Kick & Punch... not karate...

I started a new thread on this because I thought this might be a useful thread for many....

It amazes me Guitarhacker that you run a security company or own one and are still using MC4? I don't get it, I mean I've heard about everything on the songs forums and the stuff with the stronger punch in the sound of the songs are using Sonar or something else. What's your secret? Compression? Recording method? Or what? Or all of the above. Technique? Just wondering?

Bobby

Bobby, I really don't "do" anything special...but let me see if I can tell you what I do and how I do it. I use MC4...the low end product from Cake because it works well. It gives diigital quality and doesn't have alot of frills and options to distract me. It records what I give it....straight from the Saffire interface. I use not mixer on my audio tracks...mic is straight in and my guitar is through my POD2.

First...drums & bass are midi. drums are Jamstix....bass is midi with SFZ playing a soundfont. I go for as much bass and low end as possible in the tracks, without distortion. In Jamstix I use the mixer to kick the bottom end up a few db, I scoop the mids and boost the highs. For the bass, I use a hot & heavy bass font. Playing the bass guitar part to compliment (hit the notes with the kick) is something I try to do all the time.
I try to get the tracks sounding as good as possible without any FX in them. recorded dry. then I use as little fx as possible. If it doesn't sound good without FX...and it doesn't have punch, FX are not necessarilly going to give it to you automatically. Often, they will only make a bad mix sound worse.

Up until about 2 or 3 weeks ago, I used only the cakewalk FX compressor & reverb in the master track..... I have recently bought ozone 3 and have been using that to remaster my tunes. BUT.... the punch in the music has to be there before the mastering is done....mastering is not a magical process that makes a bad mix/recording suddenly sound good.

There's a saying that you can't fix it in the mix....or something like that... and there is truth to that.

So to get more kick and punch in your music..... pay close attention to the kick drum, bass guitar, the interplay between the notes and the level of those frequencies.

Short story here: I was at a gig listening to another band. The guitar player was setting at the table with me and we were listening to another guitar player "set in" with the band on a song. The guitar player turned to me and said "Rick makes me sick...he gets a really good tone out of my guitar & amp...Why can't I get it to sound like that?" After pondering that for a while... I came to the conclusion that it's not the equipment..it's how the equipment is used that makes it sound good or not. Listen to the music that has that kick & punch and try to duplicate it...figure out how "they" do it.

I have been a victim of self-over-complication, and try to live by the axiom, "simplify, simplify".
Who said that?

In an ideal world the only mixing and mastering I'd like to do is setting the track levels and the panning of the various parts.

Often, when I finish a song and start to "mix" the tracks....raise & lower the levels ..... I end up setting the levels at the beginning of a tune, and leaving them set at that same level throughout the song...... and for a while, I thought "something is wrong".... I am not having to "twist the knobs"...I should be Mixing this... you know...doing something.

The truth is: if the levels are good, and the result sounds good... don't do something just to be doing something. Don't insert a plugin just to insert a plug in.....do it ONLY if it ADDS somthing useful to the mix.

Even now...and I do use the volume automation function when I need to.... on playback, my faders are mostly setting still.

Automation is easy.

I like to start the project from the beginning.... set your levels manually to where you want them to start the tune.... Then go to console view. In the track you want to automate the parameters in..... click on the "W" in the track control panel and it turns RED.

I generally like to do the automation one track at a time.

Simply start the project playing and as you need to increase or decrease that track's level ...just drag the fader up or down. A volume enveolpe is automatically created starting from the levels you set at the beginning, and gets written into the track. You can switch back to track view and it appears in the track as a line of varying color depending on the type of envelope. You can have several envelopes in a single track.

You can edit this envelope or delete it easily. You can create envelopes for volume and panning easily in this manner.

To edit the envelope, open track view and zoom in a bit so the envelope is ease to see and work with. You can right click on the envelope and add nodes...the little ball looking things on the line....you can also delete them..same way. Click and drag the nodes to where you need them to edit the envelope.....if the volume needed to come up sooner and higher....drag the node to the exact place and it's done....when you playback the track...the program reads the automation envelope and does the work for you.

I generally automate vocals, guitars, keyboards, and speciality instruments...

Bass & drums pretty much need to be constant in the song so they don't get automated. I have however, used automation in Jamstix to contol the power levels, and that works well for giving the drums some dynamics.

Okay. Not 100% sure about this yet. I guess I always start my tracks with what MC gives me. I never thought about changing it until it's all done. So what settings do you change before starting to record? I read a little bit about automation in the help files. It appears it more or less just copies your settings? Can this become a template for other projects or is it only good the the current project? "...increase or decrease that track's level"...what is the track level? Just volume? The help files say that you can use it for panning and I forget what else. Are these separate envelopes or are they all kept in the same one? I don't much about envelopes yet, but I get the sense they are used a lot. If it makes recording easier than I should find out sooner than later about this feature!

This thread gives me the opportunity to ask this question about volume. When recording, at what level should the volume be on your speakers or headphones? I ask because sometimes the volume on the midi tracks or audio tracks isn't loud enough, so you can turn up the volume on the speakers or mixer or whatever. But I was thinking there should be a standard so you know when you should adjust the volume on the preamp and not the overall volume or change the velocity or whatever on the midi track. I know that most times when I import the file from Band in a Box as a midi file, 127 is often not loud enough and there is no way to change it except with FX (as far as I'm aware). Or should I crank my system up and base the recording of the audio on the volume I have set for the midi files. I just thought there should be some kind of threshold that would make the recording better. I know everybody's system is different as well. For example, the vocals could be very loud on my system and then some else listens to it and they say the can't hear the vocals. Hope this makes sense. "Inquiry minds want to know".

Thanks.

Nutty

Volume is another word for level. I generally try to get my input levels as high as possible ...with out clipping (distortion). This is not always possible. But there is a fix for that too....I'll go into later.

I have toyed with the ideas of setting up templates but ultimatly rejected that idea. When you understand MC4...it really doen't take up alot of time to set up a new project from scratch. I don't use MC4 to write songs so grabbing an idea quickly is not a concern to me. I write my songs on paper and then set down to record only when the song idea is complete.

Envelopes: When you create the envelope...it physically appears in the track you have applied it to, and is visible as a light blue or green line in the TRACK VIEW. Each track can have multiple envelopes for volume, panning, and other midi & control functions....and each envelope is seperate and distinct from the others in that track...so when you have more than one envelope in a track, you must be careful when editing the envelopes to be sure you have the right one.

As far as volume: You need to do what you need to do to get the levels in your monitors or headphones loud enough so you can work & record properly. I like to have my incoming (input) levels as high as possible. The higher the level the better the signal to noise ratio will be...which is good. Do not allow clipping.

When working with midi & TTS you will have essentially 2 volume controls for each track. One is the midi source track which is just "THAT" particular instrument and TTS synth which controls ALL the midi tracks levels coming in to it. With SFZ you have 2 tracks with level controls but both are related to ONE instrument only. I generally set these levels where I need them to hear clearly what I'm doing..

REMEMBER: There are no hard & fast rules here...do what you need to make it work for you.

Same thing goes for recording audio...try to get the levels as hot as you can without clipping...you don't want ANY meters to be in the red....midi or audio. Once you have the audio track recorded...you will have a waveform in the track. My waveforms are generally small (less than 50%)....which equates to a lower overall volume on playback...even with the fader up...so I use a function in MC4 called normalize. Some people don't like to use it....for varied reasons, I however, find it useful. Normalizing raises the levels in the audio track to a higher level (generally about 85% average) and stops just short of allowing the peaks to clip. I mentioned I use it....no one has ever posted that the vox or guitar sound like they were normalized.... highlight the track....click process>audio>normalize>ok

When mixing your tracks, if you have a certain track that is lower in levels, it's sometimes better to lower everything else to blend, than it is to raise that one track if it introduces distortion or clipping. Get a good blended and clean mix, because you can always use a wave editor, and other tools to raise the final level of the finished track.

When you have a finished and balanced mix...the track should sound similar on everybody's systems.

Nutty...it's alot of work, and there's alot to learn, but you have the spirit to learn this stuff...as evidenced by the fact that you are still here, and still asking questions...so keep on trucking and you'll get it accomplished.


edit: read Al's post right above this one. ++++

ORIGINAL: Guitarhacker
Nutty...it's alot of work, and there's alot to learn, but you have the spirit to learn this stuff...as evidenced by the fact that you are still here, and still asking questions...so keep on trucking and you'll get it accomplished.

Hi Guitarhacker,

Thanks for the information. Give me some time to process it/apply it and I'll see if it sinks in.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I am working on a song right now that is almost ready to be mixed, thus all the questions. But, I think it is important to understand it. Everyone is bearing with me and I do really appreciate it. Once I get a handle on it I should be okay. The other DAW I used was much simpler for applying FX and working the buses, so this is a big change for me. Even with the other DAW I only mixed one song and now I realize it wasn't that good, although I was prettty proud of it at the time. The one thing I have learned is patience. As eager as I am to produce something, I'm taking the time now to get it as good as I can. And some things are still a bit foreign to me like automation and envelopes. But if I can find a scenario where I should use them, that would help learning when and how to use them. I have learned a ton of stuff about midi too. There's still more, but at least I have a much better idea of what it's about.

All this to say, there's no running away now. In fact, I thought I would try the harmony option in my old DAW, but quickly realized I didn't know how to use it anymore!

Thanks everyone for your continued support.

Nutty/Annette

The second column from the right is velocity. Double-click the number and you will get a box to lower or raise the velocity level.
Check this forum for a post in which Beagle wrote of how to edit MIDI velocities much easier than changing each note's velocity one at a time. And some songs can have thousands of notes, which could take some time.
I'll see if I can find it, too.
Edit: here it is http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1472696