zerbaman wrote:for the 1000th time, thanks for doing this, I don't think I've ever been as pleasantly surprised to drop into the Production forum as I was when I logged in today.
Hoping I'm not too late
1 -
almost everything is dead centre. there's quite a lot of stereo content, but this is usually through layering an instrument and panning the layers left and right (e.g. a 606 hat with an 808 hat). sometimes i will automate the pan for creative purposes, but in a more functional mixdown sense i prefer to think in terms of "mid-sides" than "left-right".
Would panning on hat elements be real soft-pan? Or virtually all the way hard-panning?
Does it differ in pursuit of particular effects? What would you say the effect(s) may be?
i don't often hard-pan and find it a bit extreme... but never say never etc. lots of that in old acid recordings, although cutting to vinyl narrows the stereo image in the end.
generally i'll center everything and pan only for effect, e.g. to bring out certain notes, to emphasise a call-and-response, etc. it often drives me nuts when shit is panned all over the place for no good reason. mono drums provide a good focal point in a mixdown.
zerbaman wrote:
2 -
also, see my answer above - in the end i found that working on one track at a time is generally very bad for creative blocks
Care to elaborate? - This isn't really important, I'd just like to know more about your productive ethic, so to speak, like a fly on the wall of your apartment.
well, if you spend 2 months listening to only one track then you're gonna grow to hate it much faster than if you've got a few things on your plate. it's nice to be able to take a step back and work on something else for a while.
zerbaman wrote:
3 -
good mixdown practice is good mixdown practice. the only specific vinyl no-no i can think of is heavy "side" content in the bass, since vinyl is cut in such a way that the mono content makes the needle oscillate laterally (left-right) and the stereo content makes the needle oscillate vertically, so lots of stereo content in the low end can make the needle jump out of the groove or the cutting stylus "bottom out" into the aluminium base of the master lacquer. but this is actually not bad advice for digital mixdowns either, since club soundsystems are often limited by the power of their subs, and making sure your low end is mono-only can maximise the amount of low end power you get out of a crappy system (think about it like this - if you pan something hard left then you have to boost it by 6dB to get the same volume out of it, and that might trigger the limiter earlier than if it were in mono). same applies to a heavily limited radio mix (if your track is destined for the radio).
I've personally always gone mono from 200hz downwards. This may be a slightly sappy question, but is that good? Would it be better to go lower?
I'm pretty ignorant with regard to sound control/manipulation.
i prefer to fix the problem at the source, e.g. make sure my sub and kick are mono, than fix the mastering bus with a "mono under 100hz" plugin or whatever. a mastering engineer is only gonna do that for you anyway if the track really needs it.
it's not an absolute rule. you CAN have stereo content in the low end, but it's a tradeoff - the more stereo content, the more up-down motion of the needle. the lower the frequency, the more motion of the needle generally. the more motion of the needle, the quieter you gotta cut the record. etc etc. you'll be fine if you wanna put a bit of reverb on your kick, just don't, like, hard-pan your sub or something.
zerbaman wrote:
5 - I'd like to ask about the Objekt#1 & 2, 1 in particular I suppose. I understand from interviews that you arranged distribution (for some reason, I believe it was at the distributor's expense? correct me if I'm wrong of course). Did you do any further promo of it? Was it just sending to the right people at the right radio stations from here? I caught on to you fairly late so I didn't really witness your asent.
yes, i had a P&D deal, so the distributor paid for the costs, which isn't that common these days. they also did all of the promo, which is even less common these days, but the "promo" basically amounted to jackmaster sending it to a bunch of his mates on AIM and making sure boomkat got it first. frankly that worked better than any press release i've ever read.
zerbaman wrote:
On a related point, did you have any releases before hand? As static cast or TJ perhaps? (I understood that you taking on the name Objekt was accidental).
Did you 'know' #1 would become what it was when you were originally approached with the idea to release? How did it feel (obviously good, did you feel pressured about that all eyes on you kind of thing?)
objekt #1 was my first release.
actually i was pretty reluctant to release it at all because i didn't think it was anything special. i only agreed because i was offered a deal in which i had no financial responsibility and didn't have to put in any more work than organising the mastering and physical pressing, and figured i had nothing to lose.
zerbaman wrote:
6 - I think I read somewhere that the goose started as an attempt to make some kind of pop tune? Would it be completely outrageous to request some audio of the first project file?
"pop tune" was a facetious way of putting it in an interview, but it was originally 3 minutes long, yeah. it was for the DSF samplepack competition. i think it's still on soundcloud somewhere on the competition page, along with the samplepack. otherwise email me and i'll send it over.
zerbaman wrote:
7 - I obviously wouldn't ask for specifics (names etc), but have you been working collaboratively with other musicians in the scene? Even a remote prospect of something coming out? Who would you be interested in working with, why?
i've been working on some stuff with a friend, yeah. nothing finished yet though. i wouldn't really want to say any more for now.
zerbaman wrote:
8 - Do you find yourself consistently satisfied with your productions? Are you more of a self-critical type? How long do you think it took for you to develop some consistency with your productions?
i'm the most self-critical person i know. objekt #1 was the first track i was satisfied enough with to release (and only after some persuasion) and that took me about 5 years of learning how to make electronic music, not counting several years of learning how to use a DAW and do a mixdown before that.
glottis5 wrote:A lot of times when I get my tunes mastered, they end up sounding worse (in my opinion). What should I know when I send a tune out for mastering? Or is there a chance that I've just gotten a couple of bad engineers?
where were they mastered? what was wrong with them?
glottis5 wrote:I live in a small town in Canada so to keep up with interesting electronic music I have to use the internet. Do you think it's important to be part of a local music scene to keep yourself artistically inspired/challenged?
for me yes, to a degree. for others not (or completely). it's a personal thing!
