I’ve been on something of a learning kick lately.
Whenever I get stuck in a rut or feel discouraged by my day to day work I take a break and try to learn something new about music and audio.
I’m always trying to improve my knowledge on music and audio so I take frequent breaks and read up on what I love the most.
Currently, the three books I alternate between are:
Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio – Mike Senior: A really awesome and in-depth book about mixing.
Behind the Boards: The Making of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Greatest Records Revealed – Jake Brown: It’s always fun to read stories about how certain records were made.
Songwriters on Songwriting – Paul Zollo: An inspiring interview book packed with information about how the greatest songwriters in history wrote some of their greatest hits.
I use these books as idea generation for my own music.
Whenever I’m stuck with a song I’ll read an interview and listen to the songs they wrote and see if it sparks an idea in my head. It’s so productive that I could probably just sit and read that book all day, listen to their songs and create a catalog of new songs in a week. If only I didn’t have other responsibilities…
Whenever I need an idea for an arrangement or if I need something different in my productions I’ll read a session story from Behind the Boards and grab something from there.
And if I’m stuck in a mix I’ll digest some of the knowledge from Mixing Secrets.
It all helps me learn new and different ways to focus on my interests and it refreshes my love for my work.
If you get stuck in a rut with your audio production like I do, there’s something you might be interested in.
Joe Gilder over at Home Studio Corner is a master explainer about anything that has to do with audio. I’ve learned a lot from reading his posts and watching his videos. You could say that he’s gotten me out of more ruts than I care to acknowledge.
Rut. Such a funny word. English is hilarious…
Anyways, if you’re anything like me you can get yourself “unstuck” before the end of the year with Home Studio Corner’s Humongous 2 for 1 End of the Year Sale.
If you can’t decide whether you need to know more about EQ or compression then you learn about both for the price of one.
Joe Gilder over at HSC has been a beast in the last few months with a bunch of new tutorials like Speed Mixing, Understanding Microphones and Programming Drums.
Best of all, now’s your chance to grab any TWO of them for the price of ONE.
All the glorious details can be found here:
http://www.audio-issues.com/hsc2for1sale/
Image by: smadden