Why is recording music so hard

As do a myriad of other great audio resources out there. I want to help you close that gap from what you hear in your head to what you make in your studio.

I want you to close that gap. Read what he has to say about being a beginner in an art form:. Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close the gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. What Glass says is profoundly real and honest. The only way to close the gap, to get as good as your tastes are knowing what good recordings and mixes sound like , is to just make a lot of recordings and mix a lot of songs. There is nothing wrong with you if you are churning out bad stuff early on. I get it. But I keep pressing on. So today, challenge yourself to keep going.

Do something radical. Perhaps you should write and record one song a month this year. Or maybe you need some new tracks to practice mixing on each month. Whatever it is, pick some kind of challenge and commit to it. The only way out of this crappy beginner phase is to push deeper into it and get your hands dirty.

Keep making recordings. Watch your work improve over time. Awesome article Graham. Inspiring stuff and very true. Who knows what the next year will bring. Thanks Graham.. Just finished working on a hip hop album for a friend and at the listening party, the stuff I produced did not sound as great as everything else from the other producers on the project..

I have come too far to quit. Back to my humble studio. If the gear in my studio somehow resembles some of the stuff you have reviewed, you are responsible. Always refreshing to read your blogs. Just great! As usual, Graham! Never give up, just keep things going and improve ourselves!

Top stuff, mate. The ever-evolving learning curve is always a struggle. Anyone who is honest is probably still near the bottom on that curve. Practice, patience and being a sponge is the best thing we can do. Depending on the material, we need to adapt and learn what is right for the song. Michael Brauer is my idol. Talk about having the right ears for the right music. Top stuff, Graham. Moved to Los Angeles, auditioned for band after band, was in a few crappy ones. Then I did the unthinkable.

After three years of trying, scraping, clawing, I quit… I gave up. I moved back home. Brian, That is exactly what I did without going to L. Gave up on depending on a group to get me where I wanted to go. Playing clubs was fun for a while and I packed it up and dropped it.

Release the cd, I would like to hear it. Generally no ones first album is their best and I mean rock-stars as well. Keep pushing! Thanks for your honesty Brian. It is messages like yours that keep encouraging the rest of us. We have a blessing with Graham being willing to share what God has give him.

I would also recommend that everyone learns different genres it keeps making music fresh and you learn a lot and also make you a better producer in my eyes.

Great article- so glad you posted this. If you love the process, the music and feel like your songs are good enough to put on tape in the first place- then they are, keep moving forward. Thanks for the inspiring words.

Thanks Graham, I needed to hear this today. I have spent over a month all together trying to get the electric guitars as good as he did, but they just sound like mush. EQ — not helping, compression — not helping, re-amping — not helping. Every knob I tweak just makes another bad sounding guitar. So I banged my fist on the table, walked away, and started doubting my future at mixing.

I will park that project for another day and move on to something else. I know how you feel. Wise move to park things and come back later with fresh ears and a fresh mind. Definitely one of the truest things out there. I read a quote the other day that struck a chord with me the other day: Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Yeah, this is a biggie. He likes what he hears so far but its far from done. The stakes are high.

I helped him put out a Christmas CD with a few tunes last fall. I was floored and scared and elated at the same time. Its going well but I am still just amazed to be doing this with the killer tunes he has created. Never , never, never give up. Yes you do! Each month you get new tracks, new tutorials, and a new webinar! The fairly large gap between what I could hear in my head and what was coming out of the DAW inspired me to invest in lots of software to lessen that gap, but I have to admit that my stubbornness in wanting there to be no gap greatly limited me in terms of how much music I produced.

I recommend your blog to any musician friend of mine because of articles like this, thanks for providing this value! Graham, I have to agree. The gap shows us the distance between what we are and what we want to be. It reminds me of our walk with Jesus. He already told us what we are in His eyes and what we can become, and still we can see our own faults to a grotesque detail. I have been working at becoming what I want to be for the past 2 years now, and I thankfully, and with much gratitude have to say that your posts and tutorials have empowered my focus.

Thank you. This advice has kept me from becoming frustrated with my past inexperience, and has kept me from using the lack of gear for a scapegoat when all I really needed was time to learn and develop a skillful ear and method. As for money, basically I am in a very meager circumstance. The only way you can is to practice.

I use to re-record and re-mix old songs every year to get a hint of any development. And yes, there is. Every spend hour at listening to other musicans, mixers och producers, articles, tutorials and hours facing your short-comings pay off … in the end. Still an amatuer from Sweden, but a better one than last year.

Get better every year. Hi Graham, I never leave reviews but I felt like I have learned so much from all your videos and blogs that I need to say thanks and how much it has helped. I had just bought pro tools 9 and learned how to use it this past year watching your videos. Is it possible for me to purchase just the mastering one since I have the others?

And then lastly will your jumpstart mastering help me learn to master my songs so their itunes ready? Thank you, Chris. Hi Chris. Thanks for the kind words. And thanks also for being a customer. So glad my videos have helped. The JumpStart series is now only available as a complete series, not individually.

Did you pick up just a couple of them before? Thanks you for posting this! I am at this point right now. Part of me wanted to just throw my hands up and quit, but the other part of me just wanted to keep pushing on knowing that at some point after practicing and more practicing I would have to improve at some point.

This article just reinforces that for me. Thank you Graham!! Oh how true. My greatest inspiration right now is my 9 mo daughter who tries to stand up probably times a day without being able to.

So true! My 11 month old is doing the same. Just a thought I had and might be good for all of us here… Would you ever consider taking one of our projects and mixing it up for us and doing a video of things we did wrong, could focus on, things to look out for, your advice, mixing techniques applied from past videos, etc…?

I have an album that I released towards the end of and I have never really been happy with the final results. Most of it was due to the rush that I was leaving the USA to move to the UK and needed to get the project done so it was rushed. I am happy with the results that I got in such a short amount of time but I would like to revisit the album and mix it up as best as I can… If your willing to use my idea I would be more than willing for you to disect and criticize my mix….

Let me know if you would be willing and I will get it preped and uploaded to my FTP and will send you a link. I am sure other readers here would be interested as well and I think it can help us learn a lot from someone with your knowledge.

Let me know, ok? This already features demonstration files for stalwarts such as electric and acoustic guitars, grand and upright pianos, kick, snare, cymbals, upright bass and saxophone. For example, are there any small errors that could do with patching over? Is the second verse performed as musically as the first? Are there any moments where the groove suddenly seems to hurry or drag?

Many mainstream commercial productions go way beyond that, though, assembling more than a dozen takes and devoting hours to the comping process. Early takes will often be outshone by later ones, in which case they can be recorded over to reduce your editing workload. In addition, I find that comparing takes during the tracking session itself introduces an element of self—criticism and competitiveness that frequently spurs vocalists to up their game.

Broadly speaking, the better your performances, the easier it is to leave your arrangement sparse. In a similar vein, try to resist sweetening your tracking rough mix with masses of reverb or delay effects, since these make second—rate moments in a performance tougher to spot.

One of the big drivers of the project—studio revolution has been the flood of affordable mass—produced capacitor mics on the market.

Beware bright mics : Be careful of reusing mic setups developed during the heyday of analogue tape, because high frequencies were often pre—emphasised at the tracking stage, using super—bright capacitor mics as a way of compensating for treble losses in the recording medium.

Whatever the reason, I suspect this is why drum overheads, acoustic guitar, strings, and horns so often sound painfully tinny in home—brew mixes. Pick mics for each vocalist : Amateur engineers are particularly prone to choosing capacitor mics automatically when recording lead vocals, which is a shame, since harsh, over—bright vocal sounds are a problem I commonly encounter in Mix Rescues, and the problem could easily have been solved in most cases by using a dynamic mic.

Bear in mind that many iconic studio vocal performances were captured with dynamic mics. Headphone foldback is at the root of many problems I hear on project—studio recordings. For simple solo overdubs, the most obvious side—effect of poor headphone monitoring is floundering pitch, but it can interfere with the tonal and emotional quality of the performance too. Check for cue—mix problems : When a performer is struggling with tuning while overdubbing, it may be the foldback mix at fault, so ask to listen to their headphones.

Performers are frequently reticent about asking for headphone mix changes, so stay alert for the sonic warning signs. Give each performer the balance they need : When recording ensembles, try to resist the urge to give everyone headphones from the get—go. Instead, consider who really needs them and indeed what each person actually needs to hear and work from there. A clipboard on a music stand does the job rather nicely, as it happens. A similar strategy can help singers hear themselves better in an ensemble—recording situation, too.

Here you can see a common mistake people make with the classic Blumlein stereo array a pair of figure—of-eight ribbon mics crossed at right angles : placing it too close to a large instrument or ensemble. In this case, the cymbals at the edges of this drumkit were picked up significantly out of phase as a result of the low mic placement.

Lots of people seem to come unstuck when capturing stereo. The most frequent undesirable outcome is an over-wide panorama, which not only makes centre—stage images vague, but also inflicts serious tonal damage should left and right channels ever be mixed together — as they will be, for example, if your mix is played through mass—market single—speaker playback devices.

The other major pitfall is misrepresenting the natural balance of an ensemble, most commonly by subjectively distancing edge—of—sound-stage musicians too far from the listener. For example, the useful pickup zone of ORTF is roughly degrees, in my experience, while a 60cm—wide A—B configuration will only suit a soundstage of around 60 degrees. To improve your decision—making, keep a couple of suitable commercial recordings on hand for comparison and use a stereo vectorscope as a visual confidence check.

The world of music has changed. And prayed that some big-shot producer in the audience who would impressed enough to give you a shot. Great music is being produced all the time in bedrooms , garages , and basements by normal folks like you and me…. Often with little more than a computer, a USB mic , and some headphones. But before any of that can happen, you must first know the process of how music actually is recorded. In the earliest days of the music recording….

Today though, we use a more sophisticated process known as multitrack recording …. With this new method, it meant that one man could now do alone, what used to require an entire team of engineers and musicians.

The first step is creating some kind of guide for the other instruments to follow along with. But since not all musicians can follow clicks, you could also use a pre-recorded drum loop instead.

And since not all songs have steady tempos, a third method is to create a scratch track …. As any musician knows, the rhythm section is the foundation of any song.

Depending on the song, that could mean adding rhythm guitar , piano , synths , horns , etc. To put the finishing touches on your song, you add all those little nuances that add color and flare to the main tracks.

In which case, I highly suggest checking out the website Fiverr , where you can hire session musicians to help you out for very affordable prices…. There will always be SOME mistakes that can and should be fixed…. Typically, editing is made up of 5 common tasks :. With comping , you compare the duplicate takes of each track, and select the best one. With noise reduction , you cut all sounds before , after , and in-between each section of audio where the instrument is playing.