symphonious7

I dunno man! And I'm by no means the expert as it's not like I've done a TON of things out here, but I've worked with a few managers, when I was young I was in the christian music industry, I've talked to musicians all my life, and I mean... I dont think it's like... there's alot of REAL bluegrass going on down here and very heartfelt old time country singers, I think it's just the south and the people love their country lmao And yeah I've known a lot of.... people who tell me I have to change my image and do this and do that on music row and stuff, it's kind of old school down here. But it might be changing I haven't been into the scene in like... man... it's been at least 4 years. But my wife and I will go to places in downtown where you can see some of the TIGHTEST country bands and they'll jam on fiddle and all kinds of stuff like that, so it's not all bad, there's a show called 8 off 8th that features rock bands, but once again they seem very "pop" to me. I might just have high standards though.... dang it... I'm back tracking now cause I feel like I just spoke for nashville. Sorry nashville, we can still be friends.

Well I live in nashville, and I am not the most social person in the world when it comes to going out and seeing shows, but I've rubbed elbows with my share of musical people here and all I can say is... if you wanna do country, or some pretty trendy pop music, come on down we're up to our ears in beautiful big haired blondes strumming acoustic guitars and Keith Urban types, but for someone who's trying to be very counter culture and not jump on the bandwagon? I find this area a bit stifling. I've paid to have people here produce me and there is a "nashville sound" that I really don't dig here, everything is clean as a whistle, shiny and polished. And because everyone thinks they're the next big thing you don't have an easy time standing out. When you say "I'm a musician" in response to "what do you do" you find most people are aspiring or know someone who's aspiring in some way or another. Like no joke when I tell people I make music I'm more likely to hear "Oh you should listen to my friend's music then!" Than having someone actually give a crap about hearing mine haha I may be jaded though, I was born and raised here and I got bit by the industry types in my youth, but at the same time I've heard other musicians say the same thing. So in my opinion, if you want to collab with producers and managers who are gonna try and turn you into the next Taylor Swift or Keith Urban come on down, but even then people like that are a dime a dozen here, and usually seem too focused on their own careers to try and help you with yours. There's a college town about 45 minutes away called Murfreesboro with a more indie underground scene going on, but if that's what you're looking for and you're willing to go ANYWHERE? I would imagine there's a better place for it.

Drums get me going in a lot of ways too. I'd say 75 percent of my process is all in the mind. I have a pretty thorough concept of what I want to do before I ever even touch an instrument. In fact sometimes recording one part will ruin the magic. I seem to be best at planning everything in my head BEFORE I hear anything truly recorded, once something is recorded it changes how I hear the song in my head for some reason. That's why I'll often just pace/dance around my room imagining parts and jamming out to music in my head for hours and hours before I feel ready to record it. I always get a bit of anxiety when it comes time to record because some of my "awesome" ideas turned quite sour once I began recording and there's always that fear I'm gonna record myself out of a cool idea. Bass parts are tough, I tend to want to write them like you'd write guitar licks but that causes them to walk all over all the other parts. I record the drums first as of recently because I find it helps everything else feel right. I suppose I do come up with parts as I record and sometimes I'll play around on the keyboard trying to come up with things, but whenever I do it that way the ideas aren't as good. The best ideas happen when I keep it all in the mind, and try to let stream of consciousness take over so that parts just hit me as I'm going over and over the idea in my mind. I'll make sure I've thoroughly tapped myself out with imagining ideas before I record cause like I said, once things start getting recorded it's hard to get back to what I was envisioning. I think it's because the real recordings begin to replace what my mind was hearing, and I can't really go back to the original feeling I had anymore. I think that answers your question, not really sure haha

I truly think I just figured out my number one problem with mixing. When I first started recording my own stuff, I would always play the drums from a keyboard and put it all on one stereo track, then I'd just compress and eq the entire set. Then I finally started using a program (addictive drums) that separates the snare, kick, overheads, etc... To me this was a ton more freedom, and I would just mix within the program AD itself. AD has compressors and and eq for you to work with, even saturation and some other stuff, but it's all very foreign to me, and the eq is total crap it's a little 3 band. I had always been told "route the drums out of AD so you can have full control over each separate part" but when I first tried to learn to do that, it just seemed complicated and I thought "meh, it's probably not a big deal, I'll keep mixing in AD" And I mean, I've never had a mix that didn't start with me working forever on the drum/bass lock, never feeling it was "there" but deciding at some point it's "good enough" and thinking I can work around it. Today I decided to take the time to truly separate my tracks, to see if it really would make a difference. Oh. My. Gosh. Being able to use my own compressors and eq's, being able to tweak the drums however I truly want? It's like the whole song falls into place easier cause the FOUNDATION is there now!! I just made a mix in like... 30 minutes that sounds about 10 times better than the one I'd worked on for like 2 days!! And it was just cause once the drums and bass were truly not stepping on each other or placed together funky, everything else was just like "small fader push, BAM it works..." So I think the lessen here is, you can't cut corners on the foundational rhythm aspects of your song!! I think I may have wasted a lot of time by not figuring this out sooner..... And also just to let you guys know my computer is on the fritz, not sure if I'll have it much longer, if I disappear, you'll know why, it won't be forever though, my wife and I will figure out SOMEWAY to keep me connected haha

And usually dubstep...

Well good production is all about clarity and vibe, I'd imagine it doesn't really matter too much the genre, if you know how to separate sounds and create movement that's gonna carry over to most any genre isn't it? I'd love to learn to produce like 70's artists were produced, I know a lot of that would have to do with room and mics used and analog gear etc, but at the same time I feel like it has a lot to do with approach as well. Things seem less compressed, less squashed back then, and whereas nowadays I feel like most instruments get the same level of attention, in the 70's you'd get a lot more dynamics in the mix, sometimes parts would seem to jump out over the top of everything else or swirl around your head. I feel like I still do hear productions of this nature, but they're rare.

I don't know if you're even here anymore, but if you're not, I'm gonna miss comments like these....

I was really in to Graham from Recording Revolution for a while, but honestly I'm not sure that guy's the best teacher anymore. At first I really felt he had a lot to offer, but after further examination I started to get the feeling he puts out videos just to put out videos and reiterates the same stuff a lot. I'll check point blank music school, I definitely could use some more knowledge.

Just started listening to Ah Um, I HAVE heard this one I just forgot about it! Yeah that opening track is killer, love the main riff. Watched a video from that BBC thing too, good night man that performance was flawless!!! The woman singing is incredible!!

I will check it out!

I LOVE him!! I'm only familiar with his Black Saint and the Sinner Lady album, but I meant to check out more and just never did. Thanks for sharing!

What's up my man! I totally understand really wanting to get heard, been there done that before. I'd like to suggest that perhaps the caps aren't necessary, you may be doing it to stand out, but I think it makes it difficult to get a feel for your tone. Just a suggestion, regardless, people will give you good advice here, I haven't actually seen too many hip hop acts yet, but all genres are welcome, so I hope you'll stick around!

What's up my man!

I think it was a 60 minutes interview where I saw him say that, a woman with short blonde hair was interviewing him and it looked like it was in the early 90's. She said "What's it like being on stage in front of 10,000 people?" He said "terrifying!" She said "Really?? A big star like you still gets scared on stage? Why?" And he said "Have YOU ever played played in front of 10,000 people???" hehehe I paraphrased but it was something like that.