Confessional thread

They are great for recording guide vocal with a band live off the floor. So I also like them, in that one brief application which lasts about 4 minutes per a song's 20-100 hours of production and never make the final mix. LOL

Faster than you can say "Michael Jackson"!
Chris

There's a lesson in that somewhere, but I'll be damned if I'm going to take the time to learn it ?

Many many years ago my wife figured out how easy it is to Google how much something is worth. Since I seldom pay any where near market price, it’s just easier to show receipts and flip stuff at a profit. Even with all the receipts she is still amazed that one month I made $2k after fees just flipping mics, even better the most I paid for any of them was $350!

Am I alone here? The only time I really struggled is when I get into the realms of synthetic, fake drums, fake guitars, fake instruments, plugins and generally just cheeping out. Now I'm not saying that every sim or plug sucks, I'm not saying there aren't genre's which are defined by that style and sometimes it is well produced, I'm not even saying there isn't cheap equipment that can blow your mind (I have a few inexpensive mic's that I'd take over any Neumann for my vox). However when we talk about equipment there's a lot of variables to factor in, for a start I might not be trying to achieve the same as somebody else.

I cannot for the life of me get my OTB chain to sound like my ITB chain, I don't care about single specifics like a 1176 comp because it's the song that matters not one piece of a grand puzzle. Even in the HW realm there's too much to factor in, for example I bought an A&H Zed-R16 expecting it to instil some sort of mojo like my old 4K did. Let's just say it didn't, the difference between that and a middle of the road interface was negligible. IME HW is no guarantee of anything, it's through the process of finding what works for you that it begins to make sense..

For example the BM ML I have, with the flick of a switch I can widen a track without it causing any phase imbalances and I can add decent sounding even harmonic distortion without a chain of plugs. The SSL G-Comp doesn't cave in or expand into ear compressing annoyances like a lot of ITB VCA's do, listen to deadmau5 ghoul's n stuff for a prime example. Thing is that was a popular well renowned track and it obviously didn't bother a lot of people, so how could one ever define what's "good" or "correct" within a consensus?

Over the years I've bought into the "tools don't matter" ethos, even believed it for a while. I've tried flavour of the month HW pieces etc. and for the most part its been a negative. In many cases we're not talking about the sound of things either.. I have also considered that as a hobby music is a money pit, sometimes I look at all the shiny stuff and ask myself why did I bother? I'm not at this stage going to earn anything from it.

That being said, I was searching for a sound that I could only achieve by acquiring what I have now and its taken decades of mistakes to get there.

Knowing exactly what I want and that it only takes money to get it is incredibly frustrating and sometimes debilitating. The thing is, my gear lust isn't endless. I could do what I want for say.. $30,000-$50,000. But today, with royalties being what there are with streaming, it seems I won't be able to manage that. I could even do much of what I want for $15,000 if I had to.

I spent 3 years cobbling my most recent album together, track by track, song by song. I could get decent sounds that way, since I only needed processing for one track at a time. Cumulatively, it wasn't that far off being in a decent studio with dozens of mics and preamps. But I'm not interested in doing that again and again because I can. I wish I could use a proper studio with a few good players in the same room again.

If only there was a minimum wage for using musicians' work, where streaming services paid enough to support ourselves, it sure would be better for music in general.

What I might "confess", is that despite not having any money for gear, I still keep thinking of ways to manipulate things to buy one more thing like a Chandler REDD. The problem is that even if I managed that, then I'd want a CL1b or the new Heritage compressor, and if I had them both, I'd probably want a Dangerous 2 Bus+.

There has to be a better way..

This could easily turn into a Moan Zone kind of complaint thread . . . a buddy of mine in Nashvegas and I are working on an album, and since we're a couple thousand miles apart ATM, we talk on the phone a bit, and last night we were decrying the extent of programmed drums and synths and piano in country music coming out of Nashville these days.

See? I'm totally not helping.

My intent isn't to whine but it seems to be so anti-hardware nowaday's, leveraging the best of both worlds (which does admittedly takes a lot of commitment) has made my life so much easier.