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Keywords: Quick Mixes
(Image: Fons Heijnsbroek) Quick mixes are brief sessions devoted to getting a track’s parts into a rough balance of volume, frequency, panning, texture-tone color, and presence. The track has been finished for a while and now you return to it with fresh ears to notice all that’s wrong. The voices sound dull and need a… Continue reading
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Keywords: Artistic North Stars
(Photo: NASA/Preston Dyches) Influence is everywhere and diffuse, but we know people whose work and life we turn to for concentrated inspiration, sympathetic vibration, and to re-orient ourselves on our own adventure. These people are our artistic North Stars. They’re our teachers, contemporaries, or figures distant in time and place who inspire us with how… Continue reading
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Database: JakoJako On Getting A Bit Of Distance
“As soon as a track is finished, or I think it’s time to put it to the side and start something new, at that point it’s good to actually leave some time in between before you listen to it again–you get a little bit of distance. As soon as you turn the track on you… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Robert Farrar Capon’s “The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection” (2002)
“Technique must be acquired, and, with technique, a love of the very processes of cooking. No artist can work simply for results; he must also like the work of getting them.” (…) “Interest in results never conquers boredom with process.” Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb Continue reading
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Keywords: Version 1.0
(Photo: J.S. Bach’s sketch for the first prelude of The Well-Tempered Clavier) Version 1.0 of a track feels the most unsettled because you don’t know where you’re going with it yet; it’s still too new. What is this musical thing? This state of feeling is exemplified by improvising. When you improvise you’re making it up… Continue reading
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Database: A.G. Cook On Synthesis With An Inherent Musical Goal
“I was just toying around with an ultra basic [Native Instruments] Lazerbass patch. It can be what sounds sort of FM [synthesis]-y, but you can add too many beating layers to it and end up with this kind of pretty atonal sound. Because that’s on a dial, you’ve got something harmonic on one side and… Continue reading
