Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Alosh Bennett

July 5th, 2010 – I like listening to new independent artists. Finding great music by someone who produces it in their bedroom is inspiring. As I keep saying over and over, technology is making it easier for anyone to create something great. You don’t need racks full of expensive gear or a band to back you up; you can do it all on your own, all within your computer.

Of course, easy access also means there’s a lot of material out there, some of it great and some of it not so great. How do you break above the noise? For one, make sure that your music is loud enough. There is a lot of news these days about the “Loudness Wars”, but I’m not talking about slamming your music with a limiter, I’m talking about having your music at a high enough gain to at least sound professional. If you want the average person to enjoy your music, it will have to meet their expectations of what a released track ought to sound like.

This is not a crack at people who are new to producing music, but if you listen to your song and then a commercial mix, and have to turn your music up a lot to not be jarringly quiet, then your music is too quiet. Dynamics are great, but if it’s too quiet, then you likely are still missing proper dynamic range. Likely, a listener will skip your song rather than turn it up.

I’ve discussed active listening before, and if you’re using a reference track to mix your own music, you’ll know that your mix is too quiet already. This is not to say that the use of a little EQ and limiting means your track is mastered, there’s a lot more to it than that, but it will mean you’re closer to the sound quality and gain of a professionally mixed track.

It’s hard enough getting noticed these days, and you need to do everything possible to make it easy for someone to listen to your music and a quiet mix isn’t going to help. Many of us can’t afford to get our mix professionally mastered, but if we still want to release it out into the wild, we have to try our hardest to make it sound as good as we can. This doesn’t mean squashing the dynamics and making it as loud as possible…a little goes a long way.