3 New Year’s Resolutions for Music Producers
Graham Cochrane of The Recording Revolution.
With a new year comes new studio resolutions, and Graham Cochrane of The Recording Revolution has concocted three great resolutions just in time for 2019. Whether you’re a beginning music producer or advanced mixing engineer, you’ll be able to benefit from Cochrane’s suggestions.
Don’t buy another piece of gear without creating a song that warrants it. It’s easy to get caught up thinking you need a new piece of equipment, just because you saw a “professional” using it. To identify if you truly “need” a piece of gear versus “want” a piece of gear, ask yourself whether or not it will prevent you from completing your project at a level that meets your standards.
For example, if you don’t own a de-esser, and the vocals you record always sound sibilant, it may be a good idea to buy a de-esser. If you already own three de-essers, but some new de-esser just hit the market with a flashy GUI, you probably don’t “need” it. It’s important to identify the real pain points in your workflow and spend your hard earned money where it will have the most significant impact on the caliber at which you create/engineer music.
Learn to use all of your stock plugins. You DAW probably comes with a healthy assortment of audio processing tools. In many cases, these are incredibly high-quality devices that are frequently overlooked, just because they’re “stock.” Choosing between different EQs and compressors can become a colossal waste of time. For many beginners, it’s a lack of technical knowledge that’s preventing them from creating great mixes; not their tools.
Invite people to critique your work. Find two or three people who are willing to give you honest feedback, and play them some of your finished songs. Cochrane recommends that you look for trends in the feedback you receive. For example, if three people tell you that your vocals sound a bit muffled, you may have an issue that needs to be addressed.
Listen to Cochrane talk about these “3 Home Studio Rules” in-depth via The Recording Revolution.
Charles Hoffman is a Mixing and Mastering Engineer at Black Ghost Audio. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with an English degree, Charles completed his education at Icon Collective in Los Angeles, CA.
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