Recently inspired to write this up, with the hope it can help some people.
I’ve started to think less about if I should write a blog post or create content and just commit to doing it. If we all spent our time fighting ourselves and trying to have to convince that we have the right to create, write, record, or do, we’ll get nothing done.
Life!
I do not make cookies. Yet this post and most of what it would be talking about revolves around the idea that I know how to. For the sake of it, lets pretend I am actually great at making cookies, not just consuming them with composite joy.
If the desire is to make the cookie into a non-conventional round shape, often you find you need cookie cutters.
Let me get straight to the point here. I’ll create space to create more imagery in your head about this thought I’m having but the final thought is this –
If you want to make your life a non-conventional, common round cookie and make it a standout, you probably need a cookie cutter to shape it.
i.e – You don’t want a boring career that you make your devotion only to get you through life and have a safe retirement. You don’t solve that by just doing what you want, and hope that you get a life that meets those goals. It doesn’t shape out that way. Decisions have to be made, on what to add, where to shave stuff off, structuring your life to pursue a passion with fervour and discipline.
I’ve been thinking a LOT about getting my life together physically for a long time now.
According to SCIENCE, my physical peak is just about around the corner now. 27 years old.
If you ask me though, my physical peak was about 10 years ago. I was so fit back then. I could play sports for hours on end, parkour and run for a long time. Now? I probably am a stronger person, having to do more physically demanding work etc, but am nowhere close to being as fit as I was years ago. This is all due to how little I took care of myself physically over the years.
I want to be fit again. I want to be able to run, sprint around and be nimble without begging for my breath in 5 minutes. I’ve been wanting that for about 2 years now. The problem with that is that I didn’t “cookie cut” it. I kept the habits that got me here in the first place. I didn’t take up the good ones that would help me.
Much like cookie dough that hasn’t been cut, I was just unshaped and had no form. Parts of me that shouldn’t be there for the final shape to be created, I kept. They were familiar, it was part of me, but honestly it wasn’t what I wanted me to be. Some dough has to go. Doh!
I bet you get the point now.
Lets get to the interesting bit dough. (though)
Cookie dough is still soft. Unbaked. This is the state that you can change its form. It’s size. The number of chocolate chips in it.
Once you put it in the oven and its baked, you don’t get that chance anymore. You COULD try to cut a cookie into a shape of a man once its baked, but rest assured it would look like a very interesting man.
I guess in our lives we all have an oven. Something sometime in our lives, there would be aspects of our lives that just becomes so “set” and baked into us that it gets too hard to change it, or it becomes a painful and difficult process. Why not start now?
What’s the shape of your cookie ; how are you going to achieve that? I urge you to do something about it. Now I’m not bragging – but I just kicked off what I hope to be a change and a start of a healthy habit, I ran/jogged 5km tonight – with a couple of core exercises thrown in the bag. I feel like my legs are currently in the living room as I type this in my bedroom, but thats future me’s problem.
Go get your cauliflower-shaped cookie. Or whatever you want it to be.
Audio!
Now this wouldn’t really be my blog post without some audio twist on it. Audio people, read on, non-audio people, look away! My secrets are not for you!
Now that the non-audio people aren’t reading..
I actually was inspired first on this thought of cookie cutters in general when I was thinking about how to teach someone to pull a mix, be it for FOH or Monitors.
What is the image of this mix you want to create? Is it a balanced one? Bass heavy? Guitar focused, with a good stereo spread?
Is the main focus of the mix creating massive space between everything? Clean and well-placed?
Or is it a full, impactful, in your face wall of sound? (that doesn’t have to be loud)
It is very hard to pull off a good mix if you don’t know what you want it to be. It all depends on genre, artist(s) on stage, room, and all such variables, but keep in mind, every mix has a cookie cutter to it.
There is almost always similar approaches to the mix, but if you don’t have the end game in mind, you’re already set up for a loss.
I don’t possibly have the time do dive into all that entails in building different mixes and all that – heck, I can only give you advice for the mixes that I know how to pull off.
The idea of pulling off mixes with a cookie cutter approach is this – you have your final mix in mind and you work your way there. You don’t just pull up inputs and expect a mix to happen. As you go about doing your soundcheck, with input gain structure, eq, dynamics and other mixing decisions, you’re already thinking what the mix should sound like and hence the processing on the input channel to get there. Don’t EQ a guitar because it sounds good alone, but think of what it will contribute or fight in your mix later on. That is cookie cutter mixing.
Here are some key things I find need to be part of your cookie cutter in making a mix :
- Featured source/item – each mix has an element that needs to be featured or the focus of it. In most music, it would be a combination of a few things – rarely everything though. We pick up all the details in repetition, so if its recorded music, you get all the tasty flavours later, but the main meal is still the featured item. Mostly, its vocals and some sort of a hook line played by an instrument/synth of a sort.
- Metering – now this covers multiple aspects really, and I’d love to make a post on this topic alone one day. Metering is SO important in your mix. It should be considered on both your inputs and outputs on what you want your mix to meter at. This includes transient peaks and RMS information on your meters ; keep your eye on it and get an idea of what you’re currently achieving and where you need it to be.
- Spacing – in the world of Monitors, this looks like prepping each mix with space BEFORE soundcheck. That way when you put a channel up into all the mixes via the main input channel, you’ve already considered the space it would take in everyone’s mix and not compromise the whole band’s mix when you perfect that vocalist’s voice in his own mix. Find or allocate space in a mix before its already in, and when it is in, you’ll find you have less issues. For FOH, you have less of an issue considering you’re building the one mix, but definitely already have a plan on where you are placing elements of your mix before you get to the end. Nothing is worse than frantically panning to find a space for an instrument you forgot to allocate space for.
- Effects/buss processing – this might relate more to FOH, but Monitor engineers listen up too. If you have an effect, lets say a reverb that you KNOW works for the room, or a compressor that you know works for the mix buss, don’t just build a mix and hope it works. Keep in mind what the effect or compressor (effect) would do to the final mix, and tweak your inputs INTO that. Much like preparing the right amount of cookie dough and the right composition so that it fits right into it. I would still recommend tweaking the effect or buss processing as you see fit as nothing ever “just works” but the idea of “pushing” signal into an effect as intentionally as you can, works great because you know the goal instead of just working towards an arbitrary idea of a mix.
I hope that helps. Having a cookie cutter mix isn’t all about having a one mix that you force yourself into a corner into. It is about having a “shape” or destination for your mix to sound like, and working into that goal. Making decisions as early as where to place your microphone to get the final sound that you already have planned.
For me? This planning for how my mix will sound starts when I see who the band members are (I’m talking about serving and mixing in church) – when I know who is playing, their skill level, the sounds that they produce on their respective instrument and how that can contribute or.. not.. to my mix, I’ve already decided on what I can feature, what I will spend more time on, what to bury, how to create space for, how to carve out space for others, etc. It hasn’t always been a skill I have had, but something I picked up along the way, and I am sure that you can, too!
That is all folks. It’s been a pleasure writing up this one, and I’m looking forward to hearing some of your comments, and to write more in the future.
sound thoughts 