Tape plugins, confidence

Videos Philip Weinrobe Recording & Mixing Adrianne Lenker
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Hi Philip,

This was an awesome series to watch. You don’t get to see a full analog process like this being recreated with tape involved that often so thank you for making it happen. A few questions/discussion points:

  1. Since you have plenty experience with real tape machines, what do you make of the present day tape plugins (studer, ampex, abbey road j37, etc.)? Do you use them at all, and if so, are there any tips you feel could be worth sharing? I sometimes mess around with practice mixes and only use tape plugins followed by channel strip plugins to try and emulate a similar way of mixing to what you did in the video. I find that limiting in a good way as you point out as well.
  2. I relate a lot to your views on decision-making. Not dwelling on mixing moves or not over stimulating your senses when working on a record is an approach I’ve arrived to in the last few months coming off a few projects which involved a lot of indecision. These were projects that I had started quite early in my career so the indecision was partly down to not knowing what I was doing, but anything I’ve started after that is now more grounded in confidence and realising that one small EQ move won’t change the course of my career. Finally my question on this, what was it like for you arriving at a point in your career when you started feeling more confident? Looking back is there anything that, again, you feel it would be worth sharing?

Bogdan

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Hi Bogdan
Thanks for watching the series and i’m so glad you enjoyed it.

Here’s my answers:

  1. I think there are some very wonderful tape emulation plugins and i use them all the time. I do 95% of my mixing in a digital hybrid workflow, and i never put analog gear on my master buss So therefore, I use tape emulators a lot!
    I honestly think they are all good and different and generally can find things I like about almost all of the ones you mention, and those you didn’t.
    I guess I’ve settled on the Arturia J37 emulation plugin. I went through a bunch and just seem to have settled into the J37. I think Arturia is a great company, I trust their tools a lot.
    and this one really has stuck.

    My master buss in digital is fixed – i have the same plugin chain on every mix. this gives me a nice constraint, but I tweak the actual setting a bit (though sometimes not much!).

  2. My strong opinion is that confidence is another decision you make. You get to decide whether you are confident or not. I think I arrived to a point where I felt confident when i “decided” to feel that way, i don’t remember when that was but i can tell you it was at a point when i knew very little compared to what I know now (of which I know very little compared to myself in 10 years, etc)

    I always remind myself to be humble and remember that there will always be far more that I don’t know then I do know – that is the reality of all creative practices. And given that reality, our only position we can take is to be both humble in our infinite naivete and also confident in the moves we make (while knowing our future selves will certainly figure out better moves soon).

    So yeah, just decide to be confident. You can do it on day 1 or day 1000001. But the sooner the better. nothing stoppig you.

    Oh, and confidence itself has real tangible benefits, my favorite of which is that by deciding to be confident, you improve your practice! how wild the brain is.

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Thanks a lot for the reply Philip!

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