Three West

Here is where, a typical record label, traditional or independent, spouts off a long list of fancy equipment and technical jargon that makes it sound like they are really doing something akin to rocket science. Well it’s not that deep here. I can still get professional sounds without having to load up with expensive gear and hours and hours of sound processing.

If you have the talent to produce good musical compositions, and are capable of creating crystal clear recordings of each track, you must learn how to create a stereo mix and then master the audio. This is what creates what you hear on a CD. These skills can be learned by almost anyone or if you don’t have the time, you can always record everything yourself, mix the audio and take it to a studio to be mastered. For some change, you can have a studio engineer who is quick and proficient in what he or she does, create the final sound.

**For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mastering it is just the process of taking the stereo mix and putting it in the final album-ready form; in other words, getting all the audio at a consistent volume level and feel throughout the album.

When I was running my own indie record label, Gravity Groove Records, and even now, my goal is to produce crystal clear audio recordings and do my own mixing. Once I have things the way I want them, I spend a small amount ($60-120) to have the project mastered (sometimes I do it myself).

How complicated your music is depends on your personal preferences. Here I use a variety of musical styles but I do like to keep it simple. This is partly due to the fact that I am more geared toward live performance so I try not to do too much outside of natural talent. You have to do what you have to do to get a good recording but I try not to change it so much that it gives listeners a false sense of what natural talent I actually have. We have all been to concerts just to find that the artists can’t even sing!

Our Equipment:

Yamaha DGX202 Portable Grand
Behringer UB1204 Pro Eurorack 12 Input Mixer
MXL 990 Cardioid Condenser Mic with Shockmount
Edirol MA-10DBK Digital Stereo Micro Monitor Pair
*New* Computer running windows Vista (this pc is also used for video production and graphics design).
*New* Epiphone Dot Studio Semi-Hollow Body Electric Guitar (cherry)
*New* Yamaha Trumpet (I’ll be getting rid of this soon and hopefully replacing it with an Eclipse or Bach-Strad).

I use Adobe Audition to record and mix my tracks. That’s right! I use Adobe Audition and not Cakewalk or Pro Tools. Why? Because I wanted a program that records the audio tracks, allows you to do the same mixing you can with a professional mixing board and it needed to be easy to use.

The most expensive equipment I have used so far is a Voice Prism harmonizer I bought on eBay for $400. It had many impressive features but I have resold this hardware because it was never worth the money and all it could do was create ugly unrealistic harmonies.

Still think I am crazy, cheap, and low budget and that these few pieces of cheap equipment can’t do the job? Check out the sound samples on this site and listen to what I made with this cheap equipment. And trust me, I’ve heard phenomenal music made with less and cheaper equipment than this so try to steer clear of trying to “play” producer; that’s when you have all the expensive gear just to say you have it and you think you sound impressive rattling off what you have, but your tracks sound like they were made in the 80s.

If you would also like to use nice, cheap royalty-free sound samples/loops, use Sony Pictures Sound Series products. They are wonderful and affordable. Another good company to buy sound sample/loop CDs from is Ilio, www.ilio.com. Their CDs are more expensive but they do have a product line of CDs for $49 each at www.soundscan2.com.

I also combine, samples/loops with real musicians. I can’t stress enough the importance of using live musicians and you the producer, learning to play an instrument(s) yourself. I am proficient on many brass & woodwind instruments as well as keyboard/piano. When it comes down to it, I like to only use samples/loops sparingly with my music and that of other musicians.

To get great audio, you have to produce music not tracks. The moment musical compositions turned into just “beats” and “tracks” was the dawn of all mediocre and substandard music we hear today. Hey, the O’Jays didn’t sing over beats, they sung over instrumentals. If you don’t know anything about the O’Jays, you don’t need to be reading this article anyway. *Smile*