Tagged: music

New EP release from @TheCyrenaics is now avaliable on soundcloud and bandcamp

"The King's Mistress" 

https://soundcloud.com/thecyrenaicsmusic/sets/the-kings-mistress-ep

Copyright: Love bs Cash LLC 

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.

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.

 For a limited time all of my music is FREE to download! Download here or www.V2DRecords.com for more music.

Happy Holidays,

Mikayla

hello mixposure,

Some of you may already know, I am launching into a song a week for life, that is....writing and recording a new song every week for the rest of my days....or at least as long as I am physically able to. For those interested in following me on this life long venture, all weekly songs will be posted to my blog every sunday...starting november 3rd, 2013.....here:

http://maccharlesmusic.blogspot.com/

Hope to see you all around.

Mac.