mixing Archives - CRAIG WESTWOOD

Building a New Studio – Part 1

Craig — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 14:44:00 +0000

Buying a house in France that has been vacant for four years has had its issues. Happily most of them are superficial, and involve mostly decorating and some minor refurbishment to get the house to what we we’d like.

The first issue is that I’m here on my own. Problems with Claire’s Dad’s failing health has meant that she has wanted to be with her parents in the UK. Though originally she talked about coming out of teaching by December, she has now decided she wants to stay on for another year and a half until she is 55.

So – I’m working on the things I can… especially the studio. The space I’ve got is interesting, but not everything is practical…

The post Building a New Studio – Part 1 appeared first on CRAIG WESTWOOD.

Mixing

Craig — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 13:12:00 +0000

Since getting my files back from Matthew I find myself back to the solo act of mixing my own music.

This is versus the frustration of trying to communicate to an engineer what I want from a mix, which just proved to be less productive than I thought it was going to be. Everyone has their own version of what they want to achieve musically, and Matthew’s was obviously very different from mine. As I’ve said before, I’m very much a hands-on kind of guy, and now the responsibility comes back on me. This, I have to say, I very much prefer, despite the extra work involved.

The 360 AD experience, despite it’s obvious disappointments (see previous blogs), has taught me a few things: one of which is how to get a better mix, and how to better prepare my music for mastering, which is the part that I was less aware of before beginning this journey 2 years back.

This last weekend I’ve spent some time on getting Wry Smile and Only the Good Ones Go First to a good level where they can be mastered. I’m still thinking about whether to add some backing vocals to the bridge of Wry Smile, and whether to re-do the main vocal on Good Ones, to add the tiny tweaks to the verse that I now sing in the live set. I was so happy with the performance of the Guide vocal on Good Ones that I’m reluctant to bin it just yet. The beauty of digital recording is that it can be cloned, so we may have two versions to contend with eventually.

Anyway, I left this decision until Sunday where I started coming down with cold/flu shivers and a chesty cough (again… thought I’d got rid of that a fortnight ago!), which put paid to the whole session. For the moment, I’ll have to stick with the old vocal.

The post Mixing appeared first on CRAIG WESTWOOD.

Shocking News…

Craig — Fri, 05 May 2017 14:37:00 +0000

Mixing course

A couple of weeks ago I tried logging onto the mixing course website to complete my final module of the course. The site returned a 404 (site not there) error. I texted Matthew to get the reply that that part of the business has closed. Anyway, after messaging back my disappointment that day, Matthew, some 3 days later, did send me the assignment files so I could at least complete the final assessment mix. I’ve not had chance yet, with having to re-arrange my studio-space recently, but I will do this as soon as the audio equipment is re-wired.

Performance

I have also been chasing Andrew all week about getting one more live coaching session before the Batley Taproom night in June. I sent him a text requesting a meeting with both him and Matthew, to find out what was going on. Within a few minutes he rang me to tell me that his partnership with Matthew has dissolved, and that Matthew is now running 360 on his own. This was quite a shock. I had some slight vibe that things weren’t right here, you know, just a few little things that had cropped up in conversation, but the lack of communication was obvious. Andrew now is still working with 360, but as a subcontractor, so all bookings now are handled by Matthew.

This is a relief, as I was thinking for a while that the whole company had ceased.

So – now that my year’s contract has come to it’s end, I was perhaps fearing the worst, that I wasn’t going to have anything to show for the year’s investment.

While the experience gained this last year has been life-changing, until the major part of the contract is fulfilled, i.e. the five tracks, then I have no reason to renew my contract with 360, as their commitment is still incomplete.

I have since spoken with Matthew, and he still seems determined to complete the mixes and mastering as soon as possible. He is building a new studio, and though it’s possibly a month or two away from completion, and it would be a benefit to have final mixes done in it, I would rather be in possession of my five tracks now to market and progress the music further and have something to show for my efforts. We’ve also talked about getting a photographer to do some promo shots.

The story continues…

The post Shocking News… appeared first on CRAIG WESTWOOD.

Recording Course

Craig — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 20:36:00 +0000

I haven’t really written anything about this yet, but I’ve just completed the final week 8 of the Songwriting School’s Recording Course. Now, I already have a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) in Apple’s Logic Pro, and I have a few key pieces of recording gear to go with this, but in light of previous feedback from Matthew and other music producers, there were real gaps in my knowledge and this needed addressing. Matthew thus recommended the course that he runs on the Songwriting School website.

Now I have to say, that the first three weeks of the course were very familiar to me, simply because they covered the basics: how to set up your studio for recording; speakers and microphones; and recording MIDI in particular. Anyway, I dutifully went through these weeks, and where there were testing questions, I answered them confidently…. and got a couple wrong, I admit. This is the disadvantage of being self-taught. So by the end of this I feel it filled in the gaps nicely. The real eye-opening part of the course for me was the guitar recording part, and this really got me thinking again about the way I’ve been recording my guitars up until now. The great advantage of having an acoustic guitar with transducing pick-ups is it’s immediacy in being able to just plug it in and record away; the disadvantage of this is the quality of sound it produces is limited to the quality of the pick-up, and this can never match the quality of a good high-end condenser microphone, placed correctly to get the whole spectrum of sound of the guitar, not just the electronic signal from the pick-up.

Week 7 was really the key part of the project: the practical. It was my chance to show what I’d learned and put my new skills and knowledge into practice. I decided it was worth doing a new piece, as there was no point in going over old ground and making it too easy for myself; these needed to be real problems and not things I’d faced before. This posed me a new set of challenges for every instrument I recorded. In the end I picked new song Waiting on the World to try and give it some of the new guitar recording techniques I’d been studying.

Here’s Matthew’s comments:

Final Project:

Craig, this is an outstanding effort and you should be very proud of what you have achieved.

You have a lovely use of stereo in the guitar recording and the guitars are full sounding and shows that your mic placement was well thought out and successful. There are no phase issues that I can hear. The drums come in musically and the use of cymbal is well placed. It is difficult to hear the drums generally and you may wish to consider whether the kick drum sound would benefit from layering, or some more compression to make it ‘kick’ better. You have followed the instructions of setting up the virtual instruments well.

The recording is clean and your fades are perfect.

The use of compression and reverb is appropriate for the musical style. Perhaps not for this track but generally speaking don’t be afraid to experiment with effects – sometimes you can do something crazy and get a really excellent effect from it and the more you use your plugins the more you will gain confidence at knowing exactly how to get the sound you have in your head each time.

Your backing vocals really lift the track at the right point and nicely compliment the main vocal.

This is the best final project I have had the pleasure of marking. Because I know how you have recorded in the past, I can hear that you have really taken on board everything from this course and put it into practise in a way that has vastly improved your recording skill. I thoroughly look forward to your work on the mixing course.

Anyway – I’m really encouraged by the feedback. It’s given me a real positive look forward to the mixing course coming next. Again, I think some of the knowledge will already be there, but again I’m feeling confident that the gaps in my knowledge and some of my inherited ‘bad habits’ will hopefully be addressed.

The post Recording Course appeared first on CRAIG WESTWOOD.