As I write this I'm over tired.. I'm up past my bed time.. because I'm watching the Red Sox game.. I don't generally watch these games until it comes to the post season.. and so here we are. But that's not really what I came here to talk about.. oh no, today it's about my plan of attack, so lets dig into this a little bit.
I'm now looking into mastering Indra's Net, a CD of mine that I made to give away.. Lets explore / talk about this project.
It seems like ages ago, but back in the days when credit was cheap I moved a whole lot of money off a Guitar Center credit card onto a card my mom got in the mail.. for putting the money on this card you got a free budget Dell lap top... which turned out to be a good deal faster then my main computer. Shortly after emptying the Guitar Center card there was an incredible deal on a software bundle known as "Native Instruments Komplete." So somehow I got a free computer and some amazing new software instruments.
Komplete is very bad ass... and I think it particularly seemed so at the time when so many of the instruments in the bundle had so recently won so many awards. However much bad ass - ness you want to attribute to Komplete, there is no question that there is a hell of a lot of technology and power to be found in Komplete... And this was a huge kind of studio upgrade to acclimate myself to... And basically Indra's Net was my acclimation.
The biggest acclimation challenge was coming to grips with various types and approaches to sound synthesis and sampling. For something close to 50% of Indra's Net I wasn't bothering to do any patch editing... It was all factory patches for me baby.... I mean it was just about seeing what these instruments were capable of... You have all these new tools and you don't even know what they are good for.. You're trying to use a hammer to put a screw into a board.. Eventually you get the swing of things.. and that's when you start exploring the true depth of the technology.
Maybe I should try and express just how insane this bundle is... from the box on Komplete 3 (I started at 2, and 5 is the current, just out, version) "Komplete 3 Includes 13 sound tools: synthesizers, instrument emulations, samplers, and effects." So how can I put this into basic terms.. You have 13 instruments of various levels of depth.. But lets just say that Absynth alone comes with over 1000 patches.. so 1000 sounds are already programed into Absynth's libraries.. and that's before you get around to rolling your own.. pluss there's a place online where you can trade you're creations with other members of the community making it somewhat endless... If this wasn't enough you got 25 GB worth of sample libraries for 4 different types of samplers...
So just learning one software instrument... learning the whole of it.. even for a fairly simple instrument.. (particularly when you're new to that type of synthesis / technology) can take you a few weeks.. And believe me.. some of these go very very deep...
At a certain point I got into the murky depths of sound synthesis with this stuff. I found Absynth an absolute joy to program.. Just really really neat... The FM-7 is based off the DX-7 which is perhaps most famous as the sound of Brain Eno.. FM synthesis has a little bit of a learning curve associated with it.. I can pretty confidently tell you at this point.. that I'm not a master of the medium.. but I have crafted a small library of sounds that you can hear on Indra's Net. Kontakt is a crazy sampler.. And its gone through a number of revisions from the first version I started to play with.. The trouble with it is I never have enough RAM or processor power to take full advantage of what it has to offer.. So I don't know that there's any examples in Indra's Net of Kontakt..
I think when I got Komplete it's list price was around $1,500.. and I think its now common that you can pick it up for a $1000... Though I got it for a lot less.. I think around $600 or so? Also in my tool library is Reason.. which retails at around $500... which strangely doesn't appear too much on Indra's Net... but Reason also comes with a number of synths, samplers, and effects...
Anyway this is not exactly what I wanted to talk about.. So lets get to the tail of mastering...
I haven't totally started the mastering process... But here's what I'm doing: My computer has a crummy mono speaker on it.. it also has an expensive 18 channel sound interface that connects it up to a 5.1 THX surround sound system.. or $200 head phones.. So I've been listening to this stuff through the crummy speaker.. the reason being is that many people who will listen to this stuff will not hear it under ideal conditions.. the goal of mastering is to make it sound as groovy as possible on a crummy system as well as on a good system.. Basically I'm just going through all these files to listen to on the crummy speaker to see what I have.
Here's the plan of attack on this:
For the time being I have 4 environments where I could approach the problem of mastering: Reason, Live, Peak, and Digital Performer. For serious mastering you would probably want better tools then this.. in the form of waves mastering bundles... But... Well...
One of the first things I have to do is get on the phone with Steinberg.. makers of Cubase. I own Cubase, after all, and there dongle system has sort screwed me over.. so that I can't use Cubase. I've sorta not let it get to me.. I have enough tools that I can just sorta.. move over.. but its time I see if there tech folks can save me.. If they make me drop a lot of money to fix the problem... then to quote some of the fine folks of the TWIT podcast network "Steinberg is dead to me." ALL of Indra's Net was produced with Cubase... The best way to fix problems in some of the tracks is to open up the files in Cubase.. and fix them there.. If I can do this.. then you can argue that mastering isn't even all that important.. and for that matter Mastering could also be done with Cubase.. which would be nice as Cubase would be the program I have the strongest mastery of... with respect to this sorta thing..
If I can't get into Cubase to rework the authoring files.. then that means the mastering process will be, in certain places, about making the best of a less then ideal situation...
There are, believe it or not, some pretty good free tools out there.. That will do some of the job I'm looking to do.. that will handle the mastering process.. The trouble is that I don't know were to start with these free tools.. and I'm working under a pretty tight deadline here.... so compromises are going to have to be made.
Ok ok.. so lets get out of this music talk... lets look at the big picture here: In a couple weeks comes podcamp... and promoting my music to podcasters is one part of my goal.. lets look at what we got here:
I have 2 podcasts.. or I plan to get 2 podcasts in gear by podcamp.. It is possible that I might shoot for 3.. So one of the more important objectives is to get these podcasts ready to go for podcamp.. also "printed materials," which is to say my business card printed up. I might like to hand out CDs of Indra's Net.. I'd like to have postcard / sticker sized stuff for all the podcasts and my music.
Next morning:
Well the sox fell a part last night.. I say they should of pulled Shilling that much earlier, and kept that other fellow in longer, and maybe not brought that dude, that my mom was booing, in.. and they might have won the game..
So my basic goal for podcamp is.. Well let me see if I can explain this right.. In my view, the secret to social media marketing.. is developing relationships.. It's all about relationships. I think this is true of business in general but.. Somehow in social media the importance of this seems amplified. Basically every single person at podcamp will be an influencer, and there will be 1200 of us. What I mean by influencer should have been covered in my last blog entry.. [an entry I may or may not post latter] But basically... if you're showing up at podcamp.. there's a reasonably good chance that you're some sort of a podcaster.. now.. you might have a big audience or you might have a small audience.. maybe just 5 of your friends listen.. but ether way.. you're an influencer.. and you're going out of your way to pursue this thing called podcasting....
It's sorta like if you wanted to go get publicity for whatever you were trying to get publicity for.. you would probably want to develop a relationship with the press... that onto its self doesn't get you press, but it doesn't hurt.
If you were being ultra strategic about this.. which I'm afraid I'm not really being.. you would say that over the course of the year.. you meet lots of people from all over the world.. via social media.. via online means.. and when podcamp comes.. this is your opportunity to meet that person in the flesh...
Anyway.. so its about building relationships.. How do you build a relationship? I mean this in the sense that ok.. you're in this convention center with 1200 strangers, now what? How do you go from that to having relationships? Well I think you go there with a mind set of sharing your passion.. "I am excited about X, X is so exciting because... " So some of that passion is for podcasting, and then some of it is for whatever it is that gets you up in the morning.. And my feeling is if you can share this sorta thing.. if you can connect with people on this kind of level.. I mean if you can be really real about it....
Latter that night, feeling over tired:
I'm working on "landing a dream job." Obviously... what technology one has to work with has a big effect on what one is able to do.. and landing the "dream job" is a kind of job that would help fund, in a rather game changing sorta way, the sorts of projects I'm talking about here. The topic of dream jobs is out of the scope of this entry.. but lets get back to the topic of music, technology, and budgets:
To some extent talking about how much a set of tools costs should give some indication on complexity. I have a notion of a kind of dream studio I'd like to own. That dream studio isn't really "that" expensive.. I mean.. does some calculations in his head..
Drum roll please.. a rough guess: $9,270. When I say rough I know there's any number of things I could spend money on that aren't a part of that number.. that number is, after all, a kind of "dream studio on a budget." Not only this but we are only talking sound.. But that is an amazingly small number, isn't it? Yeah, I guess for a dream studio you should add a couple grand to that, but still that's pretty small.. Anyway, so that's a number that.. hell, I could afford that with much less then a "dream job." And I should maybe say at this moment that what I think of as a "dream job" has nothing to do with how much money you make.. but based off "what my dream job is," the sorta money one can make doing that sorta thing.. is what I'm talking about here.. not to be to cryptic.
Anyway.. so if we understand that your tools have implications on what you can do.. lets explore what what the next CD of mine would likely sound like.. or be about.. if I were able to get this money together.
As I listen to my work.. I keep thinking that I want to make a kind of music that is.. Word's are failing me here. I see any number of huge revolution's happening in my work.. These revolutions have a lot to do with "how I work." We are talking about tools that open up new possibilities with regard to process.. So lets just say this is one layer of it.... And this is a pretty complex layer.. which we won't go too far into.
Mix engineering taken to the next level.. In this dream studio I would really have the tools to do it right... from which I mean everything from the sort of effects library sorta tool set for the mixing.. to the acoustic treatment of the studio space.. to proper reference monitors.
I suppose we should talk about process a little bit here: We are talking about a studio where you can invite musicians over to work.. where there are instruments there that people can play.. 2 Guitars, 1 Bass Guitar, 1 Keyboard, 1 Electronic drum kit. I can just imagine taking the drum lessons!
A day latter:
In that budget of $9,270 is included $1000 for effects.. This is loosely based off the price of Waves bundles.. like say $900 for Waves 360 Surround Native which is for mixing in surround sound.. Or Waves Gold Native Bundle which is now sell at $972 street.. These are the effects you need for mix engineering.. A cheaper bundle from waves that looks pretty good is the Waves Native Power Pack for $375. Some of the Waves bundles have over lap.. where you'll see the same effects in different bundles..
Another nice bundle from Waves is the Waves SSL 4000 Collection Native for $750. SSL consoles are prized in the studio system.. a console being, essentially.. the kind of mix controller you see in the movies.. or in pictures of your favorite band.. that part of the studio that looks like some kind of a space shuttle cockpit controller.. SSL or Solid State Logic, is a leading maker of such consoles and the Waves SSL 4000 collection gives you the kind of compression, EQ, and dynamic controls found in the actual consoles..
Another tool I'm looking at that fits into the same basic category is Focusrite Liquid Mix that runs at about $800 on musicians friend.. Liquid Mix uses a special DSP box, lets call it.. that operates as a control surface.. and it will run 32 channels of compression and EQ.. that your computer's processor doesn't have to deal with. What's nice about this unit is it uses "convolution" to model various vintage EQs and Compressors.. It ships with 20 EQs and 40 Compressors, with more available for free via an online library.
If your goal is to have a serious studio for Mix Engineering you don't just by one of these bundles.. you have many bundles from which you can mix and match.... So you can see, just based off of what I've mentioned thus far.. that you could easily invest $3000 in effects alone. For me.. lets say my ideal might be the Waves Gold Bundle, plus the surround sound bundle, and the Liquid Mix bundle.. So we are talking $2,672... so Add $1,672.. to that $9,270 budget...
What I want to be able to do is get VERY serious about my mix engineering.. I mean I want to be in a situation where I have the tools, at least, to compete with the best pros in the industry... That doesn't mean I'll be anywhere near them in terms of what I'm able to achieve.. But that I can seriously aspire to be on that sorta level... and have the proper tools for that journey and adventure.
What I'm doing is very distinct from what "the pros are doing." Basically you see various mixing styles centered around various musical styles.. And what I'm trying to do is invent a new style.. So there is a broad set of skills and knowledge that's broadly a part of the mix engineer skill and knowledge sets that I need to be drawing from.. And I ought to be studying the production styles of musical forms that in some way related to what I'm trying to do, and the directions I'm trying to go in.
So at this point you might wonder.. if you're not up on all this technical mumbo jumbo... what exactly would this mean to the music I produce.
A little bit latter:
Well.. lets take a look at my sound work online.. what I've made available thus far: If you take a look at
Viveka.. This is a CD that was produced on a G3 350 and a G4 867.. with Cubase, Reason, and Reaktor. Now Take a look at
Indra's Net... who's tracks I'm giving away for free.. This was done with Cubase and Native Instruments Komplete (Which includes Reaktor) and there's a little bit of Reason going on.. And here is where my exploration of Mix Engineering is beginning to get serious.. It's not as if on Viveka I didn't know about Mix Engineering.. or basics of it.. but it's Indra's Net where it gets serious.. and you can really hear the difference... and of course the Lap Top and the tools with which it's produced is much more powerful.
Now My Current Project is
G.G. Moe Cow Gay.... The Tracks that are up there so far are done with Reason on the Lap Top and Live on the old G4 867.. along with some of the Native Instruments stuff..
So what do we hear going from Viveka to GG? We hear an evolution in sound scape... Where the complexity of sounds goes up pretty dramatically.. both in terms of the complexity of the sounds that are a part of the over all sound pallet, the sound pallet its self, and in the way the sounds are combined.. Indeed when we get to G. G. we really feel like we've left the planet all together..
I'm listening to some of this music as we speak.. feeling transfixed by it...
Well anyway.. In many ways the music I've been able to do so far.. is ridiculously limited by my technological limitations. Especially when you consider that half my software I can't take full advantage of because of how weak my computers are!
What would happen with the upgrade is.. Imagine that every individual instrument.. Is a channel.. in a computer.. right now.. that that channel can me fed into auxiliary channels... of which there can be a fairly limited number.. which is in large measure how the sense of space is created in the mix.. If I were able to upgrade my computer, and these tools.. 1, The number of auxiliary channels you can have loaded with various effects to create a sense of space goes way up.. as well as the quality of effects.. Plus you have a level of "dynamic control," and I know this is a little in the rabbit hole.. but by dynamic control I mean how you can control fluctuations in loudness across frequency space.. In order to make a good mix.. you isolate the different instruments into there own individual frequency spaces.. so that you can clearly hear all the details of all the sounds.. And you can control how loud the over all channel is.. while maintaining its sorta performance integrity..
Because my music is as radical as it is.. the approach to mixing it is also unconventional.. It's a style where the spacial location of instruments and sounds move around.. as well as what frequency space they take up at any given time.. At the moment I don't really have all that much precision in my ability to control this sorta thing... My current process provides ways of compensating..
Maybe the best way of saying it is to imagine what we are talking about here is how we paint a sonic picture.. And what I want to be able to do is bring you into this incredibly lush universe.. Where not only can you see that there's grass over there.. but you can see every blade of grass, and you can see how those blades of grass are responding to the wind..
I mean I want to create these incredibly dense sonic sculptures... Like maybe I spent a week working out a guitar part.. and recording that performance.. And when that guitar is doing its thing.. we've got a production style that is very much a heavy metal sorta style.. So we are like.. off in the land of Maryln Manson, Korn, and Rob Zombie.. and maybe Nine Inch Nails.. And it has that kind of rich sound design.. We are off in a very Goth sorta land scape.. And there's a way that composition is... well its nothing like any of the metal styles we are describing here.. Compositionally its my sorta madness..
Latter:
What I find compelling.. particularly about the G.G. Moe Cow Gay tracks.. is the way it doesn't feel exactly like we are listening to music.. in the sense of melody and harmony.. It is more like we are in a world of living sounds.. who have a behavior that.. though is composed with notions of harmony and melody.. we do no hear in those terms for much of the time.
Behavior to me.. is something I think about when programing digital instruments.. depending on the instrument. In Absynth, for instance.. you can program how it sounds via "envelopes." Envelopes are common fare in digital instruments.. But Absynth's innovation was to have envelopes that can evolve over long periods of time. The best way to think of this is to think of a grid.. or lets say a bar chart. On this grid or bar chart you have horizontal and vertical space.... the vertical represents a number.. lets say 1-100, and the horizontal represents time. That number of 1-100 can be connected to any parameter of the instrument you like.. So it could be pitch.. it could volume, it could where the sound is coming from in space from left to right.. or even it surround sound.. It could be how much of a particular filter or effect is applied to the sound.. The absynth, basically, has 3 oscillators.. The oscillator is the start of the sound.. or the source.. in it you could have various sound wave types.. you could have a sampled sound.. aka a recording of some sort, or any number of other things.. all 3 of the oscillators could have its parameters controlled by different envelops so that the relationships of the of the various elements of the sound created can be controlled independently.. and you can have a sense of the sound evolving over time.. In addition.. there are certain key points in the envelop.. for instance.. if when you hit a key on the keyboard.. there is a part of the envelope that is triggered... and when you let go of the key there is yet another pat of the envelop that's used.. You can 'snap the envelop to a grid' which can make the sound being controlled operate in a rhythmic pattern.
The result of all this is that the program you create will behave / respond in a particular way to your performance on a keyboard, or to how you program a MIDI sequence that it is to play.. These implications must be taken into consideration when you perform or compose with it.. The next layer happens in the mix.. Lets say you have a program where the components of the sound move a little bit.. between the left and right speakers.. aka the stereo field. Now imagine the the channel this instrument is on is fed into an auxiliary track that has on it a stereo delay of some sort. The delay makes it so that when a sound is played.. it will echo... over time.. the echos will grow quieter over time.. and the sound of the echo is somehow different from the original sound.. so lets say it grows "less sharp" sounding over time. But also.. imagine that the echo happens in the same place with respect to the stereo field, as the original sound.. and the "less sharp" quality makes it feel like it's further back in space.. Now as you play / compose with that instrument.. that is moving around in space.. you automate the mix.. so that though the sound its self, because of its program, moves around in space.. in the stereo field a certain amount.. your also moving it around in stereo space on the level of the mix.. All of this is creating additional "issues" which you will need to take into consideration as you're composing.. For instance.. if you play one note, and then you play the next note up.. a semi tone up.. the harmony created between the sound you are playing and the echo of the delay.. will be a dissonant harmony: It will sound dark..
This is what I mean by the "behavior" of sounds.. and composing for behaviors.. As of this moment.. it's too quite to hear unless you really crank it up (though I'll be fixing this soon) If you listen to
"A Short Trip To Another Day" on Indra's Net you can hear an example of what I'm describing.. This is an ambient track....
Day's latter:
Wow, this is sorta an interesting blog entry.. I go pretty far into music production.. probably much deeper then the casual reader had ever really thought about.. I mean.. Perhaps you'll listen to you're CDs / iPod a little different then you did yesterday... It's kind of neat and interesting though, don't you think? lol, Yeah,
download Indra's Net, ha?
Anyway, so plan of attack.. I never really got to this did I? Side tracked by music production.
So Podcamp is now only a week away.. and I have to work my butt off to get ready for it... one project was to create a business card, and get it printed.. which turned out to cost more then twice as much as I had expected so I have no idea on earth how I'm going to pay for it.. which has me in less then the ideal state of mind about things.. But that said.. I'm really excited about how it turned out, so check it out:
I'm really digging how this came out.. The other side, of course, is:
What I like about the first side is "The Matt Searles Blog & Podcast: Thoughts and Sound of Media Artist and Thinker Matt Searles." It's a real big challenge to figure out how to convey what you're doing inside of a sound bit and I think I've done it.. So I'm very happy about that. I mean I really feel like this really get to the heart of who I am.. And I love how the elements come together...
You have the Matt Searles logo which is.. such crazy typography that you can barely read it.. but it looks beautiful.. almost like some kind of Manga thing.. Then beneath this we have Iron Maiden type typography... And then we have typography that.. It reminds me of the packaging of Criterion Collection films.. its somehow sophisticated.. in a kind of authoritative way.. So there's a very interesting way that these play together.. That again I think is expressive of where I'm coming from.
Then there's the G.G. Moe Cow Gay painting in the background.. which I use, for instance, as a repeating background on my twitter page.. Also there's a weird graphic of my face that looks like a painting is tattooed on my face... this is the graphic I use in iTunes for the podcast.. Which, because the "tattoo" is actually the painting.. has the same color as the painting... So they go together to create this big kind of block.. which contrasts with the other block that is a close up of my face.. which also happens to be the profile pic I use on all of my social network sites... and is also the same pic which the painting is tattooed onto on to... So there's a lot of interesting things going on that way to...
If this were not enough.. the G.G. Moe Cow Gay painting also appears, all be it very darkly, on the Asymmetric Biz Cult side of the business card.. And I think there are interesting ways the two sides play against each other.
Anyway.. so the feeling I get from the Matt Searles Podcast side is.. Here is a serious artist.. It's as if we all see lots of art all the time.. but here we are encountering someone who's a few steps elevated from all that.. And the interesting thing about the close up of my face is.. You almost read it like.. this guy is probably "a great artist" and yet.. he's not living an easy life as a result.. He is someone who suffers as much as you do.. maybe even more then you do..
And then how does that play with the heavy metal typography? I mean how do all these parts play against one another.. I think there are very interesting and subtle things going on here.. The way the painting over my face is almost like a tattoo, almost like war paint or something.. And the fact that this business card is a part of "personal branding" and all this kind of thing..
But this isn't into the subject of plan of attack, is it? It seems like I'd have to write a lot to finish up the story.. and frankly.. its already a little long.. so I think I'll just post this as is...