Iumring tq gqngiusiqns




Jeffrey Liker warns that the creation of a checklist or procedure is an opportunity as good as any to make one of our brain's favorite mistakes: jumping to conclusions. I've found that to be one of my great mistakes in my  previous approach to structuring my production (strongly connected to other of my top ten weaknesses: trying to standardize too soon, before running through enough iterations just letting the process reveal itself).

In a previous post I discussed how simply making conscious that all our processes have an input and an output, and making both explicit, brings in itself a great deal of clarification to any outcome we want to produce. I still believe that; I also said I would discuss what was within that "sandwich" in another occasion.

My mistake was related to the way those tiny input-output boxes interact with each other. My unquestioned assumption was that I had to standardize the procedural language within them too. It just seemed "neat", having sort of a list or "manual of all wisdoms" with a "chapter" for each thing, all written in the same language. To compress a bass track follow chapter 8, to pitch correct a voice turn to page 127, to eq a track go to 117.

Those processes don't need to be in a common language. In fact it is better if they are not. The problem is that the tasks are very different in nature. And, even if you design the process "chunks" trying to make them as even among them as you can, each of them will still benefit from a different tool to be pain free. For example, to configure the settings of my sound server, all I need is a screenshot, with a couple of written indications (conveniently future proofed). For EQ I've found it works better a general overview of the process, like "go through each frequency getting it to the roof, then to zero, compare...". For exporting the final file as wav, I have to navigate a UI that always loses me, so I have a detailed list of which shortcut comes next and what happens then.

Maybe because I'm more aural than visual, I have a tendency to choose verbal language by default. But there are lots of tools you can use depending on the job at hand (on that regard, I found the list in the middle of this post very useful as a reference).

(Note: the image was taken from this Mike Rother's seminary.)

Popular posts from this blog

Maple Dye, "Unloved"

Maple Dye · Unloved In the peak of the pandemic, when everything was uncertain and scary, two ideas for songs came to me. Or better said, two powerful ideas that lived in me asked at some point for expression in a musical way. One idea was "we'll get out of this shit, we always do. Hopefully the humans will learn something out of this. It will be worthwhile then, even if I don't get to see it". This idea, through the proper alchemies, turned into "When We Make It Through The Storm". The other idea was "we all have to die. If I win this nutty virus lottery, then so be it. The sad part is not that I have to die, but that, if I did, right now nobody would really give a fuck..." This idea was the kernel for "Unloved". I reflected upon my life and found a lot of love had been given by me, but not so much received. My family is not the most mentally healthy and, from year zero, everything under the "love" label was generally just hid
Read more

"Crazy JS Teacher"

This song is so underproduced that it's embarrassing. This time I got the mastering volume right, but a couple of unexplainable cracks and pops sneaked in... arrgg! There was a "pit of misery" moment in there when I was twisting the knobs and thinking I hate my fucking life, so I stuck to the principle of keep it fun, and moved along. Each time I fail a bit better, my processes advance and get richer and more detailed every time, but God, I need a producer so bad, this stuff drains me, it always feels like fishing in the dark with a stick, I'd rather be doing anything else, for example music. In any case, like the other quickies I'm releasing weekly, this is good practice and dexterity; you can figure out a lot a process and do a lot of preproduction, but in the end there is a kind of knowledge that you only get by running the whole process from one extreme to the other time after time after time... The song is something I dreamt. Not
Read more