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Some of the easiest ways to improve your recordings are also the cheapest. In fact, the most effective techniques require no money at all.

Here’s a collection of tips you might find helpful the next time a pricey piece of gear stands between you and great recordings.

HELP FROM OTHERS

Have a friend perform:  Home recording, especially for singer/songwriters and electronic musicians, often involves a single musician writing and recording all the music. But artists in this situation can find themselves too close to the song, at mix time, to make decisions critically.

Working with other musicians might initially complicate recording and mixing. However, creating a great mix depends, in part, on your ability to remove unnecessary details, and most of us are more comfortable objectively critiquing someone  else’s  work. So asking a friend (or  some professionals ) to perform a track or two will ultimately make mixing easier,  and  more effective.

Get more ears on the mix:  With any task requiring attention to detail, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. And so it goes with mixing. A second or third opinion can draw your attention back to details you’ve glossed over.

And outside opinions needn’t come from other musicians and engineers. (Although the  homerecording.com MP3 mixing clinic  is a great source for free advice.) Often, regular listeners give the best feedback because they don’t think in technical terms about the production, and instead form their thoughts on how the song makes them feel. And some of the best mix feedback I’ve gotten has come from children, who are unconditioned by musical convention.

Listen on multiple systems:  Hearing a mix through different speakers is a little like getting a second opinion. And professional mixing engineers rely on this technique. Chris Lord Alge, for example, keeps a portable radio near his console  for checking mixes :

Avoid dogma:  Our hobby (or profession, if you’re lucky) is plagued with religious arguments, like “tube gear sounds better,” and “analog sounds warmer than digital.” Regardless of each argument’s merit, these dogmatic issues over-complicate the recording process, and distract us from the importance of technique – which, of course, costs nothing!

Cut. Ruthlessly:  As musicians, our egos push us to put everything we’ve got into every part we record. But virtuoso performances and great recordings don’t necessarily go together. The whole, as they say, is often greater than the sum of the parts.

In most song arrangements, over-instrumentation usually just leads to clutter. And along with being more difficult to mix, clutter rarely sounds good.

Make every part do work:  Ensure that every part competing for the listener’s attention is  supposed  to compete for the listener’s attention.

PRACTICE

Practice your performance before hitting record:  The benefits of practice should be obvious to all musicians, but home recording fosters a “write as you record” approach to song creation.

Practice takes time. But it needn’t hamper the creative process; and in most cases it will ultimately save time. Though the tracks may take longer to record, it’s far easier – and quicker – to mix a set of well-performed, polished performances.

Not only do the performances themselves benefit from practice, but the final mix will sound more professional.

Use reference CDs:  No single technique will do more to improve the quality of your mixes. Working with a  reference mix  is, in some ways, like getting a free lesson on mixing from a professional engineer.

Practice mixing when you’re not in the studio:  Every mixing engineer should spend time listening critically to professional mixes. Set aside some time every day, say 10 minutes, to immerse yourself in a mix someone else has done. Consider the panning, which instruments take your focus, and how the focus changes as the song evolves. Try to determine the effects in use, and why they were chosen. In modern pop and rock mixes, the interplay between the lead vocal and the snare drum is particularly important, as is the bass guitar/kick drum relationship, so spend some time analyzing these parts in detail.

With the help of David Coonrod's bass and Piyali's vocal I have produced a song called "Just Breathe". We would love for you folks to give the song a listen.

  http://www.mixposure.com/david-c-deal/audio/16802/just-breathe-feat-d-coonrod-piyali

Thanks, David c Deal

Chabane's Records' new release:



HEADSHOT - Frozen Lips

9 Trip Hop / Electro / Dark Pop Tracks

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Torrent : https :// archive . org / download / HEADSHOTFrozenLips / HEADSHOTFrozenLips _ archive . torrent

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https :// twitter . com /#!/ chabanesrecords
http :// www . youtube . com / user / ChabanesRecs

Headshot:
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Hey Everyone! Just a quick mention that we added in a new forum. This is kind of in line with the ones we have had in the past and we were able to retain all of the original posts. When you log in to Mixposure, you should automatically be logged in to the forum. If you are not, please just reset your Mixposure password to the same password to reset your forum password. 

So what this means in login to mixposure.com > from the menu links click your Name and then Account Settings. Enter your existing password and submit. Logout and back in. Then click the forum link. You should then be logged in. To get to the new Forum, just click the Forum Link in the menu. 

Thanks!

No one knows where the first song came from. Did Neolithic men sing around the first campfire? Did Adam croon a tune to Eve in the Garden of Eden? We may never know. Many believe that rhythmic chanting with percussive accompaniment from weapons may have been the first form of song. Prehistoric Rap? Well, sort of….

At some point, ancient people discovered that blowing across a hollow tube, like an animal bone or reed, produced a pleasing tone and that a string under tension (like a hunting bow) sounded pretty cool. An archeological dig in the Ukraine has uncovered 20,000-year-old flutes made of wooly mammoth bones — you won't find those at your local music store!

The First Song, the First Songwriter

Most songs and songwriters of the pre-Renaissance world have been forever obscured by time. Even after the development of musical notation, songs were mostly passed down through the generations by rote and modified to suit the changing times without reference or regard to the original songwriter.

We have no idea where the first song originated, who wrote it, what instrument was used, if there were lyrics, or what culture fostered its conception. What we  can  be sure of is that whoever wrote the first song probably had no idea of the importance of what was occurring, only that something wonderful was happening. That feeling is common to all songwriters, whether they are professionals or amateurs, rock stars, classical composers, Music Row hit-makers, or any other lucky soul who writes songs for fun or profit.

Tribal Music

Some of the first music happened in a tribal setting. Early tribes used drums and horns to communicate across long distances. Setting music in the context of a language and encouraging the development of a musical vocabulary probably hastened music development. Ancient people also used music for religious rites, festivals, and as a form of oral history.

Work Songs, Chanties, Marching Songs

One of the earliest song forms, worksongs, were sung to relieve the boredom of repetitive labor and provided a rhythm to keep a work crew in synch. One of the basic forms of the work song is the field holler, sung by farmers, serfs, and slaves while tending crops.

Another work song variant, the “chanty” was a favorite of sailors. To prepare a large vessel to sail, steer, drop anchor for the night, or make the ship safe from an oncoming storm requires large crews of people to work together in precise coordination. The sea chanty provided a rhythm to keep things running smoothly at times when a mistake could mean disaster for the whole crew.

You could say that marching songs are a subset of work songs. By establishing a beat, marching songs helped people walk as an organized group, thus moving more quickly and at a uniform speed. By setting a pace, marching songs allowed for precise timing in processions and parades. One of the most famous marching songs is undoubtedly  "Yankee Doodle" , sung by American soldiers during the Revolutionary War. In many cultures, work songs are still a part of everyday life.

Have I been blocked from adding to the forum??

A song off my Orchid faded Sky CD. It's a bluesy rocker from the good old jammin' garage days...remember those days?

http://www.mixposure.com/farrell-jackson/audio/16680/bad-luck

Farrell

As many of you know, Mike Foster from Avalanche passed away in June of 2013. Mike was a dear friend to many of the Mixposure family and he will always be missed.

David Pendragon spent a lot of time with Mike and was putting together a documentary of the band Avalanche. David sent me the below and I was quite pleased when I read it. Below is what he sent me.

.....The link is not at this stage released to Youtube however the URL supplied here will allow Mixposure members to see the show [for free!] I know Michael would have wanted his friends here to have the opportunity to see what he had been working on in the last few months of his life so here it is.  Its a very high quality production and would look good on the home page I think. Could you PLEASE remind folks to hit the HD button at Youtube to play it back in 720p. AVALANCHE HARD ROCK DOCUMENTARY

So with that, I am very pleased to share this with everyone on Mixposure. 

Black Stone is a 5 member Rock genre group from Ontario Canada. They have that old school sound with a modern twist to the music, some say the sound resembles that of ACDC and some say Bon Jovi and others say Black Sabbath. This is a unique feature when the audience cant place a label on a group. In the spring of 2013 they went into the studio and put together a 10 song album which was released in June of 2013. Some of the tracks on the album were mastered by The legendary George Graves a top engineer who has a history working with bands like U2, Rush, Peter Gabriel and many more. Black Stone then released their first single to radio and quickly developed a following like no other. DJs across North America were taking notice to the single called "Push Me" and were putting it into rotation. Several music gurus were adding it to their top releases such as that of Alan Cross, a Radio broadcaster and writer of music. The single has been added by many main stream radio stations and continues to Rock its listeners. Another to mention is the Galaxie Rock Station which threw Black Stone into rotation and Push Me went #1 on their charts. The Air Canada Center also added Push Me to their list for music played during Toronto Maple Leaf games. There was also many other NHL teams adding it to their platylist as well. Soon there were many requests on getting Black Stone to perform at festivals and venues around Ontario. The first show they were asked to open for was The Sam Roberts Band and they accepted only to have an awesome response from the crowd and other artists on the bill. Not long after they ventured into the Toronto music scene and played many shows like The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern where many artists took the stage in the past such as The Rolling Stones, The Police, The Tragically Hip, Bryan Adams and many more. To play in such a historic place was an honour for the group. Their most recent peformance in Toronto had attracted a good crowd and they were suprised to see none other than Rob Baker the guitarist for The Tragically Hip sitting amongst the listeners, this was also a huge honour for Black Stone seeing that The Tragically Hip was a huge influence for them.

Its the Mix Country Music Award & The Mixposure Rock Music Award of 2013!

The best country & rock  song & artist of 2013. All you have to do is enter a song from Mixposure.com  ( no cover tunes! ) from 2013 and back. Were going to let the people be the judges! I started out with just a country song of 2013 , but Dazed said lets have one for Rock so here it is.

Its easy to enter just update the song you have on Mixposure.com and change the Genre to MCA2013 for The Country Tune and MRA2013 for Rock.  We will play the songs and tell all our listeners what the song is and who the artist for the contest. Enter as many songs as you like because you never know what song will win.

The winner will win a trophy (Mix.C.M.A=2013 ) name & title on country also ( Mix.  R.M.A =2013 ) name and title on it . Dazed will post winner on Mix front page picture of winner and trophy on front page . Good Luck All. Oh yea better check the Bubba Reaves Show on Sunday night to hear the songs that have enter in the contest . Starts Jan16=to Feb19

We will have more information on voting very soon!