Can (or Should) I Record, Mix and Master My Own Music?Hey this is Andrew from IntoMusic and the topic for this video is if I am a recording artist – in a band, or even solo – is it best for me to do all the production, recording, mixing and mastering myself? Is that even possible to do that? So what are some answers to that question? I guess first of all we'll talk about whether or not that is even possible. I think many of us are aware now days that it is actually, for the first time in history, entirely possible to do fully professional recording, editing, composition, mixing and mastering even on a laptop in a project studio and still create a professional product. Now this has only really become something that's accessible to many people over the last 10 years. And so it is a very recent phenomenon – especially the ability to produce music that way to a very high professional level. Now that being said, some of the best music is still produced in collaborative groups. The problem is when you're wearing too many different hats, it is hard to remain objective. So if you've written a song, and then you've actually recorded that song, edited it, mixed it, and mastered it you're very very close to the project. So while you might be quite capable of doing all those things, the more time you spend listening to the song over and over, the less objective you get about the actual song itself. So it becomes increasingly difficult to make really good decisions on a creative or technical level about what needs to be done to get that song to a turly professional level of production. So even though you can wear all those different hats and be the recording engineer, mix engineer, mastering engineer, the artist, etc it becomes increasingly difficult to do so the more time you spend working on a project. That's the only catch-22 in that situation. Some people are better at it and some genres of music are more conducive to that style of production.
Now on the other end of the spectrum, if you can delegate a little bit of the responsibility to some other people on your team, then that's a great thing as well too. So, for example, if you're in a band and there are a couple of other band members who are also inclined towards working and learning a little more about the recording and production process you can utilize everybody equally. Perhaps one person naturally gravitates towards recording, another towards mixing and a third person gravitates towards the mastering side of things. You may also have other friends that are capable of doing some of those jobs and are interested in your music but are not part of the actual band. So if you can get some people to work with and kick projects back and forth in a collaborative sense, where you're each taking on different roles while helping each other finish a final product. The nice thing about this is it allows you to remain a little more objective about each step of the process and not be dangerously close to the project throughout and make poor decisions as a result. So hopefully this gives you some more insight in some ways you may actually be able to do all those things either individually or in a collaborative group. Both are entirely possible – it's all about what's best for you and your project.
Audio Engineer Schools – Schools For Music Production
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