After a few months of trying to play a professional studio producer alone in my bedroom, I’m starting to wonder if I took the wrong advice from a friend.
That friend told me that they prefer to record a clean guitar into the mix so that they can adjust it as they like later. The idea seemed to make so much sense at the time, and in fact for people who treat music as a profession, it does seem to be the best way to go about things.
I tried recording track by track and I got a very professional sounding demo, but something didn’t sit right. The life seemed to have been drained from the recording. It felt sterile.
I had gone from one extreme to the other. Too raw to too polished.
If you’ve been able to follow me this far, you can probably at least understand why I prefer experimental music to pop music 4 times out of 5. I like naturally occurring magic. I like sounds that come from the heart and most people don’t realize how heady most professionally recorded music is.
It can have some heart in it, but it usually has more head. Some people get good enough at the hard skills that they can make something polished and clean without it having a lot of thinking involved, but thats’s usually after years and years of experience, or it’s a whole production team that covers the artists tracks so everyone thinks they’re perfect.
I decided that I’d try a different approach from before and record everything exactly as I play it live. This seemed a bit underwhelming to me because I was having fun trying to rearrange the songs for a proper release instead of doing it the same as I do it live. Truth be told I love artists who have multiple versions of their songs that sound noticeably different.
But these songs have actually changed a few times and I can just as easily keep making new versions. I could release these versions as a kind of snapshot in time of what the songs sounded like in 2026.
In a way it feels like I’ve defeated the purpose of the live album I just released but I’m free to add layers and more effects anyway and I will. Backup vocals galore, bass and some surprises.
It actually makes recording a whole lot easier. I can use the same settings to record 4-5 of the tracks which are electric guitar based and do them all in one or two sittings.
If things go well iI can fast track these tracks and have 4 songs ready for mixing by the end of the month, moving my whole schedule a month forward. If it goes poorly we are back to square one.
I guess I should enjoy this process. This is exactly what leveling up looks like
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Ok so now it’s the end of the day, I managed to record take 2 of 3 songs. They sound pretty good but there were way more mistakes than I’m happy with. I’ve got to decide to start over or to patch them up.
In any case, this new philosophy of recording live and than editing and adding afterwards makes this whole process a lot easier for me. It’s also great practice!
I said it was take 2 but actually for one song it was take 1 and the demo for this song sounds amazing!!!
is a highly honest musical production reflection that invites to preserve the live essence of homemade instruments
I was going to say you kind of have to learn by experimentation but no that's me (and anyone else like me) I kind of learn by experimentation, everything I've ever learned has been by reading a metric boatload of tutorials, grumbling if I'm forced to watch video tutorials because the person making the video has produced something quite helpful that I can't seem to find anywhere else but doesn't like writing as I then have to watch it a few times trying to understand what's going on (normally fine if I can either see what's going on or there's subs but sometimes it requires a lot of rewinding) and then borderline disregarding everything I just read/watched and seeing what happens when I throw this accumulated knowledge through the blender that is my brain XD
So did you learn some new stuff? :D
I hate to say it but gpt has been fantastic help, faster than YouTube or “googling it” although fantastically wrong 1/5 of the time but in a way that doesn’t destroy anything and usually exposes itself.
Of course I learn a lot every time I do anything with music cause as you know I’m not someone content to keep doing the same thing forever.
Yesterday I learned how to record on mic and guitar at the same time in two channels, a fantastically necessary skill.
I tend to learn the best out of necessity so I need to push myself to do things that are just above my current skill level and I learn 20x faster than people say it’s supposed to take. Without that opportunity. I learn 30x slower. I suspect everyone learns well this way but only people who are inept otherwise get comfortable doing it because there literally is no other way 😆
Why do you hate to say it? Personally I view the LLM AI as a research assistant or that friend who knows a lot of stuff but you should still double check as even though they do try their best to check they will still get things wrong sometimes (or if you don't like personifying AI that much then I guess consider it a tool that's really good at grabbing and summarising a lot of information a lot faster than you can even if you're pro at this kind of thing).
On the other hand sibling dearest and I really don't like generative AI for various reasons and I will actively avoid posts that look like they might have used it (some exceptions might be made if it was used for a cover image or something and even then I'm approaching with caution).
Yay for learning new things :D
“Hate to say it” is just an acknowledgement of where this could all be headed if the companies behind these tools and other actors have their way. As a tool (personified or not) I love AI as I love many things about social media!!
Wow your presentation is apsolutly amazing, you and your team really make a great sounds and I really enjoy it. Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful and amazing presentation with us 🙏
It’s not much of a team yet 😝 it’s all me and another singer although we will have a a friend working on mixing/mastering on the album. This band just played one song with us with no preparation
Wow that's very nice from you, you are really doing a great job @selfhelp4trolls keep up the good works brother 🥳
Great