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Jeff Henig Jeff Henig is offline
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Default 1st Project Lessons Learned--So Far

"At Rock Bottom ...life begins" was my first recording project to be
released to the public, and it's now in the can, so to speak, so I want
to say a couple of things about what I've learned here.

1: Under no circumstances ever should a commitment to a release date be
made before the physical product is in the hand of the one making the
commitment.

Oi! I thought I had things on a pretty good schedule, so I felt
comfortable making arrangements and announcements. Then life happened.
Change of job, change of living arrangements, change of life schedule
all conspired to stop the recording process and just about scuttled the
project.

I ended up trying to complete about 75% of the bugger in about a month
of part-time duty, with the last available weekend taken up with bass
vocals, lead vocals AND mixdown.

Never again!

2: Take the time to get the project recorded EXACTLY the way you hear it
in your mind.

I had so many things I wanted to do, like using my own voice to mimic
instruments and experiment with effects, but I ended up using a lot more
samples and virtual choirs and beatboxes than I originally intended.

3: Check mix environments are CHECK MIX ENVIRONMENTS, not your go-to fix
it environments.

I went and listened to my mixdown CDs in the car to see how well it
translated. I ended up completely changing the mix based upon what I
heard in the car, rather than trusting that it was just going to sound
that way in the car. It turned out later that the EQ in the car was a
bit off, resulting in the issues I heard in there.

4: Add a mix engineer along with the mastering engineer so that you can
have ANOTHER set of ears before release.

I seem to mix the bass tracks way too hot. This was related to me by the
mastering engineer regarding the project as well as my FOH sound tech
regarding my performance tracks. Evidently, a total remix is in order
for my performance tracks, and if I want to release my project on vinyl,
I'll need to remix as well.

5: Don't try to do too much at once.

My voice was fine on the bass tracks, but was way ragged on a lot of my
leads. Again, not enough time taken to get it right.

6: Trust my ears more.

A very good friend helped me out a LOT by giving me a pair of Event
Opals. (Yeah, there's a backstory there--we're pretty much brothers. I
still about passed out when he ordered them for me.)

I learned a lot from this NG about sound treating the room, what good
equipment sounds like, proper recording techniques, and so on--but I
still had misgivings about my voice in the lead vocal track. I should've
trusted my ears to get it right, rather than over-obsessing about my
tone and how others might hear it.

Thanks so much to all of you for being my real world recording professors.

--
---Jeff

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