On Tue, Jun 01, 2010 at 11:14:16AM +0200, fons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > On Tue, Jun 01, 2010 at 10:00:17AM +0200, Jean-Yves Poilleux wrote: > > > I've been try to compose for several months/years now and i'm never pleased > > with the mix and with the synth sounds. My use of effects and filters are > > more or less random. I'm self-educated here but not very well ;-). > > More, each time I listen to my tracks on a new system, it sounds different. > > > > So I'm willing to learn some mixing techniques (and some synth techniques as > > well). I'd like to have a better understanding of sound mixing and synth. A > > little studying will do me good. > > > > Do you know any good book references about these subjects, french or english > > ? Of course if they tackle the subject of free audio software as well I > > would just be great. > > Bob Katz has already been mentioned. > > Porbably the most efficient way to learn this sort of thing > is to work under the supervision of someone who knows what > he's doing, either formally or unformally. +1 on this. It's a craft, best learned through apprenticeship. I've only figured this out very recently. Get an experienced engineer to show you the ropes; you'll be very pleased with how much difference it'll make. > > Apart from that, again 'know what you are doing' - that is > don't just turn knobs blindly, but try to understand why > things work or don't work, and learn the relation between > 'the knobs' and 'the sound'. > > If something sounds OK after you have been tweaking it for > a long time, the chances are that I will disappoint you when > you hear it again next week. The reason is that your hearing > will adapt even to the worst ideas if you give them enough > time. This improves with training and lots of very conscious > listening. But an essential part of being able to set e.g. an > equaliser or an effect is to do it relatively quickly and > without too much 'exploration'. > It's amazing how much different something can sound just the next day, let alone in a week's time when it's like a totally different peice. There's no substitute for time and patience. This isn't just true of music. A few decades ago I was in the printing business, and one night we were shoving a rush job out the door, finally finishing it at around 1am. The next morning, we were boxing it up for shipment, with the UPS guy standing there tapping his foot, and were horrified at how awful it looked. One of the guys who had not worked on that job, picked up one of the pieces, studied it for a minute, and said, "Yeah, at 1AM, this'd look *just fine*." I'm don't have a ready Deepwater Horizon analogy here, but, suffice to say, neither rushing to beat the clock nor pinching pennies-- nor, worse, the combination of both-- are conducive to producing quality work. Take your time and it'll be fantastic. -ken _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
