I’m producing my own
music, but I want it to sound as professional as possible. I’m sure that
there must be certain tools that home studio owners can use to help
them match their mixes and recordings with commercial ones. Do you have
any advice for me on the best way to go?
A
reference CD compilation of commercial tracks whose production
qualities you admire can be a useful tool for helping to ensure high
standards in your own mixes.
Greg Dillon, via email
SOS
contributor Tom Flint replies:
One of the best things you can do is
create your own reference compilation so that you have something with
which to compare your own work and production decisions. All of us, of
course, can think of songs or pieces of music that we love because they
sound a certain way. Making a reference compilation is really just
a matter of collecting some of those tracks together and putting them
onto a format that can be played on a variety of music systems. At this
point, I still think the CD-R is the best media choice.
In
general, the bigger the variety of tracks, the better, although if you
were concentrating on producing a very particular genre of music it
might be worth creating another dedicated compilation comprising tracks
just from within that genre. There may also be music that is not
particularly your cup of tea but still has admirable production
qualities, and this is worth including too, as long as you can bear to
listen to it! The most important thing is to select tracks that have
something about them that seems to work particularly well, and make sure
that each one reveals something its compilation that others on the
collection do not. There would be no point, for example, in including
endless variations of a particularly pleasing type of bass sound; one or
two examples should suffice.
The first thing
a well-considered compilation will reveal is that there really is no
such thing as the perfect sound. Some productions seem to pack every
frequency with noise, while others are relatively sparse. There are
countless other contrasts too and I am continually amazed at how much
productions can vary, and yet still sound professional, polished and
satisfying.
Ideally, tracks should be taken from
CDs, tapes and vinyl rather than MP3s, for quality reasons, but be sure
to respect the music owners’ copyrights by only creating the reference
CD-R from your own purchases and not distributing the end result to
others.
Ethics, good practice and legalities
aside, it is then a matter of using the reference material properly. Get
to know your chosen tracks intimately by playing them everywhere you
can. In the car, for instance, the body of some productions is lost
under the drone of the engine, while others seem to fare quite well. It
soon becomes apparent which kind of sounds are important, and which are
merely ‘fairy dust’, only appreciable to those with superior hi-fi
systems and ideal listening environments. Not every production sounds
great in every situation, although there are usually one or two gems
that seem to sound fantastic whatever the limitations of the listening
environment or playback system.
Of course, the
compilation can be a constantly evolving thing. Some favourite tracks
might turn out to be of little use as reference material and should be
replaced with others that have very specific characteristics. It might
even be worth creating a separate ‘bad production’ compilation, just as
a reminder of what you want to avoid doing to your own music.
Take
the time to run the tracks through a narrow-band graphic EQ with
spectrum analyser and then alter the level of the bands to see which
ones have the most effect. This will help explain why certain mixes
work, and where the important energy is centred.
One
of the situations in which the reference CD is of great use is in the
mastering studio. Mastering engineers are often keen to hear examples of
what you want and can bear those examples in mind while processing
a mix.
It’s also a good idea to take your CD of
reference material to other studios when you’ll be making important
decisions based on the output of unfamiliar gear. If you know how your
tracks usually sound, something that is too prominent or lacking will be
immediately obvious.
Most of all, though, the
reference CD will keep you on the straight and narrow, particularly if
you’ve been working on something for a long time. In such circumstances,
the reference tracks should act like a user reset button for your ears.
For more on compiling a reference CD, see the SOS articles at www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep03/articles/testcd.htm and www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/articles/referencecd.htm.
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