Going Independent: Part Four

The Big Picture

I have been reading music, guitar and audio magazines for years now and I can finally say that I've begun to understand the bigger picture. When I first started reading these magazines, I was looking at them at a micro level. I wanted the answers to the "how to's" and I wanted them quick. I wanted to know what frequency to cut or boost to make a kick drum sound larger than life. I wanted to know how many milliseconds of early reflections to apply in a reverb for a vocal take. But at that time, I got limited answers. Every now and then an article or two would go into the specifics but mostly, they talked about concepts. At that time, I was not interested in concepts and ideas, I just wanted to dive in and start doing things. So I got frustrated and stopped reading those magazines for a while.

After a while, I began to see the bigger picture. It is much better to understand the concept than to learn one specific way to do something. After all, music is dynamic and it is ever changing. There is no one method to do something.

Anyway, coming back to doing things independently, understanding the macro is as important as getting the micro details done.

Understanding how an acoustic guitar sounds is as important as how to specifically look for the sweet frequency spot to boost or cut. It's always better to get it right at the source during recording, than to try to fix it later during mixing. If a guitar isn't sounding good, don't think about fixing it later. Why not change guitars? Yes, good guitars are expensive and not all of us have a large guitar collection, but I am sure you have friends whom you could borrow from. These are just a few suggestions that could start you thinking of the big picture. Feel free to post your comments and we could discuss this further. Cheers!