51m0n

[quote name='LiamPodmore' timestamp='1335952767' post='1638430'] Si, have you ever thought of starting a blog, where you go through all the tricks and techniques you use when recording (something similar to Shep's, but obviously to do with recording), i reckon it'd be a pretty useful thing for people wanting to know more about what they're doing, as you seem to have quite a lot of knowledge on the subject. It's something i would read, i know that for sure. Liam [/quote] Maybe.....

Of course this is all just technical b*ll***s. The real place a mix starts is the arrangement. The most important thing is turning the individual tracks you are given into a cohesive whole that works in the time domain, trying to get each section to pull the listener into the next section, grabbing attention yet promising something even more exciting around the corner of the song. If the song is rubbish, or the arrangement is rubbish then the best mix in the world wont save you for a second. You're doomed to have your name down next to a piece of unadulterated plop. For far more information on this aspect of the whole puzzle of mixing than I would ever have space for here I cant recommend Zen and The Art of Mixing by Mixerman enough. Its not all about the technical aspects of eqing and compressing (although he covers this stuff perfectly adequately) its all about communication skills. With the listener, the artist, the producer, everyone really. Fascinating book, exceptionally good info. if you are at all interested in mixing, buy it, read it, read it again. Then go practice, mix anything you can get your hands on. More than once.

The workflow is the same always. 1) Use your ears 2) Stop using your eyes, and really use your ears, screens and pretty graphics are irrelevant distractions to the job at hand 3) Did I mention you should use your ears? The process is all about evaluation and analysis of whats there, whats good and whats bad about it, especially when its brought into play with everything else.. 99.9% of getting good at mixing is learning how to use your ears to make the right choices when you are presented with the millions of options you have. I start by chucking every fader up to unity gain and seeing what kind of a mess I'm in (I mix stuff other people have tracked a lot of the time so its always an interesting journey for the first half an hour fiuguring out what is what). Then I group and subgroup things together so I can keep the level of an entire mixed section (ie the drums, the drums and bass) more easily under control. This also gives me a lot of leeway to add fx across sections and subsections of the different parts as well as on specific tracks (so I can parallel compress the drum kit but not the cymbals if I want). I add groups for auxes and start setting up routing to save processing power, plus a lot off good convolution reverbs definitely sound better to my ears when thye are given the sum of many tracks togetherrather than a singel track, esp if you are putting everything in a 'space' - which would be the normal thing to do. Panning is the next thing to take care of, even before eq. If you seperate things in the stereo field then the eq requirements are different. Pan wide, pan hard, dont be afraid of the pan, esp in contemporary pop/rock get as much info out of the center as you can, try and keep things balanced from side to side, a guitar on one side keys on the other, or a complimentary guitar on the other, or a delayed send from the guitar, whatever it takes. I eq out the nasty bits solo'ed in the first instance, but I refer to the mix constantly, so I listen to a kick in situ, try and hear where it clashes with the bass, make a decision about how they interact and then get rid of what is wrong with the kick. Compression where its needed, as much or as little for glue, to control transients, to glue a buss, to thicken a vocal, whatever its for, its different every time. Becoming an epxert with when, and how to use a compressor is as important as eq. Used wrong it will ruin a mix, used right it wil make a mix and no one will realise just jow much is used. It is a huge topic, and you need to really get to grips with it. It is important to realise that compression will not even out a really wide ranging vocal (or anything else) on its own without unacceptable artifacts. I very very rarely really use compression to do that more than a dB or so anyway, instead I use compression to control the enmvelope of sounds to make them fit together better. When it comes to fine level control automation is the way. Its time ocnsuming and can get fatiguing but the mix will sound better for careful automation rather than compression as a level control strategy. You then have the choice of where to control that level, do you automate how you drive a compressor, or automate the comrpessed result. Entirely depends opn the sound of the compressor at that point. Choices..... Spaces. Everything lives in a space, an acoustic space, and you need to find ways to trick the listener into believing the space you are creating. You can use reverbs (many of) on one or many tracks to bring different aspects of space to a track, eq to set things forward or further back, delays to add ambience with the musical pulse. You can add other effects to the ambience you create, phasers, flangers, compressors, distortions, whatever makes it more exciting, more engaging, more 'super real'. I regularly end up with around three reverbs on the lead vocal, one or two on the rest of the track. The lead vocal has to be right there in your face, yet within a space, understanding how to give it some ambience, a touch of a near space and a pleasant tail to that space will lead you to the conclusion that 3 subtle reverbs can allow you to more carefully control that vital piece of the mix throughout the duration of the mix better than chucking a single verb on there. Each reverb will be eq'ed as well, differently because they are doing different tings, and you dont want the verb to eat into you frequency range and smear the track too much. Subtle is usually best unless you are going fo r amajorly clever effect (huge reversed snares or whatever). Delays [i]tend[/i] to eat into that space less overtly, I use delay based ambiance a lot too. For me its more important the more tracks you have to give a sense of space but not eat up those precious frequencies. Panning and eqing the returns is absolutely vital, often I'll use a limiter to clamp down on the transient at the beginning of the sounds before the delay to help keep it in the background, and the mix of any such 'space' effect back into the track is massively important to judge right. Early reflection times on reverbs and delay times for this kind of thing are critical, some fraction of the musical pulse is always a good place to start, then I tend to play with that time to get the feel spot on. I may end up with a mix of 80+ tracks with over 200 vst instances, or only 2, I dont know whats going to happen until I start. I dont try and second guess it either, neither whould you. If there were a rule about this stuff (other than there are no rules) its that there are [i]no[/i] cookie cutter approaches that work, use your ears.

Then an awful lot of Zoom kit and other USB devices come into play.

No because its not got a network connection

£600 on ebay:- http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alesis-HD-24-24-Track-Audio-Recorder-2-x-80GB-Hard-Drives-Optical-Cables-/280869900590?pt=UK_Recorders_Rewriters&hash=item416526912e Cant even find a price for a Marantz PDM580 though so I dont know what the target is to be honest

Cheers, its nice to know its striking a chord with people reading it. Worth fighting past the tidal wave of typos at least Can't imagine there's anything in there you don't know already though.....

May seem a bit out of left field but maybe a second hand Alesis HD24? Would be significantly cheaper than the Marantz, and has ftp server built in. Overkill really I know.

Audacity has (or always has had when I have used it) one huge flaw. You cant hear an effect as you apply it. You say you want to do something then you hear a demo of a tiny region, then you change a parameter, then you listen to a demo etc etc. The reality is when using any kind of serious tool for recording and mixing you absolutely need to hear the changes you are making in real time as they are happening. So you hear an eq sweep as you make it so you can stop sweeping when you hear the problem frequency etc. For a very simple tool to top and tail wavs its fine though. Thats about the extent of it usefulness really.

That vst you are using is busy imposing ideas like hi mid and low on you that dont really exist. Have another look at the VST I was using, 5 bands, all happen to be shelves, but they arent in order 1 to 5 from lowest to highest, I can add as many bands as I want or need, whenever I hear a part of the sound I need to change. So the lo mid high thing is not real, its to make it seem more accessible really. You also have a high pass and low pass filter on that device I can see, which would possibly be better for the top and tailing you are doing, it even appears to have variable steepness (dB per octave) of filter to play with. You cut parts of the sound that you dont like, on a bass there could be fret clack or string squeaks around 2 to 4KHz that needs taking down a couple of dB, there may be a flaw in the bass neck or set up that makes it resonate particularly well around 350Hz that just sounds of mud, a player may have a habit of clunking the E string with their thumb as they move across the neck causing a very low frequency spike, say 25Hz. Or you may hear a ring on an instrument or voice, just some frequency that clashes with the other instruments that you dont even notice on its own. You see you you need to think beyond a single instrument at a time when mixing. You make a hole for one instrument in the sound of another and often vice versa at a different frequency. The goal is not to make each individual instrument sound great on its own, the goal is to make all the instruments sit together in a perfect interlocking jigsaw of frequencies. The human brain can, and will, fill in incredible gaps in spectrum for you, especially if another instrument is in those gaps, the user takes clues from elsewhere in the spectrum and builds the missing piece of the first instrument. Take a kick drum and a bass. Tough to mix these two instruments since they both have a lot of low end and are high energy instruments in a mix. The song and genre of the music will help guide you in the choice of basically a low kick and mid bass or vice versa (huge simplification here). Dub would have deep deep bass so you would cut the bottom of the kick out to make space for the deep bass, and have a punchier kick. Rock may have a grindier more midrangey bass, with a really deep kick. This 'frequency mixing' is one of several incredibly important keys to good mixes, with great seperation between instruments and a sense of a cohesive whole at the same time.

You cant bend the laws of physics here. If the singer is quiet its as often as not fear of the mic. If they use a mic like an SM58 with their top lip touching the basket, then they would need to be truly quiet to be not generating enough signal to get them over a reasonable band, given reasonable acoustics in the room blah blah. Gently pointing that out to them will usually win you friends in the vocalist department. You can then follow that up as they gain confidence by pointing out that they can help the sound by pulling the mic off their mouth as the get to the loudest bits of their performance (assuming they've got that much louder) - better than a compressor by a long way.... If a singer truly is too quiet, they arent a singer, anfd there is nothing you can do for them at all.

As a matter of course when setting up a PA I check that cupping the vocal mic(s) doesnt induce feedback, Careful use of a decent 32 band graphic and some knowledge of likely ways to generate feedback can greatly reduce the chance of it occuring during the gig. Then again, I often mix 'backwards' live. That is, I get the vocal level, add the guitar(s) and keys, "bass and drums" in that order to FOH, so the band is mixed up to the max vocal level before feedback. Usually ends up being loud enough, sometimes you even have to back it off. Either way the punters never complain it was too quiet, instead they like that they can hear the entire band including the vocals.....

Ive used a pair of Cascade Fathead 2's in MS config on the blumlein bar you get in the set for this on drums. Sounds absolutely brilliant to me (but i really love those mics on a lot of sources) Blumlein is effectively M/S but with 2 figure of 8 mics, rather than 1 and a cardiod.

Just dont forget the refernce mix to keep going back to during the process, it will really help keeping your ears fresh and dialed in through the mix process.

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1335436787' post='1630972'] [size=1]Very much this, and I fixed a few spelling mistakes. The amount of times bands have come to me and said, "hey, this recording`s got no guitar on! it`s all drums and vocals you f***ing moron" Whereupon I try to explain the two marshal stacks and trace elliot rig going full pelt didn`t feature much in the PA mix and consequently (and it`s here they struggle to understand), they didn`t end up on the recording..[/size] [size=5][i][b]If you must record yourself, take a recorder with a stereo mic and set it up near the sound man.[/b][/i][/size] [size=2]Back to the original question, the ONE thing you can do to help the sound man is have all your gear working and organised so your precious allotment of time for a soundcheck is spent checking your sound and not wiring up pedals/tuning/borrowing a strap/having a piss. Truly. Bribes may also help. MM[/size] [/quote] Cannot agree with this enough. The desk is not the place to record from, unless you have serious resources (ie multitrack system recording before the FOH faders & eq) A stereo mic FOH will sound ace in comparison, you are giveing about as fair a representation of the engineers and bands abilities in the room like this. Thats how [url="http://soundcloud.com/51m0n-1/sets/brighton-and-hove-youth-big-1/"]this was recorded[/url], and it sounds pretty acurate to me

This is a nice technique, especially for guerilla styel recordings. The approach to the OH holds true always though, get the snare/kick in phase between the mics, and central with both mic faders up the same amount and panned fully left and right (you can lessne this pan afterwards for a less stereo drum kit if thats what you wnat). Whenever you add a mic it should be in phase with the OH forst ( and all the other mics) - which is why mic positioning on drums can be a complete bitch.

I dont like 'em cos they never have enough metering, but if I had to use one it would be either the MarkBass COmpressore or the Joe Meek FloorQ

Leave it for two weeks. Dont over listen to the monitor mix, its going to change your perception (probably for the worse, you'll become accepting of the flaws in it) - I avoid monitor mixes when I'm about to mix if I can, other than to try and tell if the tracking is not utter gash. Take in a great cd you like the production of and get the engineer mixing to get close to that balance and timbre-wise, with a clear head. You'll get a better result that way. There is no such thing as 'just a demo', there are recordings, they live with you for a long time, make it good enought to be proud of for all that time and beyond, or you have wasted the money you spent tracking (IMO).

[quote name='ironside1966' timestamp='1335377131' post='1630227'] The first thing to ask is, is the recording a accurate representation of the actual live sound? The sound of the backline doesn't stop suddenly at the end of the stage. I work with the stage sound rather than against it, the clue is in the word sound reinforcement not sound replacement. Often there is enough bottom end coming from the stage amplification so you need to EQ some mid's to give the instrument more definition. Telling a sound man his job is a bit like a sound man telling you how to play. [/quote] +1 Doesnt mean he might not want to hear your bass first, but this is sage advice

I've done concrete pouring. Multi-story carpark in Horsham, thats a lot of concrete! Every day someone ended up falling over a bit of buried steel and landing in it up to their neck at least. Guaranteed to make you laugh, if its not you Good times mate!

Cutting just means turning down the volume at a specific frequency. See my eq graph, that would mean I'm cutting at points 1, 2, 4 and 5. Boosting is the opposite, point 3 on my graph. A parametric eq gives you three controls at each point, frequency, gain and Q (or bandwidht). Frequency enables you to choose the point you wish to alter Gain enables you to add or subtract (ie alter) the level at that point Q changes how steeply the eq curve is applied. A narrow Q effects a very small range of frequencies, a wide one effects a large range of frequencies. The human ear is very very adept at picking out narrow Q boosts, they sound extrememly unnatural to us. It is very bad at noticing narrow Q cuts. So in general try to boost with a wide Q, and cut with a narrow Q. When searching for the right frequency to cut, first boost an eq point by say 6dB, then sweep the freqency knob until you hear the area you dont like get louder, tighten the Q and home in on the area as best you can. Then reverse the gain, cutting until the issue is gone without leaving wany weird artifacts. Once you have cut all the crap out of a sound you can then apply gentle wide Q boosts whilst listening in the mix to a sound to get it to sit right, if necessary. This all takes skill and plenty of practice, and equally decent monitors.

Oh absolutely, if he's worth his beans he wont mind hearing your instrument acoustically first, all db's sound fairly different, and hearing it 'for real' can help. Or he may just be bemused at the thought, which you should see as a bit of a warning of what is to come....

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1335346802' post='1629488'] Day in day out dealing with petulant, rude and immature bands is where I'd start with an explanation. [/quote] +100 Its a deeply tedious job when you get a bunch of arrogant hairstyles on a stage pretending they are all rock gods with less knowledge about their craft than the average squirrel, giving you an impossible job and hurting your ears, for not much money and extremely long hours (esp on a touring set up). If the band listen to and help the soundguy, treat him with respect and are pleasant then the chances are that you'll get the best out of him (whatever that may be), and the best out of the venue.

[quote name='bungle' timestamp='1335272407' post='1628376'] As I'd said in the OP, we didn't spend that much time or money on them, and they are just a tool to get some more gigs and to have something to put up on the web. [/quote] Well that wont get you any gigs at all, it sounds very poor. If you want to hear what you're up against in terms of demos to get gigs, [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/173984-first-demo-from-skareggae-originals-band/page__fromsearch__1"]check out this topic[/url], the originals band here have recorded three tracks fo rexactly the same purpose, and their demo sounds superb. I know which band I'd put on if it were me, going on the demos alone....

I think your eq slopes are far too gentle for this kind of thing. You need a very steep slope, start off at 20Hz and slowy raise the frequency of the cut, once you hear it take too much away stop and back off a tiny bit. You need superb monitors for this or you risk immasculating your bass, cheap bookshelves and ns10 type monitors are not the tool for this job. Same with the top end, I let very few tracks go all the way up, the last thing I want is a build up of extreme top end, instead I want to allow just the most important tracks (lead vox for instance) to have much info over 16KHz. Gentle slopes terminating in a steep cut are a good way to achieve this IME. What we have here is an eq on a bass track in a mix I did recently - believe me the bass still has balls, I've ntoched out so me problem areas, and applied some very gentle bell eqs to get a bit more presence. Also note the use of q to get a bit of boost above the lowest cut. [attachment=106017:bass_eq.jpg] Most important things are eq in the mix, not soloed, and generally speaking cut tighter than you boost, boost wider than you cut, to get a natural sounding result.