Category: Blog

5 Reasons You Suck As A Producer – By Joey Sturgis

Have you ever stopped and wondered why getting clients is so hard? What about getting bands to keep working with you for consecutive albums, or even consecutive songs? Unfortunately, the root of your problems might be you…  Luckily, it’s not too late to fix that.

Stop shooting yourself in the foot! Here we go:

1. You Complain About Your Clients

This should seem simple to most of us, and it’s summed up best with the saying, “You don’t bite the hand that feeds.” Simply put – quit bitching about the artist and refocus on the art.

As a producer, you’re paid to do a job. Whether that income is upfront payment from an artist or a royalties cut on the backend, your livelihood comes from your ability to curate your clients’ music. They don’t need to be your friend, and there’s certainly plenty of competition out there for the role of producer these days.

(RELATED – Kurt Ballou (Converge, Champion, Have Heart) does a great job explaining how he treat his clients right and keeps them coming back.)

Have you ever worked a shitty job in retail or food service? Well as much as you probably don’t want to hear it – some of those skills should be applied to your role as producer.

The music industry is just as much as a service industry as any other. Your ability to provide good customer service and get the end result right for your client directly translates to how successful you will be.

2. You’re Inconsistent

I’m not talking about the quality of the songs you’re recording… I’m talking about YOU.

You need to develop good habits in your production. Turning things in late, putting off projects, and not showing up on time shows a lack of respect for your artist’s time & work.

How likely would you be to continue working with someone who you can’t rely on?

On a personal level, you should strive to make deadlines and stick to them. Timeliness forms successful habits. Before you know it, you’ll find your workflow benefiting from this behavior too. Instead of living in a world of “what if’s” you’ll be able to commit to a decision with rock solid consistency.

Being consistent will make or break your career in this industry.

(RELATED – Check out our podcast with Josh Newell (Linkin Park, Cynic, Celine Dion), whose admirable work ethic in the LA production scene has allowed him to work with heavy hitters in both metal & pop.)

3. Your Communication Sucks

This doesn’t have anything to do with scheduling your appointments or ignoring text/phone calls. Your communication in the studio has to be crystal clear if you’re planning on succeeding.

Think about what musicians are telling you. Ask for clarification when an artist has a concern. Too often, you’re brushing off their input since you’re supposed to be the expert in the room, but you should be trying to get to the root of the problem.

You need to read between the lines.

Your artists may not know the technical terms that you do, and at times they may not know what they even want. It’s your job to become a musical translator, just like we covered in Episode 2 of the URM Podcast.

The simplest issue for this is when a singer lacks confidence in their vocal ability. They may tell you their voice is too soft or they just can’t nail a verse down. Instead of writing them off as an idiot and tracking again and again until you get something mediocre “that will work”, seek alternate solutions.

It may be something as simple as muting some instrumentation so the vocalist can hear themselves in the mix better. Maybe they’re feeling uncomfortable with a dry vocal and just need a bit of reverb added on.

Learn the psychology behind common concerns in the studio, and translate them into a solution.

4. You Don’t Have a Vision

Stop spending so much time on a single piece of the puzzle. Too often, you can’t see the forest for the trees… and it’s killing your productivity. If you spend too much time working on an element, regardless of if it’s cleaning noise out of tracks, tuning a vocal, or dialing in a tone too long, you’re going to hate your work.

Instead, take a step back to examine the entire project, and how what you’re working on fits into it. You don’t need to ignore that piece altogether, but it does help to ask yourself, “Do I really need to commit all of this effort?”

If the answer is no, get it to an acceptable point and center your energy around something that’s going to make or break the song. By working with the big picture in mind, you’re able to create something cohesive and meaningful without overanalyzing or wasting your time.

(RELATED – Finn McKenty does an excellent job explaining how to find your vision in his post, “Want a career in music? You need a point of view.”)

5. You Try to Do Everything Yourself

Slow down, Superman.

Early on in your career, it’s common to try and do it all yourself. Who needs sleep when you’ve got so much great music to work on? The problem is you burn out. You realize that you can’t do it all. You don’t have to… There’s a reason the big guys all have assistants – there’s not enough time in the day.

As much as you love your work, there are other hobbies and people you should spend time with. You might be great at everything you do from drum editing to tuning vocals and dialing in the perfect guitar tone, but you should learn when to let some of that go.

You need to develop trust with those around you, and the easiest way to do that is to remember that you’re all sharing the same goal – to make great music. Find the things in projects that you don’t like doing, and find someone to do it better.

There are guys out there that build their careers off of working on the parts you don’t want to. Just look at John Douglass, who went from bedroom producing to working with the biggest artists in pop and metal by becoming an expert at drum editing.

He found his niche, have you found yours?

Delegating your work is a freeing experience. It not only gives you more time to focus on what you love, but it also keeps your mind sharp and creative.

Putting This All Into Practice

While you may not be affected by all 5 of the above, there isn’t a producer on the planet that couldn’t improve on at least one. Sure, it can feel overwhelming. But you’re off to the right start by taking an honest look at your faults and working toward a solution.

Take a quick look over the list again and choose whichever one you feel applies to you the most. If you feel pretty confident in your skills already & are seeing a steady workload, maybe it’s time to find someone to help (see #5).  

The point is – we can all stand to improve somewhere & we’re here to help you any way we can.

---

For more awesome tips on becoming a better producer, head on over to the URM Academy blog and subscribe to our podcast.

Nail The Mix is our online mixing school that gives you REAL multi-tracks from REAL bands, plus a mixing class from the producer who recorded it. Past guests include Periphery, Chelsea Grin, Machine Head and State Champs. Join now for instant access!

How To Rescue Your Lame Mix With These Mastering Tricks – By Mike Kalajian

 

Compressors are a mystery…

I’m not ashamed to admit that using them effectively can be tricky. With so many possible combinations of Attack, Release, Ratio, Knee, etc, how can you ever be sure you’ve dialed in the settings that are just right for your song?

Throw in the fact that at the mastering stage every jump of the gain reduction meter affects everything in the song, and you’ve really got your work cut out for you!

Fortunately, if you break down dynamic range adjustments into a few different categories, clearly outlining the types of issues they are meant to address, the mystery of mastering compression begins to come into focus.

In this article we’ll talk about some of the more tricky common mix issues a mastering engineer deals with, and how to use specific dynamics processing to efficiently solve them. For each example i’ll include before and after mixes, as well as a preset file for the plugin i’m using.

I encourage you to load the files and settings up in your daw and get a feel for how they’re reacting to the music. For practicality purposes i’ll only be using plugins for these examples (even though I might actually use hardware in some cases) and all the plugins used have free trials and support cross platform preset files.

The most important thing to understand is that these techniques should only be used when a mix has an issue that calls for that particular process. Just because you have a tool in your arsenal doesn’t mean you’re going to use it on every or even most jobs, but in the right situation it can really save a mix.

---

Attached you’ll find a short “song” I wrote, recorded, and mixed specifically for this blog (be nice – i’m a mastering guy, not a producer) My friend Ryan O’leary of Fit For A King was kind enough to come by and record a few vocal parts to the song, because If it were me singing … let’s just say it would be painful.

Here’s the original unmastered mix:

[smart_track_player url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/urmpublicpodcast/blog/mike+k+mastering+dynamics/Main+Mix+1.mp3″ title=”Main Mix Unmastered” artist=”Mike Kalajian” download=”false” social=”false” ]

Although I think it could be improved with a little “glue” across the entire mix, which we’ll eventually cover, from a mastering standpoint there’s not a whole lot wrong with it.

Over the course of this article i’ll provide alternate versions of this mix, each with a specific issue that we can address.

Please note – All files are 44.1khz 24-bit and are totally unmastered.

You can download them as WAVs here – or listen on with mp3 versions.

FIRST STOP: THE DE-ESSER

The obvious use for these guys is knocking down the harsh top end in a vocal track during the mix stage, but they can also be very useful in mastering. In this context it’s best to think of a de-esser as more of a “frequency specific compressor” meaning that the compression is being applied to only a certain frequency range, and the detector circuit of that compressor is being fed by a certain (but not always the same) frequency range.

My personal favorite example of this is DMG Audio’s “Essence.” In addition to the parameters mentioned above, Essence will allow you to equalize the side chain as it feeds into the compressor circuit. Using a sharp narrow eq boost on a problem frequency can really help you zero in on the problem and nothing else.

You can download a free trial of Essence from dmgaudio – I have no affiliation with them whatsoever, but it is the only plugin of it’s kind that I use. Like most of the dmg plugins it’s teeters on the verge of being too feature rich, but with mastering we sometimes need to get very very tweaky.

ISSUE #1 TAMING A SIBILANT VOCAL

In this first example we have a mix with a sibilant lead vocal:

[smart_track_player url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/urmpublicpodcast/blog/mike+k+mastering+dynamics/Harsh+Vocal+(before)+1.mp3″ title=”Harsh Vocal Before Processing” artist=”Mike Kalajian” download=”false” social=”false” ]

I find this happens most often when you get a “dark” sounding mix. Using some eq to open up the mix can reveal sibilance in a lead vocal that the mix engineer may not have noticed.

To solve this, i’ll typically set up the de-esser with a very fast attack, fast – medium release and hard knee shape. I’ve used the sidechain eq to zero in on the most offensive sibilant frequency range (7500 hz in this case) and added a very hard narrow eq boost at that range in the side chain signal.

Now i’m able to drop the threshold to a point where compression ONLY occurs when the offending sibilance is present – important because I know that i’m not messing up the other elements in the mix.

Typically, i’ll loop a section with a few harsh syllables and play with the threshold, ratio, and also the frequency range being affected by the compression, until I find something that smooths the vocal out in the most transparent way possible.

Wait .. what exactly is the knee?

You can think of the knee as “ratio smoothing” so that even if you have a ratio of 3:1 the actual ratio is less than 3:1 if a signal only slightly exceeds the threshold – the ratio then gradually increases until it hits 3:1 at a designated point above the threshold (depending on the softness of the knee). In my experience using a hard knee for surgical frequency specific mastering tasks allows you to compress what you want, and little else.

Here is the same mix with processing applied:

[smart_track_player url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/urmpublicpodcast/blog/mike+k+mastering+dynamics/Harsh+Vocal+(after)+1.mp3″ title=”Harsh Vocal After Processing” artist=”Mike Kalajian” download=”false” social=”false” ]

… and here is the preset file for Essence.

You can hear how the harsh top end sibilance is tamed in the mix, but the other elements haven’t been dulled. The ratio can be pulled up or down to change the total amount of de-essing taking place.

The orange line represents the side chain eq and filtering, while the grey represents the frequency range the compressor is acting upon. It’s also important to note that i’ve got essence in Mid / Side mode and i’m only performing this process on the mid channel.

FIXING AN OBNOXIOUS LEAD GUITAR

In this example we’ve got a mix with a lead guitar that pokes out in a really annoying way:

[smart_track_player url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/urmpublicpodcast/blog/mike+k+mastering+dynamics/Annoying+Lead+(before)+1.mp3″ title=”Annoying Lead Guitar Before Processing” artist=”Mike Kalajian” download=”false” social=”false” ]

We can hear the heavy build up around 2k that really makes it tough to listen to. This happens a lot because many 2 way studio monitors have crossover points in the 2-5k range which can cause a “no man’s land” of frequency response. A mix engineer *could* be forgiven for pouring on these frequencies in order to separate a lead guitar from the rest of the music.

Again we’re going to create a large boost in the sidechain signal (right clicking on the frequency handles allows you to solo the sidechain EQ) and sweep around a bit to find where this lead guitar really rings and sounds annoying. For this i’m going to slow down the attack a touch, but more significantly the release will be slowed quite a bit.

The offending guitar part here has a MUCH longer sustain compared to the sibilant vocal, and a short release riding across a long period of gain reduction will cause the mix to sound blown out.

Like in the vocal example, we’re looking for a setting in which the compressor only reacts to the signal we want to affect.

In a perfect world, as soon as the lead is over and the song transitions into the verse, we would not see any gain reduction. Eq’ing is an alternate option here, but the compression will basically act as an EQ only when the lead guitar passes through that most offensive frequency range.

Here’s the same mix with processing applied:

[smart_track_player url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/urmpublicpodcast/blog/mike+k+mastering+dynamics/Annoying+Lead+(after)+1.mp3″ title=”Annoying Lead Guitar After Processing” artist=”Mike Kalajian” download=”false” social=”false” ]

…and here’s the preset file for essence.

If you compare to the unprocessed mix you can hear that the lead has been pushed back down into the track a bit and and doesn’t sound like as much it’s coming through a megaphone.

The reality of this set up is not so perfect, and we’re getting some compression in the chorus where the vocal hits notes that fill the same frequency space as our annoying intro lead guitar. One solution here is to put the intro section of the song on it’s own track and only apply this process there.

 BEEFING UP A WIMPY SNARE DRUM

In this example the mix is pretty well balanced, but the snare drum just seems thin. It lacks the low mid punch to help it cut through the guitars and really establish the groove of the song:

[smart_track_player url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/urmpublicpodcast/blog/mike+k+mastering+dynamics/Thin+Snare+(before)+1.mp3″ title=”Thin Snare Before Processing” artist=”Mike Kalajian” download=”false” social=”false” ]

Again, we could probably just EQ some of that back in, but we’d also be boosting some 200hz-ish stuff on the guitars / bass / vocals which could get a little ugly. We can easily use essence to add some of that punch back in by flipping it into a frequency dependent expander by turning on “upward” mode.

Like the first example i’m in the mid only portion of side mode, using a very narrow side chain eq to focus in on the main resonant frequency of the snare, which in this case is 180hz. Since we’re expanding here we can think of the attack and release almost like the attack and sustain of a transient enhancer.

I’m going to set the attack to the fastest possible setting, I want the expander to push the designated frequencies up immediately when it detects a snare hit. The release time is going to determine how long that 180hz band gets pushed when triggered. To me 30ms feels like it’s covering the length of the snare sample and not too much afterwards.

Once i’ve got the threshold dialed to that it’s only triggering when the snare is hit, it’s just a matter of using the ratio to determine how much push is applied.

Overdo this and you’ve got a dubstep snare.

Here’s the mix with processing applied:

[smart_track_player url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/urmpublicpodcast/blog/mike+k+mastering+dynamics/Thin+Snare+(after).mp3″ title=”Thin Snare After Processing” artist=”Mike Kalajian” download=”false” social=”false” ]

…and here’s the preset for essence.  

The processed file has a nice added low end punch in the snare drum that really helps it jump out of the mix and establish the rhythmic feel of the song.

That about wraps it for now!

These are just a few examples of how you can carefully use dynamics processing to shape very specific mix elements. Next time we’ll talk about multiband compression and how we can very carefully use it to adjust the relative levels of elements in a stereo mix and add overall enhancements without destroying the mix (which is SO easy to do with multiband compression).

---

Mike Kalajian is the owner / chief engineer at Rogue Planet Mastering in New York. He’s worked with artists like, Saosin, The Dear Hunter, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, Gates, Moving Mountains, and Against the Current. 

Nail The Mix is our online mixing school that gives you REAL multi-tracks from REAL bands, plus a mixing class from the producer who recorded it. Past guests include Periphery, Chelsea Grin, Machine Head and State Champs. Join now for instant access!

 

Band Practice Is Toxic To Creativity – By Jesse Cannon

One of the most common creative tools for the novice leader of a creative team is the brainstorming session, which is structured nearly identical to most musician’s band practice. The idea being if everyone sits around and spitballs ideas, some greater good will come of it and the creative decision at hand will be solved by the group, since after all a few heads are better than one. Right?

The concept of brainstorming was invented by Alex Osborn of famous ad firm BBDO. He’s thought to be one of the inspirations for the character Don Draper on Mad Men. He popularized the idea of brainstorming in a series of business books he wrote through the 50s. While you could point to years of creativity that occurred that followed his book’s lead as evidence of how great this idea works, the first rule he outlines for brainstorming seems to have been lost on nearly every one of the hundreds of bands I have ever attended a session of. This rule was that you aren’t allowed to criticize the ideas of others in the group.

Disobeying that rule has led to the toxic environments of latent resentment present in nearly every band I know that’s made more than one record. Osborn said that if the members of group feared negative feedback and ridicule the sessions would fail. Anyone who has been to a band practice knows members are commonly reduced to having “stupid ideas” or even worse “ideas that never work” etc. While I do believe jibing and friendly teasing to be key to a great environment, when it comes to discounting creative instincts, a boundary needs to be created in order to make better art. But this balance is delicate, so delicate that Osborn called it a delicate flower, whereas most bands treat their creative brainstorming session like a food fight.

While many musicians have a short temper for trying many ideas, Osborn found the best results came from allowing people to think of the absurd and not being afraid to share the dumbest or most adventurous ideas. Quantity should come first and then through evaluation quality will come as a result.

Most successful creators have come to learn there’s no shame in throwing out a bad idea, it’s part of the process. An environment is established where it is known people will have bad ideas and that’s the only way to get to the good ideas. You come to learn that, unless you have a few bad ideas, you can’t be sure that your final idea is the best one.

Dissent and discussion are helpful and every study on the subject shows that dissent can help come up with better answers, so hating that your bassist doesn’t always love your ideas can be the reason you make good songs. But that’s not to be mistaken with just saying “no” makes better products. Figuring out how to augment the good and identifying it is just as important as saying no. The balance lies in experimenting but in the end trusting your gut to make sure you made the right decision, even if your original idea is what you stick with, it has at least been thoroughly vetted.

Even if your band practice is a positive environment that would make the happiest of hippie kindergarten teacher give you a gold star, band practice is still not the optimal place for creativity to occur. Keith Sawyer a psychologist at Washington University, talks about decades of studies that show brainstorming results in a worse creative result. Instead the best creative outcomes come when the individuals work alone and later pool their ideas. This is why over the years a common trend in the great acts are a single songwriter writing the skeleton of a song on their own and then bringing it to the group to vet, dissect and ultimately bring to greater good.

While I know most of our favorite songs were birthed in band practice sessions, this doesn’t mean we can’t reach greater heights by learning from this concept. People will always defend the status quo, but learning to not have a demeaning creative environment and that it is good to take your creative contributions out of the practice room to develop can most likely help many musicians get to a much better creative place.

---

Jesse Cannon is a Brooklyn based record producer, mixer and mastering engineer. He is co-founder of Noise Creators a service that connects musicians to the best producers in music today. He is the author of Get More Fans: The DIY Guide To The New Music Business and the upcoming Processing Creativity.

Click here and listen to Jesse’s guest URM Podcast episode where we discuss strategies upcoming audio engineers can use to promote themselves, and lots of juicy mastering tips.

Nail The Mix is our online mixing school that gives you REAL multi-tracks from REAL bands, plus a mixing class from the producer who recorded it. Past guests include Periphery, Chelsea Grin, Machine Head and State Champs. Join now for instant access!