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Post-Script to Clockwork Clown Blog

fHumble fHingaz — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 13:32:53 GMT

This is a post-script to the final part of my 6 part "Clockwork Clown" blog. To get the full sense of this little piece, you really need to the final part of of the blog here: http://forum.recordingreview.com/blo...ls-vocals.html

Here's something interesting I came up with for the vocals on my winning May "Accident" mix:

One of the problems I had was with getting the vocal to sit "just right". In "Accident" the vocalist had quite a high voice with not much lower midrange power in it - almost the complete opposite of the Clockwork Clown vocal. The difficulty was in getting the vocal to "connect" with the rest of the mix.

Here's the sound of the solo'd vocal:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/may-vocal-solod

There seemed to be a "spectral gap" in the low mids that no amount of boosting eq seemed to fix - it just seemed to muddy things up. The problem was that there was virtually none to speak of in the first place...So it needed to be "generated" - but how?

Vocal tuning held the answer... well, not vocal tuning per se, but one of the parameters offered by vocal tuning. The "Formant" control is critical when making tuning shifts, especially large ones - it can stop the shift in pitch from creating a shift in the tonal timbre of the vocal. For example, if you have to shift a note up a number of tones, the tonal quality will probably end up being "chipmunk" like. But by turning down the formant control to counter the upward shift in pitch, the vocal will retain the same timbral quality as the unshifted notes. You can mess with the overall tone of a vocal just by changing the formant control. Turning it down is instant Barry White, turning it up is instant Elvin the Chipmunk.

I had often used the formant control to "naturalize" the sound of artificially generated harmonies, so I knew what it was capable of... This gave me the clue to appropriate it to inject a little "Barry White" into the "Accident" vocal & create some subtle low-mid "connective tissue". Again, my approach was to use it in parallel to the main vocal, just slid in underneath it:
Here's how it sounded solo'd:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/may-parallel-deep-vocal

...pretty weird huh?

Yet, combined with the main vocal, it just gave it that certain "something":
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/may-vocal-combined-final

So, there you go, intrepid Home Recording Audio Engineers, go forth & imagine your own weird & wonderful uses for all the incredible modern digital facilities we have at our fingertips!

All the best!
fH fH

Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 6 - The Vocals, THE VOCALS!

fHumble fHingaz — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 13:29:06 GMT

This is THE LAST(!) installment of my blog on mixing the winning mix of the 1st round of the Slate Digital Cup. Here is the previous installment: Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 5 - Atmospheres & Transitions

... & here is the link to the actual mix: http://forum.recordingreview.com/f14...29/#post334474

The RR regulars among you may notice that the title of this installment of the blog is somewhat familiar - I was intending to call it: "Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 6 - The Vocals, The Vocals, THE VOCALS!", but I ran out of space... Why? Well you might recall this thread Brandon posted after the "Sweet Sixteen" round of the April Slate Cup mix: http://forum.recordingreview.com/f8/...-vocals-46019/

... Now, Brandon never confirmed or denied that he was talking about my April mix, but that seemed to be the consensus... In any case, you can see that this was a hard lesson learned, & you can read evidence of me chastising myself severely later on in the same thread... The reason for my earnest audio-asceticism is pretty self-evident though - Without wanting to be self-aggrandizing, in my March Clockwork Clown mix, (I felt) I got it (THE VOCALS, that is) very right - so, I definitely took a GIANT leap backwards in April.

From the moment I heard Iain's (Lazy E's) vocals on Clockwork Clown, I knew they were something special. Let's face it, the guy can not only sing, write & play, he also has a beautiful, rounded, honeyed vocal tone, just begging to be presented in the most flattering way possible.

Intriguingly, one of the subjects that consumed hundreds, if not thousands of key strokes during the course of our "peer critique" phase of the March Slate Cup was the pitch issues of the supplied vocal track, & how these were handled/not handled by the participants. Pitch corrected vocals seem to be not only expected, but almost demanded on any modern mix - I've used it many times myself - but my goal was always to try to make it "invisible"....Just to be clear, I have nothing against "invisible" pitch correction - With tools like Melodyne, this is very much an attainable goal. The thing is, if it is truly invisible, no one will even be aware of it's use.

However, it seems in modern pop especially, & many other genre, "hard" tuned "Perfect" pitching, with it's characteristic "robot-like" artifacts is a sound that seems ubiquitous, unavoidable even. This is a sound I actually HATE with a passion.

Now, I realize, that's a pretty strong opinion to voice, & it pretty much labels me as an "old fogey" who hankers for the days of those serious, yet tone deaf, tuneless warblers who abounded during my childhood years, but hang on - this is nothing to do with sentimentality... I'm sure no one enjoys listening to off-key singing (myself included)... No, the thing that really irritates the hell out of me about this style of pitch correction is how boring, unimaginative, & pedestrian it all is....

It reminds me of the '80s when big gated reverb & big snares came into vogue - at first it was interesting, quirky, different, compelling even. Then it became the standard. Rather than coming up with something new/ different/ compelling/ original, the hordes of zombified brain-dead slavish imitator-engineers out there fed hungrily on decaying corpses of superior, artistic/original intellects & turned it into some kind of crazy reverb & snare arms race. It just got stupid - taste went out the window... yes, we listen to it now & laugh - yet it was oh-so-serious back then.

If you take a moment to peruse modern recorded music history, it doesn't take long to see a pretty clear pattern emerging - Technology has almost always been the handmaiden of landmark artistic changes in direction.

Interestingly though, what is often even more evident is that it is the subversion of technology that has often provided the real watershed moments.

Take the electric guitar & amplifier for example - originally conceived as a way to simply increase the volume & provide clear, bell-like tones for an instrument that was typically lost in the standoff between the noisy audience & even noisier band-mates during the rigors of live performance before the days of sophisticated sound re-enforcement... Suddenly, guitarists discovered that abusing their amplifiers - & turning them up to levels never dreamed of by the designers - produced not only a terrifying sonorous roar, but also a beautiful, soaring sustain that turned the instrument from a humble supporting rhythmic role into a a mighty, melodious sword of power, with magical abilities to create shards of blistering feedback that morphed into glistening notes, & vice versa.

... & so it continues - Read anything about the Beatles recordings & you see renegade musicians & engineers pushing the equipment past it's limits, creating new sounds in the process.

Quite ironically, even pitch correction, originally conceived to simply ... erm... correct pitch, became a "sound" unto itself when an innovative engineer discovered it could turn the none-to-tuneful Cher into a singing fembot with a worldwide smash hit in "Believe"

Check out the article on it's making & the belated "Historical Footnote" about the "secret" of Autotune: Recording Cher's 'Believe'

... & then the zombies came out again...

It seems that, somewhere in between the Beatles & Cher, people forgot that new ideas, lateral thinking & serendipitous mistakes are some of the most valuable commodities in music. Today, instead of everyone trying to push the unbelievable levels of technology we have available to us into compelling new sounds, everyone is being sold the "modelling the old stuff will make us great" myth.

Fooey to that! We're modern, we have modern gear, let's be modern....

When I mixed Clockwork Clown, I wanted to see if I could do something new, & different with Autotune - even if it was in a small way - I wanted to stare my own (irrational?) prejudices straight in the eye & deal with the issue that I hated it so much... Was it simply because of the "no-brainer" approach that was being applied to it's use? Was it because I just have a bloody-minded tendency to always go against what appears to be the inevitable landslide of popular opinion. It might sound hypocritical, but I really wanted to use it! However, in doing so, I also had a burning desire to subvert the existing paradigm. I deliberately set out with a goal to do something that I'd never heard done before. (I'm not saying it hasn't been done, I'm just saying I haven't heard of it being done).

Now, I'm not trying to sound superior here, because I've bought into the "older is better" myth at various times as well. It's just like anything in life though - you start out thinking that everything has to be done a certain way - the way "the pros" do it, or have done it. Gradually, you realize you have to find your own way, or your stuff will come out sounding like everybody else....

Anyway, more on that later - first, the "sensible" stuff...what of the vocal?

The vocals were quite dynamic, so wanting to preserve their natural timbre as much as possible, whilst still retaining control, I started out by compressing the vocals via the "Backwards Compression" method that I outlined in this tutorial here: http://forum.recordingreview.com/f8/...u-tried-27877/ . As it is a "destructive" process, I didn't keep the exact settings I used. From memory, I think I used UAD2's Fairchild 670 compressor, compressing pretty hard. When I use this method, I usually hi pass the vocals mildly at the same time, to avoid the low end triggering the compressor too much.

Below, you can actually see the compression in the screen shot: The top waveform is uncompressed, the one below is what it looked like after being backwards compressed:

... here is the original dry vocal:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/original-vocal

... & here is the backwards compressed version:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/backward-compressed-hi-passed

So that was a good starting point. There was a lot to like about the vocal as it stood, but there was a certain "woolliness" about the vocal that needed to be downplayed to give it a more attractive sound. It seemed that it was being generated from slightly excessive low end created by the proximity effect. I tentatively applied a high pass filter with a slope of 12dB per octave - Moving it's turnover point up to progressively higher frequencies as I played the vocal in context revealed that at around 80hz, I managed to achieved a nice balance of low end girth & low-mid clarity. Instantiating Waves CLA LA-2A compressor, I found I was able to get a pleasing, additional "detail" lift in the texture of the vocal. I really wanted to get the vocal sounding "prettier" though. I use that adjective because that's the quality I imagine that the high frequencies bring to a vocal sound. The low end & mids push the power & strength, but the high end brings the detail & finesse that are critical when a vocal is right up front, as this one was. With that in mind, I grabbed UAD2's Neve 88R Channel strip. Using only the equalizer section, I gave a gentle shelf lift at around 7.5k, & a fairly hefty boost around 11k to really bring out the breathiness. Things were sounding really fine now, but there was some sibilance that needed to be tamed, so out came Waves' R De-esser to do it's usual excellent job.

Here is the screenshot of the Lead Vocal insert chain:

This is the sound that resulted:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/eqd-compressed-vocal-no-send

Now that we had a nice sounding dry vocal. What about send effects?

I really wanted to emphasize the w-a-r-m-t-h (an emotional description, not a sonic one btw, Brandon!) & humanity of the vocal - I wanted it to enfold the listener like a cozy blanket, so my first step was to create some vocal widening. I know there are plugins that do this in one step, but I've been using this complicated little method, because it allows me to use the stock plugins in Sonar to achieve excellent results. I send the vocal via an aux send to 2 busses - each panned hard righ & left respectively. On each buss I insert Cakewalk's "Pitch Shifter", with one set to shift -0.11 & the other +0.11. Both these busses are high passed @ 500hz, & have Waves' R-De-esser set to destroy the sibilance. These both then feed into another stereo buss with Cakewalk's "Channel Tools" plugin set to the "stereo widener" preset.

Here's the screenshot:

The result really spreads the vocal subtly across the stereo spectrum. Here's the widening on it's own:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/vocal-widening-only

Next the reverb: Most of the time, I like to create a "common" reverb that creates the impression of all the elements in the same room. However, as I have already outlined in earlier episodes of this blog, Clockwork Clown was a little different in that it takes the listener into different virtual "rooms", depending on the dominant character influence on each respective portion of the song.... Ultimately, I took a slightly different approach with the reverb on the "hi fi" "human" voice we're discussing here. Rather that trying to place the voice in a specific environment, I used reverb simply with the goal of subtly enhancing the smoothness of the vocal. I chose a plate reverb model preset from IK Multimedia's Classic Studio Reverb plugin. As you can see from the screenshot below, I eq'd the signal coming into the reverb with Sonar's Pro Channel eq, rolling off the lows around 330hz with a fairly gentle 12db per octave slope. I found the reverb was still creating some low-mid "cloudiness" when combined with the vocal, so I dipped out 4.2dB at 489hz as well. The reverb also seemed to resonate unpleasantly centered around the 3.7k mark with the vocal, so a gentle dip there of 2.9dB assisted the high mids of the vocal in coming through with great clarity & definition.

Here's what the vocal reverb sounded like solo'd:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/vocal-reverb-only

Together, all this insert & send processing added up to the following sound:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/lead-vocal-processed-with-send

I was very happy with this vocal tone - It seemed to fit the song like a glove... but... well... more on that later...

I already had already done my "invisible" vocal tuning to the best of my ability using Sonar's in-build "V-Vocal" system. I tuned the original vocal fairly gently, just "averaging" some notes more accurately, but essentially leaving the natural vibrato & glissando of the original performance intact. V-Vocal a good system when you know how to use it, but it's far from perfect . Having recently invested in Melodyne, I can certainly now see that V-Vocal has it's limitations. However, one thing that V-Vocal does without breaking a sweat is the ol' "hard-tuned robot voice" we all know & love so much.:rolleyes:...

It's fairly obvious that I used this effect to great advantage during the sections of Clockwork Clown where the vocalist needed to portray the closeted, robotic toy clown. Here's the vocal chain I used for those sections. My rabid anti-autotune sensibilities felt unabashedly justified in rationalizing my decision to use hard tuning in this section because, after all - the vocalist was a robot (In my mind)!
Even here though, I used a parallel, or "ghost" vocal approach:

The first "Toy Vocal" track had no hard tuning, but I high & low passed it heavily, & sent it into Sonar's VX64 Vocal Strip plugin set to the "Telephone " preset, which further "grungifies/lo-fi's" the sound. For ambiance, I sent it via auxiliary send to the "Carpeted Room" convolution reverb setting I mentioned earlier in the blog.

Here is the vocal chain:

& here is the sound:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/toy-vocal

I wanted to make it really "toy robot" sounding, so rather than processing the original, I decided to do it in parallel. I hard tuned the vocal track, lo-fied it using low & high pass eq, sent it into Cakewalk's cool little "Alias Factor" plugin wihich is basically a bit-crusher. Appropriately the "Cheaper Toy" preset seemed to be just right in conveying the right sense of...well...cheapness.

Here's the chain:

... & here's the sound on it's own:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/parallel-robot-toy-vocal

Combining the two "toy vocal" sounds together seemed to get just the right balance of "robot" & humanity I was looking for during these sections. so, here's how they sounded combined:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/combined-final-toy-vocal

Now, as with any creative endeavor, one idea usually leads to another. So after fooling around with the parallel hard-tuning for the different lo-fi vocal sections, it got me thinking...

Now here's where we get to the part that I hyped up so much at the beginning. It's actually fairly subtle, but I feel it made a big difference & gave the "hi fi" vocal an "edge"... You be the judge.

Using the "hard-tuned" version of the vocal, I created a parallel lead vocal track for the hi-fi vocal. However, rather than sending it to the master buss, I inserted an instance of IK Multimedia's Classik Studio Reverb Plate with the "Wide Vocal" preset selected. I set the "Mix" parameter to 100% "wet", so that effectively, it became a reverb in itself. The big difference being that the reverb is very different from the source - hence the "ghost vocal" nomenclature.

Listen to the raw track on it's own - it's pretty "robot-like", huh?
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/ghost-autotune-vocal-dry

...however, here's the processing chain that changed it into a parallel, "reverb only" signal:

...& the "Ghost Autotune" solo'd:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/ghost-autotune-vocal-processed

In addition to the high & low passing at 960hz & 13k respectively, you'll notice the fairly hefty eq cut at 2.49k. This was to get the Ghost Autotune track out of the way of the lead vocal, because of the strong resonance right in the high mids, caused by the tuning.

...& here is the final combined processed vocal & the ghost autotune together - the sum total of the final "hi fi" version of the vocal on the track:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/combined-processed-lead-vocal

In other sections of the track, the subtle "rubbing" of the autotune against the lead vocal is perhaps more noticeable:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/other-combined-processed-lead

Maybe not as earth-shaking as I probably hyped it up to be, & maybe you don't think it's such a big deal... but honestly, is that ever the case? In audio engineering, we often make a big deal about things that make the tiniest difference.

Nevertheless, I'm quite proud of the vocal tone on the final mix. It reminds me of a sweet, angelic "Halo" around the vocal - which is exactly the type of vibe I was trying to achieve. Ultimately, mixing is a game of inches - Thousands of little, tiny incremental changes that do actually add up to a lot in the final mix.

The larger lesson I learned from this is that everything hasn't been done yet. With curiosity, imagination, experimentation & creativity, there is no reason for us to think that we simply have to go on mimicking the glories of the past. Sure, study it all, learn how to do it all, but don't just be satisfied with that... Explore some of the new stuff & find new ways... One idea leads to another...

...just as a post script to this, & to illustrate how ideas beget yet more ideas...
With that in mind - check out the post-script to this blog here: Post-Script to Clockwork Clown Blog
... more practical, untypical uses for vocal tuning...

So that's it - A bit of a marathon I know, but I hope you found at least something of interest & use.
Cheers,
fH fH

Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 5 - Atmospheres & Transitions

fHumble fHingaz — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 11:30:10 GMT

This is a continuation of my blog on mixing the winning mix of the 1st round of the Slate Digital Cup. Here is the previous installment: http://forum.recordingreview.com/blo...-4-synths.html

... & here is the link to the actual mix: http://forum.recordingreview.com/f14...29/#post334474

Gather 'round boys & girls, let me tell you story...

Once upon a time, many decades ago, long before the term "mix engineer" meant anything to anyone, ancient electronic pioneers began recording musical performances. Years prior to the advent of close miking techniques, these recordings captured both the performance & the environment around the performer integrally....

What if you had more than one performer? Well, the recordist simply arranged the instruments around the microphone so that the sound was balanced. Highly skilled musicians effectively "mixed" themselves by playing louder or softer, & in some cases simply moving closer to or further away from the microphone.

On the instrumental side of things, not only were there songwriters, musicians & vocalists, but also arrangers who wrote musical arrangements which dictated not only the actual notes to be played by the musicians, but also the feel & dynamics of each individual performance designed to absolutely maximize the impact of the song.

So all you needed was a brilliant song, terrific arrangement, fantastic performers, an excellent space, & a brilliant engineer with great ears... easy huh? Not really, quite difficult actually...
.
..but when it all came together, magic happened.

I don't need to tell you, times have moved on, & music is recorded & produced very differently today...

What have we gained?
Well, there are probably too many things to mention here, not the least of which is the ability to still construct a brilliant musical event without actually having to have all those many & various (sometimes disparate) elements come together magically on one serendipitous occasion.

What have we lost?
Again, probably more than I could quickly outline here. However, imaginative musicians are still writing cool songs, & there are still brilliant, emotion fueled performances to be had. What has been lost is the natural innate sense of "space" atmosphere, & excitement that was so intrinsic to those old recordings. Coupled with this, highly skilled musical arrangers are a rare thing these days. While a songwriter may have the ability to write a catchy hook & a good melody, arranging these in such a way as to really mirror the intended emotional impact of the song is often where multi-tracked recordings can fall down.

Of course, once close miking techniques developed & multi-track recording grew in sophistication & complexity, the role of the "balance engineer" slowly morphed into that of the "mixer"... Soon recordings became "constructions" of a sort, & with the loss of the nuance & excitement of a simultaneous live performance, the mixer began to be called upon to "re-inject" excitement via careful manipulation of the multi-track performances, using effects & psycho-acoustic sleight of hand to punctuate the mix & create a dynamic contour that could (in some skilled hands) even exceed the visceral impact of the best live performances. They sought to immerse & engage the listener to such a degree that he/she unconsciously took a vivid "aural journey" with the artist through the emotional passage of the music & lyrics. Effectively, in many cases, the mixer could become somewhat of a substitute for the old-time position of the "arranger"... & so on to the era of the "superstar mixer"... Bob Clearmountain, Chris Lord Alge, Spike Stent, Dave Pensado, etc etc.

Why all this background? My point is: these days, a balanced mix is really only the starting point - It's the least that a listener demands from a song. While a great song & arrangement is a fantastic starting point, in these times of information overload, sensory bombardment & the resulting minuscule attention spans, something extra is often needed to capture & hold the listeners' attention.

The basis of much music involves principles of tension & release - eg. creating a tension via an unresolved harmonic structure during the verses, then releasing that tension by a chorus that resolves in a satisfying way. To heighten this effect, a mixer can often use eq, automation & effects to create atmospheres that parallel the narrative of the music & the lyrics. I described the way I mapped this idea out in my head when preparing to mix "Clockwork Clown" in my first blog: Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 1 - "The Big Idea"

Basically, I used 2 very contrasting atmospheres in this song - one that was very narrow & lo-fi, the other full bandwith, wide & very much hi-fi. The next problem that presents itself is how to move from one state to the next - to just abruptly switch would be very disorienting to the listener- the musical equivalent of crashing though a "wall". The solution was to create transitions - musical "doors" for the listener to go through into each "room" or situation.

Transitions accomplish two things:
1. Makes the "journey" through the song's textures & atmospheres appear seamless, while the mix is actually bouncing between aural extremes.
2. If it is done right, it actually "signposts" emotional high (or low) points without the listener actually being aware of it.

Ultimately, as strange as it seems, the goal is for the actual mix to become invisible, not drawing attention to itself, but rather the narrative of the song, so that the listener is just caught up...

With that in mind, a good place to start would be to look at the basic atmospheres & how they were created:
Listen to the first 43 seconds of the mix - this is the clock tick, & the low-fi intro... right after the windup, a very soft "pad-like" sound swells up starting around 5 seconds in. After the other instruments come in & the vocals start, at around 33 seconds that same sound is repeated, but at higher volume, with another layer of atmosphere that comes in over the top...

What is it? It is actually the arpeggio guitar figure played in the intro, but reversed, faded in via a clip fade, then run through Guitar Rig 4's "Slow Motion Movie" preset - a combination of compression, amp simulation, multiple crazy delays & phasing. The reverse audio trick is amazing so simple. I've found this is a really cool way to take something that is already part of the song & give it a twist - It's amazing how our brains actually process that information... I have a theory that it actually induces a state of "musical deja vu" in which, once you've heard the sound reversed (even in a mangled form), when it is played forward, it seems instantly familiar somehow... I suppose, since the old classical composers used the "variation on a theme" schtick to flesh out their opus', & the jazz greats turned the melody upside down & inside out, this might be the modern mixer's equivalent?.. Hmmm, maybe we're getting uppity & high-brow; way ahead of ourselves...I dunno, but it sure is lotsa fun!

Anyway - Here's the part of the audio that I used before I reversed it:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/intro-noise-before-reversing

Here's the signal chain:

& here's the final sound:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/intro-noise

What about the general atmosphere that I used for these "lo-fi" section of the song? This came courtesy of an impulse in Voxengo's "Perfect Space" convolution reverb in Sonar called "Carpeted Room". As is usually the case, I couldn't resist eq'ing the response to get it to sound just the way I wanted. I low passed it around 2.5k & eq'd a dip of around 8.5dB centered at 1.2k.

Here's the screen shot:

... & here's what the reverb sounded like solo'd:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/lo-fi-reverb-solod

At this point, I'd like to refer back to the mix - listen to the transition from lo-fi to hi-fi that starts @ 40 seconds...
This contains another bit of mangled audio the forms the basis for that "blossoming" sound which culminates in the full-spectrum audio at around 44 seconds. This little 4 second sequence actually took a lot of work to get just right, but I think it was worth it.... so what was it? Here it is before processing...

http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/lo-to-hi-fi-transition-before

Yep, that's right - just a simple electric guitar strum.

Now, reverse that sound, stretch it by 400%, fade it in, run it through Guitar rig, automate high & low pass eq's, throw a flanger on the track (automate it's parameters too), include a stereo widener automated to gradually move from mono to super-wide & what do you get?

This: http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/lo-to-hi-fi-transition

Now, a lot of the processing on this was done in "mad scientist" mode, so I printed the fx with the sound & didn't save them in the chain. Here's the "nuts & bolts" of what remains in my session:
The lines on the clip in the bottom right hand corner of the clip represent all the automation parameters that are happening during the transition - about 7 all up!

Now what about the "atmosphere" for the hi-fi section? This was much less heavy handed. Again, using Perfect Space, I used an impulse response called: "Sanctuary - Omni Close Rear Centre" I high passed it at around 400hz, low pass it at 5k, & set 82 milliseconds of pre-delay to keep the mix elements right "up front".

Here's the solo'd reverb buss (you might have to turn this up) - You'll notice that there is no vocal in this, because I used a completely different reverb for the hi fi vocal to keep it out front:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/hi-fi-reverb-solod

The next transition was absolutely critical - this was the one following the breakdown, where the song really needed to EXPLODE into it's ultimate climax - take it to the next level, then right OVER THE TOP! To do it, I used the same guitar chord that I used in the "lo to hi fi transition"... again reversed, again with the same "Slow Motion Movie" Guitar Rig preset. But this time, there was no automation - just static eq high passed at 591 hz & low passed at 2450k, pre fader & effects. The reason being, there was no necessity to transition between two radically different sections - it just need to create anticipation of that big snare hit signalling the arrival of the BIG verse....

Here's the sound:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/post-breakdowntransition

... as you can hear, in isolation, this is really nothing exceptional, but combined with the snare hit, it's dynamite.... tension & release...

So how do you follow that? You need to do something really different. One sound from my childhood still resonates with me still is the dream-like texture that I first heard on songs from the late 60's & early 70's like "Itchycoo Park" - check out the bridge that starts at 51 seconds & extends through to 1:07

Now, check out the moment from 3:03 to 3:22 in my Clockwork Clown mix. The lyric at this point in Clockwork Clown describes a dream - when I heard that, immediately that familiar flanging texture rose from the depth of my subconscious to the surface once again.

... ah yes, the ol' "flanger across the whole mix" is such a cool sound, & it's about time someone used it again! I'm puttin' my hand up for that! As they say: "Everything old is new again!"
So I plumped that sucker on the mix buss & simply automated the on/off button during that section.

There's something very satisfying about using a technique that I guess was written off as an anachronism years ago in a modern context...I gotta tell ya, I was so happy to get that in, & even more happy that it actually worked!:D

Skip forward in my mix to the final part, from 4:01 to the end - One last transition - from the hi fi "human" back to the little "lo-fi" clockwork clown in the cupboard.... I was envisioning the protagonist morphing, shrinking, his voice & actions becoming more & more mechanical as he walks slowly into the shadows, closes the cupboard door, & disappears into his box in the dark - the cycle completed.

Because I had set up the textures for each part by "multing" most of the tracks (ie. having both a "Hi Fi" & a "Lo Fi" version of each mix element), I decided to create the last transition simply by using cross-fades on each of these "multed" parts. You can see the cross fades in the screen shot below.... simple!:rolleyes:

Ok, so that's it for "Atmospheres & Transitions"... One more part of this blog to go... "The Vocals" - a few little surprises to come as well, so stay tuned!:beerbangX:

Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 4 - Synths

fHumble fHingaz — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:39:47 GMT

This is a continuation of my blog about mixing Clockwork Clown, the previous episode of which can be found here: Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 3 - Guitars

Here is a link to my version of the mix: http://forum.recordingreview.com/f14...ble-mix-45029/

Well, it seems a LOT of mixers/musicians around RecordingReview are BIG into guitars'n'drums - I would put myself into that category as well. I've been a guitarist for 36 years, so like most guitarists, I'm pretty comfortable dealing with guitar oriented music.

In fact, up until about 5 years ago, when I first acquired a personal computer-based recording system, I had NEVER actually recorded or mixed a keyboard or synthesizer-based sound. I have to say though, my tacit prejudice against things without strings didn't last very long once I realize how much texture & emotion could be conjured by these clever little number-crunchers lurking inside most DAWS. In reality, even back in the days of building overdubs on my little Yamaha cassette 4 track & (later) my Roland VS840, I was fascinated with the textural sounds you could elicit from a strat, a delay pedal, & some dexterous volume control manipulation... Actually, virtual synthesizers opened up a whole world of sonic fun & perversity...

After all, when it comes to open-mindedness, guitarists in general would rate as just slightly more conservative than the Amish in accepting new ideas, so the options open to a mixer with guitar sounds are somewhat limited, to say the least. With synthesizers however, all bets are off - the more weird & twisted, the better... in other words, FUN!

The thing to remember with most synth sounds is that very few musicians have the patience to build a custom-made sound "from the ground up" (or should I say, from the sine-wave up?)... I certainly don't - Your typical soft synth has such a bewildering array of controls & parameters, it could induce an aneurysm in a NASA engineer. No, we simpleton guitarist types usually like to head straight for the presets... ah yes, the presets - those wonderfully impressive sounds which are designed to show off the all-encompassing frequency range of synth, right from bowl-loosening subsonic rumbles, to dog-torturing hypersonics. Great!..

... But in reality most of what we need to contain a synthesizer in the confines of a crowded mix is decidedly low fidelity by comparison... to keep these synth presets from completely crowding out every other element in the mix, usually some serious eq. surgery is the order of the day, rather than the exception.

With that in mind, listening to the raw synth tracks provided, it became pretty clear that they were of a fairly "full range" nature, with a lot of extraneous low & low-mid information that definitely needed taming.... So having built this section up by saying how amazingly sonically adventurous you can be with synth sounds, now I'm going to severely disappoint by revealing just how pedestrian my treatments were for the main "arpeggio/trumpet-y" synth part...

In harmony with my lo-fi/hi-fi direction, the introductory parts of the song suggested a dirty "am radio" style approach. This was achieved by simply calling up Sonar's Pro Channel, hi-passing at 1255hz, low passing at 1272k, & boosting 2.9k by 7.9db. I know these numbers sound totally illogical & crazy, but when I'm chasing a sound down, I'm not really thinking about numbers... In harmony with this rather random approach, I compressed the synth extremely aggressively with the Pro Channel's 1176 module at a ratio of 20:1, then piled on some distortion using the "Tube Drive" module (also in the Pro Channel). Due to the prominent delay built into the synth sound, I didn't feel the need to add any ambiance to it, as compressing & distorting it seemed to effective create it's own "space" in the mix.
Here's the details:

& here is the sound:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/dirty-intro-synth

The "hi-fi" counterpart of this main synth was equally unremarkable - Simply high passed at 549hz, to scrape of the mud, low passed at 19.5k where nothing of value existed, given a good dose of fast attack/slow release, low ratio, low threshold compression from the SSL clone, & saturated with the Softube Saturation Knob to add a touch of texture & attitude to help it cut through the mix. You'll notice too, that I used my "General Reverb" send & panned the reverb to the opposite side of the mix.... The effectiveness of this technique in giving "size" & depth to a sound is really evident in the accompanying clip below the screen shot:

...& the sound:

http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/main-synth

The other synth provided was a rather standard "pad"-type - Quite static, & with a TON of low end. There was simply not room for all that low end, & the mids were very crowded as well, so I high passed at 441hz, dipped out 2.4k by about 9dB to make room for the vocals, & shelved everything above 5k by about 5dB.

I was aiming at an "ethereal", whispy sound that had a lot of "air" in it... something that gave the mix some "lightness", but also had some movement & enhanced the width of the mix...Back to Guitar Rig 4 again to get some inspiration...

After perusing the presets again, I happened upon a complex little signal chain involving two tube compressors, a chorus unit, 2 "phychedelay" units, a Dual Rectifier amp simulation, 2 "quad delay" units, a channel splitter, a mic & cabinet simulator, a parametric eq, & Small Stone Phaser emulation. Whew! Aptly named "Slow Motion Movie", this preset was just the thing to morph a rather boring little pad into a complex, self-evolving sound abstraction... BUT.. one more thing was needed to make this sound "just right" - I wanted it to seemingly "come from nowhere" (specific) in the mix, & yet "everywhere" at the same time - So I slapped Sonar's mid-side/stereo manipulation tool on, called up the "Increased Width" preset, & then took it a step further by removing even more "mid gain" from the signal, so that the middle of the mix was cleared out & the sound appeared to emanate from "outside" of the stereo spectrum.
Here's the screen shot:

& here's how it sounded:
http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/main-pad

But there was still more work to do to get my 2 man synth army to march in the right direction. The washy pad was fine for the more sedate & dreamy parts of the song, but there were a few places where I wanted something other than the bass & drums to reinforce the rhythmic drive of the song. I remembered an episode of Pensado's place where good 'ol Dave mentioned gating pads to create movement. After my successful experiment with Guitar Rig's sequencer driven Gate on the "Tic Toc" rhythm, I was emboldened to return yet again to my brainy German plugin, in pursuit of a pulsating pad.

I wasn't disappointed. Throwing on the the "Trance Gate Pro" preset, getting rid of some extraneous effects in the chain & whittling it down to just the gating effect, I was able to get the humble pad jump freakishly in time with the song's rhythm. High passing it even further around 700hz, sending some of the signal in parallel to the Channel Tools "Widener" preset; & then combining it back with the main pad finalized psychedelic impression.

The screenshot for the gated version of the Pad:

...& the Gated pad solo'd:

http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/gate-pad-solod

...& finally, the 2 sounds combined together:

http://soundcloud.com/coldroom-studio/main-pad-gated-pad-together

In one of the responses to my mix, I think I was (indirectly) being accused of perhaps adding extra synthesizers beyond what we were given to work with. This actually didn't offend me one bit - In fact I was delighted that I had managed to mangle the parts to the point where they might be mistaken for something else entirely! I guess it's the closest we wannabe mix engineers get to knowing what it must feel like to create our own little magic trick routine with sound instead of vision.

Whether or not my accuser was referring to the synthesizer sounds I have described here, I don't know. Why? Well, there are other sounds in the mix that are neither synths or surreptitiously imported files of indeterminate origin - nevertheless, they are definitely a big part of what contributed to the textures & transitions in the mix... So where did they come from, & why are they there?

... Tune in for the next episode & all will be revealed!..:confused:

...and here it is: http://forum.recordingreview.com/blo...ansitions.html

Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 3 - Guitars

fHumble fHingaz — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 12:01:19 GMT

This is a continuation of my blog about mixing Clockwork Clown - here is the previous installment, if you missed it: Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey Part 2 - Wrestling the with THE GROOVE.

Here is the link to the mix I am discussing: http://forum.recordingreview.com/f14...ble-mix-45029/

Ok, so here we are at the third installment of this odyssey - I hope it has been somewhat informative & entertaining.

After getting the drums & bass into some sort of order I kind of put them aside & said "that's good enough for the moment", & moved on...

It came time to look at what I could do with the "top end" of the mix - the guitars ... Well actually, I was planning to do guitar & synths in this one, but the guitars got a little lengthy, so the synths will have to wait their turn... Sorry about the false advertising - I know the Americans among you are crazy for it, but please, no litigation is necessary, just patience. :D

As I mentioned at the outset, I wanted to try to evoke two contrasting "states" in this mix - one that was LO-FI - "claustrophobic, grimy, glitchy & industrial" & one that was HI-FI - technicolor, open, smooth, wide & full. The "Hi Fi" aspect has come about by listening to Eric Valentine's mixes on the latest Slash album - I'm going through a phase of being in awe of how wide & clear they are. On the other hand, I felt that if I made the whole mix that way, it wouldn't really reflect the swings of mood & the changes in the narrative... I needed to get really down & dirty in some parts of the track....

This is something that I have noticed in the best mixes... actually, scratch that, I should say "some of the most exciting mixes" - to draw attention to something, the best way is to create a contrast... ie: if all the mix sounds "BIG" right from the start, it has nowhere to go, dynamically. However, if you start off really small, when it hits the big chorus, you can really make it B-I-G!.. I went searching through my iTunes library for some inspiration & direction - This was quite difficult, because I have a lot of rock stuff, which tends to mainly draw it's contrast from an arrangement, rather than a mix angle. In view of the alternative pop vibe of LazyE's track, two bands came to mind, both of whom use this combination of arrangement and mix dynamics to create an expansive sound that ranges from very lo-fi to HUGE.

The first was Gomez - an alternative English band that are very popular here in Australia, & my wife & I are pretty keen on. Gomez - Bring It On - YouTube
Gomez

The second is Radiohead - this song in particular "Sit Down, Stand Up" - listen to the transition @ about 3:04 - that's the kind of contrast vibe I was aiming at...

I decided that I needed to attack this from two angles: Firstly, I needed to create at least two "versions" of each mix element, each one of which would fit into the respective "hi-fi/lo-fi scenarios" that I had developed in my mind.

I tried to keep in mind that LazyE was pretty keen on having the electric guitar element prominent in the mix, so as is usually the case with me, I put that on the backburner (ie. read: procrastinated) & headed straight for the acoustic guitar track...

My first instinct was to create an acoustic guitar sound that was w-i-d-e for my Hi-Fi section. A cool trick I discovered when I had been handed a single guitar track in the past was to grab another section of the song that plays the same part move it to play in parallel with the original, & thus construct a "duplicate" guitar part from a single performance - then you can pan them hard left & right & voila! Instant lush stereo acoustic guitars! This is fine, as long as the song is played to a constant tempo (which it was) & has plenty of repeating parts to choose from. Unfortunately, this second prerequisite is where I came unstuck, because there was a LOT of variation in the parts, so scraping something coherent together was proving difficult... This didn't deter me so much, but ultimately the reason I scrapped this approach was because it simply didn't work when I brought in the other mix elements. Because I was struggling to bring the acoustic guitar to life, I decided to let it wait for the moment & concentrated on developing my "lo-fi" textures...

Again good ol' Guitar Rig 4 was my go-to sound-mangler. I called up a preset called "Megaphon" that made the acoustic sound like it was being played out of one of those tiny toy "suitcase" record players that kids use to get in the 60's & 70's... Perfect! I may have added some hefty compression inside GR4 from it's own rather wonderfully filthy compressor just to encrust the sound a little further. In the screen shot, you can see that I have sent some of the acoustic via an auxiliary send to a bus containing Voxengo's "Perfect Space" convolution reverb. I called up an impulse called "carpeted room", which seemed like a suitable setting for a claustrophobic domestic nightmare... Still, it did need a little background tweaking within Perfect Space's high pass, low pass, & eq parameters to sound "just right (or should I say "just wrong").

What about the "lo-fi" electric guitar? - Well, it might be a cliche, but nothing says "creepy, cheap & nasty" to me like a reverbed tremolo. I started by massively high passing & low passing the electric guitar track with Sonars Pro Channel eq until only the gnarliest of midrange boxiness & honk was left, & added a little of Pro Channel's 1176 modeled compression set to moderate the attack portion & of the sound & sustain the sparse chordal strums. Next, rifling through the effect section of Amplitude's "X-Gear" plug, I discovered an old-style opto tremolo. Hitting the "BPM on" button on the tremolo synchronized it's venerable warble to the tempo of the track, & adjusting the speed & depth to a fairly un-subtle setting provided the creepiness quotient I was craving...So with a heapin' helpin' of reverb from the aforementioned "carpeted room", the lo-fi guitar contingent was finally tonally equipped to disgust & dismay!

So... back to the acoustic tone. Listening to the tone on it's own, it seemed pretty unremarkable, which made it easy to mangle & destroy for the ugly lo-fi side of it's Jeckle & Hyde act. On the other hand, producing a slick, seductive & charming version to infatuate the listener's left ear might prove slightly more challenging. I set to work high passing & low passing in Sonar's Pro Channel eq to get rid of mud in the bottom end of the signal & tame some of the "pluckiness" apparent in the raw track, then I plumped for the standard "sweep & destroy" method to seek out some frequencies that were creating some boxiness & harshness in the sound. Notches around 455hz & 3.4k seemed to imbue the track with a touch of class. Adding some parallel 1176 style compression from the Pro channel seemed to smooth things a little further. I also chucked in some midrange goodness from UAD's Pultec with a generous broad boost at 8k to add some "shimmer" to the sound. However, playing back the acoustic guitar in context just wasn't rewarding me with the sonic gratification I was craving. The fingerpicked acoustic just seemed rather stark, & didn't really flow in the way I was imagining it - The sound I wanted was like rippling water flowing over pebbles - a continuous stream of harmony just bubbling away.. hmmm..

... time for Guitar Rig 4 again... This time I called up it's great digital re-creation of the Roland Space Echo tape delay - a sought after piece of gear in the analogue domain, prized for it's vibey organic combination of delay, reverb, tape saturation & general grunge. Again tweaking the delay settings to produce repeats that slotted into the timing of the track, it seemed I was getting one step closer to the sound I was hearing in my head. At this point the sound just needed some "smoothing", so that the original sound & the delays dissolved into one continuous melange of rippling sound... Sweet. Playing it in the track, only one more tiny tweak was needed to get it to penetrate the mix - I dialed in a tiny bit of drive from the Softube "Saturation" control on Sonar's Pro Channel...
Here's the signal flow below:

What about the electric tone? - This was to be a feature of the track, & although the original tone actually seemed pretty good, I still did a little eq. work to get it to behave & "expensify" the tone a little. I dialed out everything above 8k & below 110hz respectively with the Pro Channel eq, & made a "de-boxifying" notch at 349hz. Next, I called on my most recent plugin acquisition, Waves CLA-76 compressor. This compressor is modeled on Chris-Lord Alge's hardware 1176 units - & let me tell you, I don't like to rave about plugins, or gear in general, because I've always been of the firm belief that "ears & skills" beat "gear & thrills" every time (yeah that was pretty lame, sorry:() - but I have to say, this plugin just makes distorted guitars sound right just about each time I try it... it puts them "in your face" & yet, somehow they just seem to sit right in the mix ... & using it is child's play... a sound "goodify-er" if ever I've heard one.

However, getting the sound to work with the vocals was another matter - LazyE had stated that he was rather attached to this part, & he wanted it to be prominent. When absorbing the vibe of the track on my initial listens, it became clear to me why - it's meandering waywardness is a crucial element that intensifies the tracks off-kilter vibe. Without it, the track just seems to have less "teeth".

Nonetheless, it's a real challenge to have such an active guitar part (basically a lead) that sits most of the time right in the same prime eq. real estate that the vocal occupies... Let's face it, in any pop/rock track the vocal is KING - having a guitar line like this competing with your vocals is like coming back from vacation to your house in the Hamptons, only to discover your long-lost Biker relatives have moved in to stay... You're gonna have a hard time getting them to fit into the neighborhood, & something's gotta give!

My first line of attack was to make an eq. cut in the guitar right at the audible heart of LazyE's vocal - a broad gentle dip centered around 1.26k. This definitely helped, but I was still not getting the volume I wanted out of the guitar before it started spitting in the face of my precious vocal...

So let's get all psycho-acoustic for a moment - The brain is amazing in it's ability to trick our ears. Have you ever noticed when you are in a noisy room full of people having conversations, somehow your brain is able to decipher the words of the person next to you from all the other words ricocheting around the room? Your mind focuses on their words, so suddenly everything else seems to recede into the background. Nothing has really changed, but our brain has played a trick on us... A similar thing happens in reverse - if we hear something very loud initially, even if that sound is attenuated in volume later, our brain continues to register our first impression of that sound.

This phenomenon works to our advantage in the kind of mix situation that I'm describing here - when you have two loud attention-grabbing sounds vying for attention. The idea is to let the guitar be as loud as the vocal when the vocal isn't present, but to "turn it down" considerably under each vocal phrase to clear plenty of space for the vocal to shine - when the vocal stops for breath, the guitar comes back up, & so on it goes.... The cool thing is, the listener's brain doesn't notice this sleight of hand, it only keeps on repeating the listener's first impression: "That guitar is damn loud!"

Now, this can be accomplished by good ol' straightforward volume automation on the guitar, but it's pretty tedious & time consuming...

Time to bring in the heavy technical artillery. THE SIDECHAIN COMPRESSOR. A compressor's sidechain in simple terms is a place where the compressor can get it's information from. Under normal circumstances the compressor is "listening" to the information coming from the track that is being compressed. But by feeding the compressor's sidechain a completely different signal, you can get it to compress based on the information being fed to it. So here's what I did: I sent the signal from the lead vocal via an auxiliary send to the sidechain of Sonar's Sonitus compressor, which I put on the lead guitar track. I set up the compressor so that when the lead vocal came in, it's signal triggered gain reduction on the guitar track of about 6db...

Ahh... finally the vocal & the guitar were living in peace!

One final word about the panning of the guitars - I mentioned that I was going for a huge wide panoramic feel to the "hi-fi" sections of the track - to me, the only way to really get this was to go the LCR panning route for these key elements. As you can see, the electric & acoustic are panned at 100%. Notice though, that the reverb sends are panned to the opposite side of the spectrum relative to each element - not completely, because the element's reverb would be masked by the other element - but at 66. This effectively allows the sound to "bleed" across the mix to give a real sense of spaciousness that would be somewhat less apparent if the reverb were being masked by other elements filling up those spaces. This technique does double-duty in also being a key device to "glue" the wide-panned elements together. Another interesting advantage to using this technique is that the wide panned elements can sound quite "dry" & "in your face" despite having a fairly hefty helping of reverb on them.

Next up... Synths (I promise) :beerbangX:

...& here they are: http://forum.recordingreview.com/entry.php?b=159

Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey Part 2 - Wrestling the with THE GROOVE.

fHumble fHingaz — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:13:03 GMT

Here is the link to the mix that I am discussing: http://forum.recordingreview.com/f14...ble-mix-45029/

The second installment about the mix of the track linked above; Here is the first part if you missed it: http://forum.recordingreview.com/entry.php?b=153

In my last entry, I mentioned how I felt the thing that what "Clockwork Clown" needed was a bit of a "groove injection"... Let me explain what I mean:

As M24P commented on my last entry, the "mechanical" angle of the rhythm seemed important to the message of the song, along with the "clockwork ticking" that provided an internal rhythm of it's own. This is one thing I weighed up, but after some thought & more listening, I came to the conclusion that what we were dealing with was a juxtaposition of a kind - the fragile "human" element of our lives wrestling with the forces that push us towards the regimented, machine-like existence where feeling & emotion are inconvenient & unwelcome.

In line with this, I decided I wanted to try to evoke two contrasting rhythms within the song � On the one hand, a feel that parts of the current drum track already expressed to a degree - The introductory "kick, sidestick, open hihat", very rigid & repetitive loop - & on the other hand, one that was kind of hinted at by the rest of the drum track, containing tom fills & crash cymbals, & even a little hihat sequence with a 16th note "skip" in it.
I set to work with the introductory pattern - My first port of call was to insert an instance Addictive Drums into my DAW - I've had AD for the longest time, & I'm very familiar with the sounds. It has some outrageous sounding presets that are very "effected" - distorted, twisted & radically eq'ed & processed. I found one that seemed to fit the bill - it was very dirty, roomy & lo-fi. Playing back the loop, I felt that the kick drum was just too big & fat, & not nearly crunchy enough for me. Diving into the Addictive Drums effects controls, I high-passed the kick until it had just the slightest bit of "punch", but virtually nothing in the way of sub-bass to speak of... I cranked up the distortion on the kick - Ah! that's better! Industrial levels of grime & grit - nothing that could be mistaken for "Hi Fi".

At this point, I was possessed by the idea that I should use this same repeating loop through the whole song at various levels of prominence, but once I brought in the "other" drum parts, I thought better of it.
I can't tell you how much I struggled to find the right drum sound for the rest of the track - at one point, I had about 3 different virtual drum instruments open in my DAW project, just trying to find something that I felt really fit. When I got to that point, I thought "time to make a decision , be done with it & just MOVE ON!" - I settled on Superior Drummer 2, called up a fairly natural-sounding preset, & set about "massaging" some "humanity" into the drums�

Why? Well, the most obvious thing that spoiled the drums for me was that all the sections seemed to repeat with no apparent change, or drummer-like randomness (let�s face it �most drummers are notoriously random!) � All the velocities of the hits repeated themselves through each section, everything was bang on �the grid�, all the tom fills were exactly the same, & what�s more the hihat played right through part of the drum fills! That�s ok, if you have access to a 3 armed drummer, but my OCD fixation in the pursuit of human randomness (now there�s an oxymoron if I ever heard one) just couldn�t accept these things! Another thing that just blew my little mind was: Why was our �virtual drummer� pummeling his crash cymbal with such supreme venom? Had someone drawn the face of his mortal enemy on said crash cymbal? Why did he only seem to have one crash cymbal? (Maybe he obliterated the other one in his cymbal-smashing zeal!) Why did he insist on hitting it at the same time as his first tom hit on each roll? Why didn�t he finish his rolls with a crash on the down beat at the end like every other drummer known to man? (Maybe because he didn�t have a crash cymbal on that side of his kit?

... hence, I enjoyed a delightfully busy evening shifting midi drum hits to other notes, thus introducing the virtual drum sticks to other crash cymbals on my virtual kit; shifting timing by miniscule amounts, adjusting midi velocities, & generally going OUT OF MY MIND! Why, Why, WHY?

�SWING! That�s why! Yeah, yeah, I know� Isn�t that something that ancient, moldy old dudes with clarinets & trombones talk about? Maybe, but after playing in bands for years & studying my favorite players, swing is the thing that separates the men from the boys when it comes to rhythm. No, we�re not necessarily talking about �dum da-dum da-dum� obvious, Status Quo �hit-you-between-the-eyes-with-a-4 x 2 type swing here� Rather that almost imperceptible push�n�pull between a great rhythm section that ensures a track doesn�t just ROCK, it ROLLS as well & creates a groove �a mile wide�� ACDC, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, Double-Trouble & many, many others � they all had it. It�s what makes rhythm come to life... It�s not just in the timing of the drum hits, it�s the way the accents are played, it�s the bass, the attitude�
But there was one critical piece of the puzzle that was needed to complete a compelling rhythm in my mind � The tic tock � yes, that dreaded tic-tock� so many of our number were almost vitriolic in their hatred of it�s insistent clatter whenever one of our brave mixer brethren dared to raise it above more than a whisper during the track�s duration�
I mentioned before that I felt the drum rhythms were �ploddy�, stodgy, Pink Floyd with a hangover, whatever� The rhythm just didn�t seem to move the song forward, whichever way I sliced it. The fact is, if you want a song to feel faster, simply divide the beats up more - Try it� play the same beat on the drums with quarter note, then eighth note, & finally sixteenth note hi-hats� see? It sounds faster even if the tempo is exactly the same�
Lo & behold! Who�da thunk it? The tic-toc held the key to the Clockwork Clown�s sense of forward movement. Simply raising the volume of the tic toc effectively created a fast sixteenth-note pulse that propelled the song forward!... BUT� As already noted, that gets old pretty quick � what to do?...

(Cue ethereal, swelling choir effects)� Guitar Rig! What?...Actually, if there is such a thing as fHumble�s secret mixing weapon, then Guitar Rig is it! Rather ironically, it�s use usually has little to do with guitars. I found a great preset called �Trance Gate� with uses step sequence-able, tempo sync�d effect modifiers to control volume of whatever sound you put through it. By feeding the tic-tock through it, & was able to create accents on the tic tock so that it behaved much like a sixteenth note hihat rhythm�& with a touch of tempo-sync�d delay, it was extra-cool!

Great, it certainly won the war against monotony, but what about the basic tone being annoying & overly prominent in the mix� Mr High Pass & Mrs High Shelf filter came to my rescue � I was positively vicious with them, but it turned out to be a marriage made in heaven, the offspring of which was a kind of hihat/shaker mutant mongrel�

Perfect! I multed the track so that I had 3 different versions of the tic toc going at different times in the song to create 3 different feels for each respective section.
Listen to the difference in the difference in the attached files below..

...oh, & one more thing about the drums - & this was a HUGE discovery for me...
Some how, all the drum sounds I called up seemed too heavy-handed & bombastic for the feel I was trying to achieve... Then I remembered :epiphany - Superior Drummer has a whole other set of samples for both brushes & rods... Ah ha! Rods instead of sticks!... That was IT! Suddenly the drums & cymbals sounded like they were being played instead of destroyed!... It was a big lesson to me - the right sound starts with the right source!

Of course, swing is also in the way the bass pushes & pulls, creates tension & release against the drums�
So that left the bass � what did I do to it? Absolutely nothing! No timing or note tidying at all...Well, for the most part I left it completely �As is� � Now that the drums swung a teeny bit & carried the song forward, the bass seemed to have a lovely, quirky unpredictability to it � kind of like John Entwistle holding down the bottom end for Pink Floyd � completely maverick & all over the place! Great!... BUT� I couldn�t resist� I had the craziest idea & just had to try it. As you can see in the screen-shot, I did it in 4 different sections of about one & a half to two measures each. Basically, I simply took the bassline from the same section earlier in the song, lined it up with the next section, then shifted it to the right by an eighth note. Because the original bass was playing quarter notes mostly, I was able to �slot� them together like musical �teeth� & create a pumping eighth note bassline for that section of the song that followed the same chord progression framework� It took some careful crossfade editing to get it to sit right, & I hemmed & herred about whether I should use it, because I knew I was really stretching the �rules� to the breaking point� but, what the hell � no guts, no glory!

Bass processing? Check out the screen shots:

I multed the bass to two different tracks � the first was the lo-fi version of the bass � low & high passed in the Sonar�s Pro Channel EQ, & run through Amplitude�s �Tube Lead� amp.
The Main bass sound was a pretty simple matter of compression & eq in Sonar�s Pro Channel � just low & hi passing, notching out some troublesome muddy frequencies, & getting some clarity in the mid range, as well as some pretty solid compression.

Whew! Well, that�s it for now�
Next Up: Guitars & keys�

Here's the next episode: http://forum.recordingreview.com/blo...3-guitars.html

Audio File Only Available To Members.

Mixing Clockwork Clown - A fHumbling Journey - Part 1 - "The Big Idea"

fHumble fHingaz — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:29:35 GMT

Here is the link to the mix I am discussing: http://forum.recordingreview.com/f14...ble-mix-45029/

So... how to start... how to start...HOW TO START???

What do you do to start a mix? "That's easy", you say: "Just import the tracks into your DAW & pull up the (virtual) faders - start mixing - Duh!" Well, most who've done it know it's not that easy.
Ever heard anyone say "Get a clue!"? The fact is, unless you have a clue when you start a mix, the end result will sound like you need to get a clue.
When I start a mix I do a LOT of listening - I want to absorb everything I can about the musical, emotional & (yes, even) physical intent of the mix. I try to identify the things that are at the very core of the track. What are the strengths that I want to highlight? What are the weaknesses I want to downplay? What is it that is special & individual about this track?

You might have noticed, I have said absolutely nothing about the technical merits (or lack thereof) of the recorded tracks... Why? Well, for a start- most of the things I've mentioned so far can be gleaned simply from the artist's rough mix - True, sometimes you'll find hidden gems among the overdubs as you sift through the individual tracks in your DAW, but essentially, in "broad strokes" the rough mix should tell you all you need to know.
Getting down to specifics then: What did I conclude from listening to Iain's (LazyE's) guide mix?

The positives:
This was an awesomely original, melodic & definitely left-of-centre pop song
The harmonic structure of the song was a little ambiguous, which gave it an air of mystery, discovery & inventiveness.
It had an unusual structure that created a quirky swathe of transitions through different emotional states.
The song had a defined dynamic contour that closely mirrored the emotional state of the song's protagonist... It started off intimate, moved though swinging dynamic contrasts that gradually increased with each new phase in harmonic complexity & (even) dissonance, then tapered off to an intimate, exhausted finale.
The vocalist's delivery seemed absolutely uncontrived, believable & real. There were no histrionics or vocal gymnastics to speak of - just raw emotion (& a little whiff of booze!)
The playing was very good - again seemingly off-the-cuff, somewhat improvised, exploratory, & in some ways, almost "stream-of-consciousness" stuff - in other words, never boring, never needlessly repetitive - I felt a real sense of musical adventure here...

The negatives:
The main thing that struck me as "difficult" was the rhythm of the track. The drums didn't seem to reflect the same sense of adventure as the other elements - they seemed quite static & repetitive, as if stitched together from a few repeating loops for each section... Upon examining the midi files, it seemed evident that this was the case (which is logical, because Iain has admitted this was essentially a quickly conceived demo.)
In an electronic production, repeating loops are par for the course, but here, in the midst of such a wild, organic beast of a song, the drums just didn't seem to groove or fit at all - They seemed to create a "plodding" mood that seemed (at least to me) to be the antithesis of the psychedelic pop'n'roll animal it could be.
You'll notice I haven't mentioned bum notes or flat singing. TBH, this stuff never worried me. Some people (perhaps rather unkindly) refer to some mixing experiences as "polishing turds". In fact, with a song like this one, I prefer to view it as "cutting a diamond" - Even the greatest diamonds ever found need to be cut "just right", so that their best facets are displayed, & their flaws cleverly hidden... so I felt confident that this would be the case with "Clockwork Clown"

The conclusion:

I wanted to create a mix that really amplified the song's dynamics & adventurousness. I determined that the vocals needed to draw you in to the story... to wrap around you like a w@rm blanket, making the most of the timbre of Iain's voice. I decided to use effects fairly liberally, yet (hopefully) tastefully to intensify the contrast between the unreal, & the real states reflected in the song's lyrics.
I wanted the contrasts in the song not only to be expressed through extremes of frequency variation & timbre, but also the large variations in the width & the "depth" of the mix.
With all that buzzing around my head, I decided to attack my greatest concern first - How do I get the rhythm of this song to move & groove with the same intensity & inventiveness as the rest of the track?

That's what I'll discuss in Part 2... stay tuned!

...& here it is now: http://forum.recordingreview.com/blo...ng-groove.html