East West Gold Mixing

[shadyru]

I have been using East West Gold for a few months now but need suggestions on what plug ins reverb eq etc you guys use to make the strings sit better in the mix. I have many of the uad plugs and waves plugs.

[whinecellar]

Howdy,

One trick I use (if you're on Logic) is to use Logic's Match EQ plugin to "borrow" the sonic fingerprint of a commercial release that has the overall sound you're looking for.

I love the EastWest stuff and it almost mixes itself, but my one gripe with it (other than the lack of verb flexibility) is that its default sound is a little too bright and "in your face" when I'm going for more of a lush, warm classic approach.

The Match EQ works amazingly well at giving me that sound. I just finished a score that called for that kind of thing, so I took some samples from some similar commercial releases and applied them to my mix at about a 50% ratio, and it worked like a charm. Took a little midrange "honk" out and gave me that smooth "London Symphony at Abbey Road" warmth I was looking for. Note that this is much harder to do with generic EQ - Logic's Match EQ can be surprisingly good at this.

Keith Johnson did such a great job recording the EW library, it doesn't need much (if any) help, depending of course on what you're going for. I like to run stems through a pair of Neve 1073's with just a touch of hi cut, and maybe a little LA2A for "glue." Between that and the Match EQ trick, I am thrilled with the results. Oh, I may also add just a touch of a high-end verb as well to give me a bit of a bigger space. All in moderation...

Hope that helps!

Jim

[Mushy]

Wow. I couldnt disagree more. The match eq thing is the biggest farce ever foisted on the recording public. The notion that there is a magic plugin that is going to make shite sound like shinola is just plain untrue.

The answer, unforunately is that there is no one answer. On their own, I think those strings sound fine as is. If you want them to play nice with other instruments you have to consider how you are treating everything else in your mix. If you have dense and bright guitars that are masking the attack and rosin of your strings, there is nothing that an overall mix eq can do to fix it.

Try. Fail. Try again. Less is more. Yada yada.

[whinecellar]

Originally Posted by Mushy

Wow. I couldnt disagree more. The match eq thing is the biggest farce ever foisted on the recording public. The notion that there is a magic plugin that is going to make shite sound like shinola is just plain untrue.

That's not at all what I said or implied - it's certainly not what I intended. I couldn't agree more - "Shinola" doesn't happen by accident, and it CERTAINLY doesn't happen because someone sticks a plugin on their 2-mix ;-)

What I DID try to communicate is that the Match EQ simply helped me attain a result I was looking for. As with anything else, your experience may vary. By definition, results from a plugin like this are going to be highly dependent on your source and destination material, so I can understand why one person's opinion of the product could vary widely from another's.

Personally, I had always ignored that particular plugin for the same reasons - I just never took it seriously and thought of it as a gimmick. Out of sheer morbid curiosity I tried it one day and was more than pleasantly surprised. Again, YMMV.

Thanks!

Jim

[Mushy]

Not to hijack the thread for our own discussion, but I now understand what you meant. The overall tone of these forums were irking me that day and I took it out on you. I guess what rubs me funny in many of these forums is the search for the easy fix and how quickly people jump to try to provide one. There is a slight lack of real TEACHING around here but I guess that has always been the case in this industry. Everyone has their "secrets."

I see a lot of implications like "well if you record all of your guitars through APIs and Distressors, all of you mixes will sound like Brendan O'Brian." So then I walk into these private studios with all of these amazing pre's and compressors and yet they are using a crappy guitar plugged into a POD Pro and can't figure out why their guitars don't sound HUGE!

Another great example of misused information. A friend of mine (great up and coming producer/remixer but amateur engineer) calls me up and asks me if he should drop 2 grand on a Culture Vulture to make his mixes sound big. He read they were great on a forum somewhere and was ready to not eat for two months so he could have this mastering compressor that he wouldn't have the slightest idea how to use to it's full capacity.

Not that I'm this big shot mixer, but I would be happy to listen to one of your mixes, Shadyru (or anyone else), to offer some real advice on improving your work. I'm not promising magic elixirs, but there are mixing fundamentals that are impossible to learn on ones own. In my day we started out as assistants and got the opportunity to learn from the great engineers that came before us. Now as people are struggling to figure it out on their own in their basement studios, I feel the time has come for some real sharing of information/philosophy.

[whinecellar]

GREAT post. Yes indeed, we need more people willing to TEACH the craft. Internet fora can be great for gleaning good info, but like you say, many times people just buy into hype and then wonder why their stuff sucks after they spent tons of $$$ on whatever "everyone else is using."

So, following your example, I offer the same to the OP and anyone else: feel free to send me your mixes and I'd be more than happy to offer some tips. Same disclaimer too: I'm not mixing any John Williams scores at Abbey Road, but I've been really busy (which I guess means "successful"?) doing scoring work heavily based on many of these sample libraries, and I've gotten great results.

Thanks for your post, Mushy.

Jim

[shadyru]

Thanks Mushy. Great response. I will send you a mix I am working on tonight. I am still attempting to learn how to mix different frequencies so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!!