When I first started recording songs in about 1990, I had a tascam cassette 8 track recorder, it was new at the time around 2000.00 and i was a true newbie at recording. I was trying to do all sorts of things with it, and bought an alesis effects unit with all the goodies. Every song that I recorded was totally washed in some sort of an effect. Garbage was what I did for about 2 years. I sold that recorder and late bought a 4 track fostex from a pawn shop for 100.oo. I learned to record on that, it was simple, straightforward and I would only use reverb when really called for. Later came the Adat in 95, Roland v8, computer, etc. I still dont have a polished commercial sound with my recordings, and really dont want that. But, I do not have any over use of effects to look back on now. The old recordings before Reverb came along still stand the test of time. They sound clear, clean, and dont date themselves. I listen now to some of the classic rock songs that I loved in the 70's and can hardly listen to them because of the horrible effects and amount of used. I can listen to a song and pretty well date it by the effects used in it. They have a purpose, but, I think they have to be precisely placed to stand the test of time.
Anyone who does this for a while will have listened back to things we recorded years ago and thought 'what was I thinking' .. but apparently we thought it was good at the time. Welcome to the club. <grin>
Times change and so do we. I call it learning. Thanks for sharing that lesson you learned.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome Make your sound your own!
I was definitely guilty of using too many effects in my early productions. When I open old projects, everything has a long effects chain and doesn't sound very good.
I've since learned that a simple patch on a quality synth recorded through my MOTU interface rarely needs more than subtle EQ, light compression, and a touch of reverb and/or delay, and maybe some saturation (saturation is my secret weapon, usually from SoundToys plugins). If I need anything more drastic to make something sound nice, I should probably just delete it and re-record.
As Bob Dylan once responded to a question regarding why he had done something or another years ago. “It seemed important at the time.”
Our albums and singles are on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Pandora and more. If interested search on Janice Merritt. Thanks! Our Videos
Lots of people new to recording tend to overuse the effects. Either because they think it sounds good and want to "enhance it" a bit or because they think it sounds bad and they're trying to cover it up. (especially vocals)
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
I used to be very guilty of this when first mixing my own tunes. Sometimes with all the software and toys to use it's easy to forget that sometimes less is more
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