Two months later : true story
Living on the go
It’s been a little bit more than two months now that I left home’s comfort. I thought it would be nice to give some feedback from the ground.
But first, I’d like to share some revelations I recently had, like two minutes ago. Downsizing is a necessity to anybody who’s on the go, travelling, at least by plane. We can only take what fits into a few luggages. It means : nothing useless, no waste. I don’t buy anything that I will not be able to bring back with me. Do you see what I mean ? We live only with what’s needed. That’s a good thing right ?
I live now in a busy neighborhood called Alcantara. It’s in Lisbon. One step from bus and trams, literally. I thought it could be handy. It is. It’s also very noisy. I had to reschedule my mixing work but it’s a full part of the trip. Now the most surprising thing to me is how much my stuff doesn’t miss me. Really. It’s just like I always lived this way. Except for cooking. I’ve heard Airbnb was planning to create digital work-oriented places. That’s a great idea : stronger wi-fi, better chairs. It would be nice to make really well equipped kitchens for cooking too. We are not students anymore. I love to cook.
Mixing on the go
I thought speakers would miss me much more too. Instead, it became the perfect occasion to work on something where headphones are in my opinion, the perfect tool : headroom. I’ve never really dug into that part of mixing, considering it like acquired, I was wrong.
“Design your headroom and stick to it.”
You can find many tutorials about mix and mastering, plug in usage, how to set up, and everything else and between. But the most important thing is : why do you use the tools ? Do you know the rules ?
“Everybody knows the rules !”
Two stages : the creative process and the sound design process.
Creativity is jamming, playing, creating sounds, samples, tweaking them into all possible ways. It’s also composition, expression, music theory… Creative is creation [whaou(^!^)] It’s chaos and mess. Just to let you know, I don’t necessarily separate the process, I do a bit of everything at the same time. Separating here just helps to describe those mechanics.
At the sound design step, only one thing matters : headroom. That’s design. The eq you use, the filters, the compressor, the limiter, the reverb : everything must target one purpose and one purpose only : keeping the headroom, sticking to the design. While doing that, you are going to improve everything and will end up with a mix that sounds great anyway and anywhere. Because every sound will be precise. Precision is the gap between getting lucky versus mastering the all thing and making an awesome piece of work. This instrument, this sample doesn’t have to give the full sonic range. It just has to play its part in its place.
Some youtube channels give good advice. The best I found was :
- Cut at 7khz (a bit more a bit less is ok). No rules. Stay focused.
- Be careful between 125 and 500 hz. Cut the ramble.
- When it’s too loud it’s too loud. You can feel it and you can see it. Go visual. Visualize the music (This one is mine)
- Be nice with your ears. Don’t listen too loud (once again) and take a break.
- Don’t masturbate while playing everything too loud (three times). “The music should kick ass while played at low volume.”
- Chase the feeling. It also applies to graphic design, web design. It may be the most powerful and good advice, it may be summarizing a life’s work : chasing the feeling, being honest, sticking to it.
- Boost yourself. It’s actually good to move from a creative field to another one. You see a design in your web : create an artwork.
Once it’s good, you’ll know it. Once again, be honest. Be humble, the hardest part. Know your stuff. Listen how your headphones sound with other music and productions. Visualize it (visualizing plays a big part here, from my perspective). Use everything you have at your disposal. No need to own hundreds of plug-ins. Use the ones you know and master them.
Working on the go
The two-screens trick I wrote about last time is also not that much of a solution. I use it anyway from time to time. It’s quite easy to get a small second screen if really needed anyway.
Here are some models I found while researching for myself. I didn’t buy any of them for now. Some expectations : I want it to be cheap, I don’t want to invest the price I could invest in a new laptop, so a few hundred bucks is far more than enough, easily transportable, in any bag.
Playing on the go
Now playing on the go is (almost) a reality. It took a long time but today I tried (once again) GTA live on Xcloud and it worked just as well as it worked on Xbox One, maybe even better. Just before disappearing, and that’s the reality. Xcloud only works with games from the Game Pass Ultimate. Once games are gone, the possibility to play them on the cloud goes with it. Then I tried another one. The Outer World was on my list for some time. Problem, I couldn’t go further than the moment I had to type in my character’s name. I believe it needed the virtual keyboard, missing here obviously because I was on the cloud, not on the physical console. Input problem. It’s capable of running games, and games seem to run well but they ain’t conceived to run on the cloud, at least not all the game, for now. So it’s not completely ready. It’s still officially in beta anyway. But it’s not far to be ready too. For people keeping the hardware, the game pass ultimate is still the best offer on the market in my opinion. Xcloud is going to be the only serious offer I think. Next is why.
Nvidia now is another option but more than half of my games from Steam aren’t supported. I can mostly play my Assassin’s creed collection. Cool but not enough.
Stadia has a really poor catalog. It looks like a future-once again abandoned project from Google. My guess.
Shadow died before it truly existed. Too bad because cloud computing was an interesting concept, maybe the best. I tried it a few months and it worked great the first one, then it was unplayable, I don’t know why.
Amazon builds its own offer. Good luck.
Competition doesn’t always seem to be the most efficient. It’s a bit sad to watch those big brands doing just like video streaming services. I think we deserve better than a collection of competitive offers. In the same vein, I’m not gonna be on Netflix and Prime and Dysney and Apple whatever plus the indie offers. It’s like 50€/month and more to watch a percent of each one. Maybe you could try to build one big platform that could make everybody happy. My bet. Video games ain’t videos. People who play indie games also play GTA or am I the only one ?
Getting a (new) gamer laptop seems to be (still) the best to do if you can afford it right now, and the only way to play Deathloop.
Steam launched a portable device. Looks great and really powerful.
The Switch is still here if you enjoy the Nintendo catalogue.
Doing on the go. Final thought.
A lot of work energy. A lot of ideas are coming. A lot of inspiration. A lot of beach time. And that last one makes a real difference. Sun everyday. More happy people. That’s a good environment to accomplish tons of daily chunks, build projects. Conclusion :
So far, so good.
Happy whatever you are doing guys.
