- Inside The Circle
Recently I had the pleasure of being asked to write a blog article for a friend at Insidethecircle.com. The article was the first of new series of articles by musicians for musicians. The series is called “Artisitic Expression”… peep the article that i wrote below
Artistic Expression - “Home Studio vs. Pro Studio”
I’ve had experience in a few pro recording facilities earlier in my recording career. I’ve worked with some very experienced producers and engineers in some very well equipped studio facilities where I’ve learned from the best of them first hand how to create, record and mix a great song.
Which brings me to an experience I had earlier this year where I went to one of LAs multi million dollar studio facilities to re-record and mix an existing song of mines. The end result was… well… a piece of crap.
A former business associate (FBA) and I scouted studios and settled on “the one”. At the urging of FBA, we hired a world class engineer, with a resume that read like a Grammy award winners top ten list, and off we went to the magical “Studio”.The evening started simple enough with quaint greetings and smiles and small talk. I whipped out my trusty Macbook, fired up Logic Pro 8 and exported waves of the track. The engineer called on his flunky, umm excuse me, assistant and together they began powering up the mother ship and patching this thing to that thing. What a production?! (no pun intended)
Anyways, I was pleased to hear my production banging out of those expensive monitors in that pristine room. But then Mr. Engineer starts in on the knob n slider tweak fest. Things started to sound funny to me but I figured he must know what he’s doing, right? Right! Booth time!
I went into the booth and tested the mic. Mr. Engineer says “let’s get it brotherrrr” and a couple takes (or couple dozen takes… I cant remember) later we had what we needed. I came back into the control room and the “knob n slider tweak fest” continued. Mr. Engineer was doing lots of sliding around in his chair on the hard wood floor and blah blah blah. It seemed more like a show than anything real happening with the music.
The vocal recording was good and clean but I immediately noticed that the vocal recording from home had more soul and feeling. Probably because the music was changing more and more with every tweak. With the music changing the song began to morph into something less conducive to a soulful vocal recording. Not to mention, FBA suggested to Mr. Engineer that the drums should punch more. So rather than properly mix them they decided to layer new drum sounds on top. Bad idea considering the drums, sampled from Bob James’s “Take Me to the Mardi Gras” (also heard on Run-Dmc’s “Peter Piper” and LL’s “Rock the bells”), were the inspiration for the song in the first place. I know, I should’ve samari sworded them (FBA and Mr. Engineer) both at that point but I continued on because I figured they must know what they’re doing, right? Right! Break time!
I spent the break playing beats and songs from logic sessions on my macbook through the studio monitors. Meanwhile, Mr. Engineer and FBA rested their ears in the next room. What I began to notice is that my mixes and beats and logic sessions were all pretty true to what I created them to be and they all translated quit nicely in the million-dollar room. As we, the assistant engineer and I, listened to the tracks we began to discuss the esthetics of hip-hop and, of course, the genius of J Dilla. We were interrupted by FBA and MR Engineer … “let’s get it brotherrr”… and the “knob n slider tweak fest” continued on once again.
Well, by the end of the night I had a great sounding bad vocal, some sort of loud mechanical rendition of the freshness that I previously created and a bill for approximately $2000. Which, by the way, was “a great deal for the facilities and an engineer of this caliber” so says FBA.
The next day FBA called me and proceeded gloat about how great the song sounded now that we’d performed open heart surgery on it. Well I sort of explained to him that what we did was open the heart of the song and remove the soul right out of it. I think this is the conversation that made this guy my former business associate. OMG he makes me LOL.
Back to the home lab I went… I pulled up the original session and mixed it as I knew it should be mixed. The vocals were good and soulful and they had character even without the million-dollar glitz and shimmer. I listened to the mix on several different sources (i.e. studio monitors, car stereo, boom box, ipod headphones.) I sent a wav file of the mix to a couple of trusted homies for 2nd and 3rd opinions of the mix. Noble Dru in particular, gave it a good listen and agreed that the mix was on point.
Now that I’d completed a great mix. I proceeded to send the mix off to a professional, reliable and economical mastering engineer. My man warmed it up and blamed it out and sent it back sounding lush and large. Now I have a finished song ready for the market place (or bootlegging blogger cyberspace) and I didn’t need a million dollar recording facility. Nor did I need the all knowing big budget, old school Mr. FBA. Nor did I need Mr. Engineer’s Grammy mix n magic BS. All I needed was my gut instinct, my Macbook, Logic Pro, my controller and my Adam A7 monitors.
Bottom line is that no one knows my music better than me. I should’ve trusted my own better judgment and skipped that mad circus experience. I think this is the sentiment of many of my fellow “would-be-pro-studio-clients” who dwell in carefully crafted bedroom/basement studios. We changed the industry ourselves for independents sake.
