Surviving

Bob Dylan sings “The times, they are a changing”. The whole music production business seems to be going through a pretty tough shift.

I learned and starting mixing on a Sony analog console feeding a 24 track 2” tape machine. It wasn’t a glamorous as we like to remember. What I do remember was when the first DAW’s started to roll out, how cool we thought it was and the anticipation for what the future would hold.

Fast forward 20 years. DAW’s have pretty much taken over and enslaved humanity to their grids. Fine. I can deal with that. Along with that comes the unexpected competition of people buying the equipment and recording/mixing their own stuff. Fine. I’ll learn to deal with that.

What does not come in a box is the hours upon hours of experience placing microphones around instruments for the very best results. What it doesn’t replace is the knowledge of how to manage a whole lotta frequencies in a limited spectrum. It does not come with a magic spell to create the perfect sense of space around your vocals that were recorded in a closet. Admittedly I am still learning the above and more, but I’ve spent a lot of time perfecting more skills that just how to load software onto a computer.

Sometimes to remain competitive, one has to scale back and do some trimming. I’ve had just about every workstation out there but none really made me happy for mixing, until recently…and it’s not really a big name daw, it doesn’t cost a lot either but the way it is laid out is perfect for me. I still get great sounding mixes because I know how to engineer, but now the process is a whole lot more pleasing to me and that makes my results even better. I’m happy that I scaled back, life is simpler, music is sweeter and the blue birds aren’t as blue any more!

See…. I believe that technology gets in the way of art and with most tools that are available it’s almost impossible to let go of your left brain and make artistic decisions. For that reason, I have really changed the way I work and with what I work. I have what fits ME, not what a dude in a guitar store said was “The industry standard”. It took a while, and some people thought I was insane because of how many DAW’s I bought and sold, but I was on a quest, believing that I shouldn’t have to conform myself to something I did not like. The big boys all have their preferences….Neve, API, SSL, Harrison, usually when a mixer finds something that he A) Likes the sound of and B) fits how they work, they stick with that for most of their career. They all don’t try to fit into SSL’s workflow…why should we be forced into one DAW’s workflow? Find what works best for you and makes you happy. I have.

But back to surviving…. to make the best with what you have it takes skills. Real skills. That’s something I will never scale back on. To survive, learn to listen, learn what the equipment does then get creative. Use whatever tools you want and survive!