of one or two feet know what song I'm listening to?
Not OP but yes, definitely depending on the volume. I have the ATH-M40x which are closed and if you're listening at a loud volume (which you shouldn't really do while mixing) people can definitely get an idea of what you're listening to. What the fuck are you listening to that you're afraid someone will hear it?
So I'm actually gonna try to focus on my solo EDM stuff for a while. I have a little 4 track EP coming out in a couple weeks that I think sounds great, gonna do a release party at a local bar I have an in with, hit the Savannah circuit for a couple months and hopefully go on tour up in ATL and Chatanooga and see how far I can get from there. I'm also gonna send my portfolio to a couple Atlanta studios.
If you want steady employment, get an engineering cert from Berklee online; they have an excellent studio engineering course. Then sell your soul to a major studio.
Do you have a soundcloud or anything like that?
>But Tipper, Flume, and especially Deadmau5 only have an overall unique sound, not a crazy unique sound design like Aphex Twin had at his peak, or Sophie had in Product.
go listen to Peripherals by Tipper, there are sounds there that nobody else has right now, but there are artists like Bleep Bloop and Black Sun Empire that are starting to emulate some of the Tipper / peak Aphex Twin sounds even now. I actually managed to come up with a pretty passable Peripherals synth by microlooping a snap and playing with the sample length.
thanks user. Best of luck with your solo stuff
yeah, most of the stuff is way outdated but if you want/are interested I can put up a sneak peek of my EP and leave it for a couple days until I finish the last mix, send it for mastering, and put out a final product.
Sure, I'm interested in listening to your work now
Ah, thank you.
>What the fuck are you listening to that you're afraid someone will hear it?
Nothing secret, but I grew up with an abusive father that would beat me for any possible reason, and every time he'd see me enjoying anything he'd yell at me for listening/watching bad music/movies, etc, then hit me, then ask me a series of questions like "have you done your homework?, have you done this?, have you done that?" so he could find more reason to hit me and send me somewhere else.
This makes me have anxiety attacks every time I see that he's seeing me enjoying anything, to the point where I can't smile in front of a camera for fear that he could see the video.
Said attacks are made much worse by a disease I have, which, on top of normal anxiety, makes them very painful phiysically.
Although I've grown up and now he's the one who's scared of me, I still have the mental block and I don't want him to hear what I'm listening to.
Also I often work during the night and I don't want to disturb my sleeping brother.
sweet, gimme two seconds to do some bounces and I'll post links
soundcloud.com
HOW THE FUCK IS THIS SO LOUD???
I've heard songs made of pure distortion that weren't as loud and "hard" as this one, which is insanely loud but still rather clear (as far as distorted basses go anyway).
Is this the hardest sogn of all time?
Here's a lossless download:
dropbox.com
damn bro that's tough good luck
Hey, OP. Copped out and went to school to get a degree in advertising and business (1 semester left). I don't want to work in the advertising industry; music is my passion and what I spend almost all my free time doing.
I play several instruments, and produce my own stuff (here's a recent track for reference of my work clyp.it
I'm not concerned with money beyond living comfortably and being able to buy gear every now and then.
That Tipper song has very good sound design, and it's certainly very close to what I mean, but it doesn't really make me say "holy shit what the fuck", and it reminds me a lot of Amon Tobin and some Infected Mushroom (in terms of sound design).
In (the tentative) order that they'll appear on the EP:
soundcloud.com
soundcloud.com
soundcloud.com
Titanic is completely done (mixed and mastered)
the other two I'm pretty much done mixing, I threw a limiter on there just to give them some volume. There's a fourth track that I'm not putting up yet because it's not even close to done yet.
Also this one:
www61.zippyshare.com
How are the intro vocals so extremely loud without (excessive) distortion?
Thank you my friend. I appreciate it.
Go ahead and graduate, you're learning how to self-promote. Try to find a small studio that will let you come learn, do advertising work to pay the bills while you're interning, make connections, and then do whatever the fuck makes you happy. You'll make a lot of industry connections with that field which is more than I had when I started.
Titanic is the one with the Peripherals-esque sound design. I'm kind of torn on that track because it's kind of a tour-de-force of my sound design skills but it's not as cohesive of a song as the other three I'm putting on the EP
just listened to titanic, that track's gonna go hard on your release party
listening to the others right now
Sophie uses a hardward synth that I'm forgetting the name of that creates a bunch of cool unique sounds. I'm not that into synthesis but his sound doesn't seem THAT crazy to replicate, it seems to be more based in the reverb than the actual synth sound to me. As for Aphex, his sound design isn't that crazy, sorry to say. It's just incredibly time consuming. Chopped drum breaks with effects and resampled effects, usually relatively simple synth lines, add more drum breaks on top and continue. The ones with crazy acid synth lines are likely arp based and resampled. Here's something I did IDM style that isn't Aphex level but I think relatively decent for a WIP in the genre and only took a couple of hours.
clyp.it
Doesn't really "hit its stride" til about 40 seconds in so be patient.
nu skool breaks tipper is best tipper
Thanks man, I definitely appreciate it
>sound design
>people talking about fucking deadmu5 and EDM garbage
Hey OP,
Currently living in Southern California studying Audio Engineering. I'm 2 hours away from LA. Should I move there? How about New York? Whats the best way to find a engineering/producing gig?
Thanks a ton
Those are two pretty incredible producers in their own right, I think the comparison is definitely an apt one. To me, Tipper has a one-of-a-kind sound; I feel like I could hear a random Tipper track and identify it as Tipper but I kind of get where you're coming from. I just don't think Aphex Twin (or Amon Tobin, or Noisia, or whoever) are necessarily "more" (or less) uniquely identifiable.
I mean I just talk about EDM garbage because that's what I know best but I mean there are plenty of artists like Godspeed You Black Emperor that have excellent sound design using analog equipment.
bumping with pics of our outboard FX racks and channel towers, incoming momentarily.
Also, thanks for the follows, Sup Forumstants
>Sophie uses a hardward synth that I'm forgetting the name of that creates a bunch of cool unique sounds.
Elektron Monomachine or something like that.
It's one of the discontinued ones.
When I looked into it it didn't seem to have anything not replicable in Serum or other soft synth (I remember reading about Sophie making his own wavetables, so I imagine it's the Monomachine's wavetable stuff).
>Aphex, his sound design isn't that crazy, sorry to say.
I'm talking about the "spectral" stuff that involve resynthesis and sample manipulation, not the drum break stuff.
I remember reading about him circuitbending and modifying his own synths (partially with the help of other experts) to have more unique sounds, and he's currently working on an AI system that turns audio samples into FM presets (IIRC for the DX7).
If you're a producer who's known for sound design and you have money, I don't see why not hire someone to make you unique tools that nobody has. It really seems like a no brainer to me.
Also Squarepusher and Autechre had crazy sounds too.
>clyp.it
Sounds neat, but it's the typical Karplus-Strong-sounding IDM song with fast drums.
Nothing a competent producer can't replicate with some basic googling, as it's all out there.
>Tipper has a one-of-a-kind sound; I feel like I could hear a random Tipper track and identify it as Tipper
No doubt about that.
I don't mean he's not unique, but his uniqueness comes from the mix of his sound design, his arrangement, his melodies, rhythms, and harmonies, etc. while I was specifically talking about having secret technical techniques or tools that nobody has, which is a different matter altogether than the "overall uniqueness" that a song or an artist may have.
I mean LA is expensive. If you can find a studio that will hire you on, I'd say live out of town and drive in (although I have heard that is absolute hell.)
New York's studio scene is dying. Cost of living is too high, it's impossible to own and maintain a studio there because space just costs too much. Chicago & Atlanta will take over the east coast scene pretty soon. Big things are starting to come out of Colorado as well. I think LA is going to be around for a while, just because they have the good ol' California Dream going for them. Especially if you want to do audio for film LA is a good bet.
cheers. thanks for the reply. I think I already have something lined up at a local studio.
Another line of questioning, per se: Obviously, electronic music seems to be the zeitgeist, and will remain more or less a fixture of all popular music to come. However, producers don't need studios, and can often make music by themselves and watch tutorials online. What are the implications for what you do? Are all types of music going to become oversaturated with amateur artists who make their own shit, e.g. soundcloud rappers, etc.? Does that make someone who knows how to record instruments and mix in a more traditional sense more valuable? Do you have any forecasts about the music industry from your perspective?
Thanks man, I appreciate it a lot! I really find this shit so fun and want to have a good career out of this. Will definetely look into live sound in those areas you mentioned too. One last piece of advice for an aspiring engineer?
how bout Nashville and Austin?
(1/?)
That's such a fun question. You're definitely right that EDM is here to stay, you only have to go listen to the latest pop hits to hear "trendy" EDM sounds being used in mainstream music.
As far as not needing a studio, as much as I love Skrillex one of the dumbest things he has ever said is "I can do it all on my laptop."
Dude had a team of *good* engineers already on lock from his days in that screamo band. As someone who has learned so, so much from online tutorials there are some things that a professional engineer can teach you and do for you which no amount of ADSR youtube videos and running your mixes through LANDR will ever match, at least until AI gets much, much smarter.
Music has historically been oversaturated with amateur artists, I'm sure you've seen the cliche of the rapper handing out mixtapes on a street corner plenty of times.
I think the cream will always rise to the top. Sometimes that rapper handing out mix tapes turns out to be Dr. Dre.
That said, I think there's going to actually be more of a market for "real" instruments (as much as I hate that terminology, you know what I mean.)
Playing the violin has a much higher barrier to entry than being a soundcloud rapper, and as pop/rap/rock all go more electronic what we are seeing is electronic artists (Griz, Pretty Lights, Opiuo, just to name a few) starting to incorporate more traditional instrumentation in their electronic compositions.
As far as the implications for the industry as a whole, I don't think an oversaturation of amateur artists will harm the industry. If anything, it gives me work. Where the problem arises is that people just don't pay for music. I'm as guilty as anyone else of this, although I make a point to financially support artists I really care about.
In the internet age, it has become so easy to get music through torrents that people have sort of forgotten that's someone's livelihood they're stealing. (CONT'D)
>>That said, I think there's going to actually be more of a market for "real" instruments (as much as I hate that terminology, you know what I mean.)
Not him but I agree.
People are definitely getting tired of the usual "robotic" electronic music.
But what about synth music that's so aticulated that it doesn't sound robotic at all, but more like an acoustic instrument that happens to have a sawtooth timbre or something like that?
Do you think the average person who's not really into electronica will hear the difference or will it sound all the same like all electronic stuff?
So one of the most important things I've learned in the studio is how to leave shit the fuck alone if it sounds good. If you have a beautiful recording of an acoustic guitar, don't smash it in to the ceiling with compression in the mix. I used to use compression early and often, but over the course of the last couple years I have learned to approach it with a light hand. Even in EDM, not everything needs a compressor on it (even a sidechain; I used 0 sidechaining in the three tracks I posted and the drums still sound huge.)
Do everything you can with EQ and use compression only to pull down any really obnoxious peaks and smooth your sound out. The only thing I have found that really always needs compression is vocals, just because vocal artists, no matter how good, will move around the mic and modulate their voices throughout the course of recording. In addition, vocals are almost always the focal point of the song, which means you really need to hear everything they're saying. Which means they need to be roughly the same relative volume throughout the track.
A synthesizer is just a piano with extra steps. If you have a conservatory-educated virtuoso playing a synthesizer, it will sound human, regardless of the physical waveform it's producing. I like to think I can definitely tell the difference between a human playing a synthesizer and drag-and-drop MIDI notes. I think your average person on the street probably won't be able to articulate that difference, but I do think they hear it, because music is such a fundamental part of our human cultural heritage.
i've got one of these - my dad gave it to me. As well as a senhieser md441. Are they really that good? They don't seem to record that much better than some audiotechnica mic's our band recorded with.
I'm currently a recording engineer at a studio. Any general tips on transitioning into the mixing side of things? Not in terms of how to get good at mixing, but more like how to get the ball rolling with mixing things for people.
Eh, I don't know. There's so much more to a non-synthetic sound than note placement/quantization and velocity, and I think with those it still sounds too robotic (at least in my opinion), since you still have the same waveform, timbre, overtone relationship, spectral centroid (relative to the note of course), etc.
That's why any decent instrument library has many recordings of the same note (even with the same settings), since any real-life sound will sound significantly different each time, but synths and samplers sound the same every time, so you have to specifically make them sound different by mapping parameters to velocity, keytracking, random noise, and automation, so they sound different every time and are closer to what a real instrument (that has the timbre of the synth you're programming) would sound like.
well, there can still be limitations of the synthesizer, for instance how accurate it is at determining velocity of notes and shit. so the inflection of the artist can be limited by the synth. but overall, I agree. I record without a metronome bc 1. it forces me to have better takes 2. it ultimately makes it sound a little more natural imo.
(2/2)
So like, back in the 80s, when pirating was pretty hard, major labels used to just give 20 year olds $100,000 and say "go make a record"
They'd either make something incredible or not, but Atlantic was always getting enough back in album sales to cover their losses. That's simply not the case any more, because kids don't hear a song they like on the radio and go buy a $15 album because of it. If you're lucky they'll buy the MP3 for .99 on iTunes, but most likely they will torrent it.
This makes artists like Beyonce, Lorde, Name Any Major Pop Artist valuable to labels, because they connect with people in a way that makes them want to spend money.
I think what we're seeing is quality live performances becoming more and more valuable. I optimistically think that album sales have hit their lowest point though. I don't think it will get any easier or harder for people to obtain music illegally.
Platforms like Bandcamp and Soundcloud have already made huge strides in democratizing the industry. I think we'll see a lot more independent releases with a focus on getting people to come out to shows.
I was going to say, I thought that live shows (and in the instance of larger stars sponsorships/promotions) were the largest source of money artists. bc of pirating and streaming services, produces, am I correct to assume, have taken this blow? they create the actual musical product, but seem like they might be getting stiffed. seems like producers should negotiate to get better deals in a contract bc they end up producing the content that allows the artist to tour in the first place. after all, it is all about the music
Is your dad hiring?
Just kidding but those are two truly excellent pieces of gear, we have a 441 as well. It's really as good as it gets for dynamic mics.
If you can't tell the difference between a Neumann M149 and an audiotechnica mic, I'd venture to guess you probably do not have an acoustically treated space you are recording in.
The greatest thing about the M149 is it picks up literally everything in a room, however, the worst thing about the M149 is it picks up *literally everything* in a room.
Seriously, we have to cut the AC off to use that thing.
When you say producer, do you mean in terms of engineering or in terms of like crafting beats
your "producer" in terms of "producing" an album (recording/mixing/mastering) is getting paid regardless of how well the album sells or how well you do on tour.
However beat craftsmen are a different story and there has actually been a pretty significant grassroots movement to get them paid.
SoundCloud.com/Buuko
Would love some feedback/constructive criticism on my recent tracks.
>Hip-Hop Trap instrumentals
I meant beat craftsmen.
Eh you say that but Moog, for example, has a lot of incredibly sensitive velocity tracking synths. As far as soft synths are concerned, you're right in saying they're limiting but I think a lot of what people subconsciously hear in terms of what we are calling "inflection" actually has to do with rhythm. You'll find that good synth players tend to swing around the beat.
Yeah with notable exceptions like Mike Will Made It and Harry Fraud, beatmakers have been getting shafted by lack of album sales. The solution to that has been asking for larger fees up front in addition to royalties, and there has been a movement to sort of standardize beat pricing at a higher point in the last year or so.