Spend less time on your music for more creative output
If you are anything like me you have gone through (or are going through) some creative struggles. You simply aren’t carving out the time you need to get any real music done. Does the idea of starting a new project seem like a waste, since you feel you never have the time to dive in deep enough to get anything accomplished?
I know exactly how you feel.
About 6 months back I made a 30 day commitment to myself to work on music 2 hours a day, everyday. It didn’t matter what I was doing as long as I was creating. I figured this type of discipline would be exactly what I needed to start purging through all of my unfinished ideas.

This went well for the first 5 days and I was pretty motivated the first 3 days of them. Then “life” happened and something kept me from meeting my day’s goal. From there I felt much less committed to my goal of 30 days. I had a couple spurts of creative action,  but felt like I had already failed on my committment. From there, I really dropped the ball for most of the month.

Although I would consider revisiting this goal perhaps later in the year, I feel this original goal just wasn’t very realistic for me (I say “for me” because some of you may feel this is pretty reasonable. If that is the case, go for it!).
This year I have a different approach for pretty much any goal.

Think of it like exercise. The idea is to set a habit first instead of thinking about maximum production and output. My new idea is to set a goal simple enough that it would be ridiculous to not be able to accomplish it everyday. The key here is EVERYDAY, not 5 days a week, not every other day..EVERYDAY. This is so important in habit forming.

When I decided I wanted to get in better shape, I decided that I would commit to 20 push ups and 50 situps. Nothing less, nothing more. This was pretty easy to accomplish and only took up a few minutes of my time everyday. Although I wasn’t noticing much if any difference in my strength, the strength of my daily habit was quite noticeable.
As the habit became a no brainer, I decided to start challenging myself to do more situps and push up, and then added a fairly easy weight routine. Soon enough I was not only noticing a difference, I couldn’t even think of skipping a day.
The point here is creating the habit first, and once that is in place, Then slowly build your resistance in small enough increments that it is challenging, but not so challenging that you would be tempted to skip a day…..
So back to music making..
My proposal to you is to devote yourself to just 15 minutes a day, everyday,  to music making. It doesn’t matter what it is you do, but make sure you are creating in some way.

If you are away from your computer or away from home, perhaps you can pick up a friends acoustic guitar, write some lyrics or hum a melody into a portable recorder. Whatever the situation, wherever you are.. no more excuses…. 15 minutes. that’s all.

As you build up the habit and you start to look forward to the process a few things will likely happen.

1. Your mind will start tuning into being creative and more ideas will start popping in your head.
2. You will actually become more productive in 15 minutes than most people are in an hour… this is the benefit of habits. Habits lead to greater efficiency.
3. You may find yourself going way past your 15 minute goal more and more often, but don’t let yourself slide on the 15 minutes you have to spend tomorrow.

I’m certain that if you follow this habit forming technique in your musical life as well as other aspects of your life, you’ll find yourself with many more accomplishments than you likely thought possible for you!
Here’s a Slightly different creative approach you can feel free to try
Once you have your habit in place, you may want to create more urgency in your creativity. This can be done by putting a limit on your creativity each day. Yes, I said to limit your time.

“I will only allow myself 30 minutes of music making today”.
This is a good way to keep your analytical left brain from second guessing everything you do and create enough urgency to accomplish much more in less time.

Isn’t THAT why death was created in the first place? If there was no death, very few of us would do much of anything because there would always be tomorrow.

Don’t wait until tomorrow, get started today and everyday. Start small to form a habit, then build resistance once you have the habit in place. Best of luck!
happy music making
Jason

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The importance of a reference CD for mixing

Are you in the market for a new pair of monitor speakers for your studio? Are you going to be working in other studios with monitors that are unfamiliar too you?
Have you ever mixed music on an unfamiliar set of Monitors only to find out later that the speakers exagerated the highs or lows, and now your mix sounds muddy or dull?

How do you tune your ears and get the perfect mix in most studio environments without spending any extra money?

I have been introduced to a fantastic way to solve this issue.  After reading Michael Stavrou’s “Mixing with your mind” . I had a huge “aha” moment that has never left me. I will admit upfront that I’ve been a bit lazy about what I am going to share, so commiting to this will be a challenge we can all share. Also I figured that this tip is too valuable to not write about. I certainly am accustomed to having reference songs when I am mixing but I haven’t quite taken it to this level. I look forward to us sharing our collective results sometime in the future.

Reference CD
A reference CD should be a collection of preferably unmastered songs that you know a mixed well. since you know your reference CD really well, you will easily be able to distinguish the differences in monitor systems. some may be a bit brighter, some may be a bit darker but you will now have a reference that tells you when a song is mixed just right. This will really come in handy when you work in others studios, or when you move my studio to a different location. Also if you ever help someone set up their studio, your reference CD can reveal what placement works best for their monitor speakers.

Somebody else’s reference CD would most likely be useless to you as you really need to have a close relationship with each song on the CD. You need to have heard it enough times to immediately be able to pick up on a control room’s strengths and weaknesses. You and only you will know how your reference CD should sound. As you become more and more comfortable with this CD of yours, you will want to hear it on as many systems as possible. Each new environment will teach you more about the room you are working in and also about the subtleties of your reference CD itself.

advantages of a reference CD

*regardless of the sound of your monitor speakers, you know what a good mix is supposed to sound like in that studio

*It beats lugging around a ton or gear everytime you have a project outside of your own studio

*Enormous time saved in discovering advantages and disadvantages in an unfamiliar studio environment.

*This can save you alot of unnecessary spending on new gear.

How to create a reference CD:

The songs you use for your reference CD are very important, but only you can determine which songs fit the bill. Create a collection of your best unmastered mixes. Mastered material is not a realistic sound that comes out of a mixing studio. Masters have a risk of making you play the loudness game on your mixes, over EQ’ing andovercompressing.  You also run the risk of your mastered material masking the transients you are going for. It’s important to use your own mixes because you will be familiar with all the little nuances that’ll reveal the most to you. If you have no mixes of your own that you are yet proud of, you might consider using mastered material just as a more general reference, but once this leads you to better sounding mixes, ditch the mastered song as your reference.  You will only need small 60 second-90 second clips of each song you use. 6-8 songs should be plenty. Some songs should reveal the accuracy in the highs while others might be a good way to test how much extra reverb the room is creating. Another song could reflect the dimension or imagery of the room. Still another might reveal the best location to pick up accurate bass response. The better you know your CD, the easier it will be to familiarize yourself with the strengths and weaknesses of the room.

Once you have made your CD, you want to listen to it in as many professional studios as you can. Most studios will be happy to show off their control room if they think you may be a potential customer. Soak in all of that information. The more studios your hear your CD in the better. Make sure to make this the first thing you do when you walk into a new studio. You don’t want your ears to have too much time to adjust to the new environment. When you come back to your home studio, you may find you want to make some adjustments to your own monitor placement and settings.  Also NEVER play your reference CD in a home system or a car stereo system. This will only stand to ruin your perspective of what sounds professional and what doesn’t.

Dial in your monitors:

Although I haven’t yet used a reference CD to it’s full extent described above, I have used reference songs in another way.

Everyone hears a bit differently, and everyone has a certain amount of tolerance of different frequencies. When I am using an unfamiliar set of monitor speakers, or working in a new location, I will play a reference song to hear how the speakers sound. Although I know, for example, that the hi-hats on this reference song sounds perfect to my tastes, it may come across through these speakers as too harsh or bright, or too dull.  If this is the case, I will see if the speakers have EQ adjustments on them for highs or lows and adjust them until it sounds good to my ears. Alternatively, I can make small adjustments to a master EQ on the master track of my Digital Audio Workstation (Ableton, Cubase, Pro Tools etc). By doing this, I will have a better idea of when a certain frequency is right. Once the mix sounds great to my ears, I will turn off the master EQ and then mix the song down.

Before trying this technique myself, I would find my mixes were sounding a bit on the dull or muddy side. This is simply because my ears are pretty sensitive to high frequencies, so I wouldn’t mix them quite as loud as I should have for a great sounding mix.

Be very careful with this technique as it doesn’t take much to lose more than you gain. Small adjustments on a medium to wide Q can be all you need. If you find yourself changing your EQ by anymore then 2-3 DB, you may want to consider purchasing another pair of speaker monitors after all.

I hope you are able to use these tips to improve your mixing results and save you money or at least give you some things to consider before you fork over your cash needlessly.

Happy music making,

Jason

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