[View in Web Browser]( Joe Gilder here. I took over the day-to-day running of Recording Revolution back in the spring of this year. I've been busy creating weekly videos over on the YouTube channel, but I honestly haven't done a great job of connecting with you here in this email newsletter. That changes this month. I'll still be creating weekly videos, which you can find on the [YouTube channel](, but I won't be using this email newsletter as an announcement platform for new videos. Instead, I want to provide more value for you, right here in this email newsletter. Thanks for being a subscriber. Advice Most People Ignore I launched Home Studio Corner in April of 2009. It started as a little blog and a YouTube channel. (Fun story: In the first few months of starting HSC, I had a fairly regular commenter who asked good questions and seemed like a cool guy. His name was Graham Cochrane. Later that same year he would launch The Recording Revolution.) The point is, I've been doing this gig for a long time. 14 years. I'm not sure what the conversion rate is, but I think that makes me ancient in internet years. I've had a front-row seat to observe and interact with thousands of musicians on their journey to create great-sounding music in their home studios. From this vantage point, I'm able to spot trends and patterns. I've learned which traps people tend to fall into, what works and what doesn't. Do you want to know one of the most insidious traps I see people fall into time and time again? Complexity. When I first moved back to the Nashville years ago, one of the first people I met was a recording engineer who did a lot of work for major record labels. I remember his personal website had an entire password-protected area for his work with one of the labels. I always thought that was fancy. This guy was only a few years older than me, but he had an incredible studio in the basement of his home, and he was doing legit music industry work. As we got to know each other, he would occasionally call me with Pro Tools questions. (That was back before I switched to Studio One.) I was always surprised at how simple his questions were. He didn't know how to do some of the basic stuff, and yet he was doing real work with major labels. How is that possible? Because he didn't fall for the trap of making things overly complex. He learned just enough to do great work, and nothing more. He didn't feel the obsessive need to understand every nook and cranny of his recording software before he started taking on jobs. He took on the jobs, did good work, and learned along the way. This is just one example, but there are endless ways you can let complexity keep from from making the music you were born to make. Some people get obsessed with plugins. They install countless free and paid plugins on their system, and they seem to spend all their time updating plugins and managing bugs and quirks. Someone recently told me they hadn't made music in their studio for months because they bought a new computer and were having such a hard time installing all the plugins they had bought over the years. I asked them a simple question, "Do you even use those plugins?" The answer, of course, was no, but since they had paid money for them, they felt obligated to install them and make sure they worked. They felt a need to add complexity. Here's something you may not know about me. I only use one paid plugin in my entire recording, mixing, and mastering workflow. One. (It's the FabFilter limiter if you must know.) Keep in mind that being at the helm of Home Studio Corner and now The Recording Revolution, I get offers from plugin manufacturers every week to try their plugins for free. If I wanted to, I could own every plugin on the market without paying a dime. But I don't. Why? Because plugins are bad? No, of course not. For me, the reason I don't own a lot of plugins is because of one word: SIMPLICITY. I recently upgraded my studio computer. Do you know how many pieces of software I had to install to get up and running? Two. Studio One and that Fabfilter limiter. That's it. Within about 5 minutes I was ready to make music. For most people, that process can take months. I'm not saying you shouldn't have plugins. If that makes you happy, go for it. But don't fall into the trap of thinking you need a lot of complexity to make great-sounding music. I could make a strong case that the opposite is true. If you haven't actually made music in your studio in a long while, make THAT the next thing on your todo list. Before you look at another plugin bundle or guitar, make some music with what you have. After all, that's why you got into music production in the first place. Joe Gilder
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