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I’m going to check out TuneBud now, since LicenseQuote is going to shut down. It seems nice at first glance, but I noticed that there’s no possibility to upload a watermarked file for preview. This does bother me somwhat. Are you guys concerned at all (in general, not just in relation to TuneBud) to put out your non-watermarked music, in those libraries that don’t have such feature? How do you feel about that?

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One more thing about Mid_Side approach.
To me, this is VERY useful if you are mastering other people’s mixes. In that case, you probably don’t have any control on the mix (you can’t remix) so MS allows you to intervene with more precision at the mastering stage.
However, if I am mastering MY OWN mixes, and I feel the need to do something at the MS level during my mastering, to me it’s a sign that I need to go back and fix something in the mix. So, for my own mixes, I usually dont use MS.

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Hi Patrick
I agree with what it has been said above. Here’s my approach:
1) I don’t master right after mixing. I try to let at least one day pass.
2) Listen on multiple listening environments (studio, headphone, cheap speaker, car). Car is my favourite reference 🙂
3) Compare with professional tracks you love, in a similar genre / style
4) If many /significant fixes are needed, go back to mixing. I master only the the mix is well balanced.
5) Typical mastering chain for me:
– eq, usually just to give a little shine on the high end. Kush Clariphonic is phenomenal for that.
– eq, to cut some very low end
– mono the low end below 100hz or so, depending on track (not necessary on many genres but I do it anyway, it doesnt hurt)
– extend the stereo field, but only if REALLY necessary. I try to avoid it like the plague, cause it messes things up, especially reverb, but sometimes a little touch is nice or necessary
– two compressors, for different purposes (very little touch here too) and/or dynamic eq, to fix problems when needed
– a little saturation (depending on genre / track)
– a little transient enhancer (this is my secret ingredient, dont tell anyone 🙂
– limiter, dithering, loudness etc. Dont make it too loud, it doesnt make any sense anymore.
Compare with and without effects, at the SAME loudness (there are great tools for that out there).

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@Jerry
I am mostly (but not exclusively) with RF sites, I just started about 3-4 years ago with production music. I’ve been a musician for 30 years though, so only about 1/3 or 1/4 (depending on months) of my income right now comes from production music. But it’s been increasing relatively fast.
I am sure that quantity is important in this business. That’s why I’m very curious about people who can do this much faster than I do. But yes, I have a feeling that if this was my only source of income, I would probably have to increase the number of tracks, and invest more heavily in non-RF productions.
I can see how Erick can do it, because of his genre.
But you make one cue per day with 25 to 40 separate audio tracks each. That’s truly amazing for me 🙂

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Erik
You got me curious … so I took the liberty to check out your music on Pond5. I only went through the first few dozens tracks that appear in your profile, so the sample is probably not representative of the whole 1200. But for what I’ve seen, I understand better now how you (or anybody) can make 1200 tracks in 3 years. It’s not really about the quality (the quality of your music is good, for my taste), but it’s about the kind of music. I’ve seen you have a lot of eletronic / ambient tracks. I’m not saying those are easier to make, but surely faster to make. I guess it doesn’t take more than just a few good, evocative, interesting sounds (there are literally dozens of amazing synths nowadays) and put them together with some good musical taste with simple chord progressions. That’s absolutely fine, there’s probably a market for that. I also heard a couple of your acoustic tracks. These are also quite well done, but the arrangement is very simple (again, I’ve only heard a few, you probably have more complicated stuff too). Anyway, I can imagine myself doing a complete ambient track like those in 2 hours or so, quite comfortably. But for other genres things may be a bit different. As an example, right now I’m working on a latin / afro-cuban track, for which I need 3 guitar tracks (real guitars, not loops, as I am a guitar player), a horn section made of 3 trumpets, a tenor trombone, a bass trombone, 3 flugelhorns, and a solo trumpet part. Each of them has to properly harmonized and realistically rendered with all kinds of articulations. The solo part especially has to be very realistic. Plus, some pretty complex percussion and drums. Finally, bass of course and two piano tracks, one with rhythm and chords, and another one with some melodic lines and phrases. I’m probably slow, but I’ve been working on it for 3 days, and it’s far from finished. I probably need 2-3 more days to be happy with it. I spent one entire afternoon for the horn articulations alone (doits, trills, falls etc). Admittedly, I am a bit of a perfectionst 🙂
I’m starting to understand that’s it’s not really so much about quality vs. quantity, but about different genres requiring more or less time.
Anyway, keep up the good work, you obviously found a very good way of balancing quantity and quality quite nicely. Thumbs up!

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Jerry
that’s amazing. Do you sleep? 🙂
What can I say … good for you! Quite an achievement!
My approach is completely different.
But .. to each his own, I guess.

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Erick … wow. Over 1200 tracks in 3 years … (i’m guessing 1200 different tracks … or does it include alts and edits?)
Anyway … wow! Just wow.
More power to you … I truly, truly admire you.
I think it’s incredible.
The first thing that comes to mind is Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”. But I’m not saying this in a bad way, at all. I’m truly admired by the “process” ingenuity of the production system you must have put together. I’m guessing you must use some sort of “template system”, in which everything is already set in your daw (maybe 1 template per genre? or maybe more?), you just change a few chords, maybe a few sounds, record very little material (if anything at all), a few touches here and there, et voilà, you have a new track. I would LOVE to see how you do it 🙂
Honestly, in 3 years I would have a hard time coming up with 1200 different “titles” (!!), never mind 1200 different full tracks! 🙂
I’m SO behind folks …
… now, back to the assembly line …

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I’m interested in this conversation, and I am more than happy to share my experience about each of the issues that mojorising proposed. However, Art, are we allowed to mention specific libraries here? If not, it’s difficult to compare libraries in one single conversation.

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>Now, I personally don’t like the sound of corporate tracks, but there is an >art to making good ones. The ones doing it well, sell very well. But there >are thousands that never sell.

I agree with this. Which leads me to a more general point. I do agree that you need a market in order to sell. That’s quite obvious. But I also learned that I sell more of the genres that I can do better, that I like better. An example. I did my share of corporate tracks. I actually think they sound ok, for the most part. But I just can’t sell them. Why? I’m not sure, but my guess it’s because it’s just not my cup of tea. I’m just not “in sync” enough with that kind of market. I just can’t grasp what people want. Instead, I am much better at acoustic stuff. That’s the music I love, the music I’ve been playing for 30 years and more. That music, I can sell quite easily. The market is smaller, sure. But it’s a market in which my music better resonates with customers, and I guess it’s because it’s the music that resonates with me. I guess my point is: it’s important to be aware of what the market wants but, in the end, it’s also about whether you are able to actually translate your experience, your skills, your passion, your taste into music. I just find it much harder to sell music that I don’t really “love”, that I don’t really “know”, even if the market for that music is much bigger. But maybe it’s just me 🙂

Which leads me to my final point. I am sloooowwww 🙂
I’ll make 1 or 2 tracks per week, at the most. That’s especially true for acoustic tracks. Admittedly, I wouldn’t be able to make a decent living with just this kind of production … if music production was my only source of income, I would definitely have to produce more.

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@Edouardo

I thought about it, for now I’m invested in Weebly (2 years plan etc), so I don’t think I’m gonna do the switch, although I LOVE Mark’s software. I’m setting up my store in Weebly, not sure if it’s gonna work out for me, but as I said I’m invested so I’m gonna give it try at least. I really wish that Weebly allowed to ftp files etc.

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Thank you Mark!

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Mark,
first of all, thanks a lot.
My website is currently on Weebly and I know your software won’t work there. Can you (or anybody) recommend a decent (cheap …) web host where you know your software will work? I am pretty much clueless about web hosting (I guess that’s why I chose Weebly), so I don’t know how to make sure that the host I’m choosing will grant access to myphpadmin – not even sure what that means 🙂
thanks a lot

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Sound City – great, great film!

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You’re welcome Eduoardo. However, I am NOT an “established composer” 🙂 So please take my observations with a grain of salt …
By the way, I think it’s quite clear that the instruments I mentioned are actually played by a musician in your tracks – when I said “loopish” I meant to say “repetitive”, like copy and paste, as you said. All your instruments sound very “human” and “live”. Love it! Indeed, it’s nice to hear that you do quantization manually, I do the same, and only when necessary. I’m a big supporter of that approach … it is a giant pain in the butt though, but I really think that it makes a difference in certain genres. Let’s keep it human! 🙂

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