As luck would have it one day, instead of having a normal rehearsal my band was going to work on our new music video.  I had grabbed my video camera to use as a backup or secondary camera and while driving the thought came to me.  I wanted to give my readers an inside look on how my band, an indie band with some technological knowledge, creates music videos.

Now, this video isn’t going to go into specifics of exactly how to edit and shoot videos against a green screen.  However, it does give an overview of what we do and a peek at what the shoot actually looks like.  The two songs featured in my video are “Still Me” A song that will be on our new CD Blaming Tim Vs. The Mechanical Robots From Outer Space.  The second song more prominently featured is “Made For TV Movie” which will also be on the new CD.  So if you dig the music, visit blamingtim.com for more information on the band.

Without further ado I present to you A Behind The Scenes Look At Making An Indie Music Video:

The sound engineer has the power to make you sound crazy awesome or like a blurry, muddy mess.  This is why for live shows it helps to befriend your engineer during sound check (a tip or some drinks won’t hurt either).

My band, Blaming Tim finished the tracks to our new cd several months ago.  However, we kept finding that we weren’t entirely thrilled with the mixes we were getting back.  Not to say that the engineer wasn’t any good – we just couldn’t agree on a sound.  Our piano player, Tim decided that it might be a good idea to look else where for final mix and mastering.

And the best person we could find for our budget happend to be in Chicago.  Since the windy city is so far away from Atlanta, we used the power of the internet(s) to send him the raw tracks.  The results – an amazing mix that I am loving the more I listen to.

In the original mixes I felt slightly discouraged.  My drumming did not sound confident.  To me it sounded like I was missing parts, not playing loud enough, or just overall making a mess of the song… This was not how I remembered feeling during the initial recording sessions.  I mean I was tired putting in 10 hour days behind a kit, but I still remember being much more confident in my abilities.

Now that we have re-mixed tracks I have that initial feeling of “You nailed it” while listening to the tracks.  The point of this article is that, as the title states – The Sound Engineer Has The Power To Make Or Break You.

Anyone else have an experience like this or a sound engineer they would like to recommend.  Let us know about them in the comments.