Music Production Tips/Tricks/Bits of Kit

Some perspectives from Poly. Makes good case for doing it as you go.

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That’s actually what inspired me to post. As I mentioned it to my production partner Paul who is totally the opposite to me (and thinks I’m mad to mix as I go but always complements me on my mixes :thinking:) who said he’d never go back to working on sound design etc until absolutely everything was laid out and arranged etc.

I quite like sound design influencing how something should change or inspiring a different sound or approach.

To me if you keep on doing the same thing over and over you’ll always end up with the same thing.

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Yes that’s more or less it. You missed out “realise the snare sounds shit, decided to start again” step lol

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My mate always tries to remind me that vibe is king, and he’s probably right.

Sometimes I catch it sometimes I don’t

But with electronic stuff esp. in the digital/ itb mixing age, the temptation to over polish tracks esp with digital eq can easily get the better of me

That said, I read an interesting interview with a well known producer (name escapes me) who said he’d almost sacked off eqing where possible when doing digital mix downs and focussed on sound choices as his priority when writing-
Which makes sense to me, especially with the way upper mids seem over represented and harsh in the digital domain (2500 kHz area especially I find) when you get to over eqing.

Andrew Scheps is who I tend to look to for advice re digital mixing as he’s transitioned to it totally and I think Carl Craig is definitely onto something doing his mixes in Harrison Mixbus to get there more easily.

All that said, there’s definitely a distinction between eq and mixing for sound design during writing process and final mix eq especially with music that’s so reliant on sonics

Just my 2p. No expert.

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Totally
It’s too thick,
It’s too thin…

It’s going in the fucking bin.

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Swap the kick out half way through and everything goes to total shit :rofl:

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I jumped down the Carl Craig Harrison Mixbus rabbit hole after reading your post - thank you! For anyone else interested, there’s a great François K interview with Carl Craig where they talk about many things related to music production, including mixing tracks. There are 3 parts to it. Here’s a link:

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Purely from a punter point of view - the first way i judge any record is to close my eyes - do i picture a dancefloor, a beach, a party etc or do i just picture a line going across a computer screen - if it’s the latter it doesn’t stand a chance.

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True, and called me old fashioned if you want, but you cannae beat a deep bleep!

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I like this and I agree!

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I bought it probably ten or more years ago on a special offer, it was something ridiculous like £16. I couldn’t get with it as a DAW but I did run stems through the channels a couple of times with the tape saturation on. Seemed OK.

I still get the odd upgrade offer. These days I do the same thing in UA Luna.

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Cheers JC, that’s helpful. I’ve got an Apollo twin that I use with ableton, but I don’t like fiddling with the computer mouse. The presonus faderport that CC talks about in the interview sounded interesting because it has the feel of a mixer, but can be used to control ableton and/or ua plugins.

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@J_C

How are you finding your big six?

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Yeah I like it. I’ve not used it to multi-track as yet (although did test this). The four ‘Super Analogue’ channels are really nice. I was playing bass guitar through one last night with the channel EQ and some compression it sounded really good. The G Bus compressor sounds great too. I have to stop myself turning it on when listening to commercial tracks through the mixer :joy:

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Slightly off topic…

Any recommendations for a good pair of bluetooth earbuds?

Looking for sound quality, comfort and decent battery life. Noise cancellation isn’t as important tbh.

Had AirPods previously, but would rather not give any more $$$ to Apple. Tried a friends Beats (Solo Buds), but wasn’t impressed. £250 max.

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watching with interest as i’ll be buying a new set here myself, as well as some for my kid.

Does anyone have any resources or links to decent tutorials for Dub rhythms?

Dub scrolls
They have a forum too can’t help love the somewhat dated web design adds a certain charm

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There’s so much info there - some real “throw in the kitchen sink” analog ideas/solutions too - brilliant.

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If you want some dry drum samples/loops that you can add some Bim, Bam Boum to, this could be useful:
http://www.horsemandrums.com/

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