This commentary is part one of two on the topic of: communicating music to your audience.

Part One discusses three main topics:

1.     My roles and objectives as a post-production engineer

2.     Information on ‘clean’ recordings, and what to avoid in your recordings.

3.     Thoughts on budget recording equipment.

Part Two will feature a discussion surrounding philosophical, and semiotic topics relating to imperfections within music. It will also be include a demo from Tareena Rose’s upcoming debut EP, TIDES.

If you want to dive into part two without the context provided within this post, then click here to head over!

For a few years now I’ve been commissioned on various projects as a ‘post-production engineer’. This term, ‘post-production engineer’ might seem a bit ambiguous or arbitrary, but I use it explicitly as a ‘catch all’ – as I work across three roles (or perhaps disciplines) which overlap at times;

A producer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer.

The definitions of these roles can vary quite a bit depending on who you ask to define them - but regardless of definitions, I see my role as a post-production engineer to achieve two main objectives:

1.     To assist in the stylisation of sound recordings.

-         Helping the sound recordings achieve certain adjectives; upbeat, distant, intimate, lo-fi, sad, melancholy etc.

2.     To effectively communicate compositions to the listener.

-         Allowing each instrument to be heard by the listener.

As a post-production engineer (or more specifically in this context a mixing engineer), you want to be mixing recordings that have as little issues as possible.

In this context, you would want the recordings you’ve been sent to be ‘clean’, which would require the absence of the following issues (among other things):

·        background noises, such as computer fans in the background or a distant conversation in the hallway,

·        aural artefacts, such as mouth clicks, [link]

·        vocal plosives (the gush of air created by certain words containing t, k, p, d, g, and b), [link]

·        digital noise, comparable to having your phone next to a speaker, [link]

The above list are all issues that the right equipment, recording techniques and recording spaces can help remedy. Sometimes it can indeed be unavoidable to have some minor issues, such as this live recording with a little sneeze at 51 seconds in:

Not the end of the world, and perhaps it adds some character or authenticity since it was recorded at a live venue, with alive audience present. Then again, if you’re paying to get an EP professionally recorded, mixed and mastered (live or not) then you probably wouldn’t deliberately place a random sneeze within the first minute of a song!

But as of late (with covid-19), the recordings I’m being sent are understandably being mostly conducted by artists/clients themselves – meaning that the issues listed above are becoming a little more common in the recordings I’m being sent than usual.

One key element in attaining clean recordings (as mentioned above), is the recording equipment used when recording. If the equipment is either faulty or low-quality, then it doesn’t matter if you’ve got some fantastic recording techniques – a faulty microphone in the hands of a novice is still a faulty microphone in the hands of a professional.

Some individuals often need the basic functionality of recording themselves to capture some guitar, vocals, bass or drums – but if they’re on a tight budget then something that gets the basic job done, would be better than nothing at all, even if what they are able to record is less than clean.

Enter budget equipment; a smudged reflection of prosumer equipment, coming with its own pros and cons. A sacrificial offering resulting in reduced recording quality purely to access the basic functionality of audio recording usually occurs when purchasing budget equipment.

And at the beginning of one’s ‘musical journey’, this is entirely appropriate and suitable! Yet, mixing budget equipment and recording with the intention of publishing your recorded music can be a bit like shooting yourself in the foot while trying to run.

Budget equipment creates issues like the following:

Even if you’re not sure what you’re looking at, beyond the squiggly lines – the lines that don’t squiggle are generally the problem.

If you are sure what you’re looking at, then the specifics are as follows in the annotated image below:

·        constant rumble at 50hz. [red box]

·        constant background noise/high noise floor. [green box]

·        low sensitivity to frequencies around 1.25kHz.[pink box]

But with a little magic and the correct software & knowhow - you can get something that looks like this:

Even without the ability to listen this example, there’s certainly a lot less visually happening in this ameliorated version. Just trust me when I say it sounded better! I’m going to cover the specific techniques I use in a separate post, as the specific techniques I’ve used aren’t necessary to this post!

I originally only wanted to write an article about the topics featured in part two, but I realised that I had to share my own perspective on some prerequisite areas of knowledge. In order to talk about imperfections within music and music as a mirror to humanity – I had to first establish what an ‘imperfection’ was, how they come to the fold, and the context surrounding my encounters with these ‘imperfections’.

Having read (or at best skimmed), there’s a few things I hope to have communicated to you:

-         the gist of my roles as a post-production engineer,

-         what clean recordings (generally) shouldn't contain,

-         budget equipment can often inhibit clean recordings,

-         artists/clients are more commonly recording themselves during the current Covid-19 pandemic,

-         the issues budget equipment creates can indeed be fixed,

Now that you’ve picked up some varying topics of background information, click here to go to part two.