My Thoughts by R.E. Fort

Mastering your mix

How do you mater your recordings?

To be honest I didn’t have a good answer myself. So I decided to do a little research, Google to the rescue. On my Google search this site came up with a pretty good description of the term and processes http://homemusicrecording.com/music/master-your-recording/. The site lists these as mastering aspects to a song, Track volume optimization, Equalization levels, Tonal balance adjustment for consistency, Edit the final arrangement of spacing between songs, Create and edit PQ sub-code, Creation of CD master ready for mass duplication.

What a list, in my mind most of this does apply but when we are talking about the new great hit song my short list is, volume, EQ, left right balance per track, and effects revered chorus and the like per track. I apply these all too each track and some cases to a certain part of a track. It’s all a matter what I hear in the ghost ear, what’s not yet recorded or even played. We all have it happen to us. As song writers we start writing a song sitting at the keyboard or guitar and we hear the drums doing this, the guitar sounds like Benson here and Carlos here the strings increase here and so on.

So, on a guitar track I will record it with my trusty Virtualizer PRO by Behringer set with a simple revered. Once the part is recorded I will listen to it over and over editing EQ mix, a little brighter or deeper depending on the guitar I played. All of my audio files, are edited in Adobe Audition regardless if they were directly recorded in Audition or generated from MIDI plug-ins from Sonar. I do create multiple versions of them as well keeping the first clean recording and then editing and saving a copy this way I can apply the new track to the mix down and see how it sounds against it all.

My brother once told me the best recoding he has heard from me is a song on Island Life called By Request. In that song to be honest I wish I saved all of the settings I used because the mix is very clean. In short, I will master the guitar tracks cleaning them up adding my EQ and FX’s then go on to the remaining tracks doing much the same. On the master mix down of the song I do very little in the way of editing but with Audition you can control a lot per track and master. I will usually add some small amount of FX trying to give the music that almost live feel. I try to only apply EQ to each track there is nothing worse than going through the last mix and do your EQ on it and drop an instrument.

I was speaking with an old friend and guitarist I truly admire, Larry Green he was talking about the canvas of music. The foundation of the recording in my ears is the drums, keys, bass rhythm guitar and maybe the strings although they can be like the solo and melody instruments the brush the artist paints with. With that in mind I master music that way. The canvas has to be clean with all of the subtitle sounds and FX’s in place then I bring in the accents the brush strokes looking at that meters helps a lot then it’s on to the melody and chorus then lastly the final touches. I burn a CD drop it in the car and go for a drive. To be honest the best way I have found is to spend a day or two listening to other music trying to erase the not recorded but heard part of the music from my ear. Then listening to it in a car to me is better then headphones or even the most expensive monitors out there. I make my mental notes and back to the mix. In the case of By Request it took me almost a year to get that CD where I wanted it.

So to sum it up, if it sounds like it needs it, then master it. I master each track making many copies so I can go back and play with each then I bus it down to a master track and only adjust what is needed and I hope and pray that is only volume.

Enjoy and keep playing

All over the news and radio website everywhere we hear both sides of this issue. My thoughts are very simple on this topic, change is good let what comes of it come. This nation has grown because of change and we should be embarrassing it now as we look back and see just how much we have changed.  The concerns that I have heard are many but the ones that stand out in my mind are I don’t want to wait in longer lines for heath care, I don’t want to become a socialist nation, I don’t want to lose my freedom of choice. Well I have not read the entire purposed plan but I do look forward to any change that comes. I am insured through work and I have made the choice with every job I have had to have insurance no matter what the cost to me would be. I have a family and during the early years raising them money was as it always is tight. We had to go without things but not health insurance. Once before I was married a good friend of mine was in a terrible accident. He called me over as he waited for the paramedics to arrive and look at his arm. The bone was actually sticking out of the skin. I freaked out to be honest I have never been good with that type of thing. Well the paramedics arrived and mind you this is in the early 80’s. So they arrive start to treat him and then ask if he has insurance. The services stopped then and there they put a sling on his arm and said they could not drive him to county without some form of guarantee of payment. This has stuck with me to this very day over 20 years later and I still remember driving this kid from hospital to hospital all turning us away because A: no insurance and B: not life threatening. Now looking at that he did have one good option County hospital in down town LA. We waited there at least 6 hours for someone to even look at his arm. Now the term life threatening is an interesting phrase they were right at the time it was not life threatening he would live through it but if it got infected which considering his living arrangements it would have it would have developed into gangrene and would have caused him to loss the arm or worse. What I want and I believe this nation deserves is for all to have access to treatment, medications, preventative treatments and consultations and some form of insurance to help pay for it all. I remember back when my first child was born they walked intot he room and handed me and my wife a bill for over $3000 and we had insurance now when my daughter was born $0 not a dime. Different insurance companies and different plans yes but the latter should not have happened. It took my wife and I some time to pay him off.

As I said in the beginning of this rant, Change is good and we should embrace it. This nation started off looking for freedom of religion then we evolved to freedom from taxation without representation then we evolved to freedom from slavery then we evolved to equality for all men then we evolved to freedom, equal pay and equal treatment for women ok that last one we are still working on but my point with each of these changes these evolutions we became stronger. Our people became more educated and contributed to the nation and world in general. Change is what allows us to move forward. Running in fear of the “what if’s” would have kept this nation tied to horrible things that the many at the time considered standard and why change. Thank god that someone took it upon themselves to elevate all of us even the unwilling to a better place a better standard of living. Sure there are many unanswered questions and many things to be afraid of but what we should fear is not changing. Not moving forward and becoming stagnated like a dead body of water festering in our own ignorance.

This culture evolution that is on the brink of happening is an amazing thing. Think of it we are in a position now to provide to everyone a chance at health at least the basics of it. Think of the strides this will make in totally wiping out problems before they become catastrophic lets look at the big picture. A bad flu is running through our nation now. We are offering to everyone now a chance for a vaccine. Now let’s think outside of the box. A new problem raises its head but it’s unseen for too long. The population as a hold is not sick but the ones that can’t afford to see a doctor are becoming sick. The medical industry doesn’t see this new threat until it’s too late. It’s moved into the general population now and mutated into an unstoppable disease. If only those in the early days of this sickness had been treated seen by a doctor a simple pill would have put this strain down but now w count the losses in the millions. Our nation is devastated people are dying in the streets because we didn’t have the foresight to fix a simple problem allow everyone access to health care allow everyone the right to be healthy. I know I am writing science fiction here but how far off is this possibility. We have families now that do without health care until they are too sick to survive. We have people going broke trying to pay for medical bills that would not exist today if they had access to health insurance. We have people today that will skimp on their medications for serious problems because they can’t afford to pay for them. While big pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars on their drugs while the needy go without. They are seeing this now and are terrified haven’t you seen these commercials on television recently with the trailer offering people that need the medication and can’t afford it to contact them for assistance. They are seeing the writing on the wall and they should.

Our government needs to step in because the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies are not going to do it or they are not willing to bend and make the change. Look who is fighting and funding this fight. Always rememeber think for yourself dont be sheep look and read do your research. Its the insurance and pharmaceutical companies that are funing this fight and always have been. It’s time for someone to stand up and pull the rest of this nation forward into change into evolution kicking and screaming if most be to make sure we don’t become that festering pool of waste. Embrace this change don’t fear it look forward to a time when your children’s children ask, what do you mean you couldn’t see a doctor?