Components of music prod (found dig med)

Question 1

Balance

Answer 1

Balance (volume) - volume control between layers of a song. Building the layers. Listening to them to ensure they are consistent all the way through. Consider if a solo needs to be made louder. All involved in automation. Making the layers blend via balancing volume.

Question 2

Pan

Answer 2

Pan (left/right stereo image)- Most music is mixed for people with two ears. The brain’s interpretation of sound, psychoacoustics. Use volume levels and tone to determine where sound is positioned. Position in stereo mix so there’s a spectrum. - Imagine there’s a band all playing while standing right in front of you at the same time. It’s one dimensional/ only gives the effect of hearing it. Instead, panning gives it dimension and balance.

Question 3

Equalisation

Answer 3

Equalisation (tone) - Making sounds nicer to listen to. It means adjusting the tone of different frequencies. There are 3 things to adjust: cut, or boost a frequency, and how wide a frequency is.

Question 4

Automation

Answer 4

Automation –means having a DAW automatically perform tasks over time, particularly moving knobs, faders, and switches for you. Most popularly used to change volume in different spots.

Question 5

Effects (creative effect)

Answer 5

Effects (creative effect) - Some form of additional effect that is not in the original music (eg. Reverb, EQ, filter).

Question 6

Dynamics (compression, etc)

Answer 6

Dynamics = Some form of automated volume control. A type of dynamic is a a gate, which keeps volume below a threshold.

Question 7

Features of presets

Answer 7

Presets such as ‘bright vocal’ can add various plug ins to your mix, such as:
DE-ESSER (reduces harshness of ‘s’ sounds)
CHANNEL EQ (filter all frequencies lower than the fundamental. Gets rid of low rumble sounds).
COMPRESSOR (reduces how much sounds exceeds a certain level)
EXCITER (Adds spectral colour to sound and harmonic sparkle. An additive, while the other control.
STEREO DELAY (gives more depth and gets rid of the dryness of the studio. Can also be used for creative effect (echo). Also can fatten up the presence of a sound. Adds a natural reflection. )

Question 8

Plug-in chains

Answer 8

The order of plug-in chains is important.
Normally the first effects in the order are to “fix it” and the ones following are to enhance.
The order of plugins is important as an effect can be changed by other effects. For example, if you add reverb first, that can be later affected by comp and chan EQ. It might be warped by this, which is why you should consider the order.
A common convention for how to order and effects chain is:
Dynamics: Compressors, gates, and certain modulation/gain effects like wah.
Gain: Distortion, overdrive, fuzz.
Modulation: Phasers, chorus, flanger.
Time: Reverb and delay.

Question 9

Noise gate

Answer 9

Gets rid of unwanted sound.
Turns off volume unless music comes through. No buzzing, etc.

Question 10

Pedal board

Answer 10

Used for guitar effects – can add FX to colour the sound

Question 11

Amp designer

Answer 11

Emulates an amplifier.
Re-amping = recording dry sound in studio of guitar, then playing sound back through amp and tweaking it. Experiment.