Hi! Hello! Hey! If you’re reading this, thank you for being here. I’m Marina. I’m an artist, media composer, music producer, and engineer. I write music for various media (video games, film, YouTube, etc.) and equally love producing, mixing, and mastering for artists around the globe. I also edit podcasts, teach audio engineering, and release my own music.
I’ve been wanting to start a newsletter for a while now, and after being inspired time and again by a couple of close people in my life (writer Thomas Roland and filmmaker Ivana Strajin), I’ve decided to take the plunge. If you know me personally, you know I journal quite often, and I’ve been wanting a more public place to share the music I’m listening to, nerd out on how music is made, and talk about what I’ve been working on.
So, welcome. Thank you again for being here. Let’s talk about what this Substack will focus on. For the time being, I’m giving myself some space to experiment and see what sticks, so with that in mind, here’s the first structure I’ve landed on…
The Playlist. I love sharing new music. A lot. Few things give me the rush of finding a new band or artist I can listen to for hours, whether it’s their 4th album or debut single. Though I’ll be sharing what I’m listening to here, if you have any music to share with me, please do. Seriously.
Behind the Mix. Whether you’re beginning your music production journey or you’re interested in learning more about how music is made, I can and will talk your ear off about the technical side of music making. I used to make a fair bit of this type of content for social media, but I found it too difficult to create thoughtful videos without spending countless hours on a single TikTok, so this newsletter feels like the best way for me to write something meaningful and link out to in-depth YouTube videos that might be helpful, supplemental content, whether you’re a budding engineer or simply curious.
What I’m working on. This section will feature ramblings on what I’ve been up to. I can seldom give details on what projects I’m working on due to NDAs, but I’ll share what I’m allowed to. I’ll likely also include random musings on things that are currently inspiring me.
Quotes. I collect them. Some are cheesy. Some aren’t. I think words have power and I want to share them as a nice, little bow on top of each issue.
So, let’s officially get into issue #1!
The Playlist
It’s been a really, really good year for my Spotify account. Here’s what I’ve been listening to lately, featuring some rock, pop, and video game music.
Sleep Token: Big shoutout to my friend Mike for introducing me to this alt-metal band, because they very quickly became one of my favourites after I heard Atlantic. Take Me Back to Eden is a brilliant body of work and is now one of my favourite albums, with the titular song, Rain, The Apparition, and The Summoning being my most frequent listens. Their signature songwriting style is to pull (very far) back on the instrumentation and use the quieter moments to prepare the listener to appreciate how massive their guitars sound. Sleep Token’s music is a must-listen.
Lilith Czar: I’ve been listening to Lilith for well over a decade, and had the chance to meet her a couple of years ago (yes, she’s as cool as she seems, and equally kind and real). Her latest, Created From Filth and Dust, is a hard-hitting rock album that starts with the energetic Feed My Chaos and ends on a beautiful, sombre note with Diamonds to Dust. You may recognize her from The Voice, and Lilith’s music under her old moniker - Juliet Simms - is also worth a listen. If you’re looking for a starting point, Before It Rains is a great one; that entire EP is fantastic, and I have fond memories of listening to All or Nothing on repeat while I was moving to San Francisco a few years ago.
Mäneskin: Hailing from Italy, this band is the epitome of modern rock and roll. I fell in love with their energy, and their latest single, HONEY (ARE U COMING?) has been on repeat for me. It’s a fun, catchy anthem, and it’s been really cool to see them putting rock and roll back on the main stage, most recently at the VMAs. ZITTI E BUONI was the first song of theirs I heard, and you don’t need to speak Italian to feel the pure attitude they put into it. I can’t wait to follow their work for years to come.
Masayoshi Soken: I can’t talk about music without talking about one of my favourite modern composers. Soken’s music for Final Fantasy XIV is constantly on repeat for me, with Who Brings Shadow, Insatiable, and Insanity being standouts from the Shadowbringers soundtrack, and On Blade’s Edge and Finality being incredible dungeon boss themes in Endwalker. Soken’s melodies are catchy and hold weight for the stories they help tell, and I hope we get to hear a lot more new music from him in FFXIV’s next expansion, Dawntrail.
TeaGryff: Tea is one of my good friends and an insanely skilled musician and composer. He has 2 music degrees, is an incredible pianist, and I’ve had the joy of hearing many of his unreleased tracks (which I can’t wait for everyone else to hear, too). Check out his latest release here and if you forget to hit subscribe, you’ll be haunted by ghosts. I don’t make the rules, sorry.
Lazuli Mood: A fellow Canadian in Australia, she makes insanely catchy pop-rock that I’ve had on repeat recently. My favourite release of hers is IDK; it’s sassy, high-energy, and it’ll get even the non-dancers up and dancing. I’m keen to continue following her career because it’s clear she’s going to keep releasing hit after hit. Her latest release, Shifting Shape, is out now.
Lights: Ending it with an artist I’ve been listening to for well over 10 years, I can’t release the first issue of this newsletter without talking about Lights. I have vivid memories of watching her “beyond the scenes” videos from when she was making her early music, and it inspired me to eventually learn production. I met her over a decade ago in Toronto; my younger self couldn’t help but stop her on the street to tell her how much her music meant to me. She dropped a bunch of grocery bags she was carrying to chat and take a photo with me, and I’ll never forget how kind she was. It’s so hard to pick a few songs from Lights’ discography to feature because I’ve been following her career for over a decade, but I count Romance Is…, Flux and Flow, Skydiving, Love Me, Dead End, and Prodigal Daughter among my favourites, along with every acoustic song she’s ever released. She’s a songwriting genius, and I really hope you check out her discography.
Behind the Mix: Vocals & Reverb
Though I’ve been producing for a while now, I still remember the curiosity and wonder I felt as I was learning not only how music was made, but how it was made to sound good. As a teenager, I had a secondhand 8-channel mixing console (one of these things) that I used to record demos with just my voice and acoustic guitar, but I knew nothing about mixing. And so, I watched behind the scenes videos of bands making music on YouTube in wonder and amazement, as though music engineering was witchcraft. And… it sort of is. There’s no single, right way of making something when you’re trying to harness your creativity; mixing is the amalgamation of hundreds of movements and changes to a body of sound, to make it all sound and feel a certain way when it’s played together. That said, the core concepts are important to understand, so that you can decide whether and how you’re going to use them in your work. So today, let’s talk about vocals and reverb.
Being the most sensitive instrument of them all, vocals are typically the hardest thing to get right in a mix. There are a few fundamentals that are important to apply, such as de-essing a recording to reduce the sound of harsh sibilance (“s” sounds are a common problem), and compressing it so that it sounds more uniform in volume throughout a song. But today, I wanted to talk about reverb; technically, it’s the persistence of a sound after the sound source has stopped. When a sound occurs in a space, the sound waves we hear bouncing off its walls is the reverb. Larger spaces - like cathedrals, will have reverbs that last longer.
We apply reverb for a variety of reasons — whether to make a performance sound like it was recorded in a massive hall, or to simply make it sound more “glued together” with the rest of the instrumentation. But engineers typically apply reverb using sends and returns (also called auxiliary channels) instead of putting a reverb effect directly onto the track where the vocal recording sits. The latter affects the original recording itself, making it sound drowned out, but the former technique utilizes a new track, called a return track - separate from the vocal recording itself - that houses and applies the reverb effect. This allows us to retain the presence of the original recording (which we typically call the “dry” signal in this case), while deciding how much of that recording it going to be sent over to a reverb effect, for that reverberated sound to be “returned” to us as the listener.
Will Darling, a Grammy shortlisted producer from YouTube channel EDM Tips, has excellent tutorials on all things music production, and this video on sends and returns is a great watch if you’d like to dive into this topic more.
TL:DR: Many audio effects aren’t directly applied to a track when mixing. Effects like reverb are typically processed using sends and returns to preserve the clarity and presence of the original recording, and to save on processing power.
What I’ve Been Up To
God of Rock: Released earlier this year, God of Rock is a game available on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Steam that I had the privilege of working on, and I still love watching people compete in its tournaments – I recently watched this one. Getting picked up by Rolling Stone and watching Jon Weigell and Jacksepticeye play the game upon its release will forever be a career highlight for me. I had an amazing time working on 10 songs for the rhythm-fighter soundtrack, and it was a joy to work with the team at Modus (shoutout to Geoff for his hard work implementing each note chart). You can check out the entire OST on Spotify here.
New Music: My focus for the last couple of years has been working on films and games, and I’ve loved it. Throughout it all, I’ve continued to write for myself, and I recently carved the time out to produce, mix, and master my next single, which I’m excited to announce comes out on November 13th! I’ll talk more about it in a future issue, but until then, here’s a little sneak peek of the album art for Witness:
Quest Markers: I run a video game podcast called Quest Markers, and I released my first solo episode a few weeks ago so that I could talk everyone’s ears off about how much I love Final Fantasy XIV. If you’re a Warrior of Light too, I hope you enjoy.
The Alphabet Superset: I’ve learned a lot in the last few years since completing Juilliard’s Music Production intensive (scariest audition I’ve done to-date, but that’s a story for another time). I’ve worked on a lot of music since then. And I haven’t quite taken the time to templatize my workflows in order to speed up my production process. So, I’ve decided to do Struthless’ Alphabet Superset (my friend Ivana is doing it as well — check out her films here).
For my challenge, the conditions I chose are:
Write a new demo every week
It has to include vocals and instrumentation
It has to be made in less than 3 hours (the most challenging bit!)
I have to share it publicly, and
I have to find areas where I can templatize my workflows
This has already gotten me writing more music and sharing unfinished, unpolished demos publicly, which I’ve always been uncomfortable doing, even though I love seeing other artists’ demos as they sprout to life. I’ve been trying to live by the adage “progress is better than perfect” this year, and what better accountability than publicly sharing demos? If you’d like to check them out, I’m sharing them on Instagram and SoundCloud. Here’s one that I’m planning on finishing in the future:
Elden Ring: I’ve never been a Souls player. I never thought I would be. That said, Elden Ring has me in a DEATH GRIP right now and I completely understand why it won Game of the Year at The Game Awards last year. The exploration is top-tier; it feels like there’s something meaningful hidden around each corner, and you’re well rewarded for exploring every nook and cranny. I’ve been streaming it fairly consistently over on Twitch if you’d like to follow along. My Tarnished is named Onion Ring and she is an overlevelled menace.
What’s next: My schedule is opening up for November and December, and I’d love to continue working with independent artists on their music, whether as a producer, mix engineer, or mastering engineer. If you’re an artist and are in need of production or engineering, send me an email (marina@marinamakes.co) and let’s keep in touch. Or if you know of someone who is, feel free to send them my info. I love supporting artists and helping them bring their music to life, so thank you a million times over for considering me. 🤍
Quote
“The path between can’t and can isn’t hidden. It’s the breadth of your resilience, the depth of your conviction, the height of your character. It’s not in the stars or in the cards. It’s not in the graces of the powerful, nor in the cheers of the crowd. It’s not a thing to be obtained, but one to be called forth. It’s within you. It’s your spirit. It’s your very fibre. It’s in you now, just as it’s always been. You only need to believe. Your power far exceeds your limits. Will it into being. Right now. Why do you hesitate?” (via gfda.co)
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for being here! If you have any feedback or music suggestions or anything else you want to say, you can use this Google form and anonymously share it with me.
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Do something nice for yourself today and stay hydrated, friends. See ya next time. ✌️
Welcome to Substack!! Your passion for music is palpable. Excited to read future issues! And thanks for the shoutout 😁