Even with my new plugins… no, not Sound Toys. For the first time ever, I participated in Black Friday, and purchased the Sonnox Essential bundle. That’s right, I’ve got the Oxford EQ, Dynamics, Reverb, and SuprEsser. Don’t worry, all will be revealed in my Massive Plugin Comparison, which will unfortunately have to wait until after this semester is over. Consider it the best Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Festivus present you’ve ever received. You’re welcome… in advance.
As I was saying, before my plugin tangent, even with new tools it is sometimes hard to come up with fun and creative ways to use them. Thus, I wanted to share an awesome and kind of hippie-esque technique for when you become stumped at what to do: Oblique Strategies.
Originally it was a single card deck created by artist Peter Schmidt and the mighty Brian Eno, who is every audio engineer’s god and mentor. The premise was that if you were ever stuck in a recording studio with writers block, you would pull one of these cards with a phrase on it, that would be the catalyst for a new way of thinking.
While I don’t agree with Schmidt’s constant use of pastel colors, or all of the 8,432 albums Eno has participated in… I think some of these cards are worth considering. You can try out some of them online, right here.**
** My personal favorite? “Give way to your worse impulse”. That is pretty much gives me permission to soak my track in viscous, fat, all-encompassing reverb. Mmm… Sonnox Reverb.
