Had a (near) final tidy-up session with Padraig on Monday.
He had a few notes, so we ran through each song making a few tweaks here and there.
Everything seems to be in pretty good shape, so now it's a case of checking out the mixes on a bunch of different speaker systems to see what they can tell me.
Listening to it in the car last night, I was struck by difference in detail between the car stereo (which isn't a bad one) and my Focals. The car stereo kinda smoothed everything out and made things that really jump out of the mix on my monitors receed back quite a bit. Thank God for the Focals - at least they tell me what's actually going on.
Aside from tweaking the vocal up a touch in one or two songs, the 'consumer' stereos are great for getting a handle on what the low end is going to sound like in the real world. Most consumer stereos have a bump in the low end in and around 100hz to add some excitement, and knowing how your bass and kick drum will be affected is really valuable.
That low end is definitely the trickiest part of a mix to really nail, so I'll always try to get plenty of different perspectives on it.
Padraig's talking about mastering with Golden, which is great, home recorded stuff always benefits most from a really good mastering job - it's also a really good incentive for me to try to get things right! A bunch of Irish bands have used Golden recently with great results - Dudley Corporation, Nina Hynes, Jimmy Cake etc.
With the dollar where it is, and the ability to ftp the files back and forth, it makes a huge amount of sense to go to the US for mastering, particularly with the ease of access you get to really experienced professionals.
Update on the analog summing/gear lust situation..
I'm starting to lean towards the RollMusic Folcrom for that analog summing situation.
It's cheaper than the Dangerous D-Box but still has plenty going for it. Golden Age have them for 578 ex vat and shipping. I'm definitely gonna have to see if I can arrange a demo. It doesn't have the monitoring control/switching or built-in conversion of the D-Box, but then again it is half the price and sums 16 instead of 8 channels. Being able to use the mic pre of your choice for make-up gain and 'colour' is definitely a nice option, although my APIs are the only dudes I think I'd trust in that scenario.
I'm also (finally) demoing the URS Saturation plugin. They finally got around to releasing the PC version (although only for vst so far - I'm using the Fxpansion VST wrapper.. recommended, by the way) and so far, it's pretty sweet. Very nice on a parallel drum bus. Pretty good for giving DI bass a little grit and roughing up vocals where necessary.
I think I'm gonna go with their rental option - it's $200 to buy, but you can rent it by the month for $100, and when you've rented the full price worth, you own the plugin. Beautiful!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
Mixing Home Recordings
Now, maybe I'm a lucky guy...(The fact that I haven't caught the sickness my fair lady has been coughing around the house for the last few days may be testimony to that), but I've never had a bad experience mixing tracks that have been home recorded.
Now, you don't have to throw a stone far in your average audio forum to hit a topic bemoaning the state of the tracks that an engineer has been sent to mix, but for me, there's a lot of reasons why I find it a lot of fun.
For starters, you're coming to the songs and arrangements with totally fresh ears.
You get to make decisions that aren't informed by hearing the song a load of times as it was tracked and overdubbed.
Quite often, I'll end up fairly judiciously using the mute button - more often than I would with a song I'd tracked myself.
Partly this is because of the temptation to throw a lot of shit at the wall when you've got the time that home recording affords to try different approaches and parts. Partly it's because I think you naturally get attached to parts as you become used to hearing them. Fresh ears mean you can make quick (and usually pretty good) decisions about what's helping the song - and what isn't.
Just by taking away an instrument that's contributing to overcrowding, or even muting it in verse one so that it brings something new to verse two, you can usually improve the feel of a mix before you even get in to heavy lifting with eq and compression.
A lot of the time, you'll be dealing with one guy or gurl who's getting their first outside perspective on their work. This alone can be very valuable. Mixing is a constant battle to maintain perspective, hence the widespread practice of switching between different speakers and headphones during a mix. Our ears automatically gets used to what they're hearing - good and bad, so the best way to avoid thinking a turd is shiny is to change your listening perspective every once in a while.
It's even trickier to maintain perspective on a song you've written, rewritten and recorded yourself.
Most of all though, I enjoy the big difference you can make to the finished mix.
It's a really good feeling when you can help someone enjoy their own song more because of the bit of mix glue you've applied to it.
And that's what it's all about - making dudes happy, and hopefully helping the songs be better at the same time.
Now, you don't have to throw a stone far in your average audio forum to hit a topic bemoaning the state of the tracks that an engineer has been sent to mix, but for me, there's a lot of reasons why I find it a lot of fun.
For starters, you're coming to the songs and arrangements with totally fresh ears.
You get to make decisions that aren't informed by hearing the song a load of times as it was tracked and overdubbed.
Quite often, I'll end up fairly judiciously using the mute button - more often than I would with a song I'd tracked myself.
Partly this is because of the temptation to throw a lot of shit at the wall when you've got the time that home recording affords to try different approaches and parts. Partly it's because I think you naturally get attached to parts as you become used to hearing them. Fresh ears mean you can make quick (and usually pretty good) decisions about what's helping the song - and what isn't.
Just by taking away an instrument that's contributing to overcrowding, or even muting it in verse one so that it brings something new to verse two, you can usually improve the feel of a mix before you even get in to heavy lifting with eq and compression.
A lot of the time, you'll be dealing with one guy or gurl who's getting their first outside perspective on their work. This alone can be very valuable. Mixing is a constant battle to maintain perspective, hence the widespread practice of switching between different speakers and headphones during a mix. Our ears automatically gets used to what they're hearing - good and bad, so the best way to avoid thinking a turd is shiny is to change your listening perspective every once in a while.
It's even trickier to maintain perspective on a song you've written, rewritten and recorded yourself.
Most of all though, I enjoy the big difference you can make to the finished mix.
It's a really good feeling when you can help someone enjoy their own song more because of the bit of mix glue you've applied to it.
And that's what it's all about - making dudes happy, and hopefully helping the songs be better at the same time.
Monday, March 3, 2008
RfR gtr dubz yo
Yesterday was guitar dub day out at Rifle Fire Rifle headquarters.
It was a bit warmer than last time out, thankfully.
It was pretty much all R121 and SM58 into API in front of my Blues Junior.
We've got each section of the song pretty well covered for different tones now, the only slight concern may be tying them all together in the mix. We got a particularly nice blend between a mild big muff fuzz and a Blues Jr. cranked up distortion for the chorus.
I tried Nick's Sennheiser E902 early on, which sounded pretty nuts. It's got a really pronounced smiley curve frequency response to it, which didn't work for any of the sounds we wanted. I must try it sometime for a hilarious snare sound or something.
In other news..
When will Digi release PTLE for Leopard?
When will my SM7 arrive?
What about new TapeOp?
It was a bit warmer than last time out, thankfully.
It was pretty much all R121 and SM58 into API in front of my Blues Junior.
We've got each section of the song pretty well covered for different tones now, the only slight concern may be tying them all together in the mix. We got a particularly nice blend between a mild big muff fuzz and a Blues Jr. cranked up distortion for the chorus.
I tried Nick's Sennheiser E902 early on, which sounded pretty nuts. It's got a really pronounced smiley curve frequency response to it, which didn't work for any of the sounds we wanted. I must try it sometime for a hilarious snare sound or something.
In other news..
When will Digi release PTLE for Leopard?
When will my SM7 arrive?
What about new TapeOp?
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