Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.HOLMES 
At the time I am saving money for a D2B but I have the feeling it is not the gear it is me. I get the feeling gear is an excuse for my skills.
Conclusion:
1. I blame my skills?
2. I blame my gear because it is true you cant get it with 90% ITB?
3. None of this?
You are an idiot the reason is:
Don´t get me wrong I have happy customers but I guess they don´t know the difference what I am talking about here. And you mastering engineers are hearing tons of mixes every day.... so you sure have a opinion to my questions....
If you have good arguments I swear I will give up and sell all the gear.
Andreas
|
I know exactly what you mean and how you feel. I was mixing in the 1970's and despite having a great insight into the technicality of it all (being a design engineer), I didn't rate myself as a first class mixing engineer.
It wasn't that the customers were unhappy, I'm sure I got what they were wanting the majority of the time - it was basically because I loved the music above all else, so I found it difficult and unrewarding to be forced to do what i personally didn't feel was best. All the time I found myself 'playing other versions and productions in my head' that I would have liked to have done instead - this even went on after sessions and kept me awake at nights! But I was only the engineer, not the musicians or the producer, so I could never realise these things in real live sessionsm, only in mixes I sometimes did for fun after everyone else had finished and gone home..
I was not overly impressed or proud at being the master of 'so many controls', or egotistical about my humble role in the whole thing either - so these factors didn't make it all worth it to me psychologically speaking either.. Whilst I loved the creative atmosphere of the sessions, ultimately I ended up finding the whole thing very hard work emotionally and kind of drifted away from it back into a technical and design role.
To this day i still find myself turned off and horribly disappointed with productions I hear and I take these into my head and involuntarliy find myself concocting a mental production of 'what might have been', had they played this instead of that, or mixed it like this instead, or didn't crush the life out of it in some manic quest to simply make more noise :-( I hear those sounds in my head and long to hear them actually come out of speakers and witness the excitement for real :-)
I now spend my time trying to advance the art by offering designs that people might use to do their creative work - and of course these reflect current production trends (as well as being able to do many other things :-)). In the end I think this is more satisfying for me, but these days it has become quite a lonely pursuit and I really do miss being on the sharp end as well, but who needs an ageing 58year old sound engineer these days - LOL.
My advice is that if you love what you are doing and have a deep feeling for it, persist at all costs. Satisfaction in what you are doing is many times more valuable than simply towing the line to make money. Your perception of how things should be may well be the right one and indeed your day may come :-)