Transcription
I want to take a minute to talk about this thing that I have that I'm sure a lot of you have as well. And it's called the 8-second rule. And it's [music] something I live by certainly when I'm recording or even mixing and sometimes even in pre-production.
And I feel like there's certain elements you're going to have to the so for a song you're going to have if you have drums and bass, keyboards and guitars or horns or whatever it might be. Those elements are going to be a part of the song. But when you're creating music, the idea would to have things that developed and opened up as the song went along. This helps with dynamics. This helps with uh giving the emotion when you add something.
So, I'm not saying you don't need to change the song in the middle. You don't need to go somewhere completely different unless you're [music] trying to do that, which you could. But I'm saying the 8-second rule introduces a new element. [music] What would what that be would be if you done a first verse and it's kind of bare and there's nothing there. Maybe it's just a guitar or a piano with a vocal. As the second verse happens, you can open up the song by adding even just a floor of sound noise which [music] is we used to record air in the studio and add it into the track just so that you had a hiss all these little things.
I think you two with or without you is a great example of the verses with that ghost keyboard where you've got the the singing and there's like this [music] real kind of guitar uh arpeggio thing, but then there's this eerie ghost sound on the keyboard and it opens up the whole track. So, I like to think that every 8 seconds something new happens.
Another example would be if you're doing a chorus, every chorus is exactly the same with exactly the same part. You're bas basically making cookie cutter. [music] So chorus one would be the same as chorus two would be the same as chorus three and four but adding things especially at the end of the song gives you a lasting impression that the song had thought that had gone into it.
I'll give you an example of that. If you listen to, yes, Owner of the Lonely Hearts, when you get to the end of the song, yes, it's got the chorus, but the baseline changes, the vocal changes, but the groove is staying exactly the same. And when the song ends, the first thing I want to do is go right back to the beginning and wonder how they got there.
So, this 8-second rule kind of gives you an awareness that just because you think something sounds great and nothing's reintroduced doesn't necessarily mean that people have that kind of listening ability to uh have the same feeling you do about it. And I kind of feel like with people playing video games these days and [music] you know the amount of phone calls and texting and everything that goes on, it's hard to keep somebody focused. And I feel like when you grow the song and you add things to [music] the song, it's going to make people way more invested in the lyrics and the music.
I want to give some examples of things that add to a song. For example, I might add percussion in a second verse where I've got a shaker or a tambourine. I might bring that in. I might bring in a sequenced keyboard [music] in the second chorus that was never there before. It's in the background, but if you took it away, you would miss it. I might bring in feedback. I mean, one of my [music] bigger songs was Misery Business. I don't think people realize in the first second verse [music] that it's screaming feedback, but way low in the track. [music] It's ticking like a clock. It's a matter of time. >> But if you listen carefully, it's there >> and it doesn't go away. Uh, and if I was to turn it up loud, you'd be going like that. Oh my god, that's so loud. Uh, but that's what it is. It's feedback.
Those kinds of textures, um, guitar parts, playing arpeggiated parts with delays on them, they really help. [music] And of course, the greatest being the background vocals where you throwing in a harmony on a word [music] or you're throwing in a precourse, you might add uh some color [music] by doubling or even singing ooze and o's. That's this is the beauty of what the Beatles did using meatron, using string ideas. These are little things that come [music] in that enhance the song that you want to keep low in the mix, not muddy, but and again, I'm one of [music] these people that believe, you know, if it's really down low and you don't hear it, take it out. If it's too loud, it's probably going to kill the vocal.
So, finding that sweet spot for that 8-second rule and just maybe having something come in, it can even come in like that and fade away really quickly. So these are creative ideas that are that is the producers's responsibility. It's really important to understand your role and not overproduce something but do what the song is asking you to do which I'm sure you've heard that expression many times. It's so true. Certain songs need a little bit of love. They need [music] maybe bigger drum sounds in sections.
But being aware of not just being the producer or the writer. Try and make yourself the listener. This has come up a lot lately with mixing and these are my observations. They might not be yours, but today's successful mixer is probably more of a mastering person than they are an actual mixer. These are people that are using a lot of [music] limiting, a lot of compressing and make everything brickwalled so that any kind of recording [music] dynamics that were done are lost in the song. And it really you would only know if you heard the original before it was mixed.
So once you're starting to build dynamics [music] into a song, once you're starting to build in drama into a song, if everything's on 10, and that's okay if you're doing Slayer or if you're doing Mega Death or, you know, or any kind of black metal band, you can do that. That's the excitement of it. One of my favorite new bands is Death Haven. And I actually listen to it to chill out because it doesn't stop. Although the levels are pretty good on that record. I think that's a [music] great record.
But again, it's like you want to make sure that people [music] immerse themselves into the song that you draw them into the song. And so you have to be very careful when introducing things that it's [music] not going to be brickwalled and everything's going to be loud because the subtlety I don't think I'd be able to get away with my kind of [music] big courses that I've done without making my precourse mono in a lot of cases trying to make everything move in so that when the chorus comes in it opens [music] back up and it's wide again. If you're making a really loud pre chorus with lots of things going on in it, when your chorus hits, it's just gonna be a dud. It's gonna hit the wall.
So, you you've got to be aware that a chorus, if you want it [music] to and you want it to explode and smack somebody in the head, be careful about the 10 seconds that comes before [music] it. I use my master fade. This is a great example. Like, I'll be mixing. [music] This is a good little trick actually. I'll start the song here and when the [music] chorus hits I'll just kick it up a dB and then as the song comes back out of the chorus [music] I'll write a little note here next to the master fader but I'll bring it back slowly or if I have to do it [music] quickly. So I'm giving that's a a level boost but at the same time I'm following that with [music] making instruments come up with that. So it's giving you that effect.