Ben/Neb/whoever you are in your demented mind today: I have no idea what you are talking about. I didn't use your name one time in this thread. You have SHOWN me and everyone else...that you once again are a self-serving me me me, I I I individual that has no business in this thread...and you have done nothing to help or answer the OP's question other than to jump in and start with me. Again, if the shoe fits...smack yourself in the head with it a few times.

Let me put it in black and white to you since I have nothing to lose but my composure. Don't challenge me, quote me, don't prove anything to me and don't talk to me. We have nothing to discuss and you have burned every bridge you can think of when it comes to me. When I write someone off, they are written off for good. I don't give them the chance to bite me again. So though we have nothing to talk about, I'll leave you with this.

Some people really want to learn and need help. If you can't give them the help they need that really works that has merit in a language they can understand and you can't lead by example, how about bowing out until you can?

That said, if you weren't so stuck on yourself, self centered, ego, submersed in Ben, loving and caring for only Ben, bragging and all that goes with your antics and inability to communicate properly with others that share your passion, I'd actually welcome you with open arms and wouldn't take the stand I take towards you. But you need to be the center of attention, you are misleading, you bring forth more drama to these boards than anyone that has ever been here and other than a sense of entertainment for those who are laughing at you that are having a hard time believing a human being could be as dilusional as you, you serve no purpose here really.

I'm a loving person believe it or not in spite of the harshness in this post and would give anyone the shirt off my back. Those that know me personally on here and in life that have treated me like a human being should be treated, can all vouch for this. However, there are breeds of people that I have no time for because of their lack of respect and lack of consideration for mankind. You Sir, (and I use that term loosely) are one of those breeds.

There comes a time when you have no choice but to turn your back on a bad seed or that bad seed brings animosity into your own life that is not needed. Sorry, that's how I feel. I have no time for people like you. I remember a post I made to you months ago that was honest, sincere and also compassionate as I left my door open a crack at the end of it. What did you do? You threw up all over me and made it into a fight. So, I wash my hands of you for good. The dog that bites me gets put to sleep unless it proves itself worthy of a person like me. That's not ego, it's principal and how things work in my world.

As for how many Cake products you own, that means nothing to me. I've had Cake since version 3.0 on floppy disks and have been a part of this community since it came in newsgroup only format and was delivered to your email program. That means what? Right...it means nothing other than I have been here a lot longer than you. I'd also be willing to bet that I haven't improved much on my use of the product, but I make it work for me and many others. 

If I was a jack-a-lope and was constantly misleading people or sharing information that could be really messing people up, it matters not how long I've been here, how many Cake products I own or if I created/owned the Cakewalk company. Wrong is wrong...and you are wrong more times than you are right. People just don't feel like getting into an argument with you or trust me, the majority of this forum would rise up and attack you. You're not even entertainment anymore. Your posts are just sad...every one of them.

This place is not an entertainment stage to me like it is for you. It's more a lecture hall for me as a speaker, helper, teacher that takes this stuff VERY seriously. But I have NEVER tried to make it a stage to where I am the center of attention at the expense of someone else crying out for help in a thread. You have a way of sharing useless information in posts in attempt to make yourself sound/look knowledgable yet take the liberty to attack guys like me that HAVE made a difference for the better for people. You could have even acted like you liked me and respected me a bit better and I would have fallen for it and still been a helpful guy. But I digress..your loss.

And remember, just because you admit to your downfalls doesn't mean anyone has to accept you. You don't put a time line on when people forgive or accept you...that's for us to decide, not you.

I'd rather help people and make a difference over using this space to justify myself to you or anyone else. How about leaving me out of your rants so I can do that and not waste time defending myself?

-Danny

Middleman
Here's the problem with Danny's approach. He doesn't live on the West Coast so I can hang out with him.

Words of wisdom there my friend. I can't tell you how many times I have heard diatribes from an "expert" on the internet here and over at GS, then listen to their tracks and realize they haven't got a clue.

That can be arranged ya know! :) I'm actually going to be out there either this summer or by the fall. If I end up anywhere near you, maybe we can hang for a day or so. I'd sure love it brother. :)

Grant: no worries man...I may not be as active, but when I see something that I feel could use a little TLC, I won't hesitate to share. :)

John T: Well said on all counts man. I know there are a few things out there that can definitely help, but in my experience, the starting points we can use have never been anything that made me go "wow that sure made a difference!"

I may have shared this story before, but if not, it's definitely a good read for you. I remember mixing my brains out working on songs for weeks, months...it was really a downer. So much so, I didn't want to do this stuff anymore and was pretty much going to just use my studio as my little pre-pro man cave. How could I charge people if I myself wasn't happy with my own stuff? I mean don't get me wrong, I was fair at doing this, but nothing that I would even consider "pro demo quality" which is where I feel my quality is today. I have my moment so of "damn that sounds as good or better than so and so!" but I've accepted that with the gear I have, I'm a pro demo studio that can sometimes give the majors a run for their money. I'm fine with that really.

But as I was doing this and trying my best to learn, my monitors were the biggest part of my problem. I know you've heard me rant about ARC etc, so I won't go there, but part of me knowing what to listen for was having the ability to HEAR that stuff. And, ARC of course made a huge difference in that area.

So I started recording my own album and though it turned out decent, there were things that just weren't there when you compared it to something that was pro done. The bassist in my band at the time was a big time engineer who wound up working with Breaking Benjamin on their first album. He sat me down with my mixes and mixed them in his studio. As he did this, he said stuff like:

"this is what is wrong with this, this is what is wrong with that...this sound shouldn't have even been recorded because of this, on this instrument, we need the compressor to kick a little earlier and the comp you used isn't the right one..listen what happens when we use this one instead. Ok, now you have this blanket of mids on your guitars. I know you like this sound, but listen to what happens when we remove this 640hz...the sound will open up and not sound as congested. Now, you also have some low end issues on this guitar. Listen to what happens when we remove this blanket of ussssssssss in the back ground. There...here's with it in, here's with it out...can you hear what it's doing and how this low end is making a mess of your guitars? Ok, the kick drum...your pushing this frequency and you're pushing the same freq on the bass...you can't do that just because 60 hz gives you the right low end you feel these instruments need. This is why you keep on raising your faders...these instruments are masking bro."

In that little paragraph right there John, it totally changed my life. I had no idea to listen for this low end stuff behind my guitars. Heck, I loved my guitar tone back then and always got major compliments. When he soloed it up, it sounded thin...lifeless, no bass push. He said "right, that's because you're not supposed to be pushing that kind of low end in a guitar. You're walking into kick drum/bass guitar territory and this is why your rhythm guitars aren't heard as much in your mixes."

Stuff like that is an eye opener. However, if he wouldn't have shown me this stuff right there in front of him, I don't know if I would have ever learned about it watching someone else do another mix or read a book. It would never deal with MY problems and issues, know what I mean? I'm always going to create sounds and mixes that work with my instruments. If my instruments I love...which sound great on their own don't work in a mix, I'm NEVER going to get this stuff right unless someone shows me how to deal with my instruments. This is why I do the video lessons I do. It allows people to see just what is wrong with their instruments using the right techniques to control them.

This is why I feel it's soo important to know what and how to listen for something. It starts with learning on YOUR stuff, not someone elses as a test subject, ya know what I mean? I knew what compression was and how to use it, but I never thought at that time, that a different compressor is going to make that much of a difference on a particular instrument. I didn't know about sculpting eq to make a mix work. I soloed everything up individually and made it sound good as an entity. Little did I know, just by doing that, I was totally missing the boat.

Now that I'm more experienced at this, I can of course solo something up and make it work because of knowing what to listen for. But I still try to stay away from that unless I'm honing in on a problem area. The mix itself needs to be treated as an entity....you can't mix all the instruments to sound good on their own. Quite a few people don't realize this and I was one of them.

I can also remember working with my bassist later on after this mixing session I spoke about. I brought hiim a mix that took me 2 weeks to do. He listened to 5 seconds of it and shut it off. He says "ok, here's a pen and paper, write down all the stuff you hear wrong with this mix."

I was pretty upset because I was so excited that I did a good job. I did a horrible job. I wrote down all the stuff I heard wrong and gave him the paper. He reads it and says "if you can hear all this stuff, why did you leave it like this?" The answer...I was mixing through un-corrected NS-10's, no sub, and switching betwen them and headphones. This is where new monitors, a sub and ARC come in...so I'll spare you there. But, in order for me to hear the things I heard at his place, I needed to fix my place.

Once I did all that, I realized I really wasn't the crappy engineer I thought I was. I was decent at this stuff all along...but I was failing because:

1. I didn't know what to listen for in my own instruments

2. My room/monitors were not giving me the proper representation I needed to make the right calls.

So when you look at things this way, it's easy to see how this stuff can make a huge difference as well as an impact on how you end up. :) I don't think any video or book would have helped me at that time. :)

-Danny

This quote really jumps out at me: "I know you like this sound, but listen to what happens when we remove this 640hz...the sound will open up and not sound as congested". That really reminds me of one of the best bit's of Yep's thread I posted the link to.

He talks a lot about "forget what you think it should sound like, and listen to what it actually sounds like". What he means is that you may think you want a really bassy kick drum, or super-bright hi-hats or whatever, and you may be mixing according to such pre-concieved notions. But in actual fact, the record you like that you think has these things, doesn't actually have them at all.

This is why the answer to "How do the pros get everything really loud and slamming at once, with eveything really heavy in the bass and bright at the top end?" is "they don't, listen again".

Touching on the value of videos or in person tuition over books, yes I agree. I started out doing a three month course in a real studio, taught by a working engineer, back in the mid 90s. I still sucked after it, of course, you don't become an expert at anything in 3 months. But the amount of foundational stuff I learned in that three months saved me years, I reckon.

Danny Danzi


...... I'd rather help people and make a difference over using this space to justify myself to you or anyone else. How about leaving me out of your rants so I can do that and not waste time defending myself?

-Danny

I know this guy has got under your skin but you may as well be trying to communicate with an AI program that doesn't understand what you're saying but continues to recycle phrases that have been programmed into it. He's pushing all your buttons without even trying. You're a major asset to this forum and I hate to see you get wound up like that because it will affect how much of yourself you give here and probably give you ulcers. I defer to your skills and talents but I, too, have been online a long time and have seen these kinds of flame wars. You can't win by arguing. Logic won't help you, facts won't help you. Reason won't help you. All you can do is take a deep breath and let it go. Act, don't react. Ignore it when others make snotty remarks. Your reputation is safe. When all else fails, don't feed the trolls. Starve them and they will self destruct. I've seen it, you've seen it, most of us have seen it. Do you really care about what some jerk thinks about you? Be the bigger man.... let it go. You'll be glad you did.

Yeah, I think it's pretty much time to relegate Ben to the block list. That's what I'm going to do. He's got two modes: utterly insufferable a$$hole, and whiny poor-me complainer. I don't like either, and on top of that, the odds of him ever posting anything I would want or need to know are now confirmed at zero.

Starting in this thing I find all kinds of things out that I wish I knew all those years ago. I know that in London ON Fanshawe College has a RIA program but not much else ... 

I find that, sometimes, just communicating with you guys here, JohnT, Danny, FBB, that I am starting to understand a lot more of what I am doing in this so-called studio of mine

Well, thank you. I don't want to overstate my case; I am not Dave Pensado or anything. Far, far from it. I do try to avoid spouting off about things I don't understand, though, and only give advice that I'm very confident about.

Actually, that's a not-bad mindset for mixing. There should be a mixers Hippocratic oath, in fact: "first do no harm". It's a good exercise to approach a mix at first by seeing how *little* you can do. I tend to start with just high pass EQ (on EVERY track), basic level setting, and *some* compression *only* on tracks that absolutely require it. No more detailed EQ yet, no effects, no panning, no bus compression. That will never get you to a polished sound, of course, but it's amazing how far you *can* get. Far more bad mixing comes from over-cooking than under-cooking, IMO.

So in other words, when mixing, see how much you can achieve doing simple stuff that you fully understand. Don't dive in with all kinds of esoteric trickery you've read about on the internet.