My Epiphanies (and mini-epiphanies)

OK, so I've got a long software build going and I'm too lazy to actually stand up and do something else while it's going on, so I figured I'd type something of use to assuage my guilt, maybe of use to the newbies coming on line. These are things that I seem to have figured out so far, though of course they may all be wrong, so consult your doctor, lawyer, spiritual adviser, etc... These are not technical ideas, but conceptual ones, so they aren't tied to any particular hardware or genre. Anyone else feel free to correct me or add more.


Having More Equipment (Probably) Won't Help You Now

It may help you later, but probably not now. The mix probably doesn't sound bad because you don't have an original LA-2A or the Waves JJP plugins. So don't waste your time pining away for an Avocet or Manly Massive Passive or TL Space or whatever. Well, you can, and I do, but don't be pining because you think it's what you are missing to make your mixes sound good.

* This assumes that your equipment is of reasonable quality of course, i.e. instruments that stay in tune and reasonable quality pre-amps and converters and such, the plugs that come with SONAR or better, etc...

All of us who have gone before you have wasted stupid amounts of time and money buying things and then selling them (at a loss) and buying other things because we kept believing that we were just missing a magic piece of equipment that was going to make our mixes sound good. And it never did. What made a difference was just the mixing we did along the way as we tried all those different magic bullets.

It's mostly lack of experience. So just keep trying things. If you are in the very early stages, try small things, just little snippets, so that you can try out lots of very different scenarios quickly. Youtube and the internet in general has LOTS of good information that will help you. Load simpler commercial tunes into a track and try to emulate the production.

Yeh, at some point, you'll get to the point where you've got the experience that it's worth trying to find the original LA-2A or Fairchild and U47 and all that. But in the early days, there's no magic bullet. Optimal tools will make a good mix sound better, but it won't make a bad mix sound better, not by much anyway.



Everyone in the Band can't be Equal.

Though this might have applications to real bands, I'm talking here more about the one man virtual band thing that most of us do. There's a tendancy, since you struggled so hard to get that triangle solo just right, that you want it to be right up front and hearable, and the same for all the other parts you struggled so hard to record.

The problem is that you end up with a mix that has no depth, and the more I listen to mixes from us guys (definitely including my own) and compare them to pro level mixes (well, good ones anyway), that becomes apparent as a big difference. If everyone is up front, then there's only one layer to the music. You have to distribute the instruments front to back as well as side to side. As has been discussed many places, that's done by a combination of high end roll off, more ambience, less attack, and moving more towards the center line (since any sound source at the same distance to the right or left will sound closer to the center as it moves away from you.)

You can create a sense of ambience with reverb and delay, but it's not the same thing as depth of field. Yeh, it means that some of the triangle solor won't be necessarily obvious, but the compensating benefit is that there's more to hear after the first listen. I'm sure we all know tunes of this sort, where you can shift your focus and find things going on back behind the obvious up front stuff, and it stays interesting every time you hear it.



Don't Necessarily Start with Modern Production

Modern day commercial audio production is often just stupidly complex. It's often incredibly artificial and tweaked out the waazoo. If you start from day one trying to recreate some of that stuff that's been hand tweaked for months by some of the best folks out there, you may be setting yourself up for a fatal disappointment. Not to mention that a lot of it has almost little real merit in terms of something for a mixer to aspire to, because it's so hyper compressed. And often there are LOTS of very carefully tweaked layers of every instrument and voice used to create that hyper polished modern type of production.

Just as the beginning guitarist learns Greensleeves before he learns Eruption or Crazy Train, go back and try to first emulate simpler productions that are simpler and more sparse. I'm very influenced by Pink Floyd and made the mistake of trying to make every one of my initial songs be The Wall or something like that. I learned a lot in the process, but it would have probably served me better to start with accoustic and voice and learn to make that sound good and then work my way up. I'd probably have learned more in the end for a given length of time, and had less frustration.

It doesn't necessarily have to be old music. The cyclical nature of music means that every decade or so it always collapses back down to more rootsy stuff. So you can look to more stripped down bands of today, and there are plenty of them.

* Obviously some music that sounds simple really only sounds that way because the people who made it were so talented that they make it sound simple. So it's not necessarily the case that a simple sounding song will be easy to emulate.



Composition IS Mixing

Even the best mixers I'm sure use EQ on the bulk of the stuff they do, in the pop/rock type world anyway. However, the biggest single way to have a good mix is to select parts that already work well together. I.e. don't have 8 massive grinding guitar parts, all recorded exactly the same way, all playing different parts. They'll all just mix together into a big blob. You could then EQ them all away from each other. But you could have even better have recorded them differently to begin with.

So think a lot about how each part sounds. Find a place in the stereo spread, in the front to back field (see above), and in the frequency spectrum for each new part to live. Figure out the least amount of frequency real estate that a part requires to do its thing (in the context of the mix, it might sound silly by itself) and only give it that much, so as to leave space for other things. That may mean high and low pass filters but also stuff in the middle somewhere. A slight notch in this instrument's EQ and a slight bump in the others at the same frequency can sometimes give them both more clarity.

OK, that last one there drifted into the technical, but you get the idea. Don't just record a bunch of stuff and then figure out how it will sonically fit together later. Look at composition as part of the mixing process. As much as possible try to 'mix it as you go' by having each recorded part sound the way you want it to sound. Obviously you don't want to be dogmatic and refuse to do any processing later. You may always have a better idea after the fact. It's just a nice discipline to help you be sure as you go that you are creating a coherent sonic landscape.



Find the Heart of the Song

Partly related to various previous points in a number of ways. Even if a song has 32 tracks, there will be some group of tracks that, just by themselves, provide the essence of the song. If someone were to hear just those tracks, he'd know immediately what the song is.

In the mixing process, early on find those tracks and get them sounding great. Then everything else, except for those short places where you want to highlight a particular other part, will be subservient to those core tracks. Any other track that interferes with those core tracks will lose, it will get frequencies removed or be lower in volume, be pushed back behind, etc...

Maybe the heart of the song is different in the chorus, verse, and bridge of course. But in each part of the song, find it and make it sound great and make everything else serve it. You can always bring up another part for a quick phrase here or there, using automation.



Automation Is Your Friend

This is one of those situationally dependent points. There is a spectrum of folks mixing music, from us bedroom types to mega studios. At the bottom and top of that spectrum, we probably have the leisure to take the time to really tweak our work. In the middle, financial survival and time considerations may make this an impractical argument...

But anyway, it's that automation (the modern equivalent of a recording engineer sitting there moving the knobs during the recording) can be used to great effect. Instead of just slapping a compressor or limiter on a track to deal with peaks, use volume automation instead. It'll be less fiddlin of the bits (hence probably more sonic clarity), and will sound more natural generally. Not only can you control overall volume levels, you can almost rewrite the song, creating swells into choruses that might not have occurred naturally. You can take a flat vocal phrase and give it life, blend the end of this part into the start of that one, etc...

Also, you can automate way more than volume. You can automate compression thresholds or EQ to be just right at every point in the song, change the EQ on various instruments between chorus and verse, move instruments around in the stereo field at difference points in the song, and so forth. It's a powerful, though sometimes time consuming, tool so learn to use it well.

* Note that there are two aspects to compression and limiting. One is to shape the sound of the individual notes (manipulate the envelope of the notes), and the other is to control volume. I'm only talking about controlling volume here. This isn't an argument that compression is bad. Using compression to add or remove punch or adjust the funk factor of an instrument is a completely legitimate reason to use compression and not something practically done by automation unless it's a short part.



Look When it's Time to Look, Hear When it's Time to Hear

Some old timers would seem to argue that you should wear a blindfold when you mix. They are extremely anti-eye. I think that's a little excessive, if not a bit reactionary. Use all the tools ya got. But they do have a point that it's easy to become transfixed by the pretty blinking lights and wave forms and meters and stop listening.

So always be aware of when it's time to look and when it's time to listen, and do the right one at the right time. Learn to close your eyes when it's time to listen and really listen. But also use your eyes, use the meters that God Give Ye and all that as well. Learn to use spectrum analyzers, but also put on commercial CDs and both analyze them and also really hear them and try to figure out why they sound like they do. Do they same for your own mixes.

You have multiple senses, so use them to maximum effect. But don'tl et them interfere with each other.



Learn to Edit

For those of us recording ourselves, a really important thing to understand is that one of the benefits of the modern DAW is that there are no mistakes, just happy accidents. You have SO much ability to blend and comp takes together. Make good use of it.

Yeh, I understand that it's really amazing and worthy of aspiring to to be able to nail every performance the first time. But those of us recording in our bedrooms who aren't necessarily great musicians don't have to do that, and that's not necessarily conducive to exploration. You can do easily do multiple takes and pick the best stuff. You can blend one take into another pretty easily and seamlessly.

So if you aren't a great musican, but just a guy with some good ideas and a desire to express yourself, learning how to edit and comp, and understanding at a fundamental level how it works, is very useful. You'll get to know after a while that the mistake you just made is important or not. It not important as along as it doesn't make the other parts of the take unusable, so you don't have to stop and lose your concentration and do it again. OTOH, knowing that it's something that's not going to be fixable means that you don't have to waste precious mojofication factor on a take that's doomed.

Early on I really threw away a lot of takes that had really good bits, because I didn't have faith in my ability to weave that take into another take and keep the best parts of them both. But you can really do some pretty amazing things on that front with a DAW and with clip fades and volume automation.



Foreplay is Your Friend

Don't go straight for the naughty bits the minute you get them into your song. Add instruments and change things as the song moves forward. Make this part more ambient and that part less. Bring the drums up more here and down more there. Make each part of the song something unique. Don't make it sound like you pasted 8 different songs together of course. But make the song grow over time, and if long enough to have some ebbs and flows. It should be like a relationship or a story, with ups and downs, and lawsuits and stalking and all that.

Very eloquently put there Dean! Definitely good stuff, even for us NQANBSWALWTGs (not quite a newbie but still with a long way to go).

Good stuff............
Especially about composition = mixing ; those songs that are strong always are very little work come time for the mixdown.

Wow, Dean, you hit the nail on the head with this post! Straight to the point, well thought out advice for both beginners and veterans.

ORIGINAL: droddey

Sure, yeh, I'd put the Radio Shack mic and most onboard audio cards in the wretched category probably :-) I was assuming that they've got reasonable equipment. I was just trying to get at the point that most people first starting off, even if they have reasonable equipment, always have this lurking feeling that the reason their mixes don't sound good is that they don't have the doohicky plugin or pre-amp or whatever.

The plugs that come with SONAR are pretty good, at least the core ones. Part of my point was that, if someone who really, really knew what they were doing had the SONAR plugs, and your or I had the Waves Diamond bundle, who's mix would probably sound better? Probably the person who really, really knows what he's doing would end up with the better mix. Because the difference between VC-64 and RenComp or the SLL buss comp, or the Sonitus reverb and some other reverb isn't that large compared to the difference in results that experience will provide.

So, if your mixes don't sound good, buying the Waves API bundle isn't going to make them sound good. It'll make them maybe sound a little better. But it's not a magic bullet that will fix your mix. And the SONAR plugs aren't so bad that what would have otherwise been a great mix will sound like crap either. I look back at the various pieces of equipment I went through and realize now I could actually do quite good work with most of it.

Just for the record, the Sonitus reverb is actually quite nice. And VC-64 is the Kjearhus stuff rebadged, and those plugs are quite good, you just don't have access to all the bells and whistles that you'd have if you had the separate bits that make up the channel version of them.

I don't want to overstate the point, but plug-ins obviously have an effect on the sound, and they differ greatly based on the way they're designed. The Sonitus EQ and compressor are OK, but the end result is not a totally pleasing sound IMO. VC-64 is a decent attempt, but I think it goes a little too far trying to color the sound. Part of my POV may be that I've been a musician for a long time, and as a result I have a pretty good ear for differences in sound quality. So while I may not be a seasoned pro as an engineer, I may be pickier than others and quicker to pick up on something that's having a negative effect on the sound.

The SSL stuff is really good, and I've been learning to get really nice results. But partly it's good in that it is designed to provide a specific sound, not necessarily because it's inherently superior to the Sonitus compressor. It's actually quite limited in many ways. And you can emulate it pretty closely with other tools. I did an experiment with RenEQ and the SSL EQ and could get the exact same curve and sound with RenEQ. Some plugs do of course impart harmonic content and that's not so easily emulatable.

The thing about the SSL consoles is that they were designed by people who really knew what they were doing. George Martin apparently participated in designing the E-Channel EQ, for example. I wouldn't call it "limitations" as much as well-informed decisions. The bazillion hit records recorded and mixed on SSLs means they must have done something right. On the software side, I've tried a lot of plug-ins that attempt to emulate analog gear, and the Waves versions are the only ones I've used that sound good and really achieve their goals (I haven't tried UAD because of the hardware). You can't argue with results, and the results I get now are much better than what I could get with the Sonitus stuff. With or without the analog emulation switched on, the Waves stuff sounds much, much better.

Also, as your experience grows and you learn how to track stuff better and better, probably you'll use fewer plugs to begin with and they will have less and less influence on the mix because you need fewer of them. If I compare my mixes now to my early ones, I have more complex mixes with less and less processing. I used to have all kind of processing going on to try to get it sound like what I wanted, but in the end it had more to do with recording it the way I wanted it.

I think that's only true if you're recording jazz or classical. If you're doing pop/rock/R&B, you've got to sculpt each sound individually and the mix as a whole to get any kind of decent result. Every time you add a track, you're adding another slew of frequencies that will compete with something else unless you alter it.

And one final point is that our experience is often misleading because as we move forward and get different equipment, we are also accumulating more and more experience. So it can seem like the equipment is making the difference when it's really the experience. If you went back in time and gave the SSL bundle to yourself back when you first started, probably it wouldn't make nearly as much difference as it does now that you know better how to make good use of it.

I certainly appreciate it more. At the same time I have to admit, I feel like in some way it has made me better at mixing. Having the right tool for the job makes a difference. Like I said, the channel EQ and compression available in Sonar, IMO, is particularly lacking. I kept getting frustrated thinking I must be doing something wrong. Turns out it wasn't as much me as I thought.

For most of us, the idea that we don't have good mixes because we don't have the best equipment, is like thinking "I'm not the best brain surgeon because I don't have a really nice scalpel." :-)

This mixing stuff is a lot more difficult than what the uninitiated might expect. I had no idea when I got started with the home-recording-studio gig how difficult it is to get a pro sound (which I still haven't achieved).

+10 To the comments about buying the next piece of gear that will be the silver bullet, only to sell it later of a loss. In general, now when I buy new gear, I ask myself, what will the re-sale be in case I upgrade (or cross-grade later).

Wow, well said, as a newb to the DAW world, you have certainly made a lot of sense, and I think inadvertently contributed to the GAS post going on elsewhere in these forums!


Regards

ORIGINAL: droddey

Two and only two attack times is pretty limiting, to me anyway. But, it's all relative. If you speak to people who use real SSL consoles of course they will generally say that the SSL plugs are complete crap.

I'm not sure about that, but I am sure they're a lot better than anything I had at my disposal before.

I do agree that the Waves SSL, API, Neve and the JJP bundles are some of the best plugs out there. But, as I said before, do you really think that if you had all those plugs and you were competing against a top shelf mixer who had the plugs that come with SONAR, that you'd do a better mix than he would?

No. In the past I would have said that you can get a professional sounding result solely using what's in Sonar. I've changed my mind slightly. Once I got a better idea of what I was trying to do with EQ and compression, I realized that what was there wasn't cutting it for me. I'm sure the top shelf mixer would come up with a better result, but I'm not sure he could come up with one he'd be willing to put his name on, either.

I don't think you or any of us here would. It's not that those Waves bundles aren't nice, it's that experience is orders of magnitude more important. If you don't have the experience to create a good sounding mix with what comes with SONAR, then you aren't going to create a good sounding mix with those Waves bundles. Each individual track might end up sounding better in some way, but the mix is all about how it all fits together and those plugs aren't going to magically make you any better at that.

Here is where I think we disagree somewhat. Like I said, it makes a big difference when you have the right tool for the job. To use the brain surgery example, you're going to do a better job with a scalpel than a butter knife, no matter how much experience you have.

None of which is to say that you can buy something and suddenly end up with great mixes even if you don't know what you're doing. Anything you get you have to learn how to use. What I think I am saying is that if you have something that really isn't getting the job done, it can impede your learning curve.

No. In the past I would have said that you can get a professional sounding result solely using what's in Sonar. I've changed my mind slightly. Once I got a better idea of what I was trying to do with EQ and compression, I realized that what was there wasn't cutting it for me. I'm sure the top shelf mixer would come up with a better result, but I'm not sure he could come up with one he'd be willing to put his name on, either.

Well, most of them probably wouldn't use the Waves plugs either, since they'd consider them complete junk. But, clearly you don't agree. You feel you can do a great mix with them. It's just another version of the same discussion we are having. You have what you have and you learn to make it sound good. I have no doubt that you can get a professional sounding result purely with what's in SONAR. Famous mixers don't because they can have whatever they want. But if that's all they had, they'd make good music with it.

Here is where I think we disagree somewhat. Like I said, it makes a big difference when you have the right tool for the job. To use the brain surgery example, you're going to do a better job with a scalpel than a butter knife, no matter how much experience you have.

But plenty of amazing albums of the past were made with nothing but the pre-amps, EQs and compressors in the console they were using. They had one tool with one sound, not a bunch of specialized tools. It was what they had and their experience allowed them to make it sound good.

Anyway, I don't want to get bogged down in a detailed argument about who considers what plugins good, or whether any plugins are any good and so forth. No matter what piece of equipment or plugin you put forward as what you think is the greatest thing since sliced bread, someone else thinks it's boring at best and wretched at worst. But somehow all the experienced people manage to make good sounding mixes with what they have to work with, because experience is many times more important than whether you use the Sonitus EQ or the Waves API EQ.

I couldn't say "Amen" enough as I read your post. Especially the bit about composition. A well structured musical arrangement will mix a heck of a lot easier that a piece that is nothing more than musical lasagna. One layer over the next with a bunch of thick sauce and cheeze poured over the top. Might work for cooking but in music it's mostly "less is more".

ORIGINAL: droddey

Well, most of them probably wouldn't use the Waves plugs either, since they'd consider them complete junk. But, clearly you don't agree. You feel you can do a great mix with them.

Hmm. Clearly, Waves plug-ins in general are used by many top professionals on major releases. As for the "Classics", they've got some pretty major people promoting them on their website (Eddie Kramer, Chris Lord-Alge, etc.). Giles Martin, son of George: "It was interesting for Paul Hicks and I as we got the SSL 4000 Collection and the V-Series stuff, which of course we were quite familiar with and to use that in my little room at AIR, and compare them, suddenly I turn around and said, “We are now getting into an approaching world where in the box will be no different.”

Also saw a series of interviews done at the Record Plant in L.A. (which is stocked with several SSL rooms) where the guy remarks about the irony of people coming in to the studio and using the Waves SSLs in Pro Tools while the board is sitting right next them.

I'll take your word for it, though.

But plenty of amazing albums of the past were made with nothing but the pre-amps, EQs and compressors in the console they were using. They had one tool with one sound, not a bunch of specialized tools. It was what they had and their experience allowed them to make it sound good.

Anyway, I don't want to get bogged down in a detailed argument about who considers what plugins good, or whether any plugins are any good and so forth. No matter what piece of equipment or plugin you put forward as what you think is the greatest thing since sliced bread, someone else thinks it's boring at best and wretched at worst. But somehow all the experienced people manage to make good sounding mixes with what they have to work with, because experience is many times more important than whether you use the Sonitus EQ or the Waves API EQ.

There is definitely a point where you're wasting both time and money by continuing to accumulate gear you don't need. There is also a point where lack of good tools holds you back. As I said before, I agree with your statement in general, but my personal experience is that sometimes it actually isn't lack of experience or knowledge but rather crappy gear that stands in your way. It can happen. That's all I'm saying.

I agree, if you have that kind of stuff and you can't get good results with it, it's not the gear that's standing in the way.

Maybe there's a better way to put it. Don't buy something until you know it's what you need, and you know why it's what you need. I've always been somebody who does a significant amount of research before I buy something. The upside is that you can try almost anything these days before you buy it, and there is a wealth of information and opinions on the web. I've made a couple of minor mistakes where I bought something I thought would be good and it ended up being crap, but they were usually stuff that didn't cost much anyway and I thought I could get a cheap solution when I couldn't. In other words, in my case it's always been a matter of "How little can I spend and still get the results I want?". Whenever I think about making a substantial purchase, I always make absolutely sure I know what I'm getting and why I'm getting it. That's how I ended up using Sonar instead of Cubase, Logic or Pro Tools. It's why I will almost certainly never buy a Mac.

I wouldn't buy a C414 because I don't have a lot of use for it with what I do, but I only know that because I have some knowledge of mics. I get by with an SM57, a cheaper large diaphragm AKG, and an ART preamp for DI. If I was recording drums or pretty much any other non-electric instrument in a good room I'd want some C414s, although you can get by with less expensive options. I don't like amp sims. I see why they're useful for many people recording at home, but there is no substitute for an amp. If you can't record because of noise restrictions, I think it's better to get a preamp you can DI and make up for the rest with pedals. Similarly, I'm sure the people you're talking about who don't like the Waves emus are analog purists, maybe the same kind of people who still prefer tape and despise digital. I would have agreed until I tried the Waves stuff. 99% of analog emulations sound like garbage. Waves really did something right IMO.

I've never used Auto-Snap.

I haven't either, other than one little quickie experience to see what it did, and I didn't relaly understand what I was doing. But, these days, I don't want to ever know how it works. For a pro who has to fix stuff I'm sure it's great. For someone like me, it's a crutch I don't want to have.

I haven't either, other than one little quickie experience to see what it did, and I didn't relaly understand what I was doing. But, these days, I don't want to ever know how it works. For a pro who has to fix stuff I'm sure it's great. For someone like me, it's a crutch I don't want to have.

I have a HUGE bias against crutches for fixing rhythm or pitch -- being able to play in tune and in time are basic musical skills.

HOWEVER -- tools like auto-snap and pitch correction can be put to other, fun uses! I actually avoided one earlier release of SONAR because the whole concept V-Vocal seemed so offensive to me. Now I use V-Vocal quite a bit, but never to correct pitch. And lately I've been thinking of some uses to which auto-snap could be put, none of which involve correcting rhythm.