wst3
Danny Danzi
Yes and yes to both you and Jeff, but you're both speaking from an experienced engineer frame of mind. Having tracks that are great do nothing for a bedroom engineer that is trying to learn. What good is it mixing a mix that needs little to no work in THEIR realm? I think you guys may be missing my point.
I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree...
I think working with good tracks, where you are not trying to "fix it in the mix" is the best place to start, since that is exactly where you want to end up. I've never been a fan of the mindset that says you can fix it in the mix, and even with the tools available today I avoid that at every opportunity.
In fact, my rule of thumb is simple - if I could not make an edit with a razor blade, or spot erase, or something else I'd have done when I was working with tape then I don't make the edit. Even back then I would encourage the artist to take another shot.
Obviously this is not cast in stone - I will fix the occasional bad note if the performance is otherwise stellar. I will remove a chair squeak or a bumped microphone stand, even if I could not possibly have removed it with a razor blade. I will reduce background noise if the track was recorded in a crappy environment. Heck, I now have UnVeil, and I'll use that to reduce room tone if the track is otherwise really great.
But these are not short cuts! These are work-arounds for taking short cuts while tracking.
Furthermore, learning to track is essential if you want to learn to mix. I used to drop my jaw every time one of my mentors would throw up a mix with all the faders set to "0". Not that we could not make it better, but his fader up mixes often sounded great. That's talent and skill and experience!
So I think if you are going to learn to mix you ought to learn with good tracks first, and then work your way towards not-so-good tracks. You will have a baseline to work from.
I do understand your frustration with some of the mixes that get posted... and I know you can make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but that's not the way to learn... in my less-than-humble-opinion.
That's fine, agree to disagree it is. One last try before I do agree to disagree. You said in your initial post to me:
"Learning to track is an entirely different matter"
What good is learning to mix if you can't track? You're STILL looking at things as an experienced engineer, Bill. I respect everything you're saying and am in no way trying to be confrontational with you. I just can't seem to understand how you could feel great tracks that were created by someone else, would help a person with limited skills and resources. I know that the good tracks can be a great teaching tool showing what we should strive for, but again, that doesn't teach a person "how to achieve" and this is where my only argument is.
If I posted up guitar and drum sounds to people, it doesn't tell them how they were captured, what they were captured with, how they were eq'd, how they were mic'd or if they were hybrids of real and sampled kits. It shows those that are not where I may be yet that I have a decent understanding on how things work. But it does NOT teach them a thing to improve their mixes using their gear with their limited resources, correct? How can they get this sound? Do the research? Would that be an acceptable answer? To me it would NOT be. That's like the great guitarist I bowed down to asking him how to do this or that and replies with a canned answer of "practice, kid".
I see the same thing with multi-tracks that are of the finest quality. You don't even need to extensively do anything to them...which we all know is how it's supposed to be. But now place yourself in the position of someone new at this that may know good sounds when they hear them that may NOT know how to create them. They learn just about nothing from this exercise if they do not have the knowledge or the resources to create tracks such as these.
If you cannot create correctly, you will find mixing more difficult, yes? So are we to say "ok newbies, since you can't track, just settle for being good mix guys and get good at mixing...let someone else do your tracking"? At an early stage in recording, or even at an intermediate stage, the greatest part is the creation....the tracking....the experimentation, the art...the hands on trial and error. At least it was for me.
If that sucks, your mix will probably suck too but that goes with the territory. You learn based on what you have and what you know. As you move up in the ranks of experience, you buy new stuff that makes a difference for you for the better and your experience in other areas grows as well. Experimenting with tracks that are already pristine won't help a soul other than those that are interested in learning what a good representation of tracking will do for them in my opinion because at this point, there's a really good chance the person is not even coming close to what was offered in the multi-track examples.
Oh I'm not frustrated with the tracks I hear from others. I'm sorry if it came off that way. My point was, they sound that way because most times the engineer/hobbyist is not aware of what good tracks should sound like and moreover, may not be able to create them. Some don't have bass rigs, so they use bass loops or program like Trillian. Though a great program, it's not the same as really playing a bass. Drum programs have come a long way, but people process them so much, they no longer sound real. So there's another nail in the coffin. Stuff like that can make a huge difference and we haven't even touched on proper compression and where to high pass etc.
In a nut-shell, if you can't create the quality you hear on those multi-tracks, wouldn't a person be putting the cart before the horse? In my opinion, they most certainly would be. When I teach my students here, I teach them (to the best of my ability) when a sound is acceptable and when there are blatantly obvious issues that should be altered. I don't teach them how to mix first and wouldn't have them download any perfectly mixed multi-tracks until they have a grasp on the other things that I feel are important FIRST. This is where my issue lies.
Respectfully,
-Danny
post edited by Danny Danzi - 2013/12/30 15:09:48