GregB

Yamaha H5 powered monitors + Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro monitoring headphones (plus shelf hifi + PC speakers for 'real-world' sound)

Hi John I know age is no barrier but, turning 70 this year, I have, in my my own mind, closed my late-in-life creative burst with a sigh of great satisfaction at having been able to (quite unexpectedly until it all happened): Write my first song at age 50, including it in my first co-written album in 2002 ... a wonderful but inexperienced foray into a commercial studio: "Not All It Seems". After retiring from my IT career, cowrite and record an album in 2015, this time home-produced and with a different collaborator: "Prescient". Complete my magnus opus 30-track debut home-produced solo album in 2020: "The Flat White Album". And, finally, in 2021, home-produce my fourth album, a solo re-imagining of the original 2002 album, hence called "Not All It Seems - Redux". Plus created music videos for 51 of the 54 tracks. Not burnt out, per se, just feeling the whole songwriting/producing challenge was grabbed by the throat and bent to my will. I'll keep on noodling on guitar and piano, but I've felt I've found a neat place to stop with all the technical stuff ... there's no longer a need to battle the expense and frustration of continuous OS/hardware/software upgrades and glitches 😄

Hi Peggy To get that independent appraisal from 'trusted sources', I found a local studio that had produced music 'sounds' I really liked (e.g. more indie/acoustic rather than pop/rock) and asked if they would critique my album mix/master prior to release. It was to be specifically about the technicals and NOT whether they liked the music (which I think helped remove any potential awkwardness for them). Fortunately, they were happy to oblige and weren't at all sniffy about people doing stuff at home and bypassing commercial studios. They would charge their normal hourly engineer/producer rate. I brought in a stick with the WAVs and we sat in the control room. The husband and wife team (both writers/performers themselves) went through, one track at a time, doing a real-time analysis in their familiar listening environment. Their listening skills were astounding in identifying issues I had been deaf to, often stopping a track and pointing out things. e.g. the 'bloom' of the kick drum needing compression, holes or crowding in particular EQ bands, flamming of instruments. Once pointed out, the remediation was relatively quick and easy for me back home, and the resulting tracks were definitely better. We got through approx 6 tracks per hour. They'd sometimes offer production comments, e.g. could do with shaker/tambourine here, consider doubling-up the strings there, use a Verb on the master track to bind everything into one 'space'. There were several benefits of the experience: - relatively cheap and under my control (I could stop at anytime and not continue) - because they were husband/wife, I got two people and twice the experience for the price of one - besides writing/production/engineering, she was a singer/percussionist and he was guitar/bass/keys/drums - we were roughly the same age and they were nice people - we got on well - they used the same DAW as me, so some advice was highly specific and relatable - I learned a lot in a short time, and that knowledge could be applied to everything in future - it was a magical experience listening in a professional environment, and huge fun - they were quite complimentary, giving me confidence that, while I am no doubt an amateur, I wasn't too far off the mark in terms of playing, recording, arranging and mixing This approach to having a final review by studio professionals was applied to the last two albums, a total of 42 tracks. Well worth it and great memories too. Regards, Greg