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Some of our regular readers may have noticed my conspicuous absence from the blog for a bit and it is high time I revealed the reason. For the past month or so I have been working with Professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School in preparing a plea to the Supreme Court to hear the case of Whitney Harper, the “innocent infringer”. Our plea takes the form of a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, just recently filed by her lawyer, Kiwi Camara, and will take further shape in the expressions of support we can gather for it. Whitney Harper is one of the 40,000+ targets of legal action the RIAA has brought against ordinary Americans in downloading music for free. Each one of these is a classic case of the little guy against giant multinational corporations. An army of lawyers with essentially limitless financial resources against individual defendants with pro bono lawyers. These battles are fought in a legal system that cares little about what is just and appropriate... Read More →

For a thorough explanation of dynamic range and the “loudness war,” read: An Explanation of The Loudness War That Even Your Dad Will Understand. But here’s the gist: in order to make a mix louder, mastering engineers have to increase the volume of the softest points in the music to be closer to the loudest points. This is called decreasing the dynamic range. Today, March 20th, has been declared “Dynamic Range Day” by Ian Shepherd, the guy who broke the Death Magnetic / Loudness War story. His proposal? EVERYONE SHOULD TYPE IN ALL CAPS ON TWITTER AND SCREAM EVERYTHING ALL DAY IN ORDER TO SHOW NORMAL PEOPLE HOW ANNOYED THEY SHOULD (THEORETICALLY) BE WITH OVERCOMPRESSED/OVERLIMITED MUSIC… BECAUSE BY YELLING ALL DAY YOU ARE DECREASING THE DYNAMIC RANGE OF YOUR OWN SELF EXPRESSION AND THEREBY PISSING PEOPLE OFF. From what I understand, the idea is to protest the loudness war, raise awareness, and ultimately persuade others to join the effort to preserve... Read More →

Whether you are an at-home audio hobbyist or a seasoned and professional Pro Tools operator, everybody yearns for the optimum working environment to produce music. Over the next few weeks I’ll take you through the various components of the digital audio workstation and offer some suggestions for maximizing its performance. This is by no means the end-all-be-all of how-tos on the subject and I invite all of you readers out there to contribute to the body of knowledge with your personal expertise. As for me, I can only speak from my own experience as a professional audio engineer (plus a couple years in Information Technology, but we don’t like to talk about those years…). So please offer your opinions or questions in the comments below if you are so inclined. I should admit right off the bat that I am a supporter of Macintosh computers and Pro Tools in the professional environment. The realities of the professional world decree that this is how you must go if you... Read More →

Editing is sort of like the breakfast of the production process. Although people don’t covet and fetishize it they way they do mixing (the dinner), it is absolutely essential for a well-balanced diet. You might say mastering is the dessert, but I’m inclined to call it a breath mint that you grab on your way out of the restaurant. Or maybe editing is the house salad and pre-production is breakfast since people skip it when they’re in a hurry even though it’s the most important meal of the day and even though they could at LEAST take a Nutri-Gain bar on their way out the door… Anyway, here’s what I’m really getting at: you wouldn’t eat breakfast and dinner at the same time, would you? That’s gross. To this end, the absolute top of the top mixers (i.e. the ones that charge $10K/song–there are about 20 of them in the world) make sure all of the editing is done before they begin by having their assistants prep all their sessions.* And... Read More →

Ladies and germs, I present to you what is perhaps my favorite release that I’ve worked on to date: In The Clouds, a five-song EP and debut release from Boston-based indie rockers The Dirty Dishes. I mixed and co-produced the record, also sharing mastering duties with Dave Cooley (produced both Silversun Pickups records and has mastered for J Dilla, Madlib, & Polyphonic Spree). They’re something like a female-fronted Silversun Pickups or Autolux. But fresher. And maybe with a dash of Smashing Pumpkins. Listen to all five songs on Bandcamp. My favorites: » “Deer In Headlights” (catchy, indie) » “Stolen Apples” (fun with a hint of evil) » “Thin Air” (epic shoegaze) Haggle with your favorite ticket scalper tonight outside Boston’s House of Blues to catch the Dirty Dishes opening for Passion Pit at their sold-out show. And in case you haven’t noticed, these blogosphere darlings have been hyping the hell out of the Dishes: Passion... Read More →

Hey everybody, just wanted to encourage you all to check out the back of the most recent Guitar Center catalog to take advantage of this INSANE offer. From December 1st until the 31st, you can get 10% off any item from “the nation’s widest selection of guitars, basses, amps, effects, drum kits, keyboards, turntables, recording gear, PA systems and more!” except nearly every brand they sell. Here’s the fine print: “Excludes [...] Adam Monitors, AKG, Ampeg, Apogee Duets, Apple, Audix, Bose, Crate, Crown, dbx, Digitech, Digidesign HD, Edirol, ESP, Euphonix, EVH, Fender, some Gibson and Epiphone, Gretsch guitars, Jackson, JBL, Korg, KRK, Lexicon, Mackie, Marshall, Martin, Mesa Boogie, Mogami, Monster Cable, Morgan, Peavey, QSC, some Roland/BOSS products, Royer Labs, Shure, Soundcraft, Squier, SSL, SWR, and Vox.” (Click to enlarge:) How do they do it and still make a profit? Amazing deals this holiday season, y’all.  Read More →

Well folks, 2009 is winding down and it’s been a great year for us and the blog. My only regret* is that I haven’t had time to post more stuff, from the great people we’ve worked with lately to finishing some of the drafts I’d contemplated for months. For those of you who have emailed us or left comments, thank you. You let us know when we’re doing something right and call us out when we’re oh so wrong. On occasion we’ve written entire posts in response to your comments and emails. Today I’d like to formally invite all our readers to give us some feedback. What do you want from the Fix Your Mix blog in 2010? Things you’d like to see more (or less) of, specific topic ideas, etc. Leave your thoughts in the comments or send an email to blog (at) fixyourmix.com In other news, we’re finally taking the leap into the zany world of advertising. If you have something that would be valuable to our growing readership of musicians, songwriters,... Read More →

Miss Geo is a Rhode Island-based singer songwriter. Her new album, The Story, is an excruciatingly (yes) catchy indie-pop record with clever lyrics and tons of stand out tracks. Check out “Broken Wrists”: I’ve been meaning to feature Miss Geo for a few months now, not only because the music is killer, but because I want to talk about a lesser known service that we offer at Fix Your Mix called stem mastering. Stem mastering, sometimes also called stem mixing or separation mastering, is a hybrid between mixing and mastering. To explain how this works, I’ll tell you a little bit about how this record was made. The Story was produced, engineered, and mixed by my good friend Rob Arbelo here in Boston. What I received from Rob was stereo “stems”–a single stereo track of drums, a stereo track of all the guitars combined, stereo vocals, bass, and a stereo track of synth/harmonies/noises combined. The benefit of mastering from stems is twofold: You can’t... Read More →

Grizzly Bear – “Ready, Able” on YouTube Key Signature: A minor, C Lydian Time Signatures: 3/4, 4/4, 6/8 Special Songwriting Devices Used: Three-bar phrases, Polymeter, Polyrhythm, Modal harmony Structure: Verse-Refrain-Verse-Refrain-C-D-C-D-C-Outro Hover your mouse over terms underlined with dots (like this) for more information. If you’re following along with the album version rather than the video, subtract 5 seconds from any time stamps listed below to account for the video lead-in. This blog mostly concerns itself with what can loosely be considered pop music, but today’s song violates what is perhaps pop’s most sacred and universal characteristic: structure. It’s not that “Ready, Able” has no structure, but it certainly isn’t your typical verse-chorus-verse. While a traditional pop song is designed to grab your attention and get to the hook ASAP, Grizzly Bear has no patience for people with no patience. And to those who... Read More →

Some musical terms are so basic and widely used that we never stop to ask ourselves: “Hey, what is a measure? What is a riff? What is a phrase? What’s the difference between a bar and a measure?” This article should answer all of those questions for you and more. Summary: • Bar = measure • Phrase = long(-ish) musical idea • Motif = short musical idea • Riff = lick Bars & Measures A bar is the same thing as a measure. What determines the length of a measure can vary depending on the time signature of a song, but generally speaking you’re going to be able to tell by the snare pattern. For most pop applications, you’ll be dealing with either 4/4 or 6/8 time. In almost every song in 4/4 time, there will be 2 snare drum hits per measure. These hits indicate beats 2 and 4. This is called a back beat. In addition to the back beat, there will often be snare accents, but they will not feel as strong as the snare hits on beats 2 and 4. The back beat... Read More →