The winter is the perfect time to tackle mastering projects that have been laying around in your DAW or computer etc. for a while. You'll have more time to work on it, and pay closer attention with less distractions (assuming that your buildings water pipes burst or your car won't start in this horrific winter). For me, I don't want to go out right now and have been cranking away at a variety of recording projects as well as some more recent live recordings using only 2 mics. Challenges...
There is a lot to discover in mixing and mastering right now. And for things that are not recorded well, the more tools you have at your disposal the better, imo. More audio sculpting and shaping capabilities. I am very happy with my modest studio upgrade to Focusrite Scarlett 18i6 and Reaper license purchase to go along with it. That and I have finally gotten around to digging around in what even Ableton Live Lite has to offer.
Pretty exciting mixing and mastering in tandem with both Reaper and Ableton, as at least for my barebones setup, each have different important things to bring to the table:
Reaper brings very easy multi-tracking, first and foremost. It works perfectly with my 18i6 audio interface, and it more than accomplishes what you need a multi-tracker to do. Way better than Audacity, but not expensive, being far less than all the other comparable DAWs. So I'm very happy about that. Also added a ribbon mic to my mic collection, which is really helping to capture the upper midrange and high end more effectively.
What surprised me lately was thinking about all the (sometimes drunkenly) sound projects I have begun over the last 2 years. It is ridiculous... 15 different things current!
Although some are one-off projects and others will be rare occasions (such as Sidesplitter, which will be experimental sequenced music or collaborations). The big ones are a proggy stoner rock band with punk moments called Voltage Cobra; a downtuned super heavy version of Jesus Lizard, or something like that, but with more grindcore, probably called Vronk; Psychic Attack, a freeform psychedelic rock mind melter; Sid Yiddish and His Candystore Henchmen... an conducted art rock/avant classical aleatory marvel; and then a bunch of solo recording projects: Nebulous Peril, experimental black metal/grindcore death metal; Sunsawer, another project in the works for a few years, which is drone meets shoegaze somewhere between MBV and Flying Saucer Attack; At The Weather Station, a one-off project recorded on an organic farm in the middle of Illinois at an old weather station, for real; Sitari, my long running infamous electronic music; Sidesplitter, the weirder version of Sitari; Baba Deep, which will be a vinyl based project, both as live dj/curator as well as vinyl sample based producer; Voiceprint, a project assembling music out of samples of only the human voice; Truthdealer, my solo guitar project often doing soundscapes but not limited to that; stuff released under my own name, George M. Bowles, which will usually be free jazz, noise, or avant classical, or just compilations of the various styles I am comfortable with; Forest Moon, which I just made a short film for, is a totally studio/soundtrack/cinematic based project that revolves around the old art of midi; and last but not least a collaboration with artist Heat Jones which is called for now, Heatmap.
You can find many of those projects at my net label Cosmic Column Records, or for Sitari which was in existence well before that, http://sitari.bandcamp.com. Some of this stuff you are just going to have to dig around for, or wait for the finished product!
There is a lot to discover in mixing and mastering right now. And for things that are not recorded well, the more tools you have at your disposal the better, imo. More audio sculpting and shaping capabilities. I am very happy with my modest studio upgrade to Focusrite Scarlett 18i6 and Reaper license purchase to go along with it. That and I have finally gotten around to digging around in what even Ableton Live Lite has to offer.
Pretty exciting mixing and mastering in tandem with both Reaper and Ableton, as at least for my barebones setup, each have different important things to bring to the table:
Reaper brings very easy multi-tracking, first and foremost. It works perfectly with my 18i6 audio interface, and it more than accomplishes what you need a multi-tracker to do. Way better than Audacity, but not expensive, being far less than all the other comparable DAWs. So I'm very happy about that. Also added a ribbon mic to my mic collection, which is really helping to capture the upper midrange and high end more effectively.
What surprised me lately was thinking about all the (sometimes drunkenly) sound projects I have begun over the last 2 years. It is ridiculous... 15 different things current!
Although some are one-off projects and others will be rare occasions (such as Sidesplitter, which will be experimental sequenced music or collaborations). The big ones are a proggy stoner rock band with punk moments called Voltage Cobra; a downtuned super heavy version of Jesus Lizard, or something like that, but with more grindcore, probably called Vronk; Psychic Attack, a freeform psychedelic rock mind melter; Sid Yiddish and His Candystore Henchmen... an conducted art rock/avant classical aleatory marvel; and then a bunch of solo recording projects: Nebulous Peril, experimental black metal/grindcore death metal; Sunsawer, another project in the works for a few years, which is drone meets shoegaze somewhere between MBV and Flying Saucer Attack; At The Weather Station, a one-off project recorded on an organic farm in the middle of Illinois at an old weather station, for real; Sitari, my long running infamous electronic music; Sidesplitter, the weirder version of Sitari; Baba Deep, which will be a vinyl based project, both as live dj/curator as well as vinyl sample based producer; Voiceprint, a project assembling music out of samples of only the human voice; Truthdealer, my solo guitar project often doing soundscapes but not limited to that; stuff released under my own name, George M. Bowles, which will usually be free jazz, noise, or avant classical, or just compilations of the various styles I am comfortable with; Forest Moon, which I just made a short film for, is a totally studio/soundtrack/cinematic based project that revolves around the old art of midi; and last but not least a collaboration with artist Heat Jones which is called for now, Heatmap.
You can find many of those projects at my net label Cosmic Column Records, or for Sitari which was in existence well before that, http://sitari.bandcamp.com. Some of this stuff you are just going to have to dig around for, or wait for the finished product!