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S3E09 – Harsh vs. Pleasing Speakers

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In this episode of Music Production Made Simple, we talk about HARSH and PLEASING speakers while beatmaking, mixing, and mastering your music.

With Vol. 10 of BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous soon releasing, I’m currently in the final listening stage for audio translation..

The goal when releasing your music is for it to sound similar across any audio device your music is played on.. and what you’ll discover is, especially in the low-end, sometimes your music doesn’t sound the same!

In this episode I talk about HARSH and PLEASING speakers.. and how they have both been beneficial to listen on before the final release of your music.

Also, thanks for those who took part in the survey for the next beatmaking course to the platform.. Serum was the clear winner, so the new course will be Serum for Beatmakers Course 🙂

See the new updated course layout page here..

BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous Beatmaking Mastering Mixing Workflow

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S3E09 – Harsh vs. Pleasing Speakers

  1. Season three, episode nine, harsh versus pleasing speakers.
  2. When we are in the studio making our beats, we're often listening on our reference
  3. monitor speakers. Or we may be using studio headphones.
  4. And you have to understand that these audio devices are meant to
  5. replicate naturalness in the music.
  6. Flat. And so when we're mixing our music, when we are working with our music, you
  7. have to understand that your music can sound really harsh through them.
  8. As soon as you listen to your music through some pleasing speakers, and this is
  9. typically just kind of consumer kind of speakers, your music all of a sudden
  10. sounds a lot more pleasing. Okay, we're gonna talk about that in this episode.
  11. Before we get into this episode, I sent out a survey about the next beat making
  12. course coming to the platform.
  13. The majority of people want to see serum.
  14. I asked you the question about you know what's causing you the most frustration
  15. about beat making. Some of you left left some really really good questions, and I
  16. could definitely create some courses off of that information.
  17. So thank you for that. Okay. Again, also if you want to stay updated with the
  18. website, check out the resources page.
  19. So just go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  20. Again, you will see the free teaser of the drum bundle trio.
  21. You'll sign up, you'll get some free sounds just to get an idea of the drum kit.
  22. I also follow up with some free training about you know how to make drum loops, how
  23. to buy drum samples. There's also again that three exclusive videos if you want to
  24. learn FL Studio, some really helpful videos to get you up and running.
  25. There's also the five keys to a successful beat book.
  26. Again, just go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  27. That's a great way for you guys to get started learning about how I can help you
  28. learn to make beats, okay? Now, again, the reason I want to talk about harsh speak
  29. speersakers and pleasing is because again, I am going through beat tapes by
  30. gratuitous volume 10.. All right
  31. So for those who are new, I create beat tapes.
  32. And the reason I like to release a beat tape is it's amazing for practice.
  33. Okay. The art of learning to create an album is being lost in this
  34. industry. Most of the time when people are releasing their music, they're just
  35. releasing one beat or one song at a time.
  36. Even if they do release an album, it's more of like what we call like an EP, which
  37. is like six tracks or something.
  38. So, anyways, in volume 10 now of beat tapes by gratuitous, again, I usually try to
  39. release about 10 tracks per beat tape.
  40. And so I do all the beat making, all the arrangement, all the mixing, all the
  41. mastering. And now I'm in the final listening stage.
  42. So what does that mean? Well, for me, I'm not in a very good listening environment
  43. in my studio. I have eight-inch reference monitor speakers, I have a subwoofer, and
  44. that allows me to really make my beats and feel the music essentially.
  45. I can I can feel the bass and the speakers, they are pretty clear.
  46. I'm able to mix half decent well.
  47. But I always like to listen to the music on different audio systems before I
  48. actually release it, okay? And that's what I'm doing right now.
  49. And so what I have been doing is I have been using an old iPod, all right.
  50. And so what I've been doing, so let's say we work in a single project.
  51. Let's say the project is beat one, okay.
  52. Inside of beat one, that is the beat, the arranged beat, the mixed beat, and the
  53. mastered beat, all in one project.
  54. I just like to do it that way.
  55. It's usually the easiest way to work, in my opinion.
  56. And so once that beat, I think is done, I will export it.
  57. You know, all the beats. So I export all the beats, I'll load them onto the iPod.
  58. And when when I I load it onto an iPod,, I make sure just to delete like all like
  59. the music, and then I'm always make sure to re-upload the new versions every time
  60. just so that you're never listening to an old copy by accident, thinking that you
  61. know it you got the new one on there.
  62. And so once I have all the beats loaded on, right now I only have nine, I still have
  63. to just work on one more, but I think I'm pretty much complete all nine right now.
  64. but anyway, so I listen through all of them one by one, and there's a couple things
  65. I'm listening for. Number one, just loudness and completeness and balance, making
  66. sure that the actual track is just very polished sounding.
  67. I'm also listening to the fade out of the song.
  68. So, in other words, when the song finishes, when it's transitioning to the next
  69. song, I'm listening for does that have enough space in it?
  70. If it's too rushed, it it you know, it just sounds too rushed.
  71. Because again, I am creating what's called like an album here, and in an album, you
  72. have to think about the fade outs and even the fade in if you want to do that too.
  73. Anyways, this time around, I'm actually pushing my music just a little bit louder
  74. than I normally do in my masters.
  75. I'm just kind of finding that these tracks have a nice sweet spot of where I'm
  76. pushing them, and I'm just finding some of the tracks are really, really full and
  77. balanced sounding, and that really does come down to just wise sound selection.
  78. When I was making the beat, some of the tracks, some of the sound selection, I
  79. guess, is just kind of poor, and I'm just trying to make it work if that makes
  80. sense. Now, to the average person, and they're really not going to hear a
  81. difference, but to me, I just feel that some of the beats are a little bit more
  82. hollow sounding, whereas some of the other ones are way more balanced.
  83. And typically the ones that are more balanced sounding, you can actually push them
  84. much louder in the mastering stage, and you're not really gonna hear audible
  85. distortion. When you have poor sound selection, it's gonna be a lot harder to push
  86. your master loud. be For example, there's this one specific song on theat tape right
  87. now. the track name is called There's No Other Lord, but it's causing me problems to
  88. push it loud, and it's actually I notice quite a bit quieter than the other tracks,
  89. and I'm still getting distortion when I'm pushing it, you know, when I'm trying to
  90. push up to that equal loudness.
  91. Even when I pull it back, I'm still getting a little bit of distortion, especially
  92. when the when those kick drums hit and stuff.
  93. And so this could be for a couple reasons.
  94. One, yes, maybe poor sound selection.
  95. Number two, in the mixing stage, I may not have been aggressive enough with
  96. compression and distortion. Okay, some of these other tracks on the beat tape.
  97. Maybe I was a little bit more aggressive.
  98. And again, when you are applying more distortion, a lot of the time you're actually
  99. applying more balance to the music because what happens like a distortion is
  100. essentially like a form of kind of like compression or limiting.
  101. But what makes distortion more special is that it's adding frequencies, making the
  102. music sound a lot fuller than what it originally was.
  103. And when you can work on each track individually and you combine them all together,
  104. again, the mastering stage, you can push it a lot louder.
  105. So when I'm working in my studio, and even when I'm working on different speakers
  106. within my residence, some of the speakers I've been listening to are a little bit
  107. too natural sounding, a little bit too harsh sounding, and that's good and bad.
  108. This is good, kind of like in the initial mixing stages of the song, but then
  109. sometimes I'm telling you, it's nice to listen on just consumer speakers because you
  110. listen to your music in a much more pleasing way.
  111. All of those kind of harsh things that are spiking out at you normally, if you
  112. listen on more pleasing speakers, you're just like, wow, like I can actually just
  113. kind of sit back and just maybe just listen to the music right now.
  114. Whereas when I'm listening in my studio, it's like I get so analytical.
  115. And another thing to mention is because I've been creating these FL Studio courses
  116. for a while now, you know, this release, you know.
  117. I try to I want to try to hold myself up to like a standard of like, you know,
  118. practice what you preach. But I will say, like, I'm more of a beatmaker.
  119. Like I really like making beats.
  120. The mixing, I'm not in as strong in, and the mastering, definitely not as strong in.
  121. But I like to do them, I like to learn them, and the more you practice them, the
  122. better you're gonna get. But in the beat making is really where I specialize.
  123. So when it comes to this release, like usually I used to be able to release beat
  124. tapes super quick because I would just make the beat, do some mixing, and I just
  125. release them. This time around, I am wanting to just like slow it down a little bit,
  126. and I've just been really listening through, trying to listen for just completeness
  127. out of each track, making sure it's all sounding good.
  128. But that's just something I've really really noticed this time around, is just the
  129. types of speakers I'm listening on.
  130. So when we're in the studio, something that could be a little harsher sounding, a
  131. little more you know, things kind of stick out a lot more.
  132. When you're listening on more consumer speakers, it's more pleasing.
  133. So I what I've been doing is I just go on a little bike ride where I live, it's
  134. there's like a little forest, so it's just go up there, put some earbuds in, go for
  135. a bike ride. Don't really have to worry about any vehicles or anything like that.
  136. And then I just listen from beginning to end of this beat tape.
  137. The beat tape is like, I don't know, maybe 30 minutes, 45 minutes kind of thing.
  138. So that's enough time for you know a little session out there, and then I come back,
  139. I make some quick tweaks, and then the next time I go, I will just kind of
  140. listen. Did I kind of fix what I did?
  141. Now I'll give you one other little tip that I've been doing to do revisions..
  142. Okay Revisions is if we worked on the track, we need to adjust it a little bit.
  143. That's revision one. Same thing, revision two, revision three.
  144. So this time around, I've been approaching it just a little bit different.
  145. And what I've been doing is I've actually been copying and cloning that project, and
  146. I've been putting V2, V3, V4, V5, and then I'm just working my way all
  147. the way until I'm happy with the release.
  148. Usually I used to just kind of keep working in that same project, and I just kind of
  149. tweak it just a little bit wherever I needed, and then I'd keep exporting it.
  150. But this time around, I have just been doing a copy paste and then just putting V1,
  151. V2, like right beside it kind of thing.
  152. And that seems to be working out pretty good on some of the tracks.
  153. I'm on version 7. On some of the tracks, I was just like on version four.
  154. Alright, so I just wanted to share my story of what I've been experiencing regarding
  155. harsh speakers and pleasing speakers.
  156. Working in the studio all the time.
  157. Again, I am using the Yamaha HS8Ms.
  158. I think they're now the 80Ms, but I have the older version, I think.
  159. And I just find that they're very, very flat.
  160. They're very just pretty truthful speakers for the most part.
  161. And I just find that they're just a little bit harsh if you're always listening to
  162. them all the time. When I start listening on more consumer speakers, I was actually
  163. able just to listen to my music a lot more enjoyably.
  164. And a lot of those problems I was hearing kind of go away.
  165. Now that's good and bad. Good because you're not so focused on just like one little
  166. high hat or something, but bad because maybe you're not hearing what's actually
  167. being heard. And if someone is listening to your music in different environments,
  168. you know, so that's always the goal.s.
  169. Translation does the beat work in multiple system, multiple audio speakers
  170. So even for these earbuds, I was just using just basic, like Apple iPod ones.
  171. I have these little black Sony ones, I think they're like $14.
  172. Great. And one thing I want to share is I one time I actually purchased these more
  173. expensive in-ear monitors, they were quite expensive, significantly more money than
  174. just an average earbud. And it's okay, right?
  175. I find it's really finicky. so just be very careful with marketing when it comes to
  176. audio equipment. Like, honestly, like like the amount of money I paid for them and
  177. the experience I've gotten out of them is nowhere near the $14 I paid for
  178. these black Sony earbuds, which are awesome.
  179. Like, I really really like them.
  180. They're just like I find that they're full, balanced, they're comfy in the ear, and
  181. I don't have to worry about if I break them because they're only $14.
  182. Also, check out the website and visit the course pages.
  183. Okay, so if you go to the shop, visit a course page.
  184. I totally revamped and updated it.
  185. I think it's really cool. At the moment, it's kind of like a purple background.
  186. If you guys are ever wondering, like what I'm doing in the background, at the moment
  187. I'm working so heavily on the website still, and you might be like, Well, what am I
  188. working on? I don't want to get too much into it, but when we have a website,
  189. there's what's called assets. Okay, so there's CSS, which is like how your website
  190. is styled, then there's JavaScript, which is JS, which allows you to kind of control
  191. your website in very cool ways, and without getting too technical, what happens is
  192. when you load a web page, a lot of times.es it can be loading a lot of
  193. extra fil, slowing down the website
  194. And that's what I've been focusing on right now.
  195. I'm trying to what's called unload certain files that don't need to be loaded.
  196. Because when I talk to you guys about plugins, a website is no different when it
  197. comes to music production for plugins.
  198. Okay. So how it works is let's say we have FL Studio.
  199. FL Studio is our DAW. Okay. Built into FL Studio was pretty much everything you need
  200. to get up and running to have a basic music program, right?
  201. You have EQs, compression, reverb, even have synthesizers, they even give you stock
  202. one-shot drum samples, right? But if you want further enhancement to that DAW, you
  203. you're going to get a plugin, right?
  204. And this is why I always talk to you about be very careful with plugins, because on
  205. the website, you need to install plugins if you want to have additional
  206. functionality. For example, if you guys are viewing the course viewing area in the
  207. platform, that is a plugin. Some plugins are paid, some plugins are free.
  208. It's no different than music production.
  209. But on the website, what happens is sometimes if you install a plugin, that plugin
  210. can what's called behave badly.
  211. And they start loading files in different areas of the website and they start
  212. slowing it down. And I finally now have some time to look at that and improve
  213. performance because you know, when it comes to Google being found on Google, it's
  214. all about speed. So, anyways, when I talk to you about make sure to get good plugins
  215. that work well that you know will last you for the long term, that's why I speak so
  216. I guess knowledgeable in that area, because with the website, what happens is
  217. let's say a developer releases a plugin, just like in music production., this is
  218. it's the it's like the exact same correlation
  219. Let's say FL Studio updates, and then now let's say that old plugin is buggy.
  220. If that developer was not profitable in their business or they don't update their
  221. plugin, that plugin would be unusable in new versions of FL Studio, let's say.
  222. And it's the same thing with the website stuff.
  223. Like sometimes a developer creates a free plugin or a paid plugin, and then the
  224. website keeps getting updated, but the actual plugin is not updated and it can start
  225. breaking the website too. But I'm finally at a point where the website is finally
  226. organized, and this is essentially the last biggest thing is just looking into what
  227. we call asset management. And I want to unload certain files to speed up the
  228. website. And then we will be getting right into some more content.
  229. All right. As you can see, I've been releasing these podcasts, trying to do it every
  230. Thursday, which is good. I will try to stay consistent with that for you guys.
  231. And I want to start getting into new courses and new books and just focus solely on
  232. that stuff and give you guys the best experience because the website is now built,
  233. up and running, super clean, super organized.
  234. I hope you guys, as members are enjoying.
  235. And if you guys are brand new, again, visit the resources page and you guys can
  236. select what you would like for your education from me to get some free training.
  237. Okay, so it's gratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  238. There is the free drum bundle trio sounds.
  239. I talk about that drum kit a lot.
  240. The full version has 2300 drum samples.
  241. If you sign up, you just get a little teaser pack just to hear what is a
  242. high-quality drum kit, and then I send you some follow-up emails about drum loop
  243. training and how to buy drum kits.
  244. Again, you got to be a little bit careful out there.
  245. There's no standards when it comes to selling a drum. kit
  246. So, in other words, if you find a drum kit for 40 and has 40 sounds, or if someone
  247. offers a sound kit for 20 and it has 10,000 sounds, you know, there's really no
  248. standard for that stuff. And then again, there is the three-free exclusive FL Studio
  249. videos where if you sign up, I will break down how to set up FL Studio, how to set
  250. up your music folder, how to get just a really good experience as a beat maker.
  251. Okay. Again, just it's gratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  252. You'll you'll you will see tons of different ways to sign up, get some free
  253. training, and then it's up to you if you want to join the platform.
  254. I will be getting on this new serum course next week.
  255. So be on the lookout for that.
  256. Again, thank you to everyone who filled out the survey.
  257. serum was the winner, and then the next course will be silent one.
  258. And my goal for these courses is not like a super in-depth course, like what does
  259. everything do? The main point I will be getting across to you is how can we use
  260. these tools as beat makers. If you have been watching tutorials and they're showing
  261. you, oh, here's how you design this certain sound, or how do you design this certain
  262. sound? That's fine, but you ask yourself the question: are you actually learning how
  263. to make beats? Are you still struggling?
  264. And if you are, that's gonna be the whole point of this serum course.
  265. So this will be a serum course specifically aimed at beat makers.
  266. It's not gonna be super in-depth in regards to sound design, but we will be talking
  267. about how to use it as a beat maker.
  268. Again, I have tons of premium serum packs.
  269. Again, you can visit the website there.
  270. Click on shop under the sounds tab just to give it a quick little peek.
  271. and I'll be walking through how serum works.
  272. We will design some types of sounds, and then near the end of the course, we will
  273. make a little be beat.at all based off of serum, and I'll show you what I'm saying,
  274. how we're gonna be using it as amaker
  275. Because when you go through presets, it doesn't matter if it's serum, silence one,
  276. pigments, any of these synthesizers.
  277. What you'll notice when you go through the default presets, some of them are not
  278. designed for beat makers, and a lot of people don't understand that.
  279. So when they go to make their beats and they're trying to play their mini keyboard,
  280. trying to play the sounds, and they're just they just feel they just can't play good
  281. chords, they just can't find good melodies and stuff.
  282. I'm telling you, high quality sounds has a big part in that.
  283. Obviously, yes, you have to know how to play the piano, you have to know the keys,
  284. you have to know the chords because it makes it easier, right?
  285. But when you have low quality sounds or sounds that just really aren't usable for
  286. beat makers, you will see how much harder it is to make beats.
  287. When you have sounds that are designed for beat makers, you'll be like, wow, okay,
  288. these are super usable sounds.
  289. In other words, we can quickly make our melodies, we can quickly play chords, and
  290. then if we start adding in multiple sounds over top of each other, they all kind of
  291. work together. All right, and that's what I'll share with you in the course what to
  292. look for, what makes the sound specifically for a beatmaker.
  293. Because again, we have film music, we have sound design when you're designing all
  294. these sounds. But as a beat maker, we need to have the presets that are for beat
  295. makers. So, again, sign up to the email list by going to it's gratuitous.com forward
  296. slash resources. Sign up for what's interesting to you.
  297. You will get that free download, whatever the resource is, and you'll get some free
  298. additional training. And you'll also be updated when I ever release you know the new
  299. course survey or stuff like that.
  300. You guys will always be updated in behind the scenes.
  301. Okay, thanks for listening.. Visit it'sgratuitouscom, and I'll talk to you in the
  302. next
  303. episode.
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