Old 01-08-2009, 03:18 PM   #121
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Quick note before proceeding...

As I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of back-and-forth and inter-dependence to this stuff. As much as we try and isolate different aspects for discussion and analysis, ALL real-world sound has dynamics, noise, reverberation, standing waves (even just the ones in our eardrums), absorption, harmonics, and so on. And all real-world audio similarly has some of everything that we might talk about.

There is no way to talk about one aspect at a time without glossing over or assuming a lot of other relevant stuff. So whether you get it from this forum, or a book, or magazines, or independent research, it is usually most valuable to work through the same concepts multiple times. The "aha!" moments often come when re-visiting one topic after having picked up a smattering of others.

So read, think, and most all LISTEN to everything around you, and then be prepared to read, think, and listen some more.

This is specifically prompted by uncertainty on part over whether to talk about dynamics or gain-staging first, but with the idea of "begin at the beginning" in mind, we'll start with gain-staging.
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Old 01-08-2009, 04:28 PM   #122
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Gain-staging and noise

"Gain staging" is a super-critical concept that unfortunately gets short shrift in the digital era, which leads to a lot of frustrations among young recordists who do not realize the effects it can have.

Let's set aside digital for the moment and pretend that we still live in an all-analog world. When you walk into or see pictures of an old-school professional recording studio, there are thousands, maybe millions of knobs, switches, faders, meters, and blinking lights. Almost every single one of those corresponds to some kind of signal amplification. In a typical commercial mix there may be literally thousands of stages of amplification or "gain" captured in the final mixdown, when you count all the preamps, processors, instrument amplifiers, and mix decisions.

And still pretending to be in an analog world, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE AMPLIFICATION STAGES HAS A "SOUND." And whether you got them all right or wrong is going to have a big deal to do with the quality of your recording.

For example, let's imagine a super-accurate, extremely sensitive preamp designed for sparkling, dazzling, lifelike headroom. Big transformers and power rails for massive headroom means slightly higher internal noise, but whatever. We'll use that as our default preamp. We added a tiny bit of hiss, but otherwise have fairly pristine, unaltered capture. Let's call this preamp the "CRYSTAL PALACE" when we talk about it later.

Now we want to EQ the track a little, maybe subtractive EQ with makeup gain from our warm, chunky-sounding vintage mixing console. This hypothetical gain stage is very low noise, but part of that is because it fattens and flattens the sound a little. That's the "warm" part. The "chunky" part comes from having a slightly slower response and slew rate than the super-accurate preamp used in stage one. Overall, this gain stage has a neat effect of ever so slightly gating and compressing the sound, which might even slightly reduce the hiss from above, but probably won't increase it any (unlike if we had used an additional stage of gain from the first preamp). Let's call this one the "FATBACK."

Next, we add some compression to tame the peaks and even out the overall level a bit. Here we might decide to use a tube-based "character" compressor, one that adds a litle harmonic "fire" to the signal, to up the growl and presence a notch. This stage of amplification uses extremely high internal votages to power the tubes, and is likely to introduce a smidgen more hiss, and it also a more reactive and non-linear approach to dynamics. In fact the output of such a compressor might actually have HIGHER peaks than the input, because of slow attack times and makeup gain. But that's okay, we're going by ear, not by the meters. Let's call this guy the "INFERNO."

Next we're going to send the signal to tape, which is effectively yet another stage of gain. How hard we hit the tape can have a big efect on the sound. Tape is about the hissiest thing in the studio, so we want to stay above the noise floor as much as possible, which is one of the reasons why it was so common in those days to compress BEFORE tracking, because any compression after tracking will reduce the signal-to-noise ratio.

Another aspect of recording to tape is that the higher in signal level we go, the more peaks become compressed and saturated. At extremely high signal levels, it sounds like the direct out of a guitar distortion pedal (in fact you can make a great distortion effect from the guts of a cassette player). At moderately strong signal levels, you get a very smooth, natural, musical compression-- that infamous "tape warmth."

But simple "warmth" is not all there is to it-- we cannot undo anything done previously to the signal, and HOW we hit the tape counts just as much as HOW HARD we hit the tape. It is very probable that putting a little low-shelf cut BEFORE we record to tape and then a corresponding low BOOST AFTER tape will come out sounding different than if we just left everything flat. The tape saturaton would be embedded in the highs and the midrange, without causing the low end to "fart out" as might happen if we sent the whole signal through unaltered. So we could get a little fire and saturation in the presence range without losing clarity and impact in the lows.

And we could apply this to any eq, compression, reverb, or other processing that we did before or after ANY gain stage. THIS REALLY MATTERS, so re-read or ask questions if it's not making sense.

Continuing on, let's say that mixdown time comes around and the engineer just decides to go crazy on this track and try and get that kind of lo-fi, band-limited, telephoney crunch of listening to something really loud on a cheap cassette walkman. He finds some device to fit the bill that just overloads the hell out of itself. It hardly matters whether it's an eq, a compressor, a preamp, a stompbox, or whatever, because it's pretty much doing all of it whether it means to or not. We'll call this one the "CRAPOMETER." He probably would not run the entire mix through this device, but for one instrument that's having a hard time fitting in the mix it might be just the ticket.

So far so good.

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Old 01-08-2009, 04:48 PM   #123
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Now, let's talk about how each of those gain stages are inter-related.

Think about the characeristics of "CRYSTAL PALACE" and see if this makes sense: There would never be any reason to use crystal palace AFTER any other of the devices in the example above. It can never restore clarity or lost dynamics, it can only capture what was already there, plus hiss.

Placing FATBACK after the INFERNO would probably not achieve the results we were after, unless our intent was to subdue the effects of INFERNO (i.e. we realized we made a mistake and overdid it). If INFERNO hypes the sound, FATBACK mellows it. I.e. Fatback kind of undoes the effect of inferno, but the reverse is not true. This could lead to some frustration if you got it wrong before recording, because simply-rerunning it through the INFERNO might not restore the same result-- it might just give a more strangled, fizzy version of the duller FATBACK'ed sound. And the CRAPOMETER simply cannot be undone.

The signal chain we described above makes a kind of sense: take a pristine signal, chunk it up and fatten it a little, then fire it up to maybe restore a little impression of clarity and "cut." But rearranging the components doesn't work the same way. This is NOT a recipe where the order of ingredients doesn't matter.
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Old 01-08-2009, 05:24 PM   #124
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Similarly, HOW we use each of those gain stages matters A LOT.

The CRYSTAL PALACE preamp, with its super-sensitive modern transformers and massive power rails might well offer tons of crystal-clean headroom, but if we push them to the point of actual overload, they might actually crap out pretty badly, like digital clipping.

On the other hand, the preamps on the FATBACK console, with their slow, burly, heavy-wired Soviet-era transformers might be nigh-impossible to overload. They might just get fatter and chunkier the harder you push them. At some point they might get TOO fat, but they won't give the crackly nastiness of outright clipping, they just round off the edges of the sound.

Similarly, the INFERNO and the CRAPOMETER are likely to change sound radically depending on how hard they are pushed. Both of these are heavy "character" devices that have a lot of subjective middle ground, like tape saturation.

Analog circuits have electrons moving across copper wire, or across a vacuum, or jumping across coils in transformers, or getting stored and discharged in capacitors, or squeezing forcefully through resistors, and so on. These processes result in phase-, dynamics-, and frequency-dependent alterations in the output signal (distortions, in short). Small amounts of inevitable randomness in the movement of electrons produces hiss, and induced magnetic and electrical disturbances produce hum and radio static and other kinds of noise.

And the copper (or whatever) conductors themselves have capacitance, resistance, reactance, and all the rest of it. There is no free lunch. If we used a massive industrial transformer like the power company does, we could have essentially infinite headroom, but the self-noise of such a system would be off the charts, or else it woud have to be a system the size of a house with every component shielded in a lead box. And even if money and size are no object, the length of wire runs in such a system would cause losses in regular line-level signal, unless we specially constructed a system that ran with 200 volt signal, in which case we're right back where we started because now our 1,000 volt transformers can only handle 6.2dB of headroom. so now we're upgrading to 20,000 volt transformers and much heavier wire, and back to the same problems.

Everything is a tradeoff. This is why top-flight hardware is so expensive. The closer you get to "perfect," the more you run up against the laws of physics.

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Old 01-08-2009, 05:35 PM   #125
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the great wizards of hardware design, the wild-eyed, chain-smoking, sleepless, obsessive electrical engineers who labor away in basement workshops building gear for mail-order so esoteric that even the wife and kids don't know what dad is up to until the day comes when some marquis producer decides to outfit her entire studio with the stuff from his garage... these people are constantly threading the needle between noise and headroom, between accuracy and flattery, between fidelity and desirability.

It is all well and good to speak of a "straight wire with gain" as the ideal preamp design, until we consider that it is impossible, and that a straight wire itself has a sound, and that gain itself has a sound, and that virtually zero popular music recordings are intended to have the "neutral" sound that "straight wire with gain" theoretically implies.

And this is where the magical, "musical," sound of the best analog equipment comes into play. The very best devices are forgiving, intuitive, natural-sounding, well-suited to downstream processing, and whatever personality they have hits a "just so" note that seems to work great for all kinds of stuff.

More affordable, second-tier gear might also be very good, but might be for instance a little more limited in application. For example a second-tier prosumer "FATBACK" preamp might be just the ticket for drums, but all wrong for overheads. An "INFERNO" might be awesome for synths, bass, and power vocals but totally out of place for orchestral recordings or soft crooning ballads. A "CRYSTAL PALACE" might be brilliant for small jazz and acoustic combos but hard to process and unforgiving for garage rock or hip-hop vocals.

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Old 01-08-2009, 06:04 PM   #126
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Bringing this all back to home-studio applications...

Every single analog process in your studio has a "best" setting. Even if you consider yourself to be "all digital," your preamps, mics, speakers, amplifiers, and instruments are still analog. Even your converters have an analog front-end with a bona-fide copper circuit that handles analog signal.

I want you to go dig out the documentation that came with your preamps, soundcards, hardware effects, mics, and so on (which will be easy if you have organized your studio, as above). Now get an exacto knife or razor blade, scissors at least. Got all that? Good. Now with the exacto knife, carefully cut out all the portions that talk about frequency reponse and THD+N and every other spec, file them all in alphabetical order, staple or paper clip them together, and throw them in the trash.

Now that you have documentation that talks accurately about what your gear is capable of, it is time to suss out your gear. Your preamps will sound different at different gain settings. So will everything else. Mics will sound different when recording louder or quieter signals, from closer or further away. And the type of signal you are putting through them matters.

Especially if you are working with inexpensive preamps, it is almost a certainly that some will sound better than others, or at least different on different gain settings (even in the same physical box). Maybe the ones closer to the transformer sound different. Maybe one that has a slightly off-spec capacitor or resistor sounds different. Maybe the first ones to tap off the power rails sound different when you're recording multiple channels.

It is very possible that some channels on some instruments will sound best when you set them well below the threshold that would be indicated by your digital clip or peak meters. This is especially true of low-frequency instruments and highly dynamic instruments, and especially true if you are using more than one channel at a time.
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Old 01-08-2009, 06:06 PM   #127
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Just a quick Q. Would you consider guitar pickup position and height to be important to the staging? I usually run my pickups as high as I can get...

~Rob.
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Old 01-08-2009, 06:31 PM   #128
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If all of this sounds hopelessly complicated, it's not. Take deep breaths, close your eyes, forget about what you paid for anything, and repeat ten times "all you need is ears (and level-matched listening)."

Here's a specific and very relevant tip: any active instrument (e.g. a bass with active pickups, or an outboard synth) is apt to sound very different when plugged into line inputs vs "instrument" inputs, or when used with a DI box. Try them all.

Professional studios with loads of gear have long-since gotten over brand anxieties. In one recent session a cheapo behringer mixer was selected for preamps over a very lush, well-respected tube preamp on a piano recording. It just sounded more appropriate. Well-equipped engineers often have favorite channels to plug into on the mixing console, and they have the massive gear selection not because more expensive is invariably better, but because different gear sounds different, and a restaurant needs to have all the ingredients.

The point is not a clinical evaluation producing detailed charts that you have to look up or think through, the point is to LISTEN to what you are recording and fix it until it sounds right, or at least as good as you can get it EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. This process is actually a lot faster and easier than trying to fix it later.

None of this means that you have to try every mic through every preamp on every gain seting on every track you record. I think the soul-suckingness of such an approach would actually be counter-productive. What it means is to take nothing for granted and to let your ears guide you, not your preconceptions.

Trust your instincts, not your documentation. If something isn't sounding right, try something else, even if it seems stupid. Actually, nothing should seem stupid in music. Some of the stupidest things have been the most successful in history. And not just commercially for teenyboppers, either-- hum the foundational melody from "Ode to joy," probably the single greatest piece of music in history. A lot of graduate students in composition would be embarassed to build a piece on such a singsong, rudimentary melody. If that's not your cup of tea, think about the real essence of say, "A Love Supreme" or even "Love Me Do."

The relationship between conception and execution, between inspiration and perspiration is often vastly different from what we imagine. Genius is in the details as often as it is in the big ideas. Maybe more so. But it is the works that ignore the details and focus solely on the conceptual ideas that come out clumsy and sophomoric. And the cool thing about the details is that they are relatively easy. All you need is ears.

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Old 01-08-2009, 06:43 PM   #129
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Quote:
Originally Posted by junioreq View Post
Just a quick Q. Would you consider guitar pickup position and height to be important to the staging? I usually run my pickups as high as I can get...

~Rob.
Uh, yeah. Extremely so. Probably just as important as the kind of amp you use. And exactly the right kind of question to be asking yourself.

And on the topic of electric guitar, do not take your tone or volume knobs for granted. The onboard electronics on a guitar are VERY reactive.

For example, the classic "woman tone" of a guitar on the neck pickup with the tone knob rolled all the way down (see Clapton, Slash) sounds vastly different through an amp with the treble cranked and the bass knob way down than a guitar set to a treble pickup with the amp at even eq settings. The difference is NOT subtle.

This is EXACTLY the kind of stuff I'm talking about. In the analog world, turning a signal way up and then way down in a later stage ALWAYS sounds different from turning it way down and then way up. And whether it is eq'ed or reverb'ed or compressed or whatever before, after, or in-between this process matters.
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Old 01-08-2009, 07:16 PM   #130
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Coming back to digital...

WITHIN a modern DAW like Reaper, gain itself is essentially pure, clean, and soundless. You could mix all your tracks so that the individual track meters are like +50dB and totally redlined, and as long as the master output is turned down so that your DA converters don't clip, it will sound basically exactly the same as if you had mixed everything at -50dB and then turned up the master out to compensate.

There IS a limit to this, but in a 64-bit mix engine, it is so far outside the realm of sane real-world work practices that you can basically pretend it doesn't exist. But it is probably better practice to keep your tracks in normal ranges, if for no other reason than that the controls and meters are much more useful and intelligable when you're working with tracks that are running around -20dB steady-state or so.

HOWEVER, when we get to plugins and processing, the same principles are still very much in effect. EQ before a compressor sounds different from eq after a compressor. Maybe only slightly, maybe not. Compression after reverb sounds a LOT different than compression before reverb. And the more you work with analog-style "saturation" effects, the more these things are true.

The big thing is that stuff that happens earlier in a signal chain cannot be undone later in a signal chain. Going back to the "ideal preamp" discussion above, one of the things I mentioned was a "forgiving" sound that is easy to process. It is very hard to add back clarity and depth to an overly "FATBACK" sound. Turning up the highs is likely to bring up steady-state hissy fizz if the high-end dynamics are dead to begin with. Turning up the lows just increases mud if the deep dynamics have already been squashed.
Attempting to use reverb to smooth out a harsh sound might just result in metallic splashies.

One of the ironies of this stuff is that sometimes the only solution to "too much" is to dial in "too little." For example, if you recorded a vocal with a shrill, brittle, essy high-end, your only solution might be to dial in a duller, flatter, sound than if you had simply recorded a smooth, midrangey vocal to begin with and then shelved up the highs. If you recorded an overloaded, farty bass in an over-enthusiasm to get big lows, you might end up having to roll off all the lows in order to get the bass to fit in the mix.

This is what we mean by "don't plan to fix it in the mix." It doesn't necessarily mean to try and hype up all your sounds at tracking, it means to get GOOD sounds, FORGIVING sounds, WORKABLE sounds. Sounds that are a smooth and natural representation of the source, without any ugliness.

Trust your ears, and LEVEL-MATCH your AB comparisons. Make sure you are focusing on better and not louder, EVERY STEP OF THE WAY (golden ears in one easy step, really).
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Old 01-08-2009, 07:49 PM   #131
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One more post on this topic before we get into noise, especially for the home recordist...

It is often hard for the beginner (or even the old pro) to distinguish between "good" saturation/distortion and bad. This is especially true on full-frequency stuff like electric guitar, snare, organ, bass, massive synths, and rock power vocals. If you're recording a cranked Marshall stack it can be hard to hear the effect of the mic diaphragm flattening or the preamp overloading in the vortex of steady-state tube distortion that you are TRYING to record.

But it really fucking matters. Because the full-throated Marshall roar is NOT the same as the strangled, clipped sound of a flattened mic diaphragm or the buzzy nasal fizz of an overloaded transistor preamp. And these things WILL make themselves known in the mix, even if your Marshall-deafened ears couldn't hear them while playing the thing.

Similarly, if you are recording yourself singing through headphones then what you are hearing is likely to be the smooth, dull, bassy, inarticulate sound of your own voice, with your ears blocked, PLUS whatever is coming through the headphones. This may lead you to record an overly hype, brittle, saturated, presence-rangey sound of your own voice.

I plan to post some specific approaches for specific instruments and voice later, but for now the most important thing is to be aware of these effets, and on the lookout for them. You don't actually need my approaches or tips (all you need is ears, remember), but you should be taking it slower and listening more critically and giving your ears frequent breaks if you are both the performer and engineer.

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Old 01-08-2009, 08:47 PM   #132
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oh, god, keep it comin brotha!
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Old 01-08-2009, 09:00 PM   #133
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As Larry Gates put it in an earlier post, noise is seriously not your friend.

Noise is anything that you DON'T want in a signal, but the most common culprits are 50/60 cycle hum, hiss, and low-end rumble.

Hiss is the most common and least egregious kind of noise. In fact, tape hiss can be a little soothing to listen to, at low levels. But let the listener put on their own hiss machine if that's what they like.

Hum is the most obvious and offensive kind of noise, and the leading culprit is single-coil guitar pickups, followed by unbalanced mics and a handful of older keyboard instruments that lack balanced connections. The last two are so uncommon that I'm not even going to address them. Hum that comes across anything else is a whole nother topic.

Low-frequency rumble is nasty and devious stuff that is often inaudible on conventional monitors but that devours headroom and causes dynamics processors to work in unexpected and often unpleasant ways.

Taking the above in reverse order, from most specific to most general solutions...

Rumble is usually noise picked up by mics and/or electrical signals that is below or almost below the threshold of audibility. Passing trucks, handling a mic, appliances running in the basement, people walking on nearby floors, planes flying far overhead... all of these things can produce very low-frequency soundwaves that are practically inaudible and often too low to be reproduced by your speakers. But they still eat up headroom. Even very quiet sounds at 20Hz can use up a LOT of energy, and can cause inexplicable clipping when you try to turn up affected tracks that sound too quiet.

The simplest solution to rumble is to use high-pass filters on every track. As I mentioned in an above post, frequencies lower than what your monitors can produce are often not all that necessary or desirable to have in a finished recording anyway. And a gradual high-pass filter set to say 40dB actually DOES still allow a significant amount of content down to 20Hz and even below. You could do a lot worse than to simply get in the habit of high-passing until a track sounds bad, then backing off just a smidge. Especially for anything that is not a bass instrument. Not only will this clear up rumble, but it will also clear up mud and undertones on non-bass instruments, giving you more room for a clean, tight, punchy low-end, and more headroom so you can make a "hotter" mix without compressing and limiting everything to death.

An even easier solution to rumble that is also generally good practice is to decouple your mics. This means shock mounts, floor pads under mic stands, anything that keeps sound from being transmitted through anything other than mic diaphragm vibrating in open air. That way what you hear is what you get and the water boiler in the basement doesn't rumble up through the floorboards and mic stand. Padded carpet works great.

Hum is a very ugly kind of noise. A little "hum up" in the intro of a track to give a "garage" feel to the lead-in of a song is one thing, but incessant, droning hum is off-putting and unpleasant to listen to and makes for a very bad-sounding recording. Especially if you have lots of stacked tracks of guitar. Everybody hates it. Guitar players who have become deaf to it or who think it's just "part of the sound" frankly need to pull their head out. It sucks.

Fender guitars can be shielded pretty easily with either copper foil or even heavy-duty household aluminum foil. If you're comfortable working on your guitar, just unscrew the pickup cover, take the whole thing apart, and glue a bunch of foil into the entire body cavity and over the whole inside of the pickup plate, making sure the two will overlap the screw holes when you put the cover back on (ie the guts of the guitar will be totally enclosed by metal). Connect it via another strip of foil or wire to the ground pin of the guitar jack and viola! massive hum reduction. Why they don't come this way is beyond me. Google for more detailed instructions, I'm sure. I disclaim all responsibility if you damage or discolor your vintage strat with bad glue or a hack job, so do your homework first. Passive or humbucking pickups obviously offer a more direct solution, but they also change the sound.

Other hum-producers are flourescent lights, lighting dimmer switches, and motors of any sort, including fans, air conditioners, refrigerators, and anything else that hums or buzzes while running. It may not be enough to simply have these turned off in the recording room, because any that are running on shared circuits will still send hum along the ground lines that your gear uses for reference. If they are on the same fuse or circuit breaker, they should be turned off while recording. Also, as much as possible, mic and signal cables should be kept away from power cords, and/or should cross at 90 degree angles (should not run parallel).

Hum from electrical can also be reduced by what is called "star grounding," or using the same ground point for everything that shares a signal path. In simple terms, this means clever use of power strips to make sure that everything that is physically connected in a signal path (i.e. guitar amp and effects rack, but not necessarily mic preamp and computer) are ultimately plugged into the same outlet. Please use UL-listed surge-suppressing power strips for this purpose. Do not use "ground lift" adapters or cut the third prong off your plugs. They are there for a reason, namely to keep your studio/home from burning down. If the place does burn down because you lifted grounds or cut off prongs, insurance will not pay the claim. I'm not kidding.

But the worst hum producer in most home studios is CRT monitors (and TVs). If you don't exclusively use LCD flat-panels, now is the time to switch. They use a lot less energy, are much lighter and smaller, and cheap. And they don't hum. If you cannot afford a new monitor right now, put it on your wish list and turn off the CRT monitor while recording. Down goes the hum.

Hiss is the sound of random electrons moving around electrical circuits. Better-designed stuff has less hiss, but hiss is the most treatable and least offensive kind of noise. A little expansion works wonders. Egregious hiss is usually the result of of either bad gain-staging, or having something plugged into the signal path that doesn't need to be there. For example if you leave your entire effects rack plugged into the aux loop even when you're not using it, or incorrect bussing on an external mixer, or something like that. Minimize your signal chain for the shortest possible path from mic to preamp to converters, and use decent-quality cables (not monster).

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Old 01-08-2009, 09:57 PM   #134
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Having said all of the above, let's move on to the embarassing truths of home recording: Your neighbor's lawn mower, the family TV in the next room, the upstairs neighbors walking around on creaky floorboards, sirens and traffic.

These are all sounds that are commonly heard in the homes of musicians the world over. They should not be captured on your recordings. Notice I did not say they should not be distincly AUDIBLE on FINISHED MIXES. I said THEY SHOULD NOT BE CAPTURED in the first place.

Unwanted background noises will usually end up masked in the finished mix, but that does not prevent them from muddying up the sound, limiting your options vis-a-vis processing, and generally making your record sound worse than it should.

Moreover, and I think this is one of the dirty secrets of a lot of home recordists: anytime you can hear your neighbors, they can hear you. And unless you are profoundly confident and un-self-conscious, that awareness is likely to affect your performance, which is vastly more important than your audio quality. Your ability to get 40 takes of singing "let me lick you up and down" should not be affected by fear of the elderly landlord couple downstairs.

It is very important to have a quiet place to record. If you don't, move. I'm serious. Forget soundproofing. Legitimately soundproofing a typical residential room (one room) STARTS at $10,000. And it involves the kind of heavy construction that most landlords forbid and that reduces rather than improves property value. A windowless, double-doored room is not a legal bedroom in most developed countries. And taking a foot off of the floor-to-ceiling height by floating a room-within-a-room is not a selling point nor a subtle modification for most buyers. And that is where soundproofing STARTS. Do not waste money on foam or egg-crates. That way lies madness.

The only exception is if your problem is a single door or window that you can realistically block or replace. If you can buy an industrial solid door or block off a window with an extra mattress or something, and actually SOLVE THE PROBLEM, then go for it. But be realistic, and don't waste valuable recording time on piecemeal non-solutions.

Fortunately, working with samples, direct recording, and other such studio trickery offers a LOT of high-quality solutions for modern computer-based recordists. A multi-input soundcard, a midi keyboard, and an inexpensive electric drum kit triggering a good VST sampler offers everything you need to record a typical rock combo at headphone volume these days, and you can get great results that way. Take a weekday when nobody is home off to record vocals and you can solve a lot problems. You can even get wind controllers for the horn players.

This is not necessecarily the ideal approach, though. And it requires some degree of "scheduling" inspiration, which is an approach that I am pretty skeptical of. Moreover, this approach assumes that all the material has been thoroughly written and rehearsed in advance, which implies the existence of a rehearsal space. And if there is a rehearsal space, why not record there? (quick aside-- the ambient noise in a lot of commercial practice spaces is actually worse than a typical apartment. Given the choice between recording below people watching TV and below a live jam-rock band, well...)

Unless there is some "all-headphone" band that I don't know about. Which sounds pretty lame, but who knows?

I cannot solve all of these realities for any particular individual in any particular situation. But if you do not have a space in which you can realistically record the kind of music you create on a reasonably flexible schedule that coincides with your realistic free time, then you need to decide whther your music or your current residence is more important. Maybe you can rent a barn somewhere. It's a good time for real estate deals.
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Old 01-10-2009, 09:04 AM   #135
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You said something that just struck me and stuck with me. You said something along the lines of mix for tone and quality, not for volume!

~Rob.
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Old 01-10-2009, 09:36 PM   #136
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Yep,
I just discovered the thread and I greatly appreciate your generosity and help. You invited questions so I have just one to ask at this point.


In regards to tracking, I am becoming aware of distance in my tracks. When a mix is assembled, the distance migrates into smearing and a lack of dynamic punch. My primary pre is a Daking which is known to be the opposite of that. What would you look to as a culprit or accomplices?

Thanks for any suggestions
Rob
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Old 01-10-2009, 09:40 PM   #137
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I have the same problem, as I add more, the mix sounds more distance. I think it's the masking of the high frequencies. Then trying to fix it and over compensating. I know I have a lot of stuff competing at 3khz. Will be interesting to hear his response.

~Rob.
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Old 01-10-2009, 10:14 PM   #138
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Update Yep PDF as of today...
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Old 01-10-2009, 10:18 PM   #139
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Thanks Smurf!
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Old 01-10-2009, 11:25 PM   #140
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Your very Welcome!
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Old 01-11-2009, 02:30 PM   #141
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Yep,
...In regards to tracking, I am becoming aware of distance in my tracks. When a mix is assembled, the distance migrates into smearing and a lack of dynamic punch. My primary pre is a Daking which is known to be the opposite of that. What would you look to as a culprit or accomplices?...
I might need you to clarify what you mean mean by "distance."

Are you asking about something specifically related to reverbed or far-field recordings?

When you talk about tracking, I assume you're talking about something you can hear immediately when the track is captured-- i.e. this is a problem that makes itself known before you go to mix. Is that right?

Without commenting on any specific mic pres at this stage, I think it's safe to say that the brand of preamp is probably not your main problem, assuming you are using it correctly.

The first thing to start with is the source itself. For instance, if you're recording a cheaper, mushy-sounding piano with really old strings and subpar construction, then no mic or preamp is going to make it sound like a steinway, any more than a different preamp is going to make a tambourine sound like a splash cymbal.

This gets back to the very first posts in this thread, about level-matched critical listening. You need to start with fairly assessing the real sound in the room and then work one step at a time. Doing this methodically will yield much bigger dividends much faster than randomly experimenting with different "recipes" or gear.

In other words, if you're starting with an old, mushy-sounding piano (or a great piano in a mushy room), then you need to be fair and realistic in terms of what you can expect from the sound. This doesn't mean that there is no way to get a good sound from this piano, it just means that you can't squeeze blood from a turnip. If the piano itself plays the song in a way that sounds pleasing in the room, but that lacks plink, clarity, and dynamic punch that you ultimately want in the finished recording, then maybe it's time to think about, for example, doubling up the piano part with some midi samples. Or maybe you could add a low-level spanky guitar track behind the piano to make the track bounce a little more.

There are things you can do with gated reverb, compression with slow attack times, and noise gates/expanders which can exaggerate the sense of punch while still keeping a semblance of spaciousness, but they can't squeeze blood from a turnip. We can selectively flatter or exaggerate stuff that is already in the sound, but we can't necessarily make it sound different from its nature.

Listen very closely to some records that have the kinds of sounds you're after, and really isolate what the individual instruments sound like. I think a lot of people would be surprised at how "small" and undramatic a lot of their favorite instruments really sound in isolation. Sometimes, a huge, roaring rock guitar record actually has guitar sounds that are fairly small, low in the mix, and not very dynamic or dramatic. But when you add in really loud, punchy drums and a deep, powerful bass track and some shakers or whatever, the whole thing jumps to life. We hear the impact of the drums, the power of the bass, the motion and excitement of the shaker, and the guitar is just there in the upper mids adding some sustain and thickening it out.

But because the guitar saturates the range where our hearing is most sensitive, and because it is the most sustained element, the whole mix "fuses" in our mind's ear into one massive, punchy, powerful, exciting guitar track, alongside which our own guitar sounds seem wimpy or lifeless. The problem with this breakdown in critical listening is that it may lead us into trying to make guitar sounds that compete with whole-band recordings, which produces a worst-of-all-worlds result. The guitar is simply not going to "do it all" and trying to make it so produces something that muddys up the lows, masks the drums, and results in a weak, strangled midrange because everything is built up in the high and low corners.

I can't tell you what kind of sound you should be after, and I can't tell you what your expectations should be, but I can tell you that the most important element in the sound are basically as follows:

source > mic placement and type of mic > preamp > converters

So if you start from the beginning, you can figure out for yourself where the problem is coming from. If the source sounds great but playback sounds bad at the same playback level, then try fiddling with your mics to get them to sound the way it actually sounds in the room. But be honest and make your AB comparisons at the same volume level. You can't expect the same clarity, punch, and size from a 60dB playback that you heard from a 90dB piano while sitting at the bench.

If you want to try and clarify what you meant about distance a little more, I might be able to offer better help.

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Old 01-11-2009, 07:55 PM   #142
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More.. more!
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Old 01-12-2009, 08:07 PM   #143
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Just a quick Q. Would you consider guitar pickup position and height to be important to the staging? I usually run my pickups as high as I can get...

~Rob.
Experiment to see if you like to sound of the pickups at different heights. Think of pickups as similar to mics...the sound will vary as the distance from the strings change. To steal shamelessly from Yep => experiment, listen, and use the information in your work. I prefer the pickups as low as possible to allow more dynamics in playing styles. This works for me and is the result of a lot of experimentation over a couple of decades. My approach to guitar is simple: I like my guitars to sound their best when played clean through a nice tube amp. It doesn't have to be loud. Then I consider layering the effects chain. This approach is very similar to Yep's discussion of signal chain processing above.

A special thanks to Yep for this thread.

Mark
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Old 01-12-2009, 08:37 PM   #144
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Yep,
maybe instead of bogging down in my stuff, how about this:

What contributes to an album sounding clear, well balanced and punchy?

If this is putting the cart ahead of the horse, I am content to wait... please continue.

Rob
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Old 01-12-2009, 08:52 PM   #145
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Yep,
maybe instead of bogging down in my stuff, how about this:

What contributes to an album sounding clear, well balanced and punchy?

If this is putting the cart ahead of the horse, I am content to wait... please continue.

Rob
First, no fear of carts before horses here-- it's all just a big jumble of carts and horses and we're trying to fit them all into a pair of 5" speakers.

Moreover, I guarantee that your specific questions are more valuable to more people than my vague and unguided ramblings. If one person dares to post a question, that means that a thousand others were wondering the same thing. So no worries at all about "bogging down" or any of it. The stupider you think a question is, the more people are probably thinking the same thing. The worst part about most recording books is that they are all written either with the idea that the reader doesn't understand the documentation that came with their compressor, or that they already know what different compressors sound like.

You might know something that I don't, and I might know something that you don't, but if neither of us asks and we both defer to the other out of courtesy or humility, then neither of us learns anything. So the stupider the better, when it comes to questions. Frankly it's the stupid stuff that most often gets left out.
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Old 01-12-2009, 09:42 PM   #146
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More specifically, "clear, punchy, and balanced" are all inter-related.

It might be time to talk about arrangements, but I'm not ready to go there quite yet (there is SO MUCH to cover!).

The first thing is that all of these goals are easier and more obvious than you think.

"Punchy" is the effect of sharp dynamics that are sustained *just* enough to momentarily raise the AVERAGE perceived volume level above the baseline volume level. Clap your hands. Do it. That's punchy. Want to add punch to a track? Record some hand claps, or cowbell, or wood block, or a xylophone (really--listen to old Benny Goodman records). Don't fear the reaper, nor his cowbell.

Want to bring out the "punch" in a track without adding handclaps or cowbell? Turn up the backbeat (kick and snare) relative to the rest of the song.

Want to "punch up" a particular instrument? Create a bigger difference between the level of the first few milliseconds of the instrument attack versus the steady-state portion of the sound. A compressor with a low thresh, heavy ratio, slow attack (50 ms or more), and quick release will actually exaggerate rather than compress your dynamics.

"punch" is the sound of instrument dynamics. A plucked string or a hammered drum sounds louder in the first instant than it does a few milliseconds later. That's all there is to it. There is no way to sidestep this. YOU MUST HAVE HEADROOM TO HAVE REAL PUNCH.

Modern digital look-ahead, frequency-variable limiters have a few tricks that emulate some advanced mastering techniques for limiting dynamics while preserving the impression of "punch," but they are so inferior, unnecessary, and extreme that trying to employ them without having a very sophisticated understanding of what you are doing is like asking how to do a power slide in a Hyundai Sonata so you can shorten your commute to work by power-sliding off the exit ramp of the highway. The short answer is that this is a great way to get in a massive wreck, and a very poor way to try and improve your everyday life.

"clarity" is all about creating space, and it is closely related to "punch". It is a process of stripping away. If the low end is cluttered and muddy, try using a high-pass filter or a shelving filter to get rid of everything except the kick and bass. If it still sounds murky, start filtering those instruments. Especially in the low end, clarity and punch are all about definition. A thumping bass part plus a thumping kick drum equals LESS overall thump, not more.

You cannot create clarity in the upper midrange by hyping everything up there. You have to strip away. One of the golden rules of the great arrangers in days past was to never have any instrument playing in the same range as the lead vocal. When the vocal dropped out, that's when the clarinet, or the sax, or the guitar would play a little fill or riff.

Nowadays, the tendency is to have everything hammering on the upper midrange-- wild organs, blasting horns, fizzy synths, clackety bass, clicky kick, explosive snare, and of course, roaring guitars (at least four tracks of them, no less). All fighting for the articulation range.

There are some ways of dealing with this. Frequency-limited/multiband sidechain ducking is one obvious starting point. But I am easing into that stuff deliberately, because it is not easy to do right until you understand the essential problems that you're trying to fix. And frankly because it is better to not have the problem than to try and fix it in the mix.
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Old 01-12-2009, 10:05 PM   #147
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So let's begin at the very beginning. Let's say you have a straightforward jazz/blues combo onstage. Drummer starts with a backbeat. Kick, snare,kick,snare... (can you hear this? bump, CRACK, bump, CRACK... maybe some hi-hat eighth notes or whatever...) No Problems with Clarity or Punch so far. (I'm going to abbreviate that last sentence as NPCP from here on-- with me?)

So the string bass comes in (or P-bass, whatever), with a walking line that hits the backbeat accents. The bass player is in the groove, the bass notes are just giving tonality to the drum hits. The bass player, onstage with the drummer, is playing just loud enough to complement the drums. NPCP. With me?

Singer starts in, alto, let's say. She's singing, nice and mellow melodic lines over the punchy backbeat and the mellow bass sustain and tonality. NPCP. Any questions?

Singer breaks for the pre-chorus. Guitar player comes in with a little melodic fill, echoing the vocal line, then switches to a spanky backbeat pattern that reinforces the snare drum as the singer delivers the chorus. With me so far? NPCP, right?

Second verse. Singer. Guitar now continuing the backbeat pattern, just muted chord stabs over the snare. Tenor Sax comes in low and mellow, an octave below the singer, fattening up the melody and providing a tonal bed. NPCP, right?

Second chorus. Singer delivers full-throated, lots of harmonics, sounding almost an octave higher as the tenor sax continues and as a Hammond organ jumps in, reinforcing the tenor sax part an octave lower with the left hand, and playing some fat upper-register echoes of the guitar part with the right hand. Band now sounds huge, but everything still has its own space. NPCP, right.

Third verse. Guitar now switches to a funky chunka-chunka part that hits the chords on the backbeat but also chugs the hit-hat. Singer picks up her tambourine and the whole band starts to shimmer and shake with the jingle-jingle-THWACK-jingle-jingle-jingle-THWACK-THWACK! Organ still jabbing the right-hand chords and echoing the sax on the lows, sax now playing fills between the vocal lines (there is a reason why they are called "fills"), bass and drums still pounding out the backbeat, singer still in full control of the alto range with full-throated harmonics competing with the organ jabs for the soprano range.

NPCP like a motherfucker, and this is just the first song of the set. Nothing to do but put up a mic and step out for a smoke. Even if you don't smoke. The band mixes itself.

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Old 01-12-2009, 10:15 PM   #148
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NPCP like a motherfucker, and this is just the first song of the set. Nothing to do but put up a mic and step out for a smoke. Even if you don't smoke. The band mixes itself.
LOL

Listening.
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Old 01-12-2009, 10:32 PM   #149
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Now let's contrast the above with a typical amateur garage band.

For one thing, the drummer is never playing bump, CRACK, bump, CRACK-- he's playing a drum solo the whole time, whether he's any good at it or not-- cymbals crashing, toms rolling, kick and snare playing all around the beat but never on it, with no attention paid or the decay of the drums or how the drum sustain fits with the tempo...

Next, the bass player is not reinforcing the drum beat (there is none), the bass player is playing her own lead part, complete with loosey-goosey timing, an overloaded, clackety, stringy, midrangery sound that can barely keep up with the steady atonal crush of overloaded mud in the lows as she strives to prove that she's really just another guitar player...

The guitar player(s), meanwhile, are stomping all over the vocal range, thoroughly convinced that the only reason anyone listens to music is to hear guitar riffs and "solos," which are of course guitar parts played in the presence range whenever the guitar player feels like playing them, without regard to whether any other instrument including the singer have actually dropped out...

Meanwhile the singer is probably also cluelessly strumming chords on an overdriven electric guitar, with little sense of punch or clarity, just trying to be heard above the cacophony, often as not playing the wrong chords for the key of the song, but determined to strum them on EVERY VOCAL NOTE and somehow you are supposed to make that fit into the rhythm and tempo of the rest of the band (which has no rhythm or tempo to begin with). On top of that, concepts such as "range" and "melody" are lost on this singer who switches octaves constantly (badly) and who makes up for inability to create melodic tension by howling tunelessly (which you are somehow supposed to make sound "soulful" or "passionate")...

Meanwhile the keyboard player is in her own little world (and who can blame her), playing some kind of late-80's rearrangement of the whole song that is completely disconnected from the rest of the band (and also totally saturating the upper mids)...

Our poor soon-to-be fired horn player is left trying to play fills in no particular key (cue sad horns wah-WAHHHH)....
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Old 01-12-2009, 11:03 PM   #150
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Okay, so let me take off my jaded audio guy glasses for a sec and stipulate that the second example might actually NOT be a bad band. They might actually have good songs, and an impassioned, energetic delivery and good musical and personal charisma. They might be the next Nirvana. But this is not going to be a "set up a mic and go out for a smoke" recording project.

The trick here is going to be to divide the sound not up as INSTRUMENTAL PARTS, which the first band did for us, but as SONIC ELEMENTS.

In other words, It is totally possible that the best results might come from trying to isolate and clone some kind of kick/snare pattern from the non-stop drum solo, and reinforce that, either through some triggering and sample-replacement or clever mixing, just to get some rythmic punch back into the record.

It is also a certainty that the upper mids are going to be a carefully-threaded minefield of making sure that every instrument can be clearly and articulately heard. This is going to require a lot of careful back-and-forth listening and adjustment to find the least un-flattering aspects of each sound that can be made to fit in with the overall band.

How can we isolate some of the lows from the bass to reinforce the beat we sculpted out of the constant drum solo? How can we still fit in a little growl and string from the bass to keep the bass performance intact wihtout rocking the whole boat every time the bass plays a leading tone?

How can we best scoop the guitars during the vocal parts so that the riff doesn't drown the vocal, without making the guitars sound wimpy? How can we scoop out the mids of the singer's guitar so that the sound becomes jangly and atonal and so that the wrong chords don't jump out of the mix?

What should the relationship be between the keyboard melody and the vocal? How can the left hand of the keys be made to complement the bass and drums instead of fighting the guitar?

How can we make the singer sound like a badass instead of a strangled lamb on the "pasionate" parts?

If we look at the mix critically in these kinds of ways, the punch and clarity have a way of falling into place. The more you get back to fundamentals, the more the details take care of themselves.

Advanced mixing techniques are really arrangement techniques. Except instead of designing roles for certain instruments, you're coming in after the fact, hearing the instrument parts, and then deciding which kinds of roles to assign them.
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Old 01-12-2009, 11:32 PM   #151
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In a sense, this is just another kind of organization-- a place for everything and everything in its place. The real work is always in finding the "place for everything."

Recipes work great with the first band, same as generic home organization tips work great for the couple with two kids, a spare bedroom, and standard-issue hobbies and home-office requirements. But what happens when the wife does marble sculpture, or the husband does hair styling in the home? What if one of the kids is learning bagpipes?

The recipes break down when the assumptions change. A "music corner" in the dining room means something very different if we're talking about bagpipes instead of violin (if you ever lived with someone who had to practice bagpipes, you know what I mean. If not, count your lucky stars-- they are loud as hell and there is no way to "stop" playing bagpipes, you just have to keep sounding notes until the air runs out).

The point is that both organization and multitrack recording become more difficult as the requirements shift from the conventional to the unusual. And any kind of "recipes" break down when you are cooking with new ingredients.

More to come. Questions and criticisms are good.

Cheers.
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Old 01-13-2009, 03:15 AM   #152
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It was said in the context of making arrangement decisions, that if you wanted a big, in-your-face, dramatic sound, the way to get it was with fewer instruments playing better-defined parts. If you wanted a "soft," distant, less-personal sound, the best way to get it was with the wash of a hundred strings. This was someone who really understood the concept of level-matching, whether he knew it or not.

Careful listening bears this out. A close-miked cello or viola can actually have a very aggressive, throaty, ferocious sound that gives electric guitar a run for its money as king of the "power" instruments. In order to get the same kind of power from an orchestral patch, you have to overlay timpanis and cymbal crashes and horn stabs to get the whole orchestra playing one giant power power chord. Which makes a nifty preset on a Yamaha keyboard, but is a completely unrealistic and fairly silly use of an orchestra.
Right. A good example of this: How the close-mic'd chamber strings of Eleanor Rigby compete in both assertiveness and dramatic in-your-faceness with the electic guitars of Taxman that precede it on the Revolver CD.

Great thread, Yep. Thanks much!

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Old 01-13-2009, 01:48 PM   #153
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I'm really enjoying this tutorial and appreciate the time you're investing in writing this and your willingness and generosity in sharing your experience with us. Really....Thank you.

You asked for questions so I have 1.

Will you be covering the nuts and bolts of the questions you asked in post #150?

I would like to learn more in this area.....where you asked...."How can we best scoop the guitars during the vocal parts so that the riff doesn't drown the vocal, without making the guitars sound wimpy?"

Along the same lines....fitting the vocal around a couple of fingerpicking guitars.....without killing off the nice fingerpicking....

Thanks Again.
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Old 01-13-2009, 02:22 PM   #154
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...
You asked for questions so I have 1.

Will you be covering the nuts and bolts of the questions you asked in post #150?

I would like to learn more in this area.....
Same here. I'm having trouble in the low to mid range. Trouble getting bass, kick/snare and heavy guitars to sound decent together.
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Old 01-13-2009, 03:15 PM   #155
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If not, count your lucky stars--
Hey! You stole my favorite mixed metaphor... Oh well, I guess you shouldn't bite the hand that thieves you.
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Old 01-13-2009, 05:24 PM   #156
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The low mids may be the hardest to deal with. They can cloud up mixes and make you think you need more highs, mess up bass notes, all sorts of icky stuff. A few times I've been at the end of my rope knowing I had a good solo track but when mixed the whole thing went soupy gross. I remembered something I'd read about the same thing and did a hefty bell cut centered on 350hz and "poof" niceness again.
And yes, THANK YOU, YEP, for this thread and your insights, all the pitfalls you list at the beginning are ME at some point starting out. And I have a LOONG way to go.
You rock.
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Old 01-14-2009, 01:23 PM   #157
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...Will you be covering the nuts and bolts of the questions you asked in post #150?

I would like to learn more in this area.....where you asked...."How can we best scoop the guitars during the vocal parts so that the riff doesn't drown the vocal, without making the guitars sound wimpy?"

Along the same lines....fitting the vocal around a couple of fingerpicking guitars.....without killing off the nice fingerpicking....

Thanks Again.
So far I have not talked too much about mixing. Not because mixing is not a hugely important part of the overall production, but because there is this rampant tendency on the web to say, "don't plan to fix it in the mix. Now, how can we fix this problem in the mix?"

There are a ton of mixing guides out there (nicholas' ReaMix is among the very best). I plan to talk about mixing later in this thread, but to skip over a lot of the lists of important eq frequencies, sample compressor settings, and so on. Partly because there are so many examples out there already, and partly because by the time you've gone through all the possibilities, you've negated the point of the presets and recipes in the first place. Any frequency is potentially a boost or a cut.

So with that said, let's talk about your specific questions:

Why do you want two fingerpicked guitars if you can't clearly hear them both? Why is the guitar playing in ways that obscure the vocal? Is that what you want from the track? Is that want the guitar player is trying to achieve? If the musicians are not playing what they mean to play, if their sounds are not what they think they are or what they are supposed to be, then the problem is not a mixing problem (even if there are things we can do in the mix to address it).

These are serious questions. There ARE a lot of ways to polish turds and "fix it in the mix," but why start from that proposition?

Can the two fingerpickers alternate, or break up the figure so that one or the other is popping through the gaps in the vocal? Can you do that by simply muting or editing the parts? (first rule of mixing: Just because it's recorded doesn't mean it belongs in the mix) Can you take the rythm guitar and re-amp a cleaner, less obtrusive sound to use during the vocal? Better yet, can the guitar player back off and play a more muted figure instead of full-bore open chords during the vocal? (This would actually make the open guitar riff sound bigger and more dramatic when it does kick in.)

You can use a compressor with the vocal plugged into the sidechain to duck the guitars when the singer is singing. You can get even more specific with a multiband. You can strip away all possible frequencies and gate the parts to make the conflicting fingerpicking as narrow and defined as possible, in the hopes of finding a little place for it to pop through. You can get creative with panning to try and improve isolation and definition. You can use delays instead of reverb to try and minimize wash and smear. But why START from these propositions?

If you already know there is a conflict and what it is, why start by asking how to fix it after the fact? It's a little like saying, "I'll be crashing my car tomorrow, what is the easiest way to do bodywork myself?" If that's the way it must be, then so be it, but my first inclination is to look for ways to avoid the problem in the first place. I think there is internet-wide presumption that plugins and recipes and preamps are the secrets to great recordings, which leads people to overlook the obvious.

I don't know how much help this post is, but the more specifically we get into specifics, the more specific we have to get. IOW, there is no quick-and-easy "make a bunch of poorly-thought-out instruments in a bad arrangement fit together" preset. I wish I could just tell you to cut track one by 6Db at 2k and boost track 3 by the same at 1k and compress track 2 by a certain amount, but I can't. For the record, there are lots of other threads and articles that DO give those kinds of answers, if you prefer them. But I am not optimistic that the results will be as neatly satisfying as the instructions.

There is a lot of ground to cover yet. In the meantime, if you would like more specific advice, I and others might be able to help with more specific questions. Hope some of that helps.
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Old 01-14-2009, 01:54 PM   #158
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Same here. I'm having trouble in the low to mid range. Trouble getting bass, kick/snare and heavy guitars to sound decent together.
You need to decide which of those instruments is supposed to dominate the low midrange, and then the other instruments need to make room for it. (Here's a hint: one of those instruments might be called "bass").

I bet that if you turn down the "bass" knob on your guitar amp in acknowledgment of the fact that there is a whole instrument doing that job all by itself, you suddenly get a lot more clarity and power in that range, have the ability to crank the guitars higher in the mix for even more impressive power, and generally solve a lot of problems. It's like, "hello Mr. Guitar, now we have a bass, so why not take a load off? No need to try and do everything yourself anymore." (Alternatively, if the track is already recorded, you could drag a shelving filter up into the mids with a 3-12dB cut and see how much you can shelve off the lows before it starts to sound bad. But I like starting with a less bass-heavy guitar sound better) Goodbye mud, hello headroom.

I also bet that if you find a snare/mic/position combination that does not try to compete with the kick drum but instead just gives a nice midrange pop or crack, then you will create a lot more space for the kick to thump, and less need for the kick to try and compete in the midrange, since the listener will more clearly feel the distinct low-end. Instead of trying to make every drum be all things to all people, focus on a kick/snare combination that is complementary, with good up-and-down motion (like, the way they call them "up" beats and "down" beats). Usually better than the common beginner approach of trying to make every drum sound like a bass drum, in my experience.

With that last in mind, I bet the kick drum doesn't need much in the lower-mids at all. In fact, a tight "thump" down in the 40-120Hz range or so might be exactly what the track needs to complement and reinforce the newly-audible bass.

The thing is to think about every instrument, and to listen without preconceptions. Like, what is the role of this instrument? What does this instrument actually sound like, in real-time, in the real world, in the room where the band is playing? What are the dominant and most important aspects of its sound?

The danger is to just listen to every instrument as a solo'd thing and get caught up in trying to make each solo'd track as big and dramatic and complete as possible, and only after, try to find a way to fit the pieces together.

(I like chef analogies): If you are going to be serving more than one food item on a plate, then it is not necessary or even desirable for each item to be a complete, satisfying meal in itself. If you've got a steak and mashed potatoes and wilted spinach, then it is okay for the potatoes to be starchy, it's okay for the steak to be strongly flavored, it's okay for the spinach to be light-- the meal is the the whole thing, how everything complements the other. Individual elements can and SHOULD be unbalanced or incomplete on their own, because they are SUPPOSED to go with and fit together with something else.

Unless, of course, you are making a solo recording of a snare drum.
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Old 01-14-2009, 03:07 PM   #159
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The danger is to just listen to every instrument as a solo'd thing and get caught up in trying to make each solo'd track as big and dramatic and complete as possible, and only after, try to find a way to fit the pieces together.
Yes, I think this is my issue (well at least one of my issues ). I'm finding less is more, also. I find the more I tinker with the isolated track, the worse off the mix sounds (most of the time). Thanks!
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Old 01-14-2009, 04:34 PM   #160
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A couple of clarifying points related to the last few posts...

I'm not here to tell you what your guitar or snare should sound like, nor what kind of mix or arrangement you should aim for. My questions are genuine ones, not rhetorical. When I ask whether X is supposed to sound this way, the answer might be yes, or it might not be. the point is not to tell you how to do it, but to think through what you're looking for.

By way of for instance, some heavy rock recordings in particular make use of very guitar-heavy soundscapes that are harder to work around. The old 80's metallica records for instance (pre-black album) had lots of layered tracks of very bass-heavy guitar sounds that soak up the entire frequency spectrum. The approach on these records was to have excruciatingly little bass, an almost inaudible little wub-wub, and quite "pointy," papery-sounding drums. All of the meat of the track was guitar. The vocals were also heavily multitracked and also compressed and saturated, with most of the lows subtracted, and just kind of "soaked in" to the dominant guitar riffs. This was a very unconventional approach to mixing, but at the time and for what it was, it worked.

Other guitar-heavy rock albums, such as a lot of modern punk and nu-metal, use a very clackety, stringy, higher-frequency bass sound to "cut" through the wall of saturated, bass-heavy guitars. The "base" is really coming from the guitar chugs, and the four-string is almost kind of a special effect "third guitar." Papery drums and trebly, delay- and multitrack-thickened vocals are again the norm, since there is almost no room for anything with any sustain to fit in the gigantic crush of guitars. These kinds of records are a nightmare to record and mix, but it IS possible.

Most sounds are, to some degree, either "fat" or "pointy." The ever-popular "Punchy" is kind of a hybrid, like a "fat point," if you will. And a lot of sounds are different things in different frequency ranges. A kick drum might be "pointy" in the upper-midrange click of the beater head, "punchy" in the low-end thump, and "fat" in the lower-mid "note." And we might make a seperate category for clear, even, full-wash sounds in the midrange and up that we could call "transparent." (Think Enya vocals).

It is very hard to fit two overlapping "fat" sounds together in the same frequency range. It is usually fairly easy to fit in more "pointy" sounds (wood block, spanky guitars, hi-hat or ride, etc). "transparent" sounds are also fairly easy to overlay on top of other sounds, but's hard to have more than one. "Punchy" sounds are prone to lose a lot of their punch if they overlap other "fat" or "punchy" elements in the same frequency range. It's all about changes in sound level, real dynamics. There is no magic secret to it-- a sound that fills up and stays full sounds fat, a sound that fills right up and then drops right off sounds punchy.

This is why it is important to really listen to and think about how all these sounds fit together before we start setting up mics. Ideally, a real band who sorts out and rehearses their real material together, in a room, over time, will evolve orgnaically and will play with taste and sensitivity, adjusting their approach, attack, and note duration according to the instruments in real time.

Note that in reality, a lot the time, if anyone plays louder, it just makes everyone else play louder, too. Instead of giving each other space, the whole band is fighting for dominance. C'est la vie. This kind of approach is actually not all that bad to work with, and frankly any kind of performance dynamics is a breath of fresh air these days, even if it's just the whole band piling on top of the chorus. Any change in texture and intensity provides more drama and emotion than a click-synched 5 minutes of static volume.

Moreover, in the isolated, one-track-at-a-time world of home recording and loop-based productions that have never actually been performed, much less rehearsed in a real room, the above kind of organic back-and-forth is a pipe dream. But this just makes it all the more important to think through what role each element is actually playing.

If the guitar sound needs to pound on the low E and A strings, and extend way down into the bottom octaves, why is there is a bass player, seriously? (guitar is technically a bass instrument, and the bass only goes one octave lower). And if you've got a dropped-D or baritone-tuned guitar, then how many speakers are actually going to reproduce the two or three notes lower than that? Do they really matter? and if the guitar is furthermore a super-saturated modern high-gain sound that takes up the whole frequency spectrum, what room is there for other instruments, other than for papery drums to add a smidgen of attack to the overloaded guitar riff?

These are not rhetorical questions. These get back to some of the earliest posts about the kinds of soundscape we're trying to create. And maybe we ARE trying to create a super-aggressive soundtrack for space marine battles or whatever. But we're not going to get that AND get fat, pounding hip-hop drums that suck the whole air out of the room between beats, because leaving enough air to do that means turning down those massive guitars until they are whiny fizz behind the 808 stomp. In order for something to be big, something else has to be small. A mountain next to a tall mountain looks like a small mountain. 6'2" people in pictures next to NBA players look like midgets. Scale is relative.

So if we want to have a fat, punchy bass, then we need to leave room in the lows for the bass to breathe and punch. There has to be an empty space between the notes. If we also want to have a punchy kick drum then we have to find a place for the kick drum to punch that is't simply eating headroom from the bass. Good luck. So maybe we're better off just getting "fat" from the bass, and getting "punch" from the kick. Or vice-vesra (this can work great, actually). But neither of them are going to happen if the guitar is soaking up the whole low end, at least not without some very fancy trickery with multiband compression and look-ahead limiters that frankly is a fast track to unpleasant, fatiguing, unnatural, and generally bad recordings.

We'll get into to some of the mix techniques later, but the less your recordings depend on mixing magic, the better they will be (and the better the mix will be able to work its magic).

Last edited by yep; 01-14-2009 at 04:37 PM.
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