Music Production

Why It's the Weakest Link for Most Bands, and What You Can Do to Fix It

Far too often I see people making music production more complicated than it actually is. Why do they do this?

Well, they're trying to give rules that apply to sound production for huge venues and concerts, as well as small shows. No wonder it gets complicated!

As a result, most bands decide that it is just out of their reach to mess with professional sound and lighting. Of course, they might get a set of speakers and a PA head, some mics and a few par cans… They may even get a mixing console and some other pretty expensive equipment. But they never really bother learning much about the stuff.

That's too bad :-(

For most bands that I've seen, music production is their weakest link. If they would just take a little time to learn about these things, the difference would be like night and day! So why don't they do something about it? Well lots of them try reading to learn more, but the books are written in gibberish.

Perhaps you have read books like this before. More likely, you have started books like this and put them down, because you felt your time was being wasted. You were right to do that. You have more important things to do with your time! Spend that time practicing your instrument, writing, or working on your band's website (you don't have one YET? Wake up and get with the program, it's 2001!!!). Unless you plan on doing a lot of consulting and installation work, or running sound in an arena, the bulk of the music production information in most books is useless.

This section of the site is devoted to giving musicians practical information about live music production and recording techniques.

Instead of a class on physics, I am going to give you all the tips, tricks, secrets, and shortcuts that professional companies use every day to make bands just like yours sound their best. My reasoning behind this strategy is simple. Why give you thirty pages of information on reading microphone specs, when I could just tell you which ones to buy and how to use them.

I know what you really want. You want it spelled out in black and white, without all the technical mumbo jumbo. Many books will tell you that mic selection is based on personal taste. This is a load of CRAP! There are certain mics that simply sound better than others. These tend to be a LOT better than their equally priced competition (by the way, they're probably not the same ones you think I'm going to recommend). Due to advancing computer technology, music production has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years. You don't have to pay a million bucks to take advantage of this emerging technology, either.

Many of the sound manuals on the market have been around for years and are put out with very little revision to keep them up to date. Because of the vast improvements made to affordable stage microphones, any sound book more than a few years old cannot give you any good advice on selecting components because the technology changes so rapidly. This statement is also true of all the other gear that I am going to recommend (especially electronic gear!).

One of the main problems with the other books written about music production is that they cover too much ground. The author will explain the theory behind speaker construction, so that no matter how big or small the system, the book will apply. By trying to reach so many different people, they become less useful. You are paying for information that you don't want or need. As a result, you have to read through all this technical stuff that you don't care about and are never going to use (that is if you don't get frustrated and tear the book up first).

One of the most important things I ever learned in life was that if you try to satisfy everyone, you end up satisfying nobody. If you are interested in the physics of how sound works, or the parts of a speaker, you can go to Barnes & Nobles and read those books for free, while you drink a cup of mocha strawberry coffee. I'm not going to make you waste time on something you can read for free. By the way, if you are interested in any of these books, I will be listing them, with links to Amazon.com, when I have a little more time.

Instead, I will give you all the information that you need to put together and run a sound system that will adequately cover a crowd up to about 500 people. If your needs become larger down the road, you can easily add more amplifiers and speakers later. I have found that this will suit the needs of most bands or clubs, and these are the people that need professional quality music production, but are unable to pay a contractor hundreds or thousands of dollars to design that system for them. If you think that means you, then let's get started.

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