Music

A good song is a good song on any medium#

A good song is a good song regardless of what it was recorded on. If you resurrected Marvin Gaye and he released his next LP recorded on an iPhone, I would definitely buy it. Format and fidelity are secondary to the music itself, and the performance usually matters more than anything in the recording chain after it.

Music is ultimately about enjoyment#

Some records I can't break down. When people ask me what is so good about one of my favourites, it's quite difficult to answer. Has it got the best vocals? No. Is it the best recording of all time? Not really. Virtuoso playing? No. But its emotional impact is simply bigger than the sum of its parts, and I can't describe it with any meaningful insight.

Enjoying music isn't only about transparency or sonic purity. Some records I only want to hear on special occasions, on vinyl, with something to drink and the lights down, listening in every detail. Ritual, collecting, buying a record from the band at a small show: those are legitimate and valuable parts of enjoying music and life. And they have nothing to do with sound quality.

Great records come from everywhere#

The most important records of recorded history do not all come from a particular genre, year, country, and some might not even be especially well known. Some years are particulary rich with monumental releases: 1959 for jazz, and 1967 for popular music when the defining albums came out one after another at an astonishing pace. But anyone who thinks all the best records were already in before digital recording, is not showing his age as much as showing his closed mindedness.

The groove and the midrange carry the music#

How a track feels often depends heavily on the timing of the low end. When a kick is smeared in time it goes "boooom boooom boooom" instead of "bm", and it feels like listening to a completely different groove. To me that difference is as big as a low-bitrate MP3 against the 96k 24-bit master. Most people can hear a hi-hat that's too loud but judging the time domain takes trained ears.

If you can't hear it, it's worth going back, training your ears and listening to the groove.

The midrange is where the magic of a mix is, which is why mixing with mid heavy speakers is how you can get mixes that translate. See speakers.

Processing should serve the music and the listener#

Every processing decision answers to two people: the client whose music is in front of me, and the music lover who ends up listening to it. Whether a plugin faithfully mimics the frequency response of a blue metal box from the 1950s has little to do with either of them. I prefer to work towards a specific goal. Random knob twirling without a plan is probably fun if you're a beginner, but it's not something I'm interested in as a professional.