An unusual way of listening to mixes

[ilovemusic]

Hello,

what I do from time to time is to load my mix into Itunes or something and click randomly on different spots the timeline to listen for a few seconds to different sections ... it helps me to retain a fresh perspective on the mix and not get sucked in by the musical narrative too much.

Now wouldn't it be great to have a randomizing program do that for you?

Does anyone know of a program like this?

A program that picks random sections of the song and plays them for a few seconds?

[henryrobinett]

My fingers work as a pretty good randomizer. Cheap too.

[dhiltonlittle]

if you really wanted to (in protools) you could set random markers and assign them to key commands. so everytime you hit a different key it would skip to that "random" section. i don't know if that would help me very much as it's the same as just clicking randomly in the time line. i'm just thinking out loud at this point....

[slaphappygarry]

what I do from time to time is to load my mix into Itunes or something and click randomly on different spots the timeline to listen for a few seconds to different sections ... it helps me to retain a fresh perspective on the mix and not get sucked in by the musical narrative too much.

I do exactly this but I also drop in reference stuff as well. I find my mixes are usually about 60% the volume of commercial stuff so adjust this accordingly and clickity click click away. This also helps consistancy between tracks.

G

[the_man361]

you could easily do this in max msp, using the buffer object and get it to start playback from a random position in the buffer.

[007]

On a similar approach, I often find it very interesting how your mind and ears perceive a mix when you've rendered it to an AIFF/WAV and play it from either the Finder, QT or iTunes, etc. I firmly believe in the psychology of recording/doing what we do and how just seeing something different on screen - better yet, turning it off and just listening - changes the perception of what you're hearing. You struggle on a mix for a certain amount of time, tweaking this and that, edits, constantly looking at waveforms, faders, automation rides, etc., it's nice to just 'bounce' that bitch, take a half-hour break and then play it, even if deep down you know there's a bit more to do, and listen to it outside the DAW. Sure, you could just not look at the screen, which essentially isn't too far off, but there's something about actually rendering the mix, knowing it's not completely done and without going to the sequencer right that second to fix it. Listen, take notes, then go back.

Sometimes in doing this I can identify problem is a mix with a bit more clarity as all I can do is close my eyes and listen, the I can reopen the session and tackle the problem with more confidence.

[slaphappygarry]

I firmly believe in the psychology of recording/doing what we do and how just seeing something different on screen - better yet, turning it off and just listening - changes the perception of what you're hearing

very well put.

exactly.

G