Production Advice

There’s quite a buzz at the moment about Derek Siver’s talk at TED, Leadership lessons from a dancing guy. If you haven’t already seen it, check out the video above – it’s fantastic !

Despite the great response he got to his idea of the “First Follower”, he immediately decided that he wanted to “give it away” – as he wrote in his post First follower idea is all yours. He wants people to take the idea, and run with it.

And people are – in clever, interesting ways.

For example, Andrew Dubber has come up with what he calls The other way of following first by choosing to give away ideas of his own – one a day, every day throughout March. I advise you to keep an eye on these ideas, I’m pretty sure many of them will be very, very good.

And already, Andrew has his First Follower – well, sort of, anyway. Andrew Wicklander has commited to choosing and implementing one of Andrew’s ideas, within 30 days, as he explains in his post Dance Party.

So, by now you’re probably thinking that I’m going to jump on this bandwagon, too ?

Well… no.

At least, only in the sense that I’m jumping on in yet another, slightly different way.

Because yesterday I had what I think is a really, really good idea.

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Yes, you read that right.

This post will tell you how to get your music really loud. Regardless of the fact that I’ve been interviewed on Radio 4 arguing passionately against the Loudness Wars, even though I’ve always said that the best way to get your song to stand out on the radio is to avoid pushing the level too hard, and despite having written 19 posts on my mastering blog about how bad Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” sounds because it’s unnecessarily loud…

Today I’ll tell you how to make your music loud.

Why ? As a response to this article on MusicRader.com

How to make your music loud

(Subtitled – “Win the loudness war with our step-by-step and audio guide”)

Now immediately I should say – I love MusicRadar. It’s a great site – I highly recommend it. Masses of news, posts, discussion and information for anyone interested in music and music technology. They were one of the first places to pick up and post about how bad Death Magnetic sounded, and link back to my blog. As a result, Wired magazine and the Guardian found the story and started writing about it, and the rest, as they say, is history. The bad press generated by Death Magnetic has done a fantastic job of raising awareness about this issue, and I for one am very happy about that.

So, MusicRadar rocks.

But that post is useless.

Sorry, but there it is. My reasons for saying so though, may not be what you’re expecting.

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Happy New Year !

I’m sorry things have been a little quiet so far this year – it’s because there’s all kinds of stuff going on behind the scenes that I’m really looking forward to telling you about… soon : )

Meanwhile, regular readers might like to check out my latest guest post on the RecordProduction.com site:

5 Reasons to be cheerful about audio in 2010

and, while I’m at it, here’s another great post from the same blog by the mysterious “Compressor”:

What Producers Do

Stay tuned here for more Production Advice very soon – meanwhile, you might like to check out the Popular and Recent post lists on the right, or

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There is a myth that in order to stand out on the radio, your song needs to be louder than anyone else’s.

Bollocks.

Maybe this was true during the first Loudness Wars, back when every Motown release was louder than the previous one, but not any more – not for a long time.

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Or, the importance of critical listening

Do you trust your hearing ?

Should you ?

There were several factors that led to me putting my foot in my mouth last week – or, my keyboard, perhaps that should be – in a post where I incorrectly announced that Spotify’s “Volume Normalisation” feature makes everything sound terrible (It doesn’t)

This post describes my mistakes, and contains some words of caution for anyone trying to decide if one thing sounds better than another. First I’ll tell you the factors that lead to my wrong conclusions, then I’ll explain how they tripped me up.

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