Female Record Producer Yerosha
Week 1
I’ve been using Logic on and off for 10 years now and its amazing to think as an aspiring female record producer that only now have I got round to studying mixing techniques. So firstly it’s a great building, very inspiring and the class is a good size with everyone having a nice workstation.
So we started off with looking at how the rooms can play a part in the sound, choosing the right equipment. I for one have never been able to get excited about the different monitors for example, but hearing the differences and what they can do for your music has shined a new light and fundamentally at the end of the day, which I was very happy to hear, a mix is still down to your own personal taste and opinion as is the sound of the equipment compressors/monitors/reverbs etc. I’ve always viewed it as something far more complex and that I was just not good at it. But it’s about training your ear to understand where each sound should sit which we looked at for example, vocals and lead instruments tend to sit 1.2 kHz and also it’s about taking the time to play around with each plug in to get the sound you think is right.
A good tip that I was surprised to be promoted in the class was first and foremost name and colour code everything as it simply makes life easier when dealing with all the different tracks.
It was a great intro to a previously thought mind f__k of a subject ?
Week 2
This lesson was EQ and Gates. Al very simply and neatly explained the key to it being more about taking away then adding unless it’s for an effect. An example that really helped was a guitar recording and just by taking out the sub frequencies and slightly lifting the high end you get a nicer less booming guitar track. I still can’t really find the ‘mistakes’ or nasty frequencies to be cleaned but that’ll just take more practice.
It was brilliant to get onto Gates and Compression as this is fundamental in my mind in helping me create my own samples which as a female record producer, I’ve always struggled with and watched in wonder at how people make basic sounds turn into great ones.
I learnt what thresholds are about, letting in certain frequencies that you want, cutting out the others. Attack, holds and release all have a meaning now for me which is great rather than just staring at them and moving my mouse over to the presets for safety. What is nice is that it is always better to start from scratch rather than always using presets as it will be a better fit for your over all sound idea and now I know the basics to do that.
Again having the different dials on compression explained helped a lot, ratio and threshold and how they work to compress the range of the sound. And again good for effects as well, like having the attack up can make a snap sound which is good for kicks and snares.
And a nice touch to lunch times is going as a class to sit somewhere and eat rather than everyone milling about trying to guess where the nearest shops are. Next week reverbs and delays…
