A take on how to glue your tracks together

[gainreduction]

Think about this. In them tape-days the tracks had something in common.

First, you used the console for tracking. Meaning all tracks were recorded with the same preamps and eq. This already puts the tracks in the same sonic territory.

Second, the tracks ended up on tape. Again, another stage of in-common-sonics.

Third, the tracks were mixed on a console thus again getting the same basic flavour, although maybe a different one this time.

After doing some mixing work (I rarely mix other peoples tracks) for a project where nothing fit together sonically I started to do some thinking, It shouldn't be this hard to get tracks to glue.

Then I mixed my own production where everything was recorded with the same kind of pre. It was so much easier sonically. Harder because you're biased by your own song and production but anyway, at least some built in glue.

In the days of digital I think this is very important. If your tracks have something in common from the get go you're gonna be allright.

This doesn't mean you can't have 10 different kinds of pres (we're gearslutz after all) but try choosing a pre for the song, not the individual track and see how you like the outcome. Please report back, I'd be curious to know what you think.

[AlexLakis]

Projects that I've done using only one console or one 8 channel pre have definately lent themselves to a certain "sound," but I don't think that necessarily equates to tracks "glueing together" any more than usual.

The glue is just the glue. If you're mixing a bunch of tracks that have the same midrange bump (imparted by the console or preamp,) then you could end up with a midrange mess. Or, it could wind up just sounding bland or flat due to lack of contrast. Not necessarily gluey at all. In my experiences, I've had better success getting tracks to "glue" together that have a different sonic signature that compliment and "round out" each other. For example, mixing a more muddy sound-hole mic on an acoustic guitar with a neck/string mic with less low end and more high end. These two fill out the spectrum when combined, and running them thru a nice, sticky compressor or limiter will help "glue them together" into a cohesive unit.

You can glue together tracks that are mostly similar or mostly different. The rewards depend on their application in the mix.

P.S. You mention putting the tracks on tape as another stage of in-common sonics. Wouldn't recording all the tracks into a DAW be just as an in-common sonic stage?

Nice topic! thumbsup

[Tom H]

I tend to think that tracking with different pre's is a good way to achieve separation, atleast contributing to the different character wich each instrument should/could have within a song. That doesn't nescessarily mean doing the opposite leads to glue.

Glue is something i would like to hear on a subgroup rather than on an entire mix.

But i guess it really depends on the kind of music you're mixing, i agree older music sounds much more glued than the stuff you hear nowadays. Also it seems like vinyl sounds more glued for some reason.

+1 nice topic! thumbsup

[djui5]

2 words

short delay

[JamesMcp]

course it could all come down to the arrangement and instrumentation

[Killahurts]

Originally Posted by djui5

2 words

short delay

2 more words


not always

[jgrif08]

Originally Posted by djui5

2 words

short delay

2 words

please explain

[RusRant]

2 words

short delay

I agree, I use mainly delay when mixing, using minimal reverbs, and it helps with depth and cohesiveness of the mix. I do a lot of mix work for other people that is not tracked in the best of circumstances. Lots of reverb added while tracking, muddy sound, no decisions made while tracking. Delay helps IMO bring some glue. Oh, and lots of EQ.

[Jim Williams]

If you cut all the tracks with different preamps, most with heavy color, you may be screwed at mix time. If the tracks sonically don't blend well, which is an easy situation if you think about it, your only recourse is to either turd polish or re-cut the tracks. Not too good.

If you track with neutrality, you then have the raw essence of the sounds. Then you can play with all the color boxes at mix time and select colors that complement rather that conflict. Any other way is a gamble.

I'm not convinced a wide pallet of mic pre sonics is that desirable. The great recordings of the past of which most folks respect were cut with one mic preamp. The unlistenable crap we hear today was done with all sorts of stuff.

You make the call...

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[pianodano]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

<snip> The great recordings of the past of which most folks respect were cut with one mic preamp. The unlistenable crap we hear today was done with all sorts of stuff.

You make the call...

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

That's telling it like it is - and the way it was.

Danny

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by djui5

2 words

short delay

I think you are only reading the title of the thread but not the post. gainreduction is not asking for advice on how to "glue tracks." He is offering a theory for debate and "short delays" while they may or may not help glue a mix, is not part of his theory.

[drBill]

I agree with gainreduction and Jim. The old time albums that we all love and are trying to recapture were basically done with one type of pre. Sometimes more, but rarely a smorgasbord of pres like is so popular today. I think multiple pres can work, but it definately takes more foresight from the engineer about how the final "sound" is going to be presented with careful attention to detail.

[swankdoc]

Well, whats an 'un-glued' song sound like?
Pretty obvious when you hear them.
imo, it has more to do with what the musicians are bringing to the table, than the pres or consoles or whatever. 4 or 5 people with unique style, presentation and honesty. Guys who have practiced hard together and are laying it out with convincing resolve.
Un-glue = software generic drumming + software generic piano + fakey humanizing-tempo-shift-this-pitch-bend-that crap + ungodly wave file manipulation to fix-it-later + vocals in dead room + cutting out every and all extraneous circumstantial sound + DI guitars + reverb box attempt at gluing it all together = today's sound.

[RusRant]

This is not an issue with me personally because of preference and sometimes budget, pres are usually limited. I have a few that I like to use and stick with them. But I have seen this to be true with projects recorded in a few different studios and over a long time period. I still say massive EQ couldn't hurt. J/K

[carival]

Originally Posted by JamesMcp

course it could all come down to the arrangement and instrumentation

This is the best "glue", and costs less than any mic pre.

[edvdr76]

I use a few diffrent pre's when recording. I track and mix on 2" tape. What I use to glue my tracks together is COMPRESSION. After I have my eq's, individual compressing on kick, sn and bass, I run all my drum and bass tracks to 2 channels and I compress the crap out of those 2 channels. I then bring up those 2 heavily compressed channels under the original drum and bass tracks. That formula has worked for me every single time I use it. I use a Summit DCL-200 tube compressor for this job. I use another DCL-200 as my buss compressor and it makes my mixes sound nice and big.

[DeathMonkey]

This is an interesting topic. As a cash strapped project studio owner, most of my tracks go through the same pres, and I think it is something interesting to think about.

Like anything else, of course, mic pre color has to be thought of in the larger context. I think too may people fall in love with certain signals chains and sounds without really thinking about everything that is going on. For example, you know that throwing an SM57 in front of a Plexi through a 1073 and an LA2A is going to give you a great guitar tone 99% of the time. But is it the right guitar tone for what is going on?

But in this day and age of digital, I am wondering - I am looking to get a premium 4 channel pre for my studio rebuild, and people ask me why not get a better 2 channel, or a killer channel strip for the same money? Part of it is because I DO like sonic consistency - I am not so advanced an engineer to be able to mix and match pres, really, yet... I am better served learning to get consistent results from one pre - working with what I know will sharpen my skills in the booth rather than the control room. Some of it also, though, is that if I record fairly clean and neutral, I can run preamp sim plugins to get a little flavor without committing to a knowledge base I don't have.

Sure, it may not sound the same, but in my mind, for a project studio, it seems that being able to mix the sonic character of pres after the fact to make sure they sound good in context is better than committing up front to a sound that may not fit.

I also think that there is a benefit to sonic consistency, at least across instrument groups - recording all the guitars with similar signal chains, recording, if not all the drums, at least all the toms with one chain, perhaps the snare and BD, same pres on all the vocals ... I would think that it would lend itself to the idea of "you are there" to have the same sonic signature on like instruments. Not sure if I am making any sense, lol, but I imagine that if it sounds like the pre timbres are radically different, it will cause a bit of goofery in the idea that all these things are occurring in the same sonic space.

Really just thinking out loud, here, but it does raise some interesting points.

[chrispick]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

If you track with neutrality, you then have the raw essence of the sounds. Then you can play with all the color boxes at mix time and select colors that complement rather that conflict. Any other way is a gamble.

There is no neutrality in recording. Mic placement affects sonic character more than preamps do. Choice of mic placement (and choice of mic) is choice of color.

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by swankdoc

Well, whats an 'un-glued' song sound like?
Pretty obvious when you hear them.
imo, it has more to do with what the musicians are bringing to the table, than the pres or consoles or whatever. 4 or 5 people with unique style, presentation and honesty. Guys who have practiced hard together and are laying it out with convincing resolve.

This is brought up like a political campaign slogan over and over..... SO WHAT?

Not picking a fight with you man, your post is completely valid and any engineer with any talent realizes this.

I just don't think it needs repeated on every thread by everyone here. More importantly most of us here are working at a regional or even a local level, we don't get to choose the musicians we record. We can and do turn away the worst of them from time to time but sometimes we need the money or the band has good music but they are not good players. We don't always have the political or economic option of bringing someone else in.

Yes I would love to record Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham for every session but that is not reality. In the real world we all want to make things sound better with the hand we are dealt and most of the time this means making the best out of a bad band....

Sorry man, just sick of hearing it is about the band and the song, OF COURSE it is.

To the original idea of the thread, I think the one preamp thing has some worth. My plan for the last month or so is to try tracking a song with just one preamp and tracking it again with my usual suspects. The hard part is matching levels and such, there are so many variables its a tricky task to test. In the end it might just be a "I like to work this way" over "I don't like to work that way" kind of thing?

[demel]

Originally Posted by not_so_new

Yes I would love to record Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham for every session but that is not reality. In the real world we all want to make things sound better with the hand we are dealt and most of the time this means making the best out of a bad band....

Sorry man, just sick of hearing it is about the band and the song, OF COURSE it is.

The audio engineer judging artists,songs and their arrangments is a really slippery slope.

The old saying that you can't polish a turd is BS.

It's way to easy to blame a sh*tty mix mix on someone else than your own crappy engineering skills.

My own mixes have gotten alot better since getting over that rubbish.

Some of the most classic songs ever could have been easily judged by the engineer as bad.

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by demel

The audio engineer judging artists,songs and their arrangments is a really slippery slope.

The old saying that you can't polish a turd is BS.

It's way to easy to blame a sh*tty mix mix on someone else than your own crappy engineering skills.

My own mixes have gotten alot better since getting over that rubbish.

Some of the most classic songs ever could have been easily judged by the engineer as bad.

Exactly. My job is to make the band sound as good as I can no excuses. Who am I to judge someone else's song or abilities, that is not what I am getting paid for.. I am getting paid to make the band sound good.

[doorknocker]

Two more words: The arrangement.

[nadumr]

Originally Posted by doorknocker

Two more words: The arrangement.

The only words worth mentioning, AMEN.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by gainreduction

Think about this. In them tape-days the tracks had something in common.

First, you used the console for tracking. Meaning all tracks were recorded with the same preamps and eq. This already puts the tracks in the same sonic territory.

Second, the tracks ended up on tape. Again, another stage of in-common-sonics.

Third, the tracks were mixed on a console thus again getting the same basic flavour, although maybe a different one this time.

After doing some mixing work (I rarely mix other peoples tracks) for a project where nothing fit together sonically I started to do some thinking, It shouldn't be this hard to get tracks to glue.

Then I mixed my own production where everything was recorded with the same kind of pre. It was so much easier sonically. Harder because you're biased by your own song and production but anyway, at least some built in glue.

In the days of digital I think this is very important. If your tracks have something in common from the get go you're gonna be allright.

This doesn't mean you can't have 10 different kinds of pres (we're gearslutz after all) but try choosing a pre for the song, not the individual track and see how you like the outcome. Please report back, I'd be curious to know what you think.

Very interesting food for thought.

On one hand I'm thinking of things like the (80s or was it very early 90s?) Sinatra Duets album... which sounded INSANELY BAD (and I do NOT mean good) to me because of the HUGE mismatch between the sonic footprints of the guest star vocals vis a vis Frankie's vocals. His vocals, not surprisingly (since he had his longtime favorite mics, yadda yadda) are pretty sonically consistent throughout, IIRC (and consistently not nearly his finest work) -- but the gues stars are ALL OVER THE FRIGGIN' MAP, sound-wise. Some are thin. Some are fat. Some sound distant; some completely in your face. And then the treatments are all over the map, too, which is really perplexing. Why have verb on a guest star and a radically different verb on Sintra?

Anyhow, that's that.


But I can also think of work I did or participated in at one of my old schools. We had a nice old 16 channel Neve and a small but tasty mic locker with a U47 on the top shelf (as it were). We had a plate 'verb, a couple dbx compressors... a couple other things. Running onto an MCI 16-2".

And that provided us with a nice, quality sound.

And I grew to hate that sound. Everything that came out of there had it. Even when I mixed (and lost the plate that seemingly everyone else drenched their mixes in [and the then new trick of gated plate on the snares, oh my! )... it all had this very cushy, softened, overly smooth kind of sound...

I mean, iso any one track and it sounded creamy.

Put it all together and it sounded... warm, smooth, and kind of boring.

[idylldon]

Originally Posted by doorknocker

Two more words: The arrangement.

Yep, and I'll also add that having players actually play together at the same time with mic bleed and artistic interaction helps to minimize that sterile, isolated, solitary-confinement kind of feeling that most modern music has. To me, one of the worst things that has happened to recording in the past few decades is the penchant for tracking in isolation. Overdubs? Sure, do them in isolation and individually if necessary, but recording the basic rhythm tracks (guitar/keys/bass/drums) by themselves can easily result in a lack of "glue" (I'd call it a "cohesive groove") in the end.

My 0.02.

Cheers,
--
Don

[DeathMonkey]

Originally Posted by theblue1

Very interesting food for thought.



And I grew to hate that sound. Everything that came out of there had it. Even when I mixed (and lost the plate that seemingly everyone else drenched their mixes in [and the then new trick of gated plate on the snares, oh my! )... it all had this very cushy, softened, overly smooth kind of sound...

I mean, iso any one track and it sounded creamy.

Put it all together and it sounded... warm, smooth, and kind of boring.

This is a great point - remember when studios were prized not for their gear per se, but for their SOUND? The room , the board, the big intangibles more than any certain set of outboard gear? There was a point where engineers could tell without looking in what studio something was recorded.

But now we take little pieces of those "signature sounds" - Neve pres, SSL pres, clones of this or that, or vintage gear from this or that - and use em like cooks. Sometimes it works - the idea of "yeah, we did the guitars at Electric Ladyland 1974, the drums at The Record Plant '89, and the vocals at Oceanway '96 " stuff is kinda neat... but sometimes it doesn't. gel as we would hope.

So how do we balance between a potentially boring "signature sound" of consistent gear and "flavor of the month" sonic trends, and our own personal favorites? I think this just places more emphasis on an engineer and producers need to know their gear, and their palette.

This raises a whole bunch of stuff in my brain as I re-gear my studio, too. You guys rock

[johnjm22]

Originally Posted by djui5

2 words

short delay

I agree, I use mainly delay when mixing, using minimal reverbs, and it helps with depth and cohesiveness of the mix. I do a lot of mix work for other people that is not tracked in the best of circumstances. Lots of reverb added while tracking, muddy sound, no decisions made while tracking. Delay helps IMO bring some glue. Oh, and lots of EQ.

Hmmm.

So how exactly can using short delays "glue" a mix together? Where are you applying the delays? On individual tracks? Subgroups? Stereo Buss!?

I don't use very many delays when mixing. I'm wondering if I'm missing something. I just don't see the need to use them all too often. Enlighten me.

[stevep]

gainreductionThink about this. In them tape-days the tracks had something in common.

You mean yesterday........ i still use tape on every session i can

First, you used the console for tracking. Meaning all tracks were recorded with the same preamps and eq. This already puts the tracks in the same sonic territory.

What about different Mic's, That colors the sound more than a mic pre

I track through my console and rarely use outboard pres

Third, the tracks were mixed on a console thus again getting the same basic flavour, although maybe a different one this time.

Another awesome point !

Mixing tracks from tape that have never seen a converter sound way bigger and glue together better

[thethrillfactor]

One word...YOU!!!

You bring the glue to the production.

As the engineer,artist, producer,whatever.

If you are the engineer you either hear it or you don't.

You either have it or you don't.

Different mics with differnet mic pres in different rooms on tape or hard disk or console or DAW or the same everything...it really doesn't matter if you can't hear it as you are doing it.

If you are one of those "i'll leave it for the end" guys than yeah there will be very little glue and you will be pulling your hair out asking questions here on GS on how to fix it. But if you are a guy who hears & sees the whole sonic picture...with the mindset that at each turn it will add up like a continous thread than yeah your "sonic stamp" or "glue" will be all over it.

I think this is what seperates the good engineers from the great one's and where succesful experience comes into play. Again i stress successful because just having experience is not enough, there needs to be some successful return made from it. That's how you are able to repeat it because you know it works and it pays major dividends in the end. Unfortuantely for some its something you can't buy and they will continue trying to fill in the gaps by buying that hottest new thing or gadget to try to circumvent it.

Which for the gear pimps and boutique designers is great since it will guarantee that they will have cash in their pockets from the inexperienced.

[Absolute]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

The great recordings of the past of which most folks respect were cut with one mic preamp. The unlistenable crap we hear today was done with all sorts of stuff.

You make the call...

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

Ok..I made the call. Todays stuff is sonically supeior to "back in the day". There is no contest. The great recordings of the past are some old guys using their bias from the age they discovered music to base their opinion.

Im 43....but I dont let my romantic feelings of the past cloud my judgement. Its the songs we loved and how they connected with us in important times in our life that make those records great. The recordings sucked compared to todays sonics.
Its time to stop repeating this fallacy because even the musicians themselves who played on those records say today is light years ahead with the expection of a few fanatics