Posts by SERFmusic

This deserves another congrats! Hahaha

This North Carolina boy says “Sweeeet!” Hahaha. Congratulations my friend.

reubenchng said
i have a track with my voice as a robotized effect, but no singing for me. haha. how’s your track? is it up yet?

lol robotized effect? That works for some tracks. My track is in the upload Queue still say @ 90% so hopefully within the next few hours, it’ll be up! I was going for a “radio pop” feel in the song by the way.

And thank you very much Carmen

Depard said
Now I’m following You.:D Just to listen to this track with Your vocals. I want all my tracks to be with my vocals, but my problem is not accent, but terrible voice:D

I hope I don’t disappoint you Depard lol

Hey Harry! Welcome!

Wow where to start? I’ll just tell you what helps me. I’ll keep it short and sweet.

1. Study – Study mixes and productions from whatever style(s) that’s applicable to what you do. For example, if it’s cinematic, then listen listen and listen even more to great cinematic productions and study it. Make it your own as well. If you are into pop, study different pop styles and mixes!

2. Study some More – I put this in another thread but I’ve been following grammy award winning mix engineer on YouTube for this whole year. http://www.youtube.com/user/PensadosPlace. This has literally helped me transform my mixes, the way i mix, and helped me learn a lot in a small amount of time. And it’s free

3. I don’t think there’s a “most important” aspect as far as the technical side (EQ, Compression, FX) but they are all vital to polishing mixes and manipulating them to accomplish what you want them to. I personally believe (depending on what you are mixing and what style you are doing) that you need to use a combination to achieve your final result.

4. Play with FX’s (reverbs, delays, panning, etc.) to give the mix depth and character.

5. Try to make your mixes sound like what you are desiring to sound like. Others may disagree, but I always try to make my mixes sound like a veteran mix and mastering engineer out of the top studios mixed and mastered it. Hey, you gotta have something to shoot for right? Am I there. NO! But i’m getting better and better as I strive to get there.

Okay, so it wasn’t so short after all, but there’s sooooo much to this but those are the things that I do.

Oh, and your tracks sound amazing

Thanks guys for the tips and support. It’s now officially in the upload Queue. I’m pretty excited about it. Wish me luck

Leon, what a monumental AJ week for you! Congrats and have fun!

AndySlatter said
Thanks for all the really interesting feedback! This is really useful. When we say that something sounds “professional” what do we mean? I wonder what kind of flaws you will hear in less professional sounding music, that you will NEVER hear on commercial releases. By the way, sorry to focus on negatives hope I’m not bringing the mood down, I just think it’s interesting.

I don’t think your making the focus negative

But to me, “professional” can mean comparable to “professional” mixes and production quality. There’s no way to specifically pin point what it is except it sounds good, clear, was mixed and mastered well, and fits the style.

The kind of flaws you may hear in “less professional” sounding music may be:

1. Poor Mix Quality – bad EQ, compression, overcrowding in the frequency spectrums, imbalanced mix, poorly tracked instruments, etc.!

2. Poor Production Quality – unclear direction of music, bad blend of instruments (i.e. 2 basses, 1 low pad, cellos, and 808 kick drum all fighting for the lower frequencies), extremely loosely tracked parts, etc.

I do think it’s very possible to make today’s common home recording gear sound “professional” ...you can do everything “in the box” as far as tracking and mixing and mastering, but it’s hard work! (at least to me lol). There’s just a lot of time and effort that goes into the whole process and we should be willing to learn and practice those processes (there’s no right or wrong way to get to the end result). It will make a major difference in the sound quality

That’s my two cents Just my opinion, that’s all.

Andy, awesome thread!

I agree with everyone so far. Gareth, you explained it so well.

I’m big on making things sound great. I think the music production and mixing/mastering both plays an equal role in commercial success. I am rather new here, but I have been creating music for years now and I constantly study and take notice to music everywhere, from the grocery store, to the music in every movie i go see, to “radio Top 40”, to that cheesy jingle that for some strange reason works in a Television commercial.

So to add on to what everyone already said, I think when people create music without purpose but just out of pure inspiration is risking failure because we are in the “business” of music selling. Business is strategic and about the consumer and what their needs are. We can be ignorant to assume that just because our track we just created that was inspired and we feel is the greatest doesn’t mean the consumer feels the same way. IT DOESN ’T TAKE AWAY FROM THE BEAUTY OF OUR CREATIVE WORK OF ART , but maybe just the commercial worth to consumers. With that said, if we want to make money selling stock, we need to study and know what sells. If we want to take a risk and start a new trend in stock audio (which is totally awesome), then we must understand that it may not get accepted by the consumer. So it’s nothing personal against us. It’s “business.”

I know I know…there are many who would say it’s not about making money, but making music from the heart. Agreed….to a certain extent. Because we are in this business, if we want to make sales, then we have to find out how we can bring something to the table without compromising who we are as composers and it be commercially successful. If you don’t want to make sales, then that’s totally cool. But why are you on a site that sells stock audio? If you want to make music purely for art’s sake (again which is totally awesome), then I feel that you don’t need to complain if people aren’t buying. I hope that makes sense

I for one love the fact that I can make a potential living/career out of something I love. I want to always keep that balance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to make money doing what you are passionate about. But as with anything else in life, it’s hard work and continual growth.

Not a W3llm4n and DarkSunz We’re in it together.

Matt, i’m glad this was good timing for you! Be encouraged as well because your music is wonderful.