The career / hobby quandary

dav | March 15, 2021, 7:38 a.m.

A question that comes up a lot for people in the music industry, regardless of where you are in the field (e.g. front of house engineer, mixing engineer, musician or even venue manager / booking agent etc) is 'should I pursue this as a career?' It's really an excellent question and one most of us have needed to think long and hard about. I can very clearly recall my own inner struggles with this. I was in my mid 20's, I'd graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane, Australia and I was working as a music teacher. I was playing around town in various bands and ensembles a few nights a week, recording fairly regularly and my life was music 24/7. I was earning OK money but there was always this instability about work that I found hard to come to terms with. It was probably a little irrational in hindsight because I always seemed to have enough work. I began to look at older people I knew in the industry - musicians, teachers, professors and others that had made music their career. Many were coming up for retirement and I suspected weren't really that comfortable financially. Others were OK financially, but because of the transient nature of the music industry found it hard to find partners and were often very lonely. The questions I began to ask myself were:

• Do I love this art form enough to continue in it no matter what?
• Am I prepared to face the consequences of my decision?
• Are there other things I would like to experience in life, other interests I would like to pursue and talents I'd like to develop?

After a lot of thought, I decided I would pursue a career in something else and keep music a hobby. I went back to university and eventually began to work in another field. When I look back, I believe it was the right decision for me. Choosing another career path doesn't mean the end for your musical dreams, and perhaps you can look at it like an investor might - you're simply diversifying your portfolio.  

Whatever you decide, I wish you all the best. If you think I might be able to help you talk it through, send me a comment.

  

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Loudness Penalty

dav | March 8, 2021, 6:41 a.m.

Ever wondered why your track doesn't sound as good when played through a streaming service like Spotify?

I have - but I put it down to me not being very good at mixing and mastering. It turns out there's something called a loudness penalty that might also be having an effect.

Evidently streaming services normalise everything so that you don't get a loud song and then a quiet song (like when you're watching TV and you get the adds that are so much louder than the program). What happens is that the streaming services turn down the volume of loud tracks which can cause issues in playback. I've seen it said that you should master your track to be about -14 LUFS (Loudness Unit Full Scale - measures average volume of a song over time). The truth is, each streaming service has it's own algorythm for determining their loudness penalty so there is no magic LUFS number.  

I bought a plug in recently that allows me to measure how the loudness penalty would be applied to my track by each streaming service. It also allows me to preview how my track would sound on each service. To use it, simply place it as the last plug in on your track and play through your whole song. They (MeterPlugs) actually have a free service too where you can upload your track and get a loudness penalty reading and preview.  

This raises a few questions:

• should you do separate masters for each service? 

Nearly all mastering engineers are saying that this would be far too time consuming. A practical solution is to aim for a loudness that will work for most services. Some suggest doing two masters - one for streaming and one for sending to clubs and for posting to your website etc. The one you send for promotion (i.e. not for streaming services) can be mastered louder (e.g. -8 LUFS).

• how will this reduced compression/limiting affect the sound of my master?

I've seen some comment that the reduced loudness means you don't need to compress or limit your track so much. This makes it more dynamic and less 'squished' giving you a better sound. Streaky points out that while this could be a good thing for some types of music (e.g. classical, jazz, folk), it might have a negative affect on tracks in a style that need more compression, because heavy compression is actually a part of the sound.

So what's the go? Perhaps you master to style and if you need that heavily compressed sound then turn down the clip gain for sending to a streming service? I'm not sure what the answer is, if you find out - leave me a comment.

D

More info:

Loudness Penalty Plugin Demo with Ian Shepherd

Mastering Audio for Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music and Youtube

 

 

 

 

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Writing crap songs

dav | March 1, 2021, 7:10 a.m.

I was watching a YouTube video on the weekend. The presenter suggests a formula for writing an album (LP) as follows:

• Write 30 songs
• Record 20
• Mix 15
• Release 10

I can definitely see the point of using a formula like this - i.e. don't just write 10 songs and release as chances are, not all of them will be of good quality. But it seems to me a heck of a lot of work. Particularly if you have work and other responsibilities. 

Perhaps you can mess with the formula a little but keep the same rough proportions (e.g. write 18, record 12, mix 9, release 6). That seems a little less daunting and would work well for releasing an EP. Maybe it'd help to think about it like this: when you're writing songs you often get a sense of what's worth pursuing and what's not. You might write a verse and chorus and then realise it's probably not your best work and put it aside. In other words, for every song you decide to record you've probably written - or partially written - at least 3 songs or ideas anyway. The truth is, I think most of what I write is utter crap, but it seems to me you gotta get the rubbish out of the way to find the gold.

Well I think you get the idea.... I hope it gives you something to think about. As Tim Molan says in his book The Do-it Youself Labotomy (which I haven't actually read by the way, I just read a review)- crap ideas are fertilizer to help you grow better ones!!!

D

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