There’s creation. And then there’s magic. When you’re harnessing the energy of the collective conscious and channeling it into art, you’re pushing the boundaries of creation, and reaching the territory of magic. Let me tell you a story.
One balmy July night in Singapore, I dreamt of a riff. It was haunting, beautiful and stuck in my head. Thankfully, I remembered the next morning and quickly put it on record. The working title was ‘dreamsong‘. However, in spite of many hours of noodling, I realized that the song as a whole was going nowhere. A few days passed and slightly disappointed, I packed my bags and headed to Berlin for an interview with SoundCloud.
It was the day of the interview, I got to the office nice and early. The person with whom I was to chat was running 10 minutes late, and I couldn’t help but eye a nice acoustic guitar lying in the room. I picked it up and started noodling, and man she was a beautiful sounding guitar! 2 minutes in, I had a chorus for dreamsong. Post-interviews, I hurried to my hotel, fired up the REC button and hummed the chorus into my phone. Now back in Singapore, I realized the song was progressing nicely. But by this time, I was hit by another creative block – while the song had a great build and a chorus – it lacked body. Not wanting to drop the ball, I decided to ask for help. For those who remember, I asked you, via a SoundCloud private track.
What resulted was an enthused display of community songwriting at its best, suggestions flying left right center – some great ones, some slightly crazy ones 😉 but overall, it was amazing crowd-sourced creation at play.
I was inspired, and the song finally went from a little idea in a dream, to a 10 minute long episode. HUGE thanks and special mentions to SoundClouders ethb, Adi, Thiman, Justin, Savi3now, Samiran, Vivek, Kapil and Shravan who helped shape dreamsong into the Idealist. Look what we’ve created!
In fact, you know – I am so stoked about this. I want to preview Miles, the new album to a select, super exclusive group of just TEN people, via SoundCloud private tracks and get your feedback. Let’s do it again.
What’s even more awesome? The best contributors will be credited on the album, and will also get a signed copy of the album shipped to you, wherever in the world you are. Yes!
Fill out the form below and I’ll be in touch once I have something to share. And please share this with your friends who would appreciate progressive music. The more people we have, the higher the probability of magic.
I LOVE it when magic happens.
– Sridhar
Update: This filled up real quick, and there are 25+ people on the list. Wow – I love you all!
Let’s bust a central myth around audio production and mixing: You don’t need enormous amounts of cash to make a stellar, pro-sounding record. If you’re the type to dig in and DIY, or just generally looking to spend your cash on other aspects of your musical journey, you will find this article valuable. Here’s a track that was produced entirely at home:
Proposed bare-bones setup
Instruments
Microphones to capture sound
Computer + DAW
Pro-Monitoring headphones
Studio monitors [Optional, but highly recommended]
Soundcard/audio interface
Your ears
You can read about all the gear I use and recommend, here. There are plenty of great articles on how to record your instruments, which is a highly important science and which I’ll leave to you to dive deeper into. What I’m more interested in, is putting things together once they’re recorded, and making it sound cohesive, and slick. For drums, I use a drum machine/sampler. There are plenty of options in the market that get you pro sounding drums with minimal drum-mixing and tweaking. If you’re interested in recording live drums, this is still possible but is definitely trickier to mix in and will require a sound understanding of the upcoming concepts. Please bear in mind that this article in particular has a bias towards rock and guitar driven music, but these are universal concepts that can be extrapolated to any genre.
Now, onto the real magic:
(1) Equalization
A good mix will have good separation between instruments and respect their individual sonic space(s), while at the same time leaving room for interplay between frequencies. Too much separation leads to a sterile, lifeless mix. Also bear in mind that the human ear is most attuned to hearing live music. Recorded audio only tries to replicate that aural sensation, and hence the mixes that really stand out are the ones that are engineered around the beautiful, ethereal physics of live sound.
Broadly, frequencies go in the following order (low to high)
Lows (0 to 150 Hz) – Bass guitars, and kick drums only please.
Low-Mids (150 to 400 Hz) – Warmth on vocals, warmth on instruments (eg: guitars).
High-Mids (400Hz to 5Khz) – Presence and attack on instruments, Can also be clarity on voices.
Treble (5 to 10Khz) – Clarity on voices and cymbals.
Presence (10 Khz+) – Shimmer, overall ‘brightness’ of a mix.
(2) Compression
By far the most important concept if you want to mix yourself. Put simply, compression is a way of levelling ‘peaks’ in your audio. Sonically, this has the effect of making things fatter, or thinner based on how you use compression. You can write tomes on compression and still not cover it all – I wrote a primer on the basics of compression to get you started.
(3) Space
Space is not reverb. Reverb is not space. Repeat after me. More often than not, you don’t need reverb to save your mix. Reverb has the effect of pushing things into the distance. In frequency terms, applying reverb usually dips the treble spectrum on the track. Next time, instead of reaching for the reverb fader, try cutting treble frequencies on the sound you’re trying to push into the background and see how that feels. Result: Clarity, yet not in your face.
Finally, a good mix is made even better with great mastering. That’s worth a separate article in itself and is generally considered a more esoteric science than mixing, but I’ve found relatively good results with DIY. Think of mastering as applying the final touches and immortalizing your work of art into a shining, gold-plated frame. The skills used in mastering are exactly the same as the ones above, but good mastering engineers work in extremely precise monitoring environments and hear things that humans don’t hear (Okay, that’s not true). But you get the idea.
Record your tracks as tightly as possible, to a click track. If you want cohesion, you want tightness. No amount of post-processing will save a bad take from ending up in the trash, or worse, on your record!
Use your ears. Do not trust internet fads.
Learn, unlearn, relearn – I’m learning everyday. This article does not mean that mix-engineers and mastering professionals don’t have a purpose anymore – They are highly skilled individuals who have most of this + more knowledge in their repertoire. Talk to them, learn from them, adapt.
Good gear will generally get you better results, but you don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on it. But if you can, do it.
When starting, benchmark your production with the sound of records you love. Before you know it, and with practice – you’ll be setting your own benchmarks 😉
We’ve covered a lot already. I’d love to hear from you on other things you do to get great results, if you’d like to get general advice on your mix or even if you’d like me to mix your stuff. Send me your sounds here.. You can reach me at sridhar (at) sridharsmusic.com or follow me on Twitter.
I recently visited the Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina in Warsaw, Poland. It’s one of the most beautiful museums I’ve been to – complete with stellar attention to detail to every phase of the composer’s life, from birth to education, travels, his rise to fame and eventually a sad, early death.
Family, Loves, Friends, Patrons and Pupils. The diverse nature of Chopin’s relationship with women arose from his position as composer-pianist and the prestige inherent to this in 19th century society. His personality in particular was marked by the intensity of his contact with his family and women, who fascinated him.
Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart – a poet, journalist as well as a musician, wrote his Ideen while in prison for insulting the mistress of the Duke of Württemberg. It was not published until 15 years after his death (1806), so it had no influence on his contemporaries. The title of the book, literally translates to “Ideas to the aesthetics of Music”.
I’ve always been curious about the nature of keys and musical modes; trying to understand the underlying nature of gravitating to certain keys subconsciously when writing or improvising. I applied Schubart’s writing and ideas to some of my own music and was quite surprised to see what unravelled. If you write music, or know the keys of some of your favourite songs, try reading what’s below to further unravel artistic intent. However, do note that with all things that abridge, there are variations, complexities, contradictions and more.
Enjoy.
Translated by Rita Steblin in A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. UMI Research Press (1983).
C Major
Completely Pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naivety, children’s talk.
C Minor
Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.
Db Major
A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.–Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.
C# Minor
Penitential lamentation, intimate conversation with God, the friend and help-meet of life; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius.
D Major
The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key. (Stepping Stones)
D Minor
Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood. (Dark Sands, Innerworld, changes from D major to a D minor interlude)
Eb Major
The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.
D# Minor
Feelings of the anxiety of the soul’s deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key. (Blue memories, I don’t agree)
E Major
Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major. (Folked 🙂 )
E minor
Naive, womanly innocent declaration of love, lament without grumbling; sighs accompanied by few tears; this key speaks of the imminent hope of resolving in the pure happiness of C major. (India, Transcend)
F Major
Complaisance & Calm.
F Minor
Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.
F# Major
Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief utered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.
F# Minor
A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.
G Major
Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,–in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.
G Minor
Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike.
Ab Major
Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.
Ab Minor
Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty. (Delusia)
A Major
This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one’s state of affairs; hope of seeing one’s beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God. (My favourite Vai song, Die to Live is in A major and I cant love that song enough, and so is Searching)
A minor
Pious womanliness and tenderness of character. (While my Guitar gently weeps, moves around between A minor and A major)
Bb Major
Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world.
Bb minor
A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.
B Major
Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere. (Satriani’s masterpiece Always with me always with you, walks around B major and B minor with Satch’s traditional modal interplay genius)
B Minor
This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones’s fate and of submission to divine dispensation. (Divinity)
Ideas are but iterations in a local, but specialized evolutionary landscape, with an intent to surpass the usefulness of the state of the current. No such thing as a perfect idea, just as there’s no such thing as a perfect evolution.
Sorry for not having kept the blog updated, it’s been a very interesting (but extremely busy!) last few months.
For starters, this beautiful guitar joined my 7 string blackjack a couple of months back, effectively leaving me with two to-go guitars that let’s me do anything from the craziest heavies to the most soulful sounds.
She’s an absolute beauty. P90s! which means I am finally reunited with good old Transcend-ish sounds, but with more low end to them brought to you courtesy the all mahogany body, with a stunning maple top. Really, I can’t stop talking about this thing.
Another picture:
Onto more good stuff!
I have finally seen the end of the tunnel for Afterward, which means the launch is around the corner! Unlike Transcend, it’s going to be a 4 track album. I had about 15 odd tracks to choose from and put on, but I chose to stick with the ones that conveyed the most to me. Instrumental music is sometimes better consumed in small chunks. That, and being a proponent of listening to albums in their entirety, I chose to put it out this way. Three songs are already up for download, and the fourth and final song should be fresh out of the studio sometime this week. Check out the bandcamp page for Afterward and download away.
And finally, I’ve gotten together an alt/rock/funk band Sage. I’m singing and playing guitars, while Arun Shenoy is on guitars, Ram Vaidyanathan on Bass, and Simon Hyett is on the drums. I’ve been writing a lot of material for Sage, and it’s a ton of fun! As soon as Afterward is out, I’d be getting down to record the Sage debut EP with the boys and hopefully some new guitar toys as well. Join the Sage Facebook page to stay updated, we’re going to be doing some gigs around town so join the fun! I’d be slinging the Gibson for most of the Sage stuff, it’s such a perfect match for the music it’s not funny.
When I get anything that seems like a breather, I squeeze in some writing time in between for my experimental googlyboogly project Melakartha, there are a few tracks in there that you might wanna check out. Do drop in your comments/thoughts, and join in the discussion, and I’ll be sure to reply to each one of them.
Can’t wait, and here’s to a kickass 2011 for all of us!
I was inspired, and the song finally went from a little idea in a dream, to a 10 minute long episode. HUGE thanks and special mentions to SoundClouders ethb, Adi, Thiman, Justin, Savi3now, Samiran, Vivek, Kapil and Shravan who helped shape dreamsong into the Idealist. Look what we’ve created!
It’s the 