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Old 01-17-2019, 09:24 AM   #41
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Originally Posted by BenK-msx View Post
Ah reminds me of Billy Jean getting 96 mixes and then they chose the 2nd one.

Says it all really
It says it all FOR THAT MIX
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Old 01-17-2019, 10:08 AM   #42
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You mean it's good, or applies just in that context?

I like the fact it involves going around the houses seeking ever more perfection then realising they'd wandered past the optimal.

Happens so often!

Or as I believe the Stereophonics used in an album title 'gotta go there to come back'.
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Old 01-17-2019, 10:41 AM   #43
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Yeah, for that mix, number 2 was best. Sometimes you do need the many more mixes to get the best. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
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Old 01-17-2019, 10:47 AM   #44
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Xaos, what you said about your hearing is something else I need to keep in mind with respect to expectations. I spent two years working on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier back in the 70's and it's affected my hearing higher frequencies a bit. I think that's why a lot of what I do seems a little muddy to other people. Probably should look into something like a spectrum analyzer or something like that so I can see the music as well.
I'm currently working on a way to handle this. Products like Sonarworks Reference omit the most important factor—the listener. They calibrate to headphone averages or to a microphone, not your ears. There is a grey noise generator at mynoise.net that is the only way to do this. It solos ten bands of pink noise, and you adjust the slider for each band until it just reaches audibility. Then it creates a personal grey noise profile for you. There is a great article by Chris (Monty) Montgomery that tackles the issue of sample rates and resolution very well, but also includes great information about how the hairs in the ears are tuned to certain frequencies. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html (The videos he links to on this page are "must see" videos for anyone working with digital audio, btw.) I'm trying to get him and Chris Johnson from Airwindows (amazing donationware plugins for Windows, Mac, and Linux) to isolate which frequencies are the best to use for calibration and have an EQ curve for each ear that is personally calibrated that can sit after everything else on the master buss to get a truly flat frequency output for your equipment, room, and each ear. If I can't get them to makes something, I'll just do my best to figure out the best way to do it manually and post it on these forums. Pink noise has some issues as a calibration base, so it may be a matter of picking the right tones to use. If anyone has any knowledge or interest in this, please let me know. I could use some help, and I think it would make things a lot better for the whole musical community. Thank you for bringing it up! If a handful of us become Patrons of Chris' and add some voices to my request for that plugin, he'll write it. Here's a thread of REAPER users discussing their favorite Airwindows plugins. He's got some really good ones:
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=204289

[/QUOTE]And your point about todays music is spot on. God how I miss musicians. Give me Stevie Ray (God Rest His Soul) or David Gilmour making those strats weave musical tapestries over these computerized synthetic sounds that pass for music today.[/QUOTE]

So right! The list of people who were amazingly creative and innovative was so long I only picked a few that I thought most people might have forgotten. I think a big factor, outside of the fascination with the ease and cheapness of electronic music, is the stigma around drugs. Today's artists are shunned if they use mind expanding substances, and, while not entirely necessary, I think they do help people open up the doors to the creative parts of their mind. I'm not saying we should all be running around on acid, but a trip to Peru for an Ayahuasca journey would be a good part of any musical curriculum. Anything that is outside the caffeine, heroin, ecstasy, and alcohol cocktail that has turned people into disconnected, mindless dancing robots happy to hear anything that makes them want to move without thinking would be a great thing. I'll probably get banned from the forum for even suggesting such a thing, which would be exemplary of the problem I'm talking about. The guy who won the Nobel prize for inventing the method for cloning DNA made that discovery while on LSD. Sometimes we have to smash internal limitations of consciousness to have amazing insights and creative breakthroughs. Doesn't matter if you do it with breathing techniques and meditation or some of the newer methods. Creativity is about breaking rules and getting outside the box, not using reference tracks to make sure you're staying inside it! That's how you weave musical tapestries. I love that metaphor. Thanks for choosing it! The greatest music came from the time it was a counter-culture statement that made us think about what needed to be changed about the boxes we've been stuck in. Now, it's only an illusion of rebellion at best, and typically only a way to distract people from what is important. I'm not saying every song needs to foster a political and social revolution, but how many times do we need to hear "he/she broke my heart, and now I'm moving on" repeated? Likewise, how many times do we need to hear songs that are produced the way Chris Lord Alge or Greg Wells would have done it? Why are we all competing to find the trick to sound as loud as possible while still within the maximum loudness limits of a streaming service? What if we changed the rules and strove for maximum dynamics for a while instead? The Roose Bolton character in G.R.R.M.'s "Song of Ice and Fire" series spoke so quietly that everyone had to hush to hear what he was saying. Would it be terrible if we started challenging listeners to turn the distractions of the outside world down and pay attention to the music instead of feeding into the trend of making sure the song drowns everything out?

I think engineers have played a big role in the dumbing down of musicians by waving our magic wands over the piles of crap they give us and making it sound like it's gold. It's still just gold plated crap. A lot of guys I know say it's our job to make whatever we get sound good because that's what they are paying us to do, but what if we started practicing some discretion instead? If it was sex we were talking about, that philosophy would make us prostitutes. Let's make love with our music, not be musical whores.

And I think the answer to the OP's question is, it's good enough when it gives you the chills and goose bumps!
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Old 01-17-2019, 10:57 AM   #45
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Partying is way more fun than listening to music for most people. Crank it up!
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Old 01-17-2019, 11:05 AM   #46
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It's half a joke, but there really almost always is a point where I've been working with a thing and really liking it, except this one little thing and then oh that thing and then I finally can't find any one thing, but I actually just hate it all. Hit save. Walk away. Come back next day. It's exactly what I wanted the whole time. I have started to learn that when I'm really sick of it, it's actually done.
Working on a song/mix last year, pull it up, crap this that and that other thing kind of needs work. Four full hours later, I've destroyed what I had, I'm totally bummed out, "why do I even try". On a hunch...

I pulled up the version I began with (I use save as version), rendered both out, compared... I could hardly, if at all tell much difference. Reminded me pretty quickly how perception changes whether you are burned out or not.
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Old 01-17-2019, 11:08 AM   #47
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When you can play it for a friend you respect and not cringe at any point during the song.
This is so true. I can have a mix perfect to my ears and then, when I play it for somebody, it suddenly changes simply by the other person hearing it. It's bizarre.

They may not even hear the problem! But you sure will.
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Old 01-17-2019, 11:14 AM   #48
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This is so true. I can have a mix perfect to my ears and then, when I play it for somebody, it suddenly changes simply by the other person hearing it. It's bizarre.

They may not even hear the problem! But you sure will.
That's a perception thing (I've experienced quite a few times), it's a good thing though because it forces your brain to switch gears. It is pretty wild how much that changes in the scope of a couple minutes. "Best mix I've ever heard", someone walks in to listen... "Except for that, that, that, that, that, that, that and that".
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Old 01-17-2019, 11:22 AM   #49
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.

So, yeah, the talent of audiation is great to have as long as more people are using their own creativation.
This thread feels quite close to sitting in a pub with some knowledgeable mates - different views but very convivial and occasionally someone comes up with something very neat like that above or Serr's superb summing up "When you can play it for a friend you respect and not cringe at any point during the song."
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Old 01-17-2019, 11:53 AM   #50
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I do most of my mix evaluation standing around the corner at the front door smoking a cigarette. It's important to sit in front of the monitors for the critical nit-picky stuff, but I get a more holistic perspective from over there.
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Old 01-17-2019, 03:09 PM   #51
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As has been covered comprehensively in lots of posts here, and very interesting and informative they are - the time constraints of the past could maybe shed light and change attitudes - have a cut off point? very difficult when we are in our own recording environment with little or no financial strangle.

After having recorded demos, early 80's stylee when studio costs would sap our earnings, we'd end up with a cassette mixed down from a far superior medium - I would sit in A&R departments in London as they were playing knowing exactly when to cough or create a similar diversion! it worked a couple of times I thought, but it didn't in fact - as the cough points I was concerned about were just my musical vanity or ego glitches - the A&R folks were listening from an entirely different perspective - thankfully.

For us a track can seem to last a lifetime - a listener listens, nods or dances - sometimes makes a comparison to something else they think it resembles - the comparison may horrify but that's not our business - and moves on.
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Old 01-17-2019, 03:18 PM   #52
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When it conveys the feel of what was happening when it was recorded.
how about be ask 'can we get a copy'? maybe that might let us know we're done.
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Old 01-17-2019, 03:58 PM   #53
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Originally Posted by Xaos View Post
I'm currently working on a way to handle this. Products like Sonarworks Reference omit the most important factor—the listener. They calibrate to headphone averages or to a microphone, not your ears. There is a grey noise generator at mynoise.net that is the only way to do this. It solos ten bands of pink noise, and you adjust the slider for each band until it just reaches audibility. Then it creates a personal grey noise profile for you. There is a great article by Chris (Monty) Montgomery that tackles the issue of sample rates and resolution very well, but also includes great information about how the hairs in the ears are tuned to certain frequencies. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html (The videos he links to on this page are "must see" videos for anyone working with digital audio, btw.) I'm trying to get him and Chris Johnson from Airwindows (amazing donationware plugins for Windows, Mac, and Linux) to isolate which frequencies are the best to use for calibration and have an EQ curve for each ear that is personally calibrated that can sit after everything else on the master buss to get a truly flat frequency output for your equipment, room, and each ear. If I can't get them to makes something, I'll just do my best to figure out the best way to do it manually and post it on these forums. Pink noise has some issues as a calibration base, so it may be a matter of picking the right tones to use. If anyone has any knowledge or interest in this, please let me know. I could use some help, and I think it would make things a lot better for the whole musical community. Thank you for bringing it up! If a handful of us become Patrons of Chris' and add some voices to my request for that plugin, he'll write it. Here's a thread of REAPER users discussing their favorite Airwindows plugins. He's got some really good ones:
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=204289
And your point about todays music is spot on. God how I miss musicians. Give me Stevie Ray (God Rest His Soul) or David Gilmour making those strats weave musical tapestries over these computerized synthetic sounds that pass for music today.[/QUOTE]

So right! The list of people who were amazingly creative and innovative was so long I only picked a few that I thought most people might have forgotten. I think a big factor, outside of the fascination with the ease and cheapness of electronic music, is the stigma around drugs. Today's artists are shunned if they use mind expanding substances, and, while not entirely necessary, I think they do help people open up the doors to the creative parts of their mind. I'm not saying we should all be running around on acid, but a trip to Peru for an Ayahuasca journey would be a good part of any musical curriculum. Anything that is outside the caffeine, heroin, ecstasy, and alcohol cocktail that has turned people into disconnected, mindless dancing robots happy to hear anything that makes them want to move without thinking would be a great thing. I'll probably get banned from the forum for even suggesting such a thing, which would be exemplary of the problem I'm talking about. The guy who won the Nobel prize for inventing the method for cloning DNA made that discovery while on LSD. Sometimes we have to smash internal limitations of consciousness to have amazing insights and creative breakthroughs. Doesn't matter if you do it with breathing techniques and meditation or some of the newer methods. Creativity is about breaking rules and getting outside the box, not using reference tracks to make sure you're staying inside it! That's how you weave musical tapestries. I love that metaphor. Thanks for choosing it! The greatest music came from the time it was a counter-culture statement that made us think about what needed to be changed about the boxes we've been stuck in. Now, it's only an illusion of rebellion at best, and typically only a way to distract people from what is important. I'm not saying every song needs to foster a political and social revolution, but how many times do we need to hear "he/she broke my heart, and now I'm moving on" repeated? Likewise, how many times do we need to hear songs that are produced the way Chris Lord Alge or Greg Wells would have done it? Why are we all competing to find the trick to sound as loud as possible while still within the maximum loudness limits of a streaming service? What if we changed the rules and strove for maximum dynamics for a while instead? The Roose Bolton character in G.R.R.M.'s "Song of Ice and Fire" series spoke so quietly that everyone had to hush to hear what he was saying. Would it be terrible if we started challenging listeners to turn the distractions of the outside world down and pay attention to the music instead of feeding into the trend of making sure the song drowns everything out?

I think engineers have played a big role in the dumbing down of musicians by waving our magic wands over the piles of crap they give us and making it sound like it's gold. It's still just gold plated crap. A lot of guys I know say it's our job to make whatever we get sound good because that's what they are paying us to do, but what if we started practicing some discretion instead? If it was sex we were talking about, that philosophy would make us prostitutes. Let's make love with our music, not be musical whores.

And I think the answer to the OP's question is, it's good enough when it gives you the chills and goose bumps![/QUOTE]


More or less absolutley right mate.

Any path is the right one if you choose it - the results are yours and if you share them you never know who might benefit or be enthralled.

Music and it's writing thereof is a conundrum for me - I have no ego in the fight, and I only seek to please, pose a question or bombard an emotion - tricky without words being sung, but that's my bag.
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Old 01-17-2019, 03:58 PM   #54
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Originally Posted by BenK-msx View Post
many here are wrinkly ...
tullamore dew, no dry skin, no wrinkles

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Originally Posted by BenK-msx View Post
issue with them is...
topic monday 'there are no rules',
topic tuesday 'your 5 biggest mistakes'

thx pro, will you mind try again?
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Old 01-17-2019, 04:00 PM   #55
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Originally Posted by sqkychair View Post
This is so true. I can have a mix perfect to my ears and then, when I play it for somebody, it suddenly changes simply by the other person hearing it. It's bizarre.

They may not even hear the problem! But you sure will.
I believe it mimics performance anxiety.
Yeah, it sometimes only takes listening to the first 4 seconds.
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Old 01-17-2019, 04:03 PM   #56
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Wrinkly ear drums perhaps

Think I have translated that and yes, it's an easy roundabout to get stuck on -

If only there were only 5 mistakes to make...

Thought recently the number of dependant and changing variables that are at play in a mix that's also your music is insane, sort of miraculous anything gets done to any level.
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Old 01-18-2019, 08:51 AM   #57
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I get the mix as good as I can without a reference.

Then I load an appropriate reference track, *laugh my ass off at how far my ears strayed from the path, then knuckle down for a few hours and fix the errors of my ways. Then I park it for two weeks.

After that, if I can play it back and nothing blatant pops out at me, then it's good enough.


*As time goes by, I find my unaided mixes get better, so the overall amount of ass laughing has decreased over the years : )
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Old 01-18-2019, 04:13 PM   #58
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it's good enough for now...
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Old 01-19-2019, 01:32 PM   #59
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Wrinkly ear drums perhaps
yeah, most when spouse calls for shopping
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