The Light of Day

So you want to make an album? (part 11)
KeithHandy posted in So You Want... on April 10th, 2007

Installment 11: A whiter shade of perfect

I’ve now certainly scared most of you away from the very thought of making your own album. Congratulations on coming to your senses, and I look forward to hearing about your success in real estate, insurance, law, medicine, and any other path that involves wearing a tie and using a lot of spreadsheets.

“His greatest reward was… what? ‘More music’?? If I wanted ‘more music’ I’d go to the frickin’ record store. Beam me up, Scotty.”

For the few remaining noble nutcases among you who are either incurably determined, or just plain stuck to the proverbial windshield (”huh? ‘proverbial windshield’?”), I’ll do my best to scoop some useful generalities out of this otherwise self-indulgent tale.

Most independent recording artists are really just frustrated architects. We logically assume that we can’t decorate the windows before erecting the scaffolding, and certainly can’t do that until we blueprint the whole dealy. While it’s always better to “get off to a good start”, it takes some experience to know what a good start actually is. We have a rather one-dimensional concept of quality, with “crap” at one end and “perfection” at the other. When we finally acquire the means to do something “perfect”, we intuitively sense that there’s something wrong with it, and then we back off and try to somehow make it less perfect, and can’t explain why.

I think some people miss out on a valuable learning experience by never striving for perfection in the first place; I think you grow more as an artist when you go through this stage, and you will go through it in at least some aspects of your work. So let’s examine the idea of “perfection”, and get to know this color on our pallette, so we can decide for ourselves how, where, when, and to what extent to use it.

First, what is perfection in recorded music? Sure, music is an art, and it’s subjective; but when we put it down on tape (or bits, nowadays), we’re shooting for something beyond what we can crank out at a typical bar gig.

Pitch

The reason we hear certain combinations of pitch as harmonious, some as dissonant (creating tension that can “lead” to something), and some as downright pathetic, has to do with math and ratios. You can do some searching to learn more out more about this, but here is a key (no pun intended) thing to keep in mind: the math that we use to define “in tune” today is not the same math that caused those intervals to sound harmonious in the first place. Our modern system of tuning is a compromise. As such, when an exceptionally talented vocal group sings a chord by ear, the pitches will not be exactly the same as if you played that chord on a perfectly tuned piano; some of the notes will be “cheated” a hair to bring the pitches closer to a true ratio, making them actually more harmonious.

(So why don’t we ditch the compromise and go back to the old way of tuning? Because then we would lose our freedom to explore all those different keys. One key would sound great, and the rest would sound like crap.)

Rhythm

Rhythm also relies on simple-ratio math: dividing a measure into a certain number of beats, then dividing each beat into two, three, four, or more parts, leaving some spots empty, and filling other spots in. When drum machines became popular, something strange happened: drummers started playing like drum machines. The more exact these divisions were, the better. So why is it that when we listen to pre-machine drumming, we get the urge to “air drum” along, yet when we hear mid-to-late 80s electronic beats we tend to just hear the rhythm without feeling it?

Fidelity

The original objective of recording — “to make record of” — was to preserve sound. So naturally, the more accurately you can re-create the original sound when you play it back, the better — from a purely recording standpoint, in the literal sense of the word. This would be cut and dried, except that everyone has a different-sounding set of speakers, in a wide range of large, small, echoey or quiet environments, and sets his/her EQ (bass/mid/treble) differently. So even if you could achieve perfect fidelity, it would be worthless for all but one playback system.

Balance

Unlike the previous three attributes, the relative levels of sounds in a mix can not be evaluated in any cold, clinical objective way. They can be measured — two sounds can be compared to one another in decibels — but there’s no scientific reason why a 3 dB difference would be better or worse than a 15 dB difference; there’s no quantifiable target to aim for. It is, however, something that a neurotic perfectionist can lose nights of sleep over, because this is the presentation of your music, and this is where you make an artistic decision about what falls in the foreground, what falls in the background, and what holds the bottom and top together. Balance is almost visual, the art of seeing the sound composition in your mind’s eye… and it is deceptive. Your ability to “see” this composition becomes distorted as you repeatedly listen to a song, because your brain forms a sort of “after-image” as it adjusts to what you’re hearing.

Why do we pursue perfection?

For a combination of right reasons and wrong reasons. We want our work to be good. We want it to be powerful, to move people, to transcend, to “come to life”, and to entice our audience into repeated listenings. These are all good reasons. On the other hand, we may be focused on the negative, trying to avoid mistakes, avoid out-of-tune notes, and avoid sloppy rhythms, in order to hopefully avoid criticism or rejection. When we operate from a mindset of avoidance, we become creatively constricted, and tend to forget why we’re making music in the first place.

So how do we reconcile with all this?

Simple. Just decree that Keith Handy is your lord and master, and send him $100.00 and a nice handwritten note saying “you are the best”.

Apart from that, the main thing is that this one-dimensional continuum, with crappy on one end and perfect on the other, is a gross oversimplification. I wouldn’t suggest trying to be “less than perfect” so much as re-examining your idea of what “perfect” actually means. Is exactly equal spacing between all the notes perfection? Maybe. In what way though? In what way do you really want your music to be perfect? Hopefully in the sense of the feeling you express through it. Rhythm has a “feel”. When you listen back to that rhythm, how does it “feel” to you?

Nuance is not random; nuance is expression. So when you play the notes a hair early, a hair late, a hair sharp or a hair flat, just be sure that’s what you mean. There will be times when you want rhythms that are metronomical and exact. Great! Use sequencers in those cases. When you need to record a great human performance, be the performance. Let it flow through you, and if the red “record” light is making you self-conscious, do a few more takes until you finally get swept up into the music and forget it’s even on.

When it comes to mixing, you home project folks have a huge advantage against the aural fatigue boogeyman. You can save the mix you’re working on, and come back to it with fresh ears… not just once or twice, but as many times as you need. This has been recommended a zillion times elsewhere, but in short: listen to your mix in the car, on your parents’ stereo, on your friends’ stereo, in your friends’ car, and so on. Listen to it immediately after listening to one of your favorite songs by another artist on the same system. Thought the bass guitar sounded a little quiet? Go home and bump it up, but not by too much; just 2 or 3 dB. Rinse, lather, repeat. Pay particular attention to what you notice the first time you hear it after getting away from it, from the instant the song starts.

Last but not least: hang in there. All is good. The statue is already in the marble. Just chip everything else away.

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