Musicians! The Recording. The Mixing. The Beware!

A New Era for Musicians

 Making music is democratized. The days of only the elite making music with the most expensive equipment are now very quickly coming to an end. Believe it or not, most people actually carry a recording studio in their pocket at all times! Think about it. What is the device that almost everybody regardless of their income have in their pocket or at their fingertips at all times? Believe it or not, your phone is a great way to start producing small music projects right away. With your phone, you are able to record, edit, mix, and share your music all with a few taps of a screen. This is not the way the music industry functioned 15 years ago and you were blessed enough to be born into a generation which affords this to everyone!

Obviously making music on your phone isn't the sure-fire way to make professional-grade music otherwise everyone else would have do it. Making music is actually quite a process! Don't fear though because the nuts and bolts of making music is actually quite fun and addicting! Learning the different types of mixing, miking, and producing might seem unbearably complex, but pretty soon, you will never look at music the same way again. By the end of this blog, you will have all the information necessary to record, mix, and share your music. At the end of this blog, we will take a critical look at musical streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. Get your soundboard, get mixer, and get your popcorn, it's time to learn how to make music!

The Recording: 

For those of you who read our previous post about how to create and share quality YouTube videos, you know that most audio-visual production is based around sound! Since music (with exception of music videos) is entirely a sound-based platform, we are going to take a very extensive look into the different types of production. Just like knowing the type of content that you are going to create for YouTube videos is essential, if you are going to make music you need to know what your genre is going to be. Your genre is going to determine the kind of equipment you will need to record your songs. Don't worry, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on equipment in the beginning, but as your songs get better, so should your equipment.

Just a few basics for those of you who aren't familiar with the types of cables that you are going to have to get used to seeing when making music:

The XLR Cable: 


This cable is used to take sound from the microphones to a mixer.


The Instrument Cable: 

This is a cable that is designed to go from an instrument and into an amplifier. These are essentially the only two cables that you need to use for getting your recording equipment set up. Just know that if you are reluctant to pour in a lot of money for your recording equipment, you can always purchase microphones that can connect to a USB instead. These are much cheaper than XLR mics, but they will not give quite the performance as a mixer will. Musician's friend is a great place to buy your first couple mics and get you recording. Ryan Bruce has a great YouTube channel which show you how to start recording right away.

Musician's Friend: https://www.musiciansfriend.com/microphones
Ryan Bruce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwjC5Xjb5Go

The Mixing: 

For this section, we are going to explore why music sounds different in your left ear than in your right ear. What you hear when the singer in some songs sounds like they're in a cave is that somebody went through and mixed the song. You can do this to your own song with some free software. 

Audacity is a phenomenal free program that will allow you to mix your music. While it doesn't offer a fraction of the features that professional software like FruityLoops and iLogic will offer, this is a great place to start. You can use Audacity for non-music related projects as well if you should ever need to record a particular sound effect. A great way to get used to mixing is to start with small projects. Record one or two tracks at a time and try to get them to sound one is close and one is far away. Below is a great tutorial on how to get started mixing. 

Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0v63_NPt9o

If you are wanting create a more professional sound, you are going to need a couple of things depending on the type of music that you are wanting to put together. If you are going to put together, you are going to need a midi controller, and possibly a soundboard. We will discuss both of these below. There are also lots of vastly superior mixing software when compared to audacity. One of the commonly used programs with Mac computers is iLogic. 

Another great premium program that you can use to mix your music is FruityLoops or FLStudio.


The Mixer: 

This is where you will plug all your instruments so they can be mixed inside of a computer software. These will also allow you to set gain so your sound will not clip.

The Soundboard: 

This is essentially going to be used when you make EDM mashups. They will have tracks set to each individual button; you will press these down when you want a certain track to play during the mashup.

Midi Controller: 

When want to make your electronic dance music, this will be how you make melodies to your songs. This is how many different electronic musicians will create their music.

The Beware: 

Spotify and Apple Music are great services with phenomenal interfaces which allow users to find almost any song imaginable. While it is a great service for early musicians to get their names out there and onto people's headphones, these are not great services to use to make a career out of your music. Instead of getting paid for the amount of records sold which is the traditional way of doing things, artists are now paid by the amount of plays they get on a streaming services like Apple Music. While there is a very very high ceiling for the amount of plays that you can get, the floor is much much lower. Artists are paid only fractions of a penny per each play. This has resulted in many musicians getting hardly any money for their work. Before you start your career as a musician, it is probably a much better idea to get some work done that you personally sell to other people instead of a record company selling your music to a streamer. 

A really cool way to get your music produced into an album is through FAWM or February album writing month. This is a way for many other musicians to piece together their music and get going.

FAWM: http://fawm.org/