My First Mix (d'awww)

This is my first ever mix that I've done for a friend. The original mix of this was done in low fidelity audio and simple MIDI and given to me in stems from garageband. I decided to put it through the ringer. Hope it sounds good! Props to my good friend Jon for the composition.

Excited to post my very first ever finished semi-professional mix. I received the audio stems and MIDI for this song in the form of lackluster garageband fidelity (actually from garageband) and decided to rework the entire song into something grand.

I learned a great deal about mixing by working on this transformation. Parallel compression on drums adds an extra nice bite (thank you prefader sends). Separating a single bass into low and high frequencies spreads out the sound. Routing different guitar tracks with different frequencies and timbres to output busses was essential to workflow. Careful use of effects and processing meant night and day in terms of quality. Learning to fine tune your ear, to take breaks from the consistent sound of your work, and to objectify the shit out of your mix was paramount to making a successful end product.

Pretty much loved every second of it. Anyone have some potential songs they need mixing? Let me at ‘em!

~MJ

The Future is Now

School was a huge bust.  Therefore I decided to graduate.

I went back to Northwestern University with the impression that I would finish my writings and papers, wrap things up, and take some really compelling classes.  What I came back to was none of these things; the classes I wanted to take: Mixology, Sound Design for Media, ASL lessons, and Post Production Audio, were not offered this quarter.  Over the course of the first week I had these constant feelings of “I do not belong here” and “I’m really unhappy,” so I did the only thing that seemed viable to me: waved two distro classes required to graduate and be done.

…and I’ve never been happier.  I have my future all planned out for the year.  In January I’m going a sound design school called Pyramind Studios located in San Francisco.  I had a tour there just yesterday and I was pretty sold upon walking in the place…it was absolutely stunning, quite literally a sound dev’s dream:

Not only will I get the real learning skill sets of multiple DAW systems, I will learn how to mix/master and record all of my projects, compose and create new music across multiple genres, and learn interactive media sound implementation (THAT’S VIDEO GAMES, PEOPLE!).  I’m really really excited, finding something you are passionate about and investing on it is probably the single greatest thing ever.

It’s simple advice, but ohhhh lordy does it go far.  More projects will be posted upon creation, updates to follow.

Typing this with a huge smile on my face,
~MJ