So... when I got to the end of this diatribe... I naturally reread it... and I realized that it kinda needed a "preamble" ... so here it is:
When I'm working, there is a certain level of schizophrenia I seem to acheive... it's one of the reasons I don't like people in my control room when I'm working, especially mixing... but I do want them around in case I want to check on direction or get an outside/fresh set of trained ears to give me a suggestion or two.
Frankly, with the half dozen people that are rattling around my brain [most of them arguing with each other] the control room is crowded enough. As I got a bit deeper into the explanation process, I got a bit deeper into the various characters that argue with each other over what's going to happen... however, they're a bit difficult to differentiate with the written word... so when you see a completely different writing style, or me arguing with myself, find another voice when you read it... good ****ing luck
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When it comes time to mix something, whether or not I've cut the tracks, I generally push up all the faders, get a bit of a balance, then listen to the song. Then I try to figure out what it's telling me? Every time I try to muscle a song into doing what I want with a mix, the mix invariably sucks... so, at least for me, it's all a question of sitting there, listening to the damn thing, and try to interpret what the hell the song is trying to tell me, and then do what it tells me to do [which has either been good training for being married... or the other way around].
With a kik and a bass arrangement, the first question is just how important is the kik drum to the song.
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Well damn dude... the kik drum is everything, duh"... not necessarily. In engineering circles many practioners seem to have gotten into some kind of cock thing with kik sounds... it seems like it's a worse syndrome with SR engineers than with studio rats, but it's still an issue in the 'little room'.
There are more than a few songs that will cross your desk where the kik drum really needs to do little more than move a tad of extra air on 1 & 3. It can melt into the bass sound reinforcing the tone of the bass on 1 & 3, and the song will be perfectly happy.
Other times the song will tell you that you damn well better separate the kik and bass... which is where the "fun" really starts. First you need to figure out who claimed to be the audio 'limbo' champion [how low do it go?]... sometimes it's the bottom on the kik, sometimes it's the bottom on the bass. One is going to have more 60Hz than the other, the other is going to have more 80-100Hz than the other... it's often pretty cut and dry who goes where. Even with the same rigs, it will often change from song to song... so don't forget to take each song on a case by case basis.
Sometimes when I get stuff to mix from less than skilled 'recordists'... the two instruments will fight like it's closing time and there's only one girl left in the bar... and seeing as she's already blown them both in the parking lot... both feel the right to the territory. This is when you actually start to earn your money, as you now have to referree between these two very stubborn events.
When I realize that I'm going to have to weed out the **** on the bottom... the first thing I'll do is drop back and punt. We'll get the damn ball back, but at the moment we have to figure out how to **** up the defense enough to get some serious yardage. I will now bring up the vocals, snare, H/H, percussion, and a couple of the more important 'melody' oriented instruments.
While we usually think of 'groove' happening in the rythm section... I find that the rythm section groove ain't **** unless the vocals sit in, and texturaly further that groove... so, seeing as the bottom of my rythm section is being an unco-operative ****... I'll move on to the other groove oriented aspects, try to get them to flow, gel, and generally sit together without fighting... then I'll get back to the two boys with the attitude problem and teach them a mother****ing lesson.
I'm not a big fan of reverbs on vocals... occassionally they can help, but more often than not, it'll give me a pain in the balls trying to get other **** to cut through the reverb fog... but I am a serious ****ing fan of rythmic vocal delays. In the final product, you don't necessarily have to hear them, but they should be felt [
huh? are you on crack?... no, by "felt" instead of heard, what I mean is that you don't necessarily hear the delay... but as you go along with your mix you turn them off from time to time... as you do that, you'll find the vocal getting "flat" sounding, that it loses part of the compelling texture you've created... and when you turn the delays back on, the vocal sits back in the groove and takes it's seat in with the other instruments, without necessarily being the loudest motherfucer on the block]
So now I'm sitting there with the snare (top end of the kit.) [this is where the application crashed... we'll see if I can get back to where I was going or not... needless to say, I'm pissed!!!] the percussion, the main melodic instruments, and the vocal... so, how do we get the bottom in?
First, let's take a look at the kik drum... why isn't it separating from the the damn bass? Well... it could very well be the bass's fault. Is there a bass 'mic' and a bass 'DI' track? If there are, are they working together or turning the bass into a washy ball of ****? Until recently, when I discovered the
Littlelabs IBP, I would pick one... mic or DI. Which ever one had the best 'growl' to it.
With an IBP (or 2 or 3) I can usually get the bass to really gel (in a seperate but equal sort of way) with the kik without having to necessarily pick one track over another... so... while we're looking at the kik... let's figure out why it's not getting through the bass.
Usually it seems to be a time/envelop kind of thing that causes the two to jam up [at least as much as a frequency thing]... so with the application of a real muscle compressor like an 1176LN or a Purple MC-76 you can **** with the envelop of the bass so it will say what it needs to say, and get out of the way of the other ****.
By 'growl' I mean the note of the bass, and how it sits in the track in terms of definition... usually I don't seem to want the world's prettiest bass tone to get the bass to really say what it's supposed to say... more often then not I'm gonna try to get the bass tone to really gel with the guitars/keyboards/melodic instruments but sometimes it's going to be a real focal point [
damn, this is no where near as good as the one that got eaten before... mother****er]. Now the kik has to have the right envelop to squeeze through the damn bass.
Enter something along the lines of a slow attack, quick to medium release compressor on the kik drum, or a DBX-160 VU whichever is closest. This will allow me to get the high end point of the drum to sit with the bass, hopefully not **** with the other ****, nor become one of the those damn annoying "little foot tick drums" that were so common on 80's metal records... I'm generally looking for a highend point that's either up at like 12-14kHz [so it kinda sounds like the beater is sinking into the kik head], or down around 1kHz where you start to get the real 'whack' of the drum, but run into the inherent danger of the sound ****ing up the bass tone, one or more of the melodic instruments... or worse, the money track [vocal].
So now, hopefully, I have a bass that's solid, and a kik drum that cuts, and the two tones are kinda working without jamming up the rest of the track... if there's still a problem, it's time to get out the old GML 8200, don a mask and gown and commence to doing some surgery. I'll often try to find the lowend point of the kik, isolate it with the 8200 with a narrow bandwidth, then open the bandwidth until the bottom of the kik is beating the **** out of me... then split the difference on the bandwidth between where I started and where I ended, put the EQ on the bass, and cut a db or two out of the bass tone to allow the low end point of the kik to cut through the bass without the conflicts I had before.
The trick here is to not EQ the bass... but use the envelop capabilities of the compressor on the bass to accentuate the parts of the bass tone that make it special, while keeping it in context with the rest of the song.
So now it's just a question of printing it, listening to the whole thing, tweezing some ****, lather rinse repeat until the mother****er comes together.
Sorry that this version of it wasn't nearly as good as the last version of it... but like a lot of things, there was only one shot at it. Getting into the right headspace to get **** mixed right is real similar to where I was before with the previous response [which went all over the place just like 'preamble' said it was going to... at the end I was gonna go watch 'The Shining' and wait for football to come on TV... but alas, that head space ain't gonna ****in' happen again on this post.
Kind of a shame... best of luck.