those are the same words my instructor gave me.thanks for the insight it related to me in many ways.

I agree with what you’re saying.

I also love the feeling of being able to enjoy something years later after getting sick of hearing it. Those are the moments when it’s clear to see how far you’ve come, but also with that burst of nostalgia, all the wiser.

The upside is that eventually you get to some sort of normalcy, in terms of listening to music. You can hear past the eqing, arrangements, etc. It’s still there, and you are conscious of it – but you’re still able to enjoy the song.

I didn’t particular mean to imply that I’ve lost any love for music. If anything I love listening more, and in a whole new way. In some ways though, it’s a curse to be always listening technically opposed to “innocent” enjoyment.

Everyone has songs they’ve played hundreds of times, loved, and then couldn’t listen to again. But, five years later when you listen, after your music/engineer/producer skills improve, you hear all kinds of beautiful new things.. almost an insight into what made it a great song, arrangemnt, mix, etc.

Once you hear the subtitles (delay’s, verbs, etc) you can never go back to NOT hearing them! Love that.

Take Care,
Dan

First time on your site, but man you’ve done a great job with it. I really like the design, as well as the content.

This post really explains a lot of what I’ve been feeling about music. I’ve been a listener for many years, but just recently began making my own music. Noticing certain things has surely changed the game for me, but with all this talk of losing your love for it as you learn more about it… I just can’t agree with that notion. The more I learn, the more I’m able to pick out things that I’d love to incorporate into my own music.

Like you said, reverb and delay was something I’d never pick up on if it weren’t for my use of Ableton, and the more I hear it, the more ideas I get on how to use it.

Nice post, and I look forward to more!

Mark

First listens intrigue me the most, once past that moment ill try to forget about critiques and techniques. They’ll pop up anyway soon or late … just relax, take the artwork with you and absorb the music, the songs, the lyrics and so on.

Hearing your own work with untrained ears is not an option I guess, but somehow further down the road you might experience some part of it. Like when you didn’t listen to it for a few months or years. My best friend mentioned this to me passed weekend, he had listened again to his first album from about 6 years ago. Said it felt like he never heard it before and actually had to compliment himself for doing a good job back then. Personally I think it could have been even better, as I know the album was mixed in a time frame of 3 to 4 hours per track. Something I can’t do, just can not work with a clock on the wall staring at me and fight deadlines. Just can’t, all for the sake of the result though. Good for business? hell no… for the result? Probably ! Mixes need to grow on me. Some might call it a lack of confidence or talent, others will say Ill never get to work on the bigger/better project’s that way, I don’t know… will see. At least for now it works for me.

Some schooled musicians I work with from time to time hear music as dictations and can spell out every song they hear. I believe it’s a big plus being able to analyze songs, studio & live mixes or sounds and be able to recreate them or parts of it but mostly to learn from. Especially live mixes intrigues me the most at the moment, as these have taking a huge studio turn the past few years with the venues and other digital consoles out there.

The last concerts I visited were 3 GN’R gig’s, an awesome experience to analyze these live mixes apart from the brilliant performances by the band of course. There’s some much going on that I needed these 3 show’s to observe n’ absorb it all… automation, different scene’s, cue’s, effect’s, all on the fly. The modest attendant will not even notice what’s going in there and that perfectly fine. You don’t want to know what every cook does to get you your meal either. Everything made perfect sense, really top notch work and a joy to learn from ! Would love to dig in to the venue stuff and get on the road with it someday. In the mean time Ill keep doing what I do…

Subliminal enjoyment:

Makes me think of my late grandfather, he really used to adore German Schlager’s on TV… That was 100% lip sync and pretended performances, looked so fake to me but for him it’s wasn’t and for the audience it wasn’t either. You know? Guitar solo’s with unplugged Les Paul’s pretending they are playing there balls off … We would get in to discussions about liking vs. not liking. Me not liking it and trying to explain that it was fake and he getting pissed at me, of course not believing what I was rambling about either. Now years later I wish these discussion never had taken place because for him this was subliminal enjoyment, something personal that nobody can or has the right to take away from someone. It’s all about how you look at it and experience it I guess.

Having a technical baggage is a good thing but also should come as a natural part of your evolution somehow, we are not better than animals and plants, usually developing new skill’s when we need them to get better at we do to survive.

End of rant, blogging and commenting is not really my thing so I hope it makes some sense to you somehow…

Cheers