Indie Music Adventures

Since computer software based recording has become cheap enough for every indie band to use, I’m sure many unsigned bands are creating their own studios as opposed to paying someone to do the recording for them.

The biggest advantage I find in doing this is that you don’t have any time constraints. You can do retakes or experimentation until you get it just right. The biggest disadvantage though, is learning a new art form. Recording music can be a very complicated endeavor.

One tool which I just discovered to help make my life easier in the digital studio is Voxengo’s SPAN. Not only is this VST plugin great quality, but it’s absolutely free! SPAN is a spectrum analyzer which can be put either in a single track’s fx bin, or in a master output…or both. It has a small enough footprint that you can use it in multiple places without eating up too much CPU power.

So, what’s a spectrum analyzer? Basically, it shows you a real-time visual analysis of the frequencies in your track or master output. Most media players like Winamp and Windows Media already have this built in. It would seem that most high end recording software would add this too, but many don’t. Those that do don’t offer something as flexible as SPAN. SPAN allows you to adjust the rate at which it tracks the frequencies, so you can watch the changes fly by or have them show more averages, which is a little easier to follow. It also allows you to angle the frequency spectrum so that you get a reading that looks more flat. Otherwise, the lower frequencies are taller on the graph than the higher frequencies.

The reason I love SPAN is that since I don’t have the luxury of owning the best reference monitors and I don’t have an acoustically tuned room, having a relatively flat frequency guide helps me to see where imbalances are.

For example, let’s say I think that I really need to add a lot more bass because the mix is just not thick enough. If I look at the spectrum analyzer and see that the bass is actually way more pronounced than I can perceive audibly, I’ll know that I’m already really pushing the bass. Of course if I mixed it down and burned a CD, as soon as I played it in my car or something I would here plenty of bass. The spectrum has helped me to kep a better balance and my mixes have turned out a lot better.

Anyways, what have you got to lose? It’s free! You might as well go download it and give it a shot. Good luck on those mixes!