Justin Beckler's Production Journal

   Anybody who’s been in a recording situation has had to sit in a room and listen to the same track for hours at a time while editing or mixing.   By the end of a long session like this, you can have a hard time being decisive about creative choices and may start second guessing simple leveling issues or eqs.  You basically reach a point where you can’t hear it objectively anymore.   This natural phenomenon occurs because your brain will never interpret a sound the same way twice. So, you have a completely different perspective at end of the day than you did at the start with hours of critical listening to draw from.  Your ears are like high end studio monitors whose sound is constantly changing.  This can be very problematic when one of your key jobs is to create a great first impression for the listener, and you’ve been listening for 6 straight hours to the same chord progression.

   Any rational person would just stop working on it for the day, or evening take an extended break to give the brain a chance to reset.  Unfortunately musicians are not always rational people.  And because of deadlines and financial limitations, sometimes you just have to plow through.  Heres a couple things I take into consideration when I feel this coming on.  

     I’ll learn most of what I need to know about a mix the first few listens after I open a session.   Mostly because I’m not hyper focusing on anything in particular.  I’m just letting it wash over me in a general way, and tuning into the strengths and weaknesses.  From there I’ll start listening to the individual elements.   

    I also never make changes to the structural core of a mix with tired ears.   And by that I mean drums and bass or anything that creates the low end.  If the snare starts sounding wrong suddenly at the end of the day, but I remember thinking it was perfect when I heard it with fresh ears, I tend to trust the person I was at the beginning of the day. You know, before the snare was drilled into my brain.   

 I try to make sure I fix problems before my brain gets used to them. Familiarity can make the worst flub feel right if you classically condition yourself to accept it.   So fixing a mistake quickly and not procrastinating can save me from some mind games down the road.      

…is finished as of yesterday at around 8pm.    I’m not going to reveal too much here other than it’s a fantastic collection of songs from an uber-talented writer and artist.  This is the  second album I’ve produced with Matt, the first being his solo debut “Me and My Friends” released in 2008 which you can listen to for free on his website www.mattbutchermusic.com.   Working with Matt is a very rewarding for a few reasons. 

First of all he’s extremely positive during the entire process which makes for a tension free creative environment.  It’s really easy to work with him because he’s constantly handing out compliments, encouraging quips, and appreciative gestures.    Secondly, he’s very good assembling talented musicians to play his songs.   Sometimes getting a great sound is as easy as finding the right guys to play the parts, and then letting them do whatever they’re going to do.    Both “Me and My Friends” and this new album are products of that concept, where the most vital production decisions are not WHAT should be played, but WHO should play it.   When you have the right musician performing a part, a producer doesn’t have to do much.  

  Thirdly, the songs Matt brings to the table don’t have a lot of baggage attached them.  By that I mean he doesn’t have preconceived notions of where his songs are allowed to go.  This makes for a great collaborative atmosphere.  He basically puts his heart into writing a song and then treats it like empty canvas because he trusts the instincts of everyone else in the room.     It leaves room for discovery.

Keep checking Matt’s website for updates

  As someone who hears a lot of songs in early stages, I’ve learned to not only trust my first impression, but to depend on it.  You only get one chance to hear a piece of music for the first time, and that perspective is what I value moving forward in a project because it lets me address the most important question—— What am I drawn to about this artist performing this song?    That’s where it starts for me. Good albums aren’t made in a day or a week.  Its months of hard work and then a couple more months scrutinizing your hard work.  One of the most challenging parts of this prolonged process is making sure the vision you had at the start of the project is the same as at the end and doesn’t get convoluted through extensive tracking and mixing.   The way I keep myself focused is by remembering how I felt the first time I heard the song performed.

    In February of this year I recorded the song “Ashes” by Daniel Anderson, which was released as a single online for his band The Anderson Gang.    This was an instance where the direction of the recording became crystal clear after hearing Daniel perform the song at my house on his acoustic guitar.  First off, the song is wonderfully written in that it sneaks up on you with some heavy emotional weight after establishing itself as a traditional country ballad.   I didn’t expect the song to go where it did after the first couple verses, and because the arrangement takes a few chances , the singer’s connection with the material becomes amplified.  That’s not an accident.  Daniel was going through a tough time and this song was birthed from it.   He sang it with a raw energy that made him instinctually play harder and sing louder as the song progressed.  You can hear a bit of that on the recording as the song crescendos.

 The performance felt so honest to me in its simplest form, that there was no way I was going to dilute it with a bunch of instrumentation.  The trinkets of production we included do not distract from the heart of the track.    I really wanted to document the experience of Daniel playing this song and what it sounded like that day at the house.  

theandersongang.bandcamp.com

I posted the track below.

 Heres my first post of what hopefully becomes many more.  This blog is mainly about the creative process and making records.

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I’m a big proponent of putting artists in a position to creatively succeed.   This is very important when working with singers.  Of course I’m not saying that as a producer I can wave a magic wand and make a poorly sung vocal in tune and in time—  Wait.. yes I can.  I can fix a vocal and make it technically in tune and in time. These days you can use technology to do just about anything with a piece of audio.   As a producer I can make it sound acceptable.  It’s up to the singer to make it great.  My job above anything else is to create an atmosphere that sets up this kind of success.

Understanding a singer’s strengths and comfort zones can go a long way.   It can be easy at times to take someone out of their comfort zone in order to explore a melody. As if there was some brave new world of vocal styling that has to be visited.  This instinct can sometimes derail a singers confidence before its been built.   Playing to the strengths of the artist will always yield greater results than trying to change them from what they naturally do well.  Psychologically there are a few things in play.   If I’m making immediate suggestions, corrections, critiques and adjustments to somebody right off the bat they’ll become self conscious.   A self conscious singer is unable to relax, let go, be vulnerable and take chances. Those are the things that have to happen in order to get a great performance.   Also, there is never an exactly right or exactly wrong way to sing anything.  It’s all opinion.  Negative feedback can instill to the vocalist that the way they’re singing is incorrect and the way you want them to sing is correct.    This does two things, it sends them in an unfamiliar direction, and takes them out of being a creative performer, and into a cycle of appeasing a producer. 

The most valuable skill a producer can obtain is knowing when to shut up.  When I make a suggestion to an artist who is giving a performance, I know that I’m pushing that performance in a different direction.  This will take a portion of the artist’s creativity out of the equation, thus eliminating some potential greatness that would come from exploiting the artist’s strengths.   When none of the singers natural instincts have panned out, I’ll step in and point them in a direction.  Recognizing a vocalists strengths and exploiting them is not an exact science.  It’s just an opinion.     If the artist has a different opinion of what those strengths are, this can sometimes lead to conflict, but in the end I have to trust my ears and my objectivity.  That’s why I was hired in the first place.

There is an art to critiquing a singer’s performance without it affecting their confidence in a negative way.  There’s also an art to beating somebody into submission. Maybe I’ll cover that in the next entry.  Have I mastered either of these techniques?  Not really.