I've been working on a TON of new mixes the last couple weeks. I've made lots of progress and I'm feeling good about how things are going, but I know there's still a lot of work to do if any of these songs are ever to see the light of day.
For me, there are lots of stages to making a good mix. Every mix is a little different, and I'm constantly tweaking the process and experimenting with new ways of getting a mix started. I find that changing up the building blocks you use early-on can have a really big impact on the final mix and sets you up for different successes/challenges later.
Typically, for a lot of songs that actually do get successfully completed, once I feel like I've settled on a structure and the lyrics are at least 80-90% there, I go for a scratch track that's just piano or guitar and vocal, recorded together (or sometimes I just import a voice memo if I already have something I really like). I want these scratch tracks to be super rough and exaggerated with lots of feeling. This scaffolding informs the flow of energy in the song and gives me a framework to follow once I start adding more parts. After I get a decent scratch going, I spend a little time going over it and tidying up anything that feels *really* off beat, or that I think might mess me up later.
Then the fun part. I add... and add... and add... and add... I freely improvise over that scratch take about 4 or 5 times with my synth (any more than 5 takes and feel like I'm burried in editing later...) While I'm recording these tracks, I follow any little ideas or motifs I want to bring out. I let each track be informed by and respond to the track that came before it. I think of each track as a different character listening to and responding to the mix it arrive into. I start to think about how these tracks will develop into a mix that gets wider, brighter, and more energetic as the song unfolds. The scratch track is often a guide for where, and when the synth should really start to drive, but sometimes it's nice to let the synths surprise me, and bring something out of it that I didn't fully expect. My synths at this phase are typically all monophonic, which I feel gives me more flexibility in editing later, and really lends itself to thinking of each track as a character.
As I start to hear things come together with the raw synth tracks, I'll sometimes grab an electric guitar and give that a few takes over a moment that I really want to emphasize. If the mix feels like it calls for it, I might do something crazy with some live percussion tracks (cymbals, floor toms, etc...)
Before I start making balance adjustments, I scrub every track as clean as I can and buff out any mistakes or hiccups in my playing. This process takes AGES. I edit them in the order they were recorded and chop out sections I don't like, fix notes that I missed, and make subtle adjustments to timing and volume. If I feel like I understand the sonic space that this track is going to have, I'll start doing a little equalizing and compression here, but they usually stay pretty raw at this phase. I also use this opportunity to iterate and play around with some of the takes- repurposing things that I think are interesting but don't really fit, or hard-editing some tracks to bring out new ideas that come to me as I sit with the song and start to understand the flow of the the mix a bit more.
Once that initial pass is done and everything has been tweaked into shape, I'll start to deliberate and cut things. Now that I can see everything at once, I get to zoom in and decide what parts art interesting and fun versus what parts feel distracting or wrong to me. Often this is where decisions about the structure and arrangement start to get made. I shuffle things around, sidechain tracks against eachother, add compression, turn up/down brightness/warmth, until everything starts to feel like a cohesive organism, and each of the tracks feels like it has a reason to be in the song.
Either after or during that process, I start to dive into percussion... For most of my mixes, the percussion is almost all sample based. I feel like there's such an interesting flexibility and playfulness to what you can do with purely sample driven percussion. Most of the time I don't even use a drum machine or anything at this phase. I dive into a few folders I have full of sampled snares, hats, kicks, noises, etc, and start dropping things in. I typically let my mix play in the background while I'm picking out a few samples to start with- just so I have some idea if I'm picking a sound that blends well and/or fills some kind of sonic niche in the mix.
I don't usually think of percussion as 'beats' or rythms when I start dropping things in. In a lot of ways, I think of them more like just another layer, playing along and responding to the song, rather than driving it. I usually don't start at the beginning, but instead jump in wherever I feel like I have a solid idea and/or the new sounds would be welcomed. In order to keep things from ever sounding too mechanical or stale, I typically start out by tapping markers onto the mix as it playes and dropping my samples onto those, instead of putting them right on the beat. As that goes on, I start to hear a beat in my mind and/ or start to notice some patterns emerging based on what I've started to set up. I try to run with this and develop it a bit more, sometimes repeating and iterating, sometimes just continuing to build forward an not worry about wether the next section is at all similar to the last...
Usually I don't get percussion right on the first pass. I often end up putting everything from the first attempt in a bus called 'perc 1,' and just muting it, lol. Then I carry on and try again with 'perc 2', which is usually a bit more structured and less ambitious than my first attempt. After a little while, if perc 2 also feels wrong, I might mute that and give it another shot with 'perc 3'... By the time I get to perc 3, I feel like i've typically learned what *doesn't* work for this song, and settled on some ideas that do feel like they could work... at least that's the hope. After I give it another run, if I still feel like it's not sitting right, I'll just unmute all three iterations and let them play together... I find that this percussion soup contains all the successes and failures of each of these brainstorming sessions, and I can usually find some common ground. Of course, I have to then balance these buses against each other and make some tweaks, but with 3 complete passes going at once, I feel like I have lots of material and ideas to work with.
After I get all that relatively balanced and sitting right in the mix at about -20db VU, It's time to go back to the beginning get some better takes of the live instrument (guitar or piano) and the vocal. I mute the scratch track and make a full render of the song without any vocals or instruments. Then I sit down with my microphone. I typically start with the instrument, giving it a handful of takes, making sure to nail every part least once or twice for good measure. I typically want a combination of live takes that run straight through the whole song, and takes that start/stop to zoom in on specific sections to get details right.
Often I do vocal takes in the same recording session as instrument. This is the moment with the lyrics need to be DONE. Any changes made after this point will be significantly more tedious to fix. I start with the main vocal and give that as many takes as I feel like I need to, to get something I can work with. Then I move on to harmonies and more colorful 'character' vocals. This is where the vocal really comes alive. I get to give it 110% of whatever the moment calls for and do things that are silly, weird, bad, dramatic, dumb- you name it. I want to make sure I'm having fun with it and staying loose at this point. Drink lots of water to make sure I don't throw my voice out yelling or doing something silly. Most of these takes will get cut, but often they supply the raw material for background layers and interesting moments in the vocal performance. Everything I do here is going to end up being layered and edited a lot, so it's okay to try things that don't work.
In the next day or so I sit down with the new vocal and instrument track and start comping. I find all the best moments of each section from each take and splice them together. I typically start with the instrumentals, then go in and make a few mixing/compression decisions. Then I unmute just the main vocal and comp that as well. I'm looking for takes that follow the energy of the song, I'm also making a note (sometimes a seprate track) of takes that stand out to me as particularly energetic or smooth and clean sounding.
Once I feel like I have a vocal comp that will be serviceable, I start to comb over it and manually adjust the pre-fx volume to sit at about the same level for the whole track... This takes hours, but it makes a huge difference on the sound and polish of the vocal. This is also a great opportunity to do manual de-essing. Once that is done, I can start doing the fun work of adding compression and coloration to the vocal. I typically end up making 2 or three copies of the main vocal and running different effects on each of them, something for space, something for color, and something for punch. Some or all of these might contain some tuning or pitch correction- it all depends.
As that's happening and I'm feeling out the flow of the song, I start to unmute some of the more colorful 'character' vocals and harmonies and pick out moments where I really like what they're doing. I like to get playful and figure out how those should sit in the mix texturally as well as sonically. Often, I end up keeping some of the more dynamic takes in the song as a super distorted layer and blending that into the mix at certain moments for extra energy or coloration.
Once that process feels like it's mostly done, I go back to the master mix and import all the tracks I worked on in the separate project where I recorded the vocals and instrumentals. Now I make my final adjustments to the mix. I tweak things that I might have made notes about while listening to the render in the other project, and I balance the vocal and blend it into the mix with the synths and percussion. I typically end up doing some subtle side-chain compression to help keep things balanced that might compete for space with the main vocal. I often have to do some side-chain compression of the instrumentals against a synth or vocal to keep the new track from getting too loud and poking through or drowning things out too much at some of the bigger moments.
And by that point, I usually feel like I've given the mix all I can. I know my mixes aren't perfect, and there's still more work that needs to be done. But, by the time I've done all that, I feel like I've at least realized the track better, and I'm in a position to know what to say to a real mix engineer and help them help me get everything out of the track that I intended. This process leaves me with a a mix that is usually about 30-60 tracks deep, with lots of layers and coloration tracks and separation of parts for different effects processing.
I'm glad I took the time to write this down while I'm in the middle of it, and can specifically articulate the process as I'm going through it. And maybe my explaination of my process illuminates something for you, too!
Recently I was asked for an artist bio explaining where I came from musically/artistically and when/ how I started writing songs. I wrote up a long bio this morning and I figured I might as well share it here on my blog here as well! It basically outlines my path in music up through the release of The Queen of Time.
I grew up in and around Northeast Ohio, and I’ve lived in Wooster for most of my life. I’m a painter at heart, and I studied Studio Art in college at Miami University, but I've been making and writing music daily since I was about 15 or 16. I’ve always loved art, science, and music, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to continue to explore and develop my passions throughout my life. A lot of my studio art is about creating and inspiring experiences for/ with a viewer, but my music tends to be where I express, discover, and interrogate my own feelings on a more personal level. Writing music, for me, is a process of refining the raw substance of a specific, weird, lumpy feeling into something tangible and coherent that helps me process whatever I’m going through.
The first band I really fell in love with at a young age was The Beatles. I listened to that red “Number One Hits” cd dozens of times, and my parents were always hugely supportive of my interests, too. When I was 7 or 8, there was a waiter named David at a restaurant my dad and I went to, and we chatted about the Beatles sometimes. Occasionally he would burn copies of some of his rare/uncommon Beatles outtakes/extras CD for me, which, in hindsight, was a very cool thing for him to do.
And when I got a little older I got the Beatles 2009 Remaster box set, and listened to it so much I could probably still recite a good chunk of their discography from memory. As I got older I was introduced to The Shins and MIA from my friend’s sister who *blasted* it on the way to school every morning, and I started to listen to more indie rock and alternative bands.
Through family friends, I got to hang out with a fantastic drummer. He was a bit older than me, and I really looked up to him. When band classes started in elementary school, naturally I chose percussion. I stayed with it all the way through high school and into the beginning of college. I was never a particularly great drummer, but through playing bells and xylophone I discovered I had a pretty good ear for pitch. Most of the other percussionists had no interest in playing mallet parts, so I started naturally gravitating towards those instruments, where I knew I could be the best at something.
In high school I did a lot of theater and competed in Speech and Debate. Through that, I met a friend named Shelby Denton who went to Stow. She is also an incredibly talented musician and songwriter, and I got to see her play at a talent show. Her performance there inspired me like crazy- It made it clear that songwriting wasn’t some impossible ineffable thing- but it’s something that *people do.* I’d always been creative and artistically inclined, and this moment was a wake up call for me; music was something *I* could *make!*
Soon after that, I started teaching myself guitar and trying to write songs. I challenged myself to find time to play/try to write every day… and I’ve managed to keep that up for almost 10 years.
My interest in composition and theory grew from there, and I started to teach myself piano around the same time. By junior and senior year, I remember taking my lunchbox to the practice rooms to play piano and work on songs instead of eating in the cafeteria almost everyday, and I was constantly finding time to sneak into the percussion closet to mess around with the marimba and vibraphone after school.
Through jazz band auditions I met a friend named Jacob Norris who was a *much* more experienced guitarist than me. We started hanging out and making music together for a few years. We would jam with him on guitar and me on drums, and record it into Garage Band on my iPhone, and then I would mess around with editing and tweaking them later, often on the bus to cross country meets. This was my first experience with a DAW of any kind.
Music was becoming more and more of a factor in my life, and when I started looking at colleges I seriously considered majoring in music composition… but I didn’t really have the background necessary to get into a conservatory, so I opted to stick with painting and focus on art and science.
I kept up a daily habit of playing, practicing, and writing my own music throughout college. Right next door to the art building was a music building with 24 hour access to the basement practice rooms. Often I would stop there for 20 minutes or so on my way home from painting late at night. During this chapter, I was (for the first time) totally outside of a band or musical organization of any kind, and I really started to develop and grow as a songwriter- making more practical decisions and discovering new ways to think about songs and sounds.
Junior year of college I got my first synthesizer, the Moog Grandmother, and this opened up a vast world of sound and mixing options for me. The fact that the keyboard was monophonic inspired a totally new way to think about writing and composition. I took an intro to electronic music class as an elective. My professor assigned weekly listening for us, and that’s where I was first introduced to Kraftwork, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, Major Lazer, Bon Iver and so many more incredible, foundational electronic music artists.
After college I took a gap year and ended up making a lot more music. I recorded and mixed many songs I had been written in college, and I wrote a lot of new songs, too, but I was still pretty inexperienced as a producer, and I realized I had a lot to learn if I wanted to make anything that might be worth listening to.
Then, in 2020, I was still writing lots of music and working on learning more about production when the pandemic came and delayed my plans for Graduate School a bit longer. My gap year quickly grew into two… then three… and on. During that time, I decided to buckle down and focus on learning everything I could about mixing and production. I already had a basic understanding of the tools, so a few YouTube videos and tips from some actual, professional mix engineers went a long way. During lockdown I was able to produce my first set of decent mixes, and really started understanding my process and discovering my sound.
I think my electronica pallet stems from a “modern folk” instinct. Folk music, at its core, is about making the song work with whatever tools you have. Traditionally, circumstances favored an acoustic guitar and/or some improvised percussion and whatever else people could easily make or buy. But the music making tool everyone owns by default in the 2020’s is a computer and/or whatever other instruments you played in elementary school.
I think my sound/ musical style is naturally eclectic and reflects a wide range of influences. I’m one of the first generations to grow up saturated in a completely whim-driven instant-access-music landscape. In 30 seconds I could be listening to any song by James Brown, Nirvanna, or Motzart with almost equal effort. It’s been like that for almost as long as I can remember. The barriers between genera and access to different types of sound are quickly dissolving.
I write songs primarily on live instruments, then I rework re-interpret them several times in different digital formats till I develop a better understanding of where/ how the energy should flow and drive the song. Ultimately the final product is a mix that intends to capture the energy of something organic and alive, while featuring interesting electronic characters and samples. I think of the recorded mix as just one continuing iteration of a song; one that utilizes the tools and capabilities of a DAW and gets to be playful and expressive in a language that works uniquely well in that format. I spend a lot of time re organizing and revising parts well after the initial recording. I think of the final mix as something I get to discover and explore while I’m making it, rather than just a captured execution of an existing song.
I feel propelled to make creative work when there’s a feeling that I need to get out of my head. This project really started as a place to process my feelings around the end of a relationship that happened as my partner and were moving in different directions at the end of pandemic lockdown. It felt like the sun was rising all over the world, but I knew this massive morning/sun would bring a difficult change, and mean an end to the comfortable life I had found in the darkness/moon. Dealing with that feeling was what prompted me to start writing some of the early songs. As a human, I’m always looking for ways to process my feelings constructively and make something meaningful out of my lived experiences. I feel like the project outgrew the typical ‘heartbreak album’ fairly early on. Somewhere along the way, I realized there was a reason all of these specific metaphors were resonating with me; most of them actually had little to do with my partner/relationship, and a lot more to do with me, and my relationship with myself, my ambition, and my frustration with the overall situation of my life at that moment.
It’s weird to be in your mid 20’s and suddenly realize you have all this *time* you’ve never had before, and all this pressure to do something important with it! The Queen of Time is an album about the way I envision myself, my future, and my relationship with artistic ambition. Its a reminder to myself that life is long, and a promise that I am (and will be) in control of it.
The decision to commit to this project came sometime in 2021 when I realized I had enough material to make a cohesive album. At first I wanted to try to produce the tracks myself, but I decided that the project would be better served if I got help/advice from a professional mix engineer. So I started reaching out to producers online and interviewing/ doing sample mixes with a few of them. I eventually settled on working remotely with John Caviness out of Denver. Over the next year we messaged back and forth and I sent stems/ notes for him to work with. He made some important balancing and mix adjustments that really helped the songs fell more polished and professional. The process of working with him also introduced deadlines and a certain amount of pressure for me to actually finish the last remaining details that needed to come together to make the album into something I could be confident in.
Working with John, I was so glad to have those years of experience mixing on my own music, because it allowed us to have much more productive and direct conversations as we tweaked things.
I had a call with my production partner John last week, and we talked about what I wanted to work on next. I had sent him a few demos for singles, but as we talked, I started to realize I should maybe try to focus on the next album while I still have time and resources to do so, here in Ohio.
He was surprised to hear I had so many song! I guess I didn't realize that wasn't the norm? I write new stuff all time and I assumed that was the way most recording artists operate. He went on to tell me how many of clients from LA approach him to record and produce one very expensive single and then disappear off the face of the earth, lol. I knew my choice to pursue an album first was not conventional, but I didn't know just how uncommon it was to have so many songs in my backlog.
Making albums just makes the most sense to me. When I write songs, I typically write them in groups about a particular topic/feeling/set of experiences. I'm not really thinking about anything other than the usefulness of the song *to me* for expressing or moving through a particular emotion.
Because I write songs that look inward and try to satisfy *me* before anything else, I think of songwriting as a continuing journey and a tool for my mental health. To this end, I simply never stop working on new songs. I work on a song every day- whether that means writing something new, tweaking something old, or editing/ recording a mix.
Sometimes I worry that I write too much. Last night I realized I might have enough material for a 4th(?) album already... Honestly this concerns me. Being responsible for the upkeep and stewardship of another dozen connected songs is really not what I need on my plate right now... but I also know these periods of inspiration won't last forever, and it's important to give a new idea time and space to grow and develop when the feeling is fresh.
I feel like my music is starting to cheat on itself... like the constant development of new music might detrimental to the demos and songs that haven't reached their full potential yet... I recognize that it's important to give new songs attention, because the period of inspiration will not last forever. But honestly, if I never had a new idea for song for the rest of my life, I'd already have enough material to make and release music for many, many years... I have probably forgotten more songs than most people have ever written. (That not to say I don't take good notes about the songs I write, because I do recognize how important that is. I have literally thousands of voice memos and drafts (of admittedly varying quality) in my notepad...)
I guess I'm just reckoning with the reality that, for me, songwriting is not pursuant of an extrinsic end... but if I want to release more stuff, I can't let the constant pursuit of new stuff keep distracting me from the hard work of developing and refining existing material... And I *do* want to release more stuff. (because, as I've said before, I believe it is the obligation of a person who calls themselves an artist to actually contribute something back to the world they exist in.) I'm not quite sure what to do about this yet. I guess this is a good problem to have? But it's still a bit of a problem... different goals butting up against each other... I guess writing something new usually wins- because that's the thing that actually matters to me in the moment, and I keep telling myself that someday (years from now) this period of being able to dig deep and write songs that satisfy a real emotion will end, and I'll be glad I spent all this time generating the seeds while I was still able to do so. It's also probably true that the more I write new, the *better* I get at songwriting... If I had spent years refining and remixing the first songs I ever wrote when I was a teenager, I would probably be a lot less flexible and experienced as a songwriter today...
So, I guess, even though it's frustrating to admit that my goals are at odds- I need to make time for *both* developing the songs I have for release, *and* continuing to follow my ear and make new songs as they come to me... Which is a lot easier said than done 😅