Benefits of listening your tracks in an unconventional way
What if you are almost done with your track but there is still that little “cherry on the cake” missing and no matter how hard you try it just doesn’t come?
I hate that feeling and for the record I’m in this situation about 350 days a year ( I deserve a 15 days break).
There a little something that I always do though and this thing inspires me most of the time.
Now, what I’m about to tell you might sound a little odd (it probably is as well) but I suggest you to give it a try since is a quick and painless thing.
I’m talking about playing you own track at different speed and before you get confused let me be a little clearer, different speed in this case refers to the classic vinyl type of speed, the one that changes tempo as well as pitch, so no time stretching or pitch shifting this is very important!
Now I won’t get into a deep scientific/musical explanation (even because I don’t know it) but what happens here is great in many ways :
1) Different approach to your track, dunno about you but by the time I finish a track I usually heard it about a hundred thousands time and the more I hear it the less I want to spend more time on it, with altered speed and pitch the track even if it’s the same track gets a new face, more or less details are brought to our attention, usually the slower it is the more details you notice, and the opposite when you play it faster.
2) resonances and harmonics, this is the best part, every time you play your track with a different speed, the natural tone change brings new harmonic elements to life, sometimes from a delay playing very slow some other from the tail of a reverb.
All you have to do at this time it’s simply listen carefully, try sing along some resonances And when you got the right thing simply record it somewhere and rewrite it on the original track once you are happy (remember than when you put your idea in the original track it ll have to be re-tuned as you were playing at with different pitched version).
I personally prefer to play the track slower as it sets the chill out mood and usually harmonics gets more interesting but sometime even play the track faster does the trick.
Before I say bye please bare in mind one thing, brain and perception are different on each one of us, so each one of us will have a his own reaction to this, some of you will be able to hear what I’m talking about, some others will just hear how a track would be if played by a broken turntable.
Worth a try anyway!
Cheers
David
About the author
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http://www.facebook.com/52degree Frank Arnold









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