One of the "challenges" of the OSC -- balancing time between sound design, composition, arranging and mixing! Everyone probably has their own way of doing this, it would be interesting to hear the various philosophies.Tjgoa wrote:Glad to see I wasn't the last entryLooking forward to hearing all the tracks. A respectable 50+ entries
Only wish I could've finished the track the way I intended. I definitely should work on the skill of finishing tracks in time or just faster in general. Prioritize arrangement while designing sounds and leads. Well, that's my note to self and late new years resolution.
Personally, I focus on composition first -- get the chords or melody down (sometimes the chords come first other times the melody), then work on sound design for rhythm section -- drums and bass. At this point the sound design and arranging kind of come together into one process for background and lead sounds. The exception to this is when a sound kind of dictates a part -- sometimes the sound design can inspire a melody or bkgd part. The hardest part for me is deciding when to stop tweaking and start mixing.
As an old timer who came up in big studios, I believe one of the downsides of modern DAW's is that you can track and mix at the same time, which combines two processes that should be separate. Tracking and mixing at the same time may seem like a time saver, but I think it dilutes the tracking process and results in sub-par mixes. Unfortunately, the temptation to spend time tweaking tracks with eq, dynamics, etc... while composing is very great! In the old days mixing boards would be set up in "input mode" with the faders and channel strips used for input and the tape returns would come back to a simple monitor section that would be used for reference. During tracking you didn't mess around with EQ's or post-effects. You focused on recording clean tracks, and making every track sound as good as possible in it's raw state. When tracking was done, you would switch the board over and the faders and channel strips would become the output section with the full complement of EQ, compression, inserts and sends.
I try to follow the old discipline and track first, focusing on the sound of each track without all the stuff you can add in the mix, and then do a disciplined mix. Of course there is always a little sound tweaking during the mix, but I really try to keep that to a minimum, otherwise you never finish. I think a lot of synth producers mix as they go, and that results in sub-par mixes. Just my two cents....
