By Tom Mulhern
Among the skills that so-called untrained musicians possess is a good ear, the result of years accompanying the record, cassette, CD, or MP3 player (depending on the time period, you see). These aural "street smarts" run wider and deeper than you might imagine. Besides learning the technical nuances and tonal characteristics of an instrument, someone with a highly developed ear has an intuitive sense of context, arranging, and sonic survival skills. The ability to react is ingrained, and even when dealt with a sudden musical "trainwreck" (the drummer loses the beat, the keyboardist drops a full bottle of beer on the synth), such a player can make the most of it, soaring deftly around or above the havoc, perhaps even showing their best playing ever by improvising a counterpoint to the mayhem.
What does this have to do with audio and the Internet? Think about this: When recording and mixing for online distribution, your instrument is everything between sound source and speaker–namely, the microphone, preamps, mixer, signal processors, recorder, computer, and any other bits and pieces that contribute to shaping audio before it zooms through the wires to your listeners. A lot of you are self-taught in the art of recording, but how many of you have really, really challenged yourself, in terms of becoming a virtuoso on your "instrument"? Not just reading the manual or knowing which knobs do what on your mixer. Not just knowing which inputs go to which outputs.
While learning the art and craft of being a recording engineer, the typical student has to learn what makes a mix tick, what characterizes the instruments and how they sonically mix (or don’t), how the equipment can cure or kill, and what it takes to save a project when it seems to be coming apart. A certain amount of "disaster training" does sharpen up your abilities, but more than anything else, repetition of the mundane and building on your skills in a steady manner is the key. As you get better, you get quicker. And like the musician who doesn’t have to look at his or her fingers and can devote more of their attention to the performance and its subtleties, the well-trained recordist has enough experience to concentrate on the sound and not just on the knobs and switches.
Is learning to "play" your recording gear the way like a deft any more important just because you’re putting sound together for the Internet? You bet. Not only do you have to create a great mix, but then you have to squeeze it into an optimized form for distribution via the web. It’s this added dimension that makes your task that much bigger and potentially more time-consuming.
Admittedly, getting to the point where you can diagnose and cure sonic problems and put a high gloss on music quickly and precisely is hard work. However, you aren’t expected to work any harder than anyone else. Instrumentalists have to keep their chops up, pilots have to re-certify, and doctors have to keep up on all the latest therapies, surgical techniques, etc. Constant learning and constant practice–no long periods of just coasting–are the price we all must pay for being good at what we do, and continuing to be good. Keep these points in mind:
Time is valuable. Even if you aren’t recording or putting audio on the Internet for money, don’t think you have unlimited time to burn on any single project. And if you spend an inordinate amount of time just trying to figure out which knob does what, you’re focusing too hard on the mechanics and not hard enough on the art. And if you’re a musician recording your own material, your pie is already sliced into thin enough pieces.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. The other way to express this, of course, is "always steal from the best." Listen. Listen hard. The best recording engineers spent years in the trenches. Listen to the kind of music with sonic characteristics that are similar to the way you want yours to sound. Then research. If you’re a fan of a producer or engineer, read articles about and by them, and try to "get inside their heads."
Break down the tasks. Every project is made up of many steps. The tricky part, sometimes, is determining what all the steps are and then determining the most efficient plan of attack before you start twiddling knobs and flipping switches. Organize the steps and optimize your working approach for efficiency.
Do it, and then do it again. If you’ve ever watched (or listened to) a musician practicing, you know that they don’t just run through something once and move on. Practice simple tasks, practice strings of tasks, and practice them again. Take a bunch of tracks and practice mixing them, trying to squeeze musicality and feeling out of every microsecond.
The lure of putting sound online is a lot like the lure of desktop publishing: It’s easy to get in, but only with understanding and practice comes real, live art. Tools alone are no substitute for discipline and technique.