I've finished my first album!

[Dave S]

Hey Joost,

There's only female vocal samples on one track out of nine!  (OK, two
out of twelve if you count the remix of that track!)

I could tell you about my process, but then I'd have to kill you!  ;-)

Welll... mostly just doodling around and seeing where I end up, then
scrapping (or at least never finishing) about 4/5 of everything and
running with the stuff I'm really into.  I have loads of unfinished
material that was almost a part of this album, and I might finish some
of it... or I might not.  Who knows?  I generally find it a lot easier
to come up with new stuff than finish old stuff, but sometimes it
happens.

Gear used was mostly FL Studio 8, lots of samples (most significant
samples were home-brew, found stuff, or home-mangled, but plenty of
the drums are from sample packs, or at least began life in sample
packs).  Quite a few VSTis, nearly all freebie VST effects (I have a
favourite selection which seem to crop up a lot because I'm addicted
to them), occasional bits of hardware - the Alesis Ion, Nord Micro
Modular and Korg Poly-800 each make a few appearances.

Does that tell you enough?

As for comparisons between the mixes and mastering, to be honest, I
was quite surprised how very similar they sounded.  I was in an email
dialogue with the mastering engineer for several months before he
actually mastered the album, and he listened to quite a few things and
gave me small tips on the mix before I sent them off to him.

In general, he's tamed my bass frequencies a little bit, and other
than that, it's not particularly different from what I sent off, other
than that it's limited.  The unmastered version of it was all sounding
at a reasonably similar level before I sent it off - you just had to
turn the volume dial up a little more than usual.

But early on in the process, I was unsure if I was going to be
"mastering" this myself, or getting a friend to do it as a favour, or
paying someone to do it.  In the end, I decided to pay someone to do
it, but I had started out with the aim that I wanted there to be
almost nothing at all for the mastering engineer to do except apply
overall limiting, because I wasn't sure what route I was going to be
taking.

So I made sure that I got each mix of each tune as good as I could
possibly manage to get it, and never allowed myself to think "that can
get fixed in the mastering".  If I could hear anything that needed
fixing, I went back to my mix.  (Sometimes, I went back to my mix a
lot of times!!!)

What is really interesting for me is to compare the final mixes with
the previous versions of some of these tunes - the musical arrangement
is usually virtually identical, but the mix has just been improved no
end.  The difference is utterly astounding - like listening to them
with a new set of ears, almost.

All of this came from stuff I learned in the last few months.  I
posted some links to some of it not that long ago - "gain structure
and mixing", this thread here:

http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=74832

A very useful thread indeed, and where I first encountered Bob Macc
who mastered my album.

Anyway, there you go - more late night rambling from me!

Thanks for the feedback (and to others who have sent me some too),
much appreciated everybody!

Cheers,

~Dave


On 27 March 2011 19:42, Joost Schuttelaar <joost at joostschuttelaar.nl> wrote:
> So played it 5 times now, it's great! Excellent production values and just a very nice listen all in all. Enough distinction between the tracks but also a coherent style - essential for an album.
>
> It's great coding music too :) the only thing I don't care for too much are the female vocal samples sometimes - but I guess that's kinda typical for the genre.
>
> So tell us a bit about the process, gear used, software, etc etc :)
>
> Would also be curious to hear an A/B between your mix and what your mixmaster did to it.
>
> Keep on going Dave :)