Mixing... I love the fundamentals but LOVE the little extras

[R3altruth]

All the HPF, compression... panning... all that is needed or more songs than not.... on pretty much every song I do....

But don't you just love the stuff that goes beyond that

The Delays... Modulation... Flangers.....
using a delay on 1 particular part of the percussion ( I love delays on Conga or Bongos)... Throwing a a phaser on something.... Flanger on a vocal mixed in under the lead???

I LOVE that shit....

Thats where mixing becomes creative.... Be adventurous.. try some shit... and don't just wait til the end of the mix to do it... because something like that could throw off the balance of your mix.. and instead of going back into yoru mix to fix things.. you just delete the effect... if you think wild and crazy during the mix you can generally use this stuff and find a way to make it work

I LOVE dudes that throw their drums to 2" and then feed it back to the DAW....

Using amp simulators and distrtion on just about anything....

Gated Reverb.... I've done heavy hihat reverb and delay before... if its a real small Closed hihat in an R&B song the hihat starts to feel like rain just little drops comign down all around you...


This is the creative part of mixing.. the part that makes the engineer a producer in his own right

So I ask.. what are some wild and crazy FX you've done that you really didn't have to do... i.e. the mix would still sound good without it... bu the result was the difference between a great mix and a hit song?????

[six_wax]

Love that opposite-panned, 1/8 predelayed room verb that CLA puts on his hihats..

...and the delays that Michael Brauer uses on ride cymbal grooves on some of the Coldplay stuff...

For some reason delays on drums rarely occurs to me, but I threw a dubby triplet-feel saturated delay on the snare on a spacey verse section once, and it just *made* the freakin' track.

[Cameron Johnson]

Back in the day, when I was new to recording myself and the like, I'd easily get tired of doing take after take of a drum track. I'd eventually just settle with a track where the error was near the end. Then I'd just add some funky panned stereo delays and fade out using some automated volume control. It really made for an interesting outro, especially when you start modulating the delay times (faster, slower - keeping it variable), while the rest of the tune sort of fades out.

It sounds messy, and on paper, it is. However, it really made for a kind of creativity that I didn't expect.

[R3altruth]

I like those...

Six... Predelay just makes reverb fun... Early on in mixing life, Khaliq Glover put me on to using predelay on my lead vocal verb and I've been experimenting ever since

Cameron... F#%$-ups are the #1 breeding ground for creativity...
Variable delay speeds sounds cool... I never really did it much... mostly just feedback on the delay... probably sounded like the drummer was a robot that was short circuiting... good shit

[Cameron Johnson]

Originally Posted by R3altruth

Cameron... F#%$-ups are the #1 breeding ground for creativity...
Variable delay speeds sounds cool... I never really did it much... mostly just feedback on the delay... probably sounded like the drummer was a robot that was short circuiting... good shit

Yes - yes they are :o)

Variable delay is even cooler when you've got your hand on the control, manually adjusting! And you're right: it DOES sound a but like a robot going haywire.... how I love it so!!!!!!!!!

[R3altruth]

What delay do you use?
Sonar has a stock cakewalk one... a Sonitus one.. and then there is always good old WAVES supertap.....

[steveschizoid]

There was a heavy, downtuned to C sort of band (not a great mix because the bass guitar was one of those you can't clarify no matter how hard you try, and the guitar was to fizzy and mid scooped) that had a song (near the end) where there was this repeated call and response. The lead vox went "meet me" and the background replied "at the gates of hell!!!" I took the backgrounds, tuned one down an octave, then reverse verbed them and added an echo on "hell." It made the song worthwhile for me. Almost every song has at least one detail that begs for some sort of manipulation above and beyond the call of duty!

[R3altruth]

Thats actually REALLY COOL...

If you're saying "Gates of hell" you almost HAVE TO tune something down an octave

Had you not talked bad about the bands tuning and tone I would have assumed that was a cool song just by the FX you used....

Good stuff

[u b k]

Originally Posted by steveschizoid

Almost every song has at least one detail that begs for some sort of manipulation above and beyond the call of duty!

quoted because it's important enough to repeat.


gregory scott - ubk
.

[thethrillfactor]

Originally Posted by R3altruth

This is the creative part of mixing.. the part that makes the engineer a producer in his own right

So I ask.. what are some wild and crazy FX you've done that you really didn't have to do... i.e. the mix would still sound good without it... bu the result was the difference between a great mix and a hit song?????

Not enough songs or artists/producers want engineers taking chances with their productions like that anymore. Pretty sad really. Its really funny with the amount of tracks and plug ins that around today the productions are so mundane and simple.

Someone like Spike Stent who's pretty much made a name for himself doing the kind of stuff you are asking about, if he had to start over today would be a fish out of water with alot of the modern productions.

There aren't any more Bjork, Massive Attack or Seal type productions/artists anymore and the ones that are no one knows about or will ever hear.

Again its really sad.

[George Necola]

Originally Posted by u b k

quoted because it's important enough to repeat.


gregory scott - ubk
.

not in modern popmusic..

sorry bout so much negativity in this thread..

[chrishansson]

One thing I did recently was in the mix of one of my own band's newer songs, but bear with me here.

We have a somewhat bridge/building section where the two guitarists are holding out chords while the drums and bass are carrying it along for 8 drawn out bars. At the very end of the section I put in, ever so faintly, A Dmin chord fading in... I used a synth that used an endless amount of harmonics to really get those 40khz ghost notes.

then

Right as that chord is fading in, getting ready for the climax, I have a 1.5 second reverse snare hit that fades in getting ready for that SMACK of the snare..

then

Directly when the riff changes to the next part on the left side of the overheads I do a send to a Flanger which somewhat fades off, and then at the very end of that riff, if fades back in right in time for the guitar solo to start.

I'm really proud of how the song turned out. If anyone would like a WAV copy of it, I'd be more than happy to share. I also did some other hidden gems in there.

[jigsawlogic]

This reminds me of quote from a Zen master, which seems to fit the process of musical development well:

Before studying Zen, a river is just a river, and a tree is just a tree.
While learning Zen, a river is no longer a river, and a tree is no longer a tree.
After attaining enlightenment, a river is again just a river, and tree just a tree.

Before learning mixing, music is just music, and sound is just sound (music being a subset thereof with a large degree of order and intention). But the first peek behind the curtain, coming face-to-face with the complexity of the gears behind seemingly simple recordings, uncovers a side to the reality of sound that is vast, beautiful, and could never have been guessed at...you are now at the stage where a river is no longer a river. Then comes the realization that the very stuff of sound is like a salt water taffy that can be pulled into unfamiliar orientations that themselves are new objects of pleasure, and it becomes a joy to see just how far you can push things into unrecognizability while still retaining coherence. But ultimately, music is not about the coherence of one part with respect to itself; it is the meaning of one part with respect to the whole. You will find that every component, rather than iterating itself towards its most perfect (or wildly expressed) form, must take into account every other component that contributes to the whole of a song, and be accorded a natural position of importance. The romance of the machinery behind the scenes (the part that makes a river more than a river) is superseded by the importance of the illusion that the machinery creates (the appearance of a river). So, after mastery has occurred, the river is once again a river...because you can control the invisible aspects to make it so.

This of course does not mean that surreal aspects should ultimately be eliminated in favor of creating a sense of reality that cannot be falsified (although the hallmark of a good mixer is going one better than reality without you noticing it). What it means is that the balance between real and surreal is ultimately dictated by the overall intent of the music you are working on. And this balance will tell you where and when to bring in the "little extras".

[RainbowStorm]

I don't like the little extras when not even the fundamentals are in place. A good example is trying to mix something that doesn't sound good in the first place. For me mixing is "the little extras". It's fundamental that musicians use high quality instruments that are in tune. Too often I hear either bad instruments in tune or good instruments out of tune. It's amazing how much value is lost due to these kinds of fundamentals not being in place. Musicians out there, do yourselves a favor and don't even play on bad instruments, unless you like to produce bad sounds. These days I hear fine electric guitars going through artificial distortion processes, just realise it will not sound good on any record you will ever make, configure it however you like, removing it from the signal chain was the best decision you ever made. Another example is the monitor choices people make these days. Give me some sweet amps and that's "the little extras" for me, I want the fundamentals in place first of all, what about a pair of really good sets of speakers to begin with. The choice of music platform. Having all these amazing plug-ins at hands is "the little extras"´for me, give me some and I'll throw up. I want a true 64-bit digital audio engine, that's fundamental and that's what I want. Having the fundamentals in place, that's "the little extras" for me and those "little extras" I love!

[R3altruth]

Jigsaw... I feel thoroughly enlightened... thank you

Rainbow.... I agree.... thats why any extra steps need to be done with respect to the fundamental process....
An amazing bassline will sound horrible when coupled with a muddy kick....
Delay is almost painful when an instrument is played with bad timing
And yes... bad guitar tone hurts....

[R3altruth]

Originally Posted by chrishansson

I'm really proud of how the song turned out. If anyone would like a WAV copy of it, I'd be more than happy to share. I also did some other hidden gems in there.

I'd love to hear it...

[Dean Roddey]

I'm still too much in the 'struggling to get it right' phase I guess. Every night I sit down at the computer and I let it know in uncertain terms I'm going to kicks its butt tonight. Of course I conveniently ignore the fact that it always kicks mine instead. But, I've slowly worked my way up to the point that I have my occasional victories.

Since I'm the arteest and the engineer and the mixer, I have to struggle on all sides of the fence. In the end, I think that composition is king, in terms of true fundamentals. A good composition makes everything else downstream infinitely easier. I really try to pay very close attention to the composition in songs that I find particularly good, and figure out why they are good composition and how everything fits together.

When the composition provides you with the space (both temporally and in the frequency spectrum) to play, you can do lots of interesting things and it doesn't get messy or busy.

One of the things I often find interesting in the tricks department is just moving tracks forward and back in time a bit. It can often really change the feel of the song in a way that doesn't add any processing at all. It can change the phase against another part, or give the part a more urgent or more laid back feel. Just because it was played at a paticular time in the beat doesn't mean it has to necessarily stay there, so that's another choice you have as a mixer.

[Old Goat]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

I'm still too much in the 'struggling to get it right' phase I guess. Every night I sit down at the computer and I let it know in uncertain terms I'm going to kicks its butt tonight. Of course I conveniently ignore the fact that it always kicks mine instead. But, I've slowly worked my way up to the point that I have my occasional victories.

Since I'm the arteest and the engineer and the mixer, I have to struggle on all sides of the fence. In the end, I think that composition is king, in terms of true fundamentals. A good composition makes everything else downstream infinitely easier. I really try to pay very close attention to the composition in songs that I find particularly good, and figure out why they are good composition and how everything fits together.

When the composition provides you with the space (both temporally and in the frequency spectrum) to play, you can do lots of interesting things and it doesn't get messy or busy.

+1

Thanks, Dean, you just saved me a buttload of typing!

[trompetfreak]

I've been doing wicked stuff with flangers on overheads live! I muted the original signal, and only used te "wet" signal. Wasn't jazz, it was industrial/metal.

Once I went crazy on a tape-delay. Winding it back and forth as a mad-man and that gave some cool results on the vocals.

[chrishansson]

Originally Posted by R3altruth

I'd love to hear it...

Edit: where is the file that I uploaded?

[R3altruth]

I don't really know

[Unclenny]

Originally Posted by RainbowStorm

I don't like the little extras when not even the fundamentals are in place.

Yep.

A good mix of a well played and well tracked song is alright by me.

Of course there are those cool delays I like to stick in at the ends of certain phrases............

[chrishansson]

Oh well, I've tried uploading it several times, but it keeps giving me an error message to relay to Jules.. which I did. So I uploaded it to a different website if you want to check it out:

Send big files the easy way. Files too large for email attachments? No problem!

Here you go friend! Thanks for your interest, I am always happy to share what I do.

And its a bit on the extreme side of metal, but if you can get past the screaming you might be able to appreciate some of the instruments, we love doing what we do.

I recorded the drums using Cascade Fatheads as overheads, 57's on the toms, C414 on the snare. Justin, the drummer, has two kicks, so what I did was put a Studio Projects mic, Figure 8 and set it in between the kicks, each side pointing at the batter head. This picked up at least a good enough reference track with the audio peaks of the kicks to turn that audio track into a MIDI score using that awesome function in Logic.

anyhow, I recorded the guitars through a Peavey XXX with a Mesa 4x12 with Celestion Vintage 30's, and did some pretty sweet cab modeling with Impulse Responses, which I believe is "going through" an Ampeg SVT mic'ed with a Neumann U47, just to give some extra thickness. Originally mic'd with the C414..

I have several different interfaces that I used throughout it.. MOTU 8Pre, PreSonus Firepod and a small Tascam us-144.
Recorded at 24bit/96khz .. and the WAV file thats uploaded is dither level 1 to 16/44.1

Please enjoy!

[R3altruth]

Since this is a place of friends and sharing.. I have a question...

I do R&B/Soul/pop music

I have to ask... at the end of a show is your drummer pretty much passed out? The drums ALWAYS have SO MUCH going on...

It seems like he'd have to have the stamina of Michael Phelps....

And do you have to pan the guitars pretty far away so the don't interfere with each other? cause the rhythm and lead parts are both pretty busy....

I dig Mesa stuff... especially with Celestions....

The only Peavey I've used is the 5150 though....

The solo really stands out because of what you did leading up to it too

[chrishansson]

Oh yeah, the guitars and the overheads are hard panned. I kept the toms about 50% each way, he has 4 toms, so they spread out nicely. Bass, kick, snare, and vocals are all center.. except the layered vocals for emphasis which all have varying pan placement.

And yes, haha, after shows Justin looks like he took a shower with his clothes on. He seems to love it though, music is just about the only thing any of us really do; we're single, about to move out of Alaska, and just about ready to hit the ground running.

[china jam]

When does a flanger EVER sound good??

!!

[Sinewave]

Originally Posted by thethrillfactor

Not enough songs or artists/producers want engineers taking chances with their productions like that anymore. Pretty sad really. Its really funny with the amount of tracks and plug ins that around today the productions are so mundane and simple.

Someone like Spike Stent who's pretty much made a name for himself doing the kind of stuff you are asking about, if he had to start over today would be a fish out of water with alot of the modern productions.

There aren't any more Bjork, Massive Attack or Seal type productions/artists anymore and the ones that are no one knows about or will ever hear.

Again its really sad.

And sometimes it's just to much , I recently bought SEAL SOUL the other day , the Music and arrangements were really nice (David Foster ) and we all know that SEAL has such an amazing voice , but after listening to it Twice ,IMHO it could of done without the Effect Wizardry that usually goes into a SEAL album.
It would of been so nice just to hear him open and raw , the music suited it.