Music production is something that has interested me for many, many years. I am fascinated how to make the bare bones of recorded sound into a commercially acceptable song. One of my preoccupations with my own music is how can I hide my own shortcomings as a player with a sheen of professional quality sound and so making music sound the best it can be has turned into more than just a hobby.
I’ve always wanted to get into music production and when bands say “Can you check out our album” I always tremble because I tend to listen to it with a producers hears rather than a critics, because their production is usually what limits their creative endeavours.
A German group called Henning, Rook and Messmer approached me for some promotion via my YouTube channel and while I politely declined and offered them some tips as how they could improve their sound, I took it one step further by offering to fix the mix of one of their songs. Reading their album description, they were looking for a very live sound, but this did a great disservice to their playing as it rendered many of their songs flat and a little lifeless.
So they gave me the master tracks of the first song from their album “Speicher” and I set to work, making sound more attractive to my ears. Now this isn’t a judging content to who’s mix is best, because hearing is subjective and a good mix is always a compromise, but I am presenting both mixes here so you can see how the same song can sound different just by mixing.
The original mix:
My mix: