2 Mar
2004
2 Mar
'04
5:26 p.m.
>This is common practice. Also switching to small
"lo-fi" speakers in the
>control room and sticking a cassette mix in the car sound system to
>listen to on the way home from the session or wherever.
...I routinely come up with a mix that I think
sounds good, only to take in the car and have it sound like garbage.
Part of that is that by the time I get to the final mix in the studio,
I've worked on it for hours and my ears are just tired.
I remember in a recording class the teacher talking about (I think this
is the term)... ear fatigue. It's when the ears are exposed to sound for
so long that they (litterally) stop hearing "correctly".
... I've spent so
long on focusing on individual parts and tweaking the EQs that I lose
track of the piece as a whole.
I also remember the teacher warning us about eq'ing each individual part
because then they may not fit into their correct spectrum. I guess what
he was talking about is how each instument has a certain (eq) range that
has it's part in the song. And eq'ing seperatly can make each instument
sound (for example) "full", but then (together with other instuments) it
sounds "muddy" because it's not supposed to have that wide of an (eq)
spectrum.
I see always see sound men listing to each drum, thinking that they are
getting a great sound by creating a full sound for each drum. But then
they don't say to the drummer "o.k., now lets hear all of it together".
And those are the times when the drums sound big a big bloated wall of mush.
Rocco