speaking the truth into existenceand actually living itDon miguel ruiez the four agreements: The first agreement. Thats not the whole picture. Combine that with follow through. A truth in word only is not necessarily the truth A truth in word plus action combined is the best thing you can give to another person. Have you ever told someone else you were going to do something then turn around and ghost them with no word of warning, no heads up? Its not a recipe for trust; granted, maybe you had your reasons, but why the lack of communication? We arranged to meet on a Wednesday, you mentioned on Tuesday that Thursday is better, okay no problem. I'll shuffle around my commitments and Ill do my best to make it work. Thursday rolls around, its 5 o clock and im expecting a call. No call. 7 o clock. Maybe somethings up. I have no way of knowing. 9:00? Fuck it. Ive got no patience left, and no trust left either. im going to sleep. Maybe ill get that call, get up, and head out for the meeting. It's important to me so i don't mind. Well I'm writing this article so maybe I do... I arranged to meet up with someone else that same week. "Hey bud, ill be in town in two weeks, let me know whats happening so we can catch up." "Sure, sounds good." The week before. "Okay man, gonna be in town next week, we still good 2 go?" "Yeah buddy, its my birthday soon, lets celebrate." "Awesome cant wait." The day before. "Hey, what are you doing on sunday, I'll be rolling into town then." "Oh, I'm in Victoria until Tuesday." Shit. "Alright, let me know when you get back. Heres my number, text me because i have no wifi on the road" Hmm maybe my friend doesnt realise how important this is to me. Can't be deliberate betrayal right? Please tell me its not that. So Wednesday rolls around, then Thursday, then Friday and I have no patience left. I mean, I get it that you have your own life, and maybe you're dealing with some shit and thats fine if you are. At least tell the person who is counting on you what is happening, maybe he can support you. Maybe you didn't stop to consider that this other person has their own shit to deal with too. Maybe he put a tremendous amount of energy into it and you just ghosted the fuck out of him. You can fuck off. I no longer tolerate this type of behaviour. To me, a word spoken without being backed up with action to support it is the same as lying to another person's face. Its a betrayal. Its not the mark of a mature human being, let alone a successful one. I pride myself in doing exactly what I say I will do - when I say I am going to do it. Is it wrong that I should hold others to the same standard? When being an excellent judge of character, one should watch for this type of horseshit. People who do this make me sick with stress, and while i understand that we're only human and we can't be all perfect all the time, at least try to have the decency to try just a little bit. I mean seriously, grow the fuck up. If you told another person that you're going to do something, either follow through, or pick up the phone (or get on whatever text messenger) and tell them that you can not commit. Do not jerk people around. Its dishonest, and its a good way to extinguish all loyalty that existed. TL:DR Say what you mean, do what you say. Do this to keep relationships healthy. when should you listen in context? Do you solo out tracks and mix them by themselves? What does it mean to keep things in context? The most important tools are your ears and your mind. Use them, trust them. If it sounds good it sounds good. but remember the context. From your sound in the space it's in, to the interaction of frequencies in your mix. listening in contextReference mixes can help you understand how your track is sounding compared to other songs. If you're listening to a playlist, and one song is drastically quieter than the one before it, thats no good. Reference mixes can help you avoid that. using ducking. if you hear a displeasing sound in your guitar track, a useful trick (if it is supported by your hardware) is called ducking (or listening in place.) This is basically just turning down everything, and keeping the track that has your attention at the forefront. imagine it like a lens through which you can still seee what's happening in the rest of the song as you're doing surgery on that guitar track. the mix-engineer's skill-setTrust your ears If it feels right, it probably is. I've seen many an indie go way overboard with mixing each individual track to perfection, only to to turn off solo and have to do it again. They end up to their necks in audio problems they barely understand. striking a balance between tracks vs tracks, & tracks just sounding good on their own. Solo out that track and it sounds fine alone but in the mix it sounds wrong. What is actually happening and why? Which interaction of instruments/tracks is causing that? Use solo to find that. Remember that sounds interact with other sounds. Just because one track is a vocal and another is a guitar doesn't mean frequencies are not competing for space. The sound is combined and played back through your sound system, and if you're not mixing in headphones, they're interacting with your room too. why it mattersSaving time - repeated steps - do-overs So how to conclude this article, and mix it right. If you're having to solo out a track, tweak it to get it sounding perfect, and then start over again to get it sounding good in context, You're doing it twice. You don't have to. Don't worry, these skills are like learning a new instrument. they come with time and practice. Luckily we live in an age where people are sharing their years of skills and experience for free on the internet. Need some tips? Let me google that for you...
identifyThe ability to dentify the challenges is an important skill for the career musician. In order to this, you'll need to use your imagination. First, I'd like to invite you to accept everything as possible. anything otherwise would just be making excuses. a fork in the roadImagine a single path before you. The road ahead branches and each one of those branches represents your decisions. Imagine at the end of these paths, your goals. It's not about wandering aimlessly down a path that's already laid out for you. Nope, we're making our own path, our own way. So what's it gonna take to blaze a trail, a road, a highway. what does the landscape look like? are we going to need bridges and tunnels? So in anticipation of challenges as a part of goal-setting. I'd recommend putting pen to paper. list everything you've got, from things you're already doing, to ideas that might seem like a pipe dream, unreachable, impossible.
verifyAs you begin to understand more about what your options are, you can start to understand what's attainable, and what it might take to make it happen. This Link, gives an animated breakdown that goes into more detail. revisionsBasically, this part is going back through what you thought about during this mental excersise. say x ammount of time later and asking questions like:
IF your answer is yes, then you're probably doing it wrongHey, It's Cody Gene here from Gene Media. Welcome to 2020! We're opening up a whole bag of Music mindsets, principles, and Methodologies to help you as an artist, creative, and entrepreneur. For the new year, we'll (I'll) be bringing you more creative-focused content in these three categories...
Are you a songwriter? Enter the Contest at
www.genemediacreativestudio.com/contest Are you a thinker? Do you like food for thought? Big picture thinking? Visit the blog at www.genemediacreativestudio.com/blog insert wall of text hereI guess the first question would be how do you want to capture your ideas? If you have a decent laptop or computer you can use a DAW with an audio interface. *Cubase/nuendo, protools, logic, studio one, reaper, are a few examples. For basic tracking they all do pretty much the same thing. The workflow and the price-point is the main consideration while you're just starting out. For Audio interfaces, there are quite a few out there. It depends on your budget. like, the Behringer U-phoria series is probably the cheapest, and the Apollo ones are on the top-end. I'd recommend going onto amazon to browse and read reviews if that's the way you want to go. Just remember, you usually get what you pay for, so if you can afford to spend the $$$, then get the best you can. Or you could use a built-in recorder that captures to SD card (like someone mentioned the zoom R16) I had one of those for years, they're mobile and useful, but the preamps aren't the greatest. but it gets the job done. other considerations, will be how many channels you need. will you want to use mics (if so do you have a nice quiet room?), or a direct-in signal? I'm guessing you could probably get by with a 2 channel (for most purposes) or an 8 channel if you need to track drums, or want to go all out with lots of mics. Sample rate and Bit Depth are another consideration. this will look like (sample rate 44,100 48,000 96,000) (bit depth 16, 24, or 32, bit) Just use the highest you can get away with. but the higher you go, the more cpu power you'll need, and the more storage space your sessions will take up Gain staging - once you're setting up to record, set your input gain to the highest you can get without clipping. I'd recommend doing a google search for 'signal to noise ratios audio' or 'gain staging audio' to figure that part out. basically, you want the 'hottest signal you can get without clipping or introducing too much noise' As far as sending your tracks off for mixing. Your engineer will probably ask you to consolidate your tracks. which basically means you export your tracks individually, each beginning at 0:00. This allows for the engineer to easily align them in the new mix session. Gets me thinking about a lesson I learned recently on understanding yourself & other people. with emphasis on the importance of presentation and how it affects everything. Personal: what are you doing to stay on track?
*insert needs here* Professional: how are you presenting yourself? inter-personally, through your band/niche/culture etc *insert values here* Promotional: how do other people recieve you? analytics, conversations, Email replies *insert systems here* a quick and dirty guide to 'getting the bass right'My biggest piece of advice is to use what you have, trust your ears. To get really great at mixing takes time and practice. Focus on geting the best sound you can from the tools and knowledge you've got. Trust that as you do more and more, your skillset will improve, and so will your mixes Low Endlet's say you're looking for a deep-warm tone. It sounds great on a good sound-system, but it doesn't show up on small speakers. what do you do?What do you do is not a question that can be directly answered yet; that is, unless you already know what your options are, and in that case, you probably already have your problem solved. what are you trying to achieve?let's start here instead. Okay, so lets say your genre is indie rock. It's a song that's driven by the guitars and the vocals. great, now which instruments live in the low-end. commonly this will be drums and bass (kick, toms, Bassline, the bottom of the guitar, and the deepest part of the vocal. The bass doesn't cut through? ask yourself which instrument and why? what is happening in the low-end?The kick drum sounds good, the guitar/vocal sounds fine. the bassline doesn't cut. It doesn't always need to be front and center, It can act as the glue to hold the song together. When you move away from your good sound-system to your laptop/earbuds/car stereo/mobile. it seems to disappear completely. how can you approach thisA few areas to consider.
Imagine your low-end in 3 bands. you've got sub-frequencies, Low-frequencies, and precieved low-frequencies (low-mids and above) Check for trouble areas in the context of these three 'bands' EQ is your most powerful tool! try to find the frequency range you're looking for using your solo function to listen for which tracks might be competing for 'space', for example, the bass if it's most present at 80Hz, but the guitar is 'masking' the bass up between 160- 300Hz. You might also have low-frequency energy competing in tracks where it has no business being. here, a hi-pass filter would be your friend. For example, The bass is warm and present between 60-160hz, but adds nothing above that. because it's being covered up by another instrument, A small set of laptop/phone speakers may lack clarity at frequencies below (approximately) 200-300Hz. They have the most presence between 1-5kHz. if you can let the bass through within these ranges (again these numbers are guestimates, every mix is different) you can achieve a more consistant tone across sound-systems.
Hey welcome, today we're going up. Taking a look at the landscape from above. The view from 24,000 feet. What does this have to do with music Cody? Let me tell you... This is the big picture and how to see it. If you're serious about your music as a career, as a profession, then you might want to consider the overall picture of where you are, where you want to go and how to get there. This is called planning. "No $%^T Cody, I already know what planning is. " Do you really? well why then are you living day to day, paycheck to paycheck, with some nebulous dream of being a rockstar and no actual strategy for how you're going to accomplish that? With that little voice inside your head telling you that it's not possible, that you should go and get a 'real job'. It's time for a manifestation check my friend. Let's Zoom out - Looking at all aspects - 24000 - 12000 - 1000 - 100 - 10 - 1 Imagine for a second your goal, with you zooming out. Out from where you stand/sit. up to a view of your life from above. Start at the top - 24,000 feet up for today's example. This is where you see everything. what your vision looks like when it's done. Be as detailed as you can. This is called Casting your vision. 24,000 feet represents the long-term. could be 10 years, 25 years down the road from now, you decide, and ask yourself what your life looks like from that persepective. Next, we'll drop down to 12,000 feet. Here, we'll be looking at the halfway mark. What have you accomplished during that time-frame? what might your challenges look like? What obstacles have you overcome? Try to put yourself in the perspective of yourself x ammount of time in the future. We'll repeat the process again and again from these different elevations. You get the idea right? As we get lower and lower to ground level, we can start getting more and more specific about what's next, and more importantly, whats most important right now towards accomplishing our desires. Gauging the scope and time frame It's pretty much whatever works for you. The important thing is that you understand the big picture and what it means to you in relation to your vision. Everyone thinks a little bit differently. We all have our own processes that we have to go through, but as we gain clarity about the big picture, we become more adept at adapting to the specific details about what to do next in order to get there. Things Like how far ahead you're looking (your elevation) and what you're looking at can have a big impact on the path you walk at ground level. A few considerations In Your personal Life
In Your professional life
Next actions + how to get there If you're looking at each moment, and seeing the view from 1' all the time, simply living day to day or moment to moment, without considering your destination, or the implications of your actions, what kind of things might be out there to disrupt you? How will you spot them? If you're here, you might feel trapped. How many artists have I met who once had a dream, but failed to plan how to actually get there, and are now stuck in a job they hate because they listened to their mother-in-law and quit too soon - or continued laying blue-collar butt rock in a one horse town instead of making new connections and expanding their horizons. I sincerely hope this is not your tragectory. I'm grateful to you for taking the time in reading this article. I hope it helps you draw some insight. I'm not saying this is the only way, or a be-all-end-all approach for guaranteed success. Success is a mindset. It starts with what you believe, but once you do believe (in yourself and that your goals are possible) You will start discover that your overall vision is actually quite attainable, and in that, start to anticipate obstacles that may stand in the way. want to work together?If you read this article to the end and have questions, I'd like to invite you to reach out via the comments below, or feel free to send me an email via the contact form
Have you ever felt stuck? Have you ever felt hopeless? Have you ever felt like Quitting? How do you use reasoning to understand a problem in order to recognize your blind spots? How do you take something that seems impossible and turn that into actionable things that can bring you closer to your goals? I'm creating a downloadable guide that you can follow step-by-step to help you solve for your challenges. If you think you might find this helpful and want it NOW, click over to the Contact page to ask for it. Comment below, what is the biggest challenge you face as an idependent artist?
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