An Indie Musician's Diary VOL. 1

Monday December 4, 2017: Understanding the Mastering Process

Writing

Last night I finished writing and published a new chapter in another of my books,  "My Imaginary Friend"-  also on Wattpad. The chapter, "Provision" and is filled with true stories of how God has amazingly met my needs in the past and how that makes me trust him when new needs show up. If you follow me on Wattpad, you can get notifications as soon as new chapters of my books drop - including this one. 

Wisdom

I just got out of my prayer closet and had a great time reading in Zachariah 5 - 8, Psalm 139 and Jude 1. I am following Nicky Gumbels Bible in One Year Plan. Really like it!

Nicky says a lot of great stuff in his devotional section such as "...even my work for God can distract me from my relationship with him." I feel that. That is why it is so important for me to wait on the Lord before I even get out of bed. Just like Aaron Keyes and his wife mentioned at the latest worship summit in Huskvarna, I need to ask God in the morning "What do you want to say to me?" "What do you want me to do?". I find that lingering and listening in the morning is very important, almost crucial to the Change My Mind Project. 

This morning's word was "quickly!" although there was more to it. I understand that I have a tendency to hold on to things too long and over-edit things. I need to stop fearing others' criticism and get the stuff out and published. The sooner the better. I'm working on it.

Planning 7:40 - 7:50

Today I need to do these things:

1. Prepare my heart and music for tonight's worship pass at Malmö Home Church. Get a  Christmas song ready for the Christmas party we are having the 6th? "Mary, did you know"? 

2. Practice sets, "spiders" and scales on the guitar

3. Automate Jakobs track on the CMM song, do a mix and send it to him so he can hear how it turned out....so far.

4. Learn about mastering 1 video and find some plugins within Logic that I can use while mastering so I don't have to buy new ones.

5. Get my papers together for the accountant. :-( got to go there by Thursday, latest!

6. Get on the train in time for the meeting tonight. 

7. Lead worship tonight if needed. 

Learning about Mastering

I am continuing to mix as I learn the next phase, mastering. 

I opened up the Mastering Mix mini course that I signed up for at www.Prosoundformula.com. I can't recommend Rob Williams highly enough. His fantastic courses have been my mentor as I started learning the mixing/mastering business. Today's goal: the first of many episodes to freshen up what I know before I hit the tracks.

So I listened to the first episode. He uses a DUY valve emulator plugin. I searched the Internet for how to do the same thing with the standard plugins found in Logic Pro and came up with this article: 

https://ask.audio/articles/adding-tube-warmth-in-logic-pro which shows you how to use the clip distortion plugin to get the warmth of a valve emulator. Because this is from 2012, they haven't got the new Clip distortion interface. So Here's a pic from my Mac when I used it to give a better tone to my electric bass so it cut through the mix better: 

Just play around with it to get a warmer effect on any track. In the case of the bass here, I found that after setting the LP filter onto 200000Hz, adjusting the symmetri setting (the green line) gave me a great sound. I'm just learning. 

The same maybe goes on the final stereo mix to get a valve effect. I dunno. Anyway, learning the possibilities within Logic helps to save money on plugins. 

Then I tested this on a few tracks and took a break: coffee and homemade date nut scones with a slice of cheese if you care to know.

Then I went back to the course and wrote down the most important steps. (I learn by writing things down.)

Mixing

Much of what I will be doing this week focus around tightening the Change My Mind song, i.e. making sure that all the vocals start at the same time and stop at the same time at the end of each word. I will also be checking for pops and other fixes that need to be addressed. 

I took some time to edit the background vocal done by my friend Jakob J's track. He has a nice voice it just needed some timing fixes which I used automation tools to adjust. Automation is used to do many things. At this stage, when the static mix is done, so the overall track volume levels are set in relation to one another, I use it to get rid of the breathes between the words. Only the lead vocal's breaths should be audible. In the pic below, you can see that I need to move the -25,0 dB dot back towards the center of the note to get his note to stop at the same time as the lead (in the track above it). This is a time-consuming process. 

 Now the mix is a lot tighter. I also adjusted the de-esser plugin to reduce the sibilance of the "S"s and the words change etc. Now it fits nicely into the mix.  

Exercise

Today - the chicken run. I take a walk every now and then to feed som chickens and see horses along the roads here. Its freezing cold today so I don't know if the hens will be out or not. Feeding them is a delight. They run up to you as if they were dancing ballet and complain in a low growling tone if you hold the marigold leaves too high for them to reach. I love chickens and Rydsgård has a few here and there. 

I got a nice pic of this white horse today.

Practice

Set 1 hr, including Christmas songs, ( wrote out the words too)vocal warmup and scales. Check!

Gotta go....

Resources:

1. www.prosoundformula.com: Courses on recording vocals, mixing, mastering etc. Some courses are free. Good for newbies!

2. https://ask.audio/ for tutorials in any DAW and more.