Hivemind Times Issue #49

Welcome To The Hivemind Times!

What is up on this fine Friday, fellow readers of the Times.  

It’s been another busy week in the office and we hope you’re getting your fill on all the stuff we’ve been leaving on the internets these days.  The train keeps on rolling so expect to see more classics hitting your feed very soon. Oh and y’all dig all the interviews at Movement fest?  Maybe you’ll catch us outside more often? 

This week we’re jammed up with a sleeper album from Grant, Cronk’s still buying shit, and we got Quinn talking nothing about chemistry and you’re still gonna learn a whole lot.

Hope y’all keeping cool out there - peace n joyx3.

- Riley & Graydon

CRONK’S UPDATE

I BOUGHT A CAMERA

Good People, in last week's newsletter I brought to you the ramblings of a mad man on Facebook Marketplace, well this week my delusions of grandeur have come to light. I bought a camera!

This is my Blackmagic 4K.

I bought this last Friday in Lansing. Not the farthest place from Detroit but was a decent drive, like an hour 30ish. The reason I chose this one was because it came with a Sigma 18-35 2.8mm lens and a kinda nice MagicRig cage for $1000. Came with a bunch of batteries (kinda useless you'll see why later) but immediately I ran into an issue with the camera. The gentleman that sold it to me was using a Canon EF to M4/3 adapter (the Blackmagic takes an M4/3 lens mount, the Sigma lens is for a Canon EF), the adapter he sold me had no electronics in it meaning you can't adjust the aperture.

So boom, I had to throw down on a $200 lens adapter off the rip.

The one I went with is the Viltrox Speed Booster Pro M2. This adapter is kinda cool because since you're adapting a bigger lens to a smaller sensor, the adapter has an optic in it that gets you an extra stop of light.

Now the camera works great but this thing fucking eats batteries so I got myself one of these V-Mount batteries with an adapter for the Blackmagic. This is basically a big portable charger made for cinema cameras that can power a whole rig (monitors, lights, camera, mics, etc.) all at the same time. It's so big though that you have to get camera rails to mount it.

This started to drive me crazy cause you need so many pieces to rig this all together. So I got the rails, the rails mounting plate, a V-Mount mounting plate to the rails, the battery to Blackmagic cable, a curly USB-C cable to power this Feelworld monitor I had, and a curly HDMI. Now we are cooking with gas. I also purchased this extremely cheap 7Artisans 12mm lens on Amazon cause I need a wide angle like ASAP. I also got a cheap ND filter that I think is gonna be junk but I grabbed it anyway.

Now hopefully I can do some cool stuff with the camera, but nothing will compare to the dopamine from getting a new toy with a bunch of doodads.

Thanks for reading!

- Cronk

ALBUM RECS

Pressure (2025)

Hey my name is Grant, how are you?

This week I got another album for ya. If for some reason you haven’t been converted to the religion of Julia Wolf I’m gonna do my best to spread the word. Her most recent album “PRESSURE” has slowly crept into one of my favorites of the year.

It was one of those classic listening experiences where I listened to the whole thing passively and saved one or two tracks, then came back and then downloaded the whole damn thing. There are so many incredible musical influences happening here. Death Metal, Hip Hop, Trap, Indie, and even Hyperpop. I think the best way I could describe the album would be a perfect blend of Evanescence & Brakence. 

Favorite Tracks: Fingernails, Kill You Off, In My Room, Jennifer’s Body

While we’re here on another magical New Music Friday, make sure to check out the releases from Billie Marten “Dog Eared” (Fav Tracks: Feeling, Crown), Jim Legxacy “black british music (Fav Tracks: father, 3x, tiger driver 91’), and obv the new Alex G “Headlights” (haven’t listened to the whole thing yet hehe) 

See ya next week with more readable words stay slippy

- Grant

QUINN’S CHEMISTRY CLASS

Producing and writing music has been a huge part of my life for a little over 11 years at this point. My journey with making music technically started with piano and drum lessons when I was a child, but I didn’t seriously begin making music as a hobby until I was 17 and I installed a cracked version of Ableton 9 on the workstation laptop included with my college tuition.

This ended up with the side effect that the foundation of my knowledge on writing music is heavily reliant on the technical side of producing and mixing. I’ve spent countless hours researching and practicing the art of mixing and mastering my projects. It is one of my favorite things to do and to learn about.

Today, I am going to start a four part newsletter series where I go over what I consider to be the four most important concepts in mixing music: levels, panning, EQ, and dynamics.

Levels:

Levels refers to the “level” (volume) of each individual element in a mix relative to all the other elements. When mixing a song and discussing mixing concepts, it is important to always think in terms of how elements sound relative to one another.

In my opinion, understanding levels and getting them set correctly is the most important concept to master early on when learning how to mix. I see a lot of people that are learning how to produce and mix that get too caught up and excited about learning the “fun” stuff, like compression, reverb, delay, sound design, and all the insane fx plug-ins that are on the market, that they skip over learning how to properly think about and carry out the fundamental, more boring, concepts like just making sure the volume of everything is around where it should be. 

Quick tangent; when I say “should” I do not mean that there is one specific way a particular mixing tool needs to be used every time. I mean that there is a way you should be doing things for your specific mix in the specific track you are working on to achieve a desired sound. There are no “one size fits all” methods when it comes to mixing, there are only concepts and tools which you learn how and when to apply to a mix to achieve a particular sound. The more of these tools you have, the more mixing situations you are prepared for, which gives you a more confident and unique way to express yourself. 

The level of an element in a mix plays a large factor in how far forward or backward it sounds. Literally, the volume of a sound plays a large role in how our brain perceives the physical placement of a sound in a natural setting. Loud sounds are usually closer to us than quiet sounds. 

A lot of modern rap mixes will have the level of the kick drum and 808 very high relative to the rest of the instruments, making them pop out and smack really hard while the chords and melodies have reduced levels so they kind of swim around in the back of the mix. The vocals are often one of the loudest elements as well, because they want the rapper to be the focal point of the song, and in real life, the singer is usually in front of the band.

Make a decision on which sound or sounds you want to be the main element(s) in the song and bring them to the front by increasing the level. The rest of the elements you can decide one by one exactly how far forward or backward you want them to be, relative to the main elements, and try using leveling to get them in the right spot before you try any other fancy methods to fix your mix.

Take it less than a dB at a time and really listen to how the small change in volume affects the perceived loudness of every element around the one you are changing. While you are writing a song, you also want to constantly be thinking about the level balance you want to achieve and mix as you go.

A great way to set the levels of everything correctly and get the balance right for the final mix, or at any point where you feel things are too out of wack, is to set the gain of every track in your project to -infinity dB, then, starting with the loudest elements, bring every track up to the appropriate gain (making sure to avoid clipping on the master or track out) really focusing on just how the volume of each element blends in or brings out the presence of it and the sounds around it.

Work your way back to the quietest elements, really thinking through how you want each element to fit, whether you want it to pop out or sit behind the other instruments, or maybe blend in with certain sounds that all sit in a similar volume range.

I do this to every single mix I have ever worked on, I save a backup beforehand and go through this process, then, compare the two. A lot of the time, it will sound better, and if it doesn’t I will know more accurately how I want to tweak the backup version to get the mix where I want it.

Once you have done this over and over you will realize that just a single dB difference can completely throw off the balance of a mix and just how important it is to get this step right.

- Quinn

MERCH