Today I write about “Reference” in the composing and mixing music.
In here Reference means mainly the thing which is imitated for your work.
For not only music, but also most of the creations which needs objectivity, the importance of reference will be huge.
In various factors of making music, the reference will reveal.
1.Reference for the mix
Now it’s quite common among the music creator to paste the reference song on a track of your DAW.
In here, you always must and can check how much the low and the high is coming and how thick the middle is.
By going back to the reference while your working, you can maintain your objectivity.
Most of recent songs in the market have big loudness, so you have to turn down the fader of the reference track until it would be the same loudness with your mixing session right now.
In the low frequency, it might better check with a spectrum analyzer.
Because about the low frequency, sometimes the way of sound will change drastically depending on the environment.
Why this happens?
Especially in the low, it makes big valley and peak depending on the room and speaker.
If you play some simple sine wave from like 20hz until 250hz by the note at the same volume (velocity), you can find that some specific note would become very big or very small.
Then it’s better that you decide by your ear after comparing the low of your track and reference track with the analyzer.
2.Reference for the composing
This is the reference you use while composing or arranging.
For example, some specific atmosphere you want to take from the reference song or more directly the chord progression or using note in a chord.
I heard that some composer collect dozens of reference tracks to make one song.
I think it’s like making play list of the iTune or Spotify and opening it while you are composing.
3.References for the images and videos
This is not only images and videos, but also narration, story, goods, place, person and so on.
In most of the requested work, you are supposed to had some information that means what for the song will be used, what with the song will be used along.
It’s this kind of other media (except music) information reference.
Check with these images and videos frequently while composing, and you can prevent your song would go far from the project and make a gap.
If you neglect this, the music tends to go another way and it will be hard to fix it afterwards.
As long as you make that music, you cannot help but see that in a favorable light.
To prevent the situation that you cannot find your mistake until your client suggest, taking care of this reference is important.
In my case, for making stockmusic, I set this type of references.
The song that made freely as it going might get many LIKE in SoundCloud but it would not get many SALE in Stockmusic market.
