I wanna make a record with slider, I would suggest that we think the same but really he just has thhe experience to know this is how you make a record. With all the bullshit and million decisions you have the make during a mix, the absolute LAST thing you should be trying to figure out is what the fuck the song is supposed to sound like. If you havent made that decision BEFORE you started tracking, good F'ing luck with your record having any sense of continuity or authority to it. At some point you have to commit and so far as Im concerned, that point is in preproduction. What happens if someone else has to mix thhe mess you made with tracking? If you track a million options, you are at best, gonna get the mix engineer's interpretation of your mess, not the record you started out to make if you had half an idea of the direction its going in in the first place. This seems like we'd all agree on this, but thats obviously not the case judging by the quality of records that come out. Maybe its just my shortcomings as an engineer, but with all the decisions you need to make in order to get the IDEA you recorded sound good, its maddening to consider that youd still be figuring out what the idea was in the first place by the time you get to mix and have to audition all the "options" you tracked because you didnt have the authority to make a decision. Why are classic rock records "classic"? Becuase many of them were recorded on 8 tracks and someone had to put their foot down.Slider wrote:I like the idea of making somewhat of a sonic commitment for a track.
I don't like having too many options left for the mixing process.
If you make it work great in tracking from the beginning your job will be easier come mix time.
It even seems to add to the personallity of the track in the long run.
It's the same reason I wouldn't want to track 3 different sounds for each guitar overdub.
At some point you have to commit, and your overdubs will make more sense if you have some kind of sonic direction.
dave