I seem to spend increasingly longer on post production all the time. Listening back to tracks, tweaking levels / eq / pan.... Then I leave it alone for a while and come back and decide whether I still like it or not.
How do you finally decide that something is the best it possibly can be?
I think my problem is that as I am continually learning, I am never satisfied.
On the plus side i guess my threshold is therefore set high and I'm not flooding bandcamp with a new album every week
I have never set out to compose tracks to sound some specific way, though I do keep general aesthetic aims in mind when I record and compile things together. In the richest sense, I think that I know that a track is done when I realize that there is nothing that I can do to bring it closer to the general aims that I had in my head.
Sometimes I also know that I am done when I just want to be done. The inspiration drains away, and I no longer feel compelled to work on it any more.
However, I think we might be able to distinguish between two senses of "done." On the one hand, a track can be totally done, as in finished and never to be touched again. On the other, I sometimes am done with tracks, but only for a time. I keep them in the back of my mind in case anything happens that could help me truly finish them. Tracks like those feel closer to "done" than "works-in-progress" because I can go for long periods of time without tinkering with them in any way. They just sit there and wait.
Horses for courses. Personally I never got too deeply into post-production stuff, as I always settled for what kind of sound I was immediately recording. Even with non-Noise material.
I'm often a bit surprised at how long it takes some people to finally fix their work. I've recently started working with a new digital audio workspace, and am frankly amazed at the huge number of options there are for mixing alone. It seems to me that fiddling around and polishing up is the majority of what a lot of people who make their own are doing these days.
I've tried paying more attention to such matters, but in the end always found it not only boring but unnecessary. Since I started with four-tracks and always had a "record/mix-it-down/that's it, finished" kind of attitude, I've never cared too much for too much fixing up after the basic sound has been made. Laziness and apathy don't work for everyone but they work for me.
If you're "fiddling" step away.
Once you release it, it won't be yours any more.
It's your decision to release it, which is true.
Its your artistic expression, only you can decide.
My two cents worth.
Or how many bands are remastering their songs?
How many of these bands are "fiddling"?
Be a real person, this is what it sounds like.
Be tough.
There is a recent Beherit interview about his electronic experimental stuff in big state owned media. Quite amusing actually, to have the Finnish state radio put out long text + 1,5 hour audio podcast about Beherit. Anyways, he concludes that after years of doing all with mouse, on the laptop, he moved back into doing analogue stuff. One of the reasons was as simple as getting it done.
Experience that when you got the option to return back to mix, and start tweaking little details, you will. If you just have to finish the track on analogue mixer, synths and such, you will basically lose the setting after session is done and moving on to next. This creates both need to focus - to be there making the track. Not just editing the track. It also creates finality. Stuff is completed, and you either like it or not. Make new take or move on to new track.
Most of stuff what I do, has same kind of element. If not in whole track, then always most of stuff appearing in track is multi-layered recording on tape deck. There is possibility to adjust a bit EQ or compress or such. Due often there are bunch of layers in one stereo (or mono) track, one just can't go back and adjust levels or any details of individual sounds.
This is totally conscious move, as it has big difference in sound, does everything sort of melt together, or is everything floating separately. One can of course start doing all sorts of tricks to get the good saturation happening later on. I feel that the real deal is better than all sorts of editing tricks to emulate result.
Especially for noise, I feel that it is almost like... metal drummers. You got the true masters, who have the skills. You got the brutal aggro players who don't really need the skills. Just energy. And then most of people, got neither. They got the basic sets of "this is how it should be done", and that averageness appears in form of not being really good enough, but also cleansing all the barbaric elements. Mistakes, odd fills, all the "what the hell just happened" -things etc. correcting drum hits on editing grid. In old noise, even the master often had the accidental goofy sounds, things falling apart for a bit. They would leave it as is, while nowadays it seems as if only seemingly "neat stuff" remains and rest stuff is cut out. Suddenly the "neat stuff" might not be that neat. That can very easily lead into being on same category as "average modern metal drummer". I would prefer not to be in such category.
So when track is done? It is just a gut feeling, BUT, I like to create this situation where things happen. There is the drive, motivation and energy to want to record, then there is recording process where things get done. If aim of session is not source sounds, but to play tracks, I generally play things until things worth to record emerges from speakers. Then I hit the rec button. That recording, with all it's flaws that may happen during live-mix that happens on the stop, will be the core of track or even ready track as is. When options are either keep it, or reject the recording, you know it far easier than when toying around if some particular layer should be +1dB or -1dB or if the envelope curve of echo is perfect now, or should you tweak it... I want noise to happen - not to be just editing.
Quote from: Soloman Tump on November 10, 2020, 01:06:41 AM
I seem to spend increasingly longer on post production all the time. Listening back to tracks, tweaking levels / eq / pan.... Then I leave it alone for a while and come back and decide whether I still like it or not.
How do you finally decide that something is the best it possibly can be?
With any 'live' performance this is obviously not possible. So does this mean all this post production kills anything which can be considered 'live'. Might the ability to tweak be then a curse, an endless process...? and one for much of history was not possible. And if Music is organised sound, then the more you organise the less it is 'spontaneous' noise.
As for judging the work by if you like it or not, once you have produced it surely it exists in the world. That is you might not like it but others may, if the criteria is amusement, and you may come to consider it differently at some future point.
I think there might be a danger here in seeking the 'perfect' track, a promise offered by technology... and maybe in future the 'perfect' human...
and some works now considered 'great' works were often not 'liked', not even produced to be liked...
Quote from: Soloman Tump on November 10, 2020, 01:06:41 AM
I think my problem is that as I am continually learning, I am never satisfied.
A dangerous addiction, hope etc?
Quote from: Soloman Tump on November 10, 2020, 01:06:41 AM
On the plus side i guess my threshold is therefore set high and I'm not flooding bandcamp with a new album every week
Yesterday I flooded Youtube with 50 new works. Today i'll do the same on my soundcloud account.
https://soundcloud.com/jliat/sets/genus-siqiiaratopijik :-)(looking out of the window I see many tress, some still with leaves, golden yellow, hundreds of leaves, and squirrels, magpies, finches, neighbours cats... a crow is calling high in a tree.. all this yet another 'ordinary' far from perfect day..)
WARNING: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C5%92uvre
QuoteClaude moves to the country to soak up more of the 'Open Air' atmosphere he revelled in as a child and to create more masterpieces... He is unable to project his ideas successfully or combine them into a meaningful whole. He begins adding incongruous elements (like a female nude bather), reworks and repaints until the whole enterprise collapses into disaster, then starts over. His inability to create his masterpiece deepens his depression....
Post Script. OFSTED an education inspection body in the UK which has been responsible for many break downs and suicides in its rigorous inspection regime, in a remarkable Orwellean way issued the command...
"SATISFACTORY IS NO LONGER SATISFACTORY"
Deadlines help for me.
I usually have an idea where i want to go with a track, but don't finish it in one take. That was more before when i did everything real time, straight to 4track tape.
Now i can have a couple of unfinished tracks laying around for months, where i know it needs something but i don't know what exactly.
And for example when i get a deadline i can finish them all in a week or 2. For me it's a mix of inspiration and purely 'hard work'. But fun alltogether.
I don't like the tweaking too much, it's usually editing the length of something and try to EQ/master it in a DAW.
Hope it makes sense
Used to have this problem. Now we record everything "live". A studio session is usually a few hours of preparing a track, all instruments, lyrics, vocal sound etc and then it is recorded. Kind of like preparing for a gig. It takes away the endless second guessing of DAW's and I also think the added pressure makes for better vocal performance on my part.
Setting a deadline to yourself works for me. After all we are finite beings with finite time and finite goals.
As for the actual "when" can be within a single day, a month or eventually abandoned and picked up at some later moment.
Depends a lot on what is the concept and the idea. Then this idea degenerates in the process of making it and only the very broad general outline of that idea remains.
It's an open conflict between concepts and the actual experience of doing it. The latter takes you to different paths which can prolong, finish or abandon the creation of a track.
I try to avoid as much as possible machines and equipment dictating the frame hence I prefer a hybrid analogue/digital setup and highly modular connectivity between my low-end analogue equipment (the patch bay is my most important tool).
The digital aspect is important if your concept requires editing at a finer detail but there is the danger of being overwhelmed by the endless options. Using tools in a greedy way just because you have so much and you want to use everything.
Used to fiddle a lot and spend more time doing post than recording. Then asked myself what I really wanted, to record the sounds that I enjoy or to turn myself into a professional audio engineer?
Decided it was the former and went old school...
Now I just try to record everything in such a way that nothing needs "fixing" at the mixing stage, and the track already sounds good after I simply set the levels of individual stems. A part not working? Re-record, replace with something else, or simply discard.
Then I send the stems to a professional mixing engineer, he does his thing, we discuss revisions, which are usually very minor, then I get the final mix and send it to a mastering engineer.
This way I end up with tracks that sound x10 better than anything I'd be able to produce myself and take x10 less time to complete.
Also, there's an added benefit of increased quality control. Since I'm paying actual money for mixing & mastering, I have to be sure that what I record really merits financial investment.
Thank you one and all, was not expecting so many replies so quickly.
I guess my main issue is that my recording process is currently done in headphones in my garage - my neighbour doesn't really like blasts of noise and electronics. I have been recording "live" by sending instruments and effects into my mixer and recording the resulting .wav
As mentioned above - there are a few tricks for tweaking EQ here and there but once the recording is done this way there is only so much that can be done to alter it. As the saying goes - you cannot polish a turd!
I want to keep working on my recording process and I would like keep as much of the original recordings as possible, to retain the raw and as intended product. Mixing together live has taught me a great deal about levels and giving elements room to breathe so I can adjust them afterwards if needed.
no no no.
Quote from: Soloman Tump on November 10, 2020, 04:46:34 PM
I guess my main issue is that my recording process is currently done in headphones in my garage - my neighbour doesn't really like blasts of noise and electronics.
But its very likely the same will be true of any listeners to your material.
And we are talking about noise! But its not anyway just a case of having studio monitors... what is the media you prefer, cassette, in which case what will be your audience's most likely playback be? Not Hi Fi? CDR ? Again – if not via headphones then maybe Hi Fi or more likely in a Car stereo. (I used to make CDRs of my work and listen in the car...) Most likely work these days ends up on smartphones... or computer.
OK if you are making recordings of material which aims at re creating a live sound again in the noise scenario its going to be in some room with a relatively poor PA and hopefully the engineer will push everything into the red anyway... its very different to a string quartet in a concert hall with excellent acoustics ...
And think about the recordings of classic 60s and 70s rock and metal... on 4 and 8 track tape setups... played back on Dansettes and cassettes pre dolby.
A couple of final thoughts- what do most here use to listen to noise? And if an expensive Hi Fi, how loud? loud enough to destroy the tweeters? (happened to me with a Terry Riley track... )
I´m very slow in music making, and I approach to the development of a track (or more tracks in their entirety) as it was somehow a painting, or a puzzle, putting together the pieces and giving them an homogeneity which expresses what I want to channel into the music. In this sense, I give me a very wide range of time to "feel" that a track is ready.
Hard to say, depends on the "track/or song" that you're trying to create, for me personally when it comes to PE/Noise it can be long drawn out to fade when the track seems more "compositional" or when it's more bursted out and spontaneous, could just end in screaming and stop all at once. You'll be the decider in that outcome ultimately. I remember awhile back talking with Patrick O'Neil in regards to something similar on the matter and it seems like with some of the harsh noise and the more compositional type of stuff, like he does in more modern Skincrime that it is drawn out in length with an intent to fit a proper compositional outcome. I've tried to incorporate that idea with some of my works in PE/Noise, but obviously Patrick a lot more experienced and has a much greater "Aube" like focus for such detail can master that sort of achievement. It's a kind of like funeral doom. That entire genre is all about timing and pacing to achieve the great end results often times. I've tried to introduce that sort of pacing with my dungeon synth/dark ambient music too, but it can be a challenge, but ultimately it comes down to what you "the artist" has in mind for a goal and what you'd like to achieve in the grand scheme of things, so really there is no wrong or right way to end a track.
When I notice that I have reversed all of the recent "improvements" to the recording/mixing, then track is good to go. I used to be a perfectionist in all aspects of my life but it served me well over the last decade to decidedly push against that and recognise where it is enough for stuff to be 95% perfect instead of 100%.
I have convinced myself that making music falls into that category - even though it may seem at first that projecting your artistic vision 100% accurately is important for a musician, there is one thing I want to stress - ultimately listener will not know (and also potentially will not care) about your artistic vision anyway and if final track sounds 95% perfect to you, it may well sound 110% perfect to the listener.
Having recently switched from using a DAW to a 4-track tape recorder for mixing / post-production, I can attest to some of the earlier statements about the endless fiddling and tweaking that come quite naturally with the apparent ease of use of digital tooling. It's too easy to lose focus of what actually is essential for the track and start attending to completely irrelevant details instead. This leads to the feeling that the piece is finished receding further and further away.
Personally the DAW work is also one of the biggest turn offs when it comes to creativity, and always was the most painstakingly boring aspect of making noise.
once is sounds complete, it does not bore me, and I have enough of it
Quote from: bad milk on January 08, 2024, 01:59:14 PMHaving recently switched from using a DAW to a 4-track tape recorder for mixing / post-production, I can attest to some of the earlier statements about the endless fiddling and tweaking that come quite naturally with the apparent ease of use of digital tooling. It's too easy to lose focus of what actually is essential for the track and start attending to completely irrelevant details instead. This leads to the feeling that the piece is finished receding further and further away.
Personally the DAW work is also one of the biggest turn offs when it comes to creativity, and always was the most painstakingly boring aspect of making noise.
Agreed. Why I am not brave enough to record straight to tape, I try to record all the music so that it doesn't require any digital modification (other than maybe fade-in or fade-out, and of course basic mastering such as compression/limit). So I only use DAW to add vocals which I record separately (only because I don't have enough brain capacity to record music and vocals at the same time) and samples. Music itself, once recorded, stays untouched.
Many times have been guilty of 'tweaking' for far longer than necessary, and for the most part, not really making it any better.
These days a far more strict approach has yielded better results.
Construct the song, get it roughly sounding 'right' then record it live into the 2 tascam 4 tracks at a pretty loud volume. Makes obsessing over some tiny nuance pointless as it'll usually get lost, but the sounds of overloaded tape and equipment pushed into the red reveal a whole new set of nuances that somehow sound more 'alive', songs can therefore take on a new and interesting twist.
Capturing the energy rather than trying to capture every single sound perfectly.