Reference Recordings: Getting out of your own mix!

And . . . I'm back at it after a short hiatus while on tour. So far we have only discussed some segmented concepts in the mix. EQing, depth, space, reverb, delay. Now, we are going to take things a step further, but not with adjusting your mix. This time we are going to actually get out of the mix for a moment and into something called reference recordings. A reference recording is anything that you feel you want your music to sound like (a finished, commercially produced product). By sound like, I don't mean copy cat. We are talking about mix, not song-writing. You should already have your song worked out and recorded (and possibly mixed to some degree) if you are delving into this step. At most, your reference recording should be within the same style. Here are a few things to think about before selecting a reference recording:

1. Instrument Sound  

You should ask yourself a few questions. How big are your guitars? What about your kick drum? Snare? Piano? Do they fit in the mix? Or do they sound segmented and out of place? Do specific instruments shine through the way you would like? Regardless of instrument, you need to think about what your mix sounds like when you hit the playback button and then what you WANT it to sound like. What are you going for? 

2. Depth

We have already discussed this in an earlier post and it is something to consider here. Is your track 'deep' enough? Is there enough distance between each instrument? Should there be more? Do you want more? Does the style call for a lot or a little?

3. Compression

I have not discussed the inner workings of compression as of yet in this blog (it is coming soon) but it is something to consider here (please message me if you don't understand this step and I can give you more of a synopsis). Do you want your track squashed and have everything as loud as possible with no dynamic range (lots of hiphop and rap records are mixed in this fashion)? Or do you want to maintain the dynamics of your original track and allow some ebb and flow? 

After thinking about these things, get ready for the mirror. Select a reference recording (or more than one) . . . then play it back to back with your track. Don't be shocked if the difference is pretty great. Keep in mind that a commercial recording is already mastered and has probably been mixed with gear that is worth more than most of your possessions combined. However, don't worry . . . one thing I was told when I first started tearing into audio production, was that 'your mixes aren't going to sound like everyone else's, and that's okay.' You are going to have your own sound, and that is a good thing and nothing to be ashamed of. However, you still want to have a quality product so listen to your reference recordings. Remember the concepts mentioned earlier? Instrument sound, depth, and compression? Analyze the references using these concepts except this time, use the info you find to tweak your own mix. One of the best ways to learn is to watch (in this case listen) what others have done and expand your knowledge and capability accordingly. I have used recordings from Prince, Bruce Hornsby, Whiteheart, Steve Stevens, and others to assist in this process. These artists (among others) have some of the best engineers alive working on their stuff and they are fantastic sources to utilize for learning. Also keep in mind, that this whole thing is very subjective. Finally, if you are unsure of yourself (and you should always be somewhat unsure because that is what will keep you striving towards perfection), let someone whose opinion you trust hear it.

And when you are happy with your mix . . . this is what you'll look like:

Studio Basics: Coming Full Circle

At 5 posts into this corruptive little blog, I think it's time to visit a few concepts that as both a guitarist and audiophile, I often have to remind myself of, and in which a few of you may find some benefit.

As you might already know, this audio biz can get extremely maddening. Your mixes don't sound right, the guitars don't cut the way you would like, the drums are weak, etc. This usually ends with you standing in front of your recording rig with a baseball bat debating whether or not it's really worth it to have all of that gear. Just kidding . . . but it can certainly have that effect on your psyche. I know I have certainly felt that on numerous occasions. My purpose for this blog is to hopefully aid anyone in need of assistance in working on their own projects and in turn create a more competitive mix. It is very easy to get bogged down in all of the various technical sides of mixing, production, recording, etc. But, there is one thing to remember, especially for the guitarists (and really any musician who is dabbling in recording) . . . garbage in, garbage out or GIGO.

GIGO was a phrase/acronym I learned from a good friend (audio engineer) who took me under his wing when I started trying to record and mix my own tunes. This acronym encompasses the entire foundation of a good mix. In the spirit of GIGO and a good mix, you need several elements present (not necessarily limited to just these though):

1. Be able to play your instrument

This may sound harsh but it is true. Good audio production is not and should not be used as a cure-all for a lack of talent. This goes against the grain of today's musical ethics (or lack thereof) but I firmly believe it to be true. If you are going in to the studio (be it your own or someone else's) and you are going to record a song in the style of Yngwie Malmsteen, you had better be able to play it. In contrast, if you are a singer/songwriter and you play along on guitar (a la Melissa Etheridge), you should be able to execute that in a cohesive fashion.

2. Have a good song

Good song craft should be at the absolute core of any mix. To clarify, I'm using song craft to encompass the next top 40 pop hit, a progressive endeavor, a neoclassical symphony, or any other possible permeation of music in existence.

3. Known your gear and be competent at producing a good sound from your amp . . . prior to the recording rig.

It's very crucial that you know how your gear works and how to produce a pleasing tone that is not only useful in playing live, but also in a studio environment (trust me, they are different). We have all been guilty of this at some point or another, but it is really important to know how to tweak your gear based on the aural requirements of a situation. This could mean dialing in some more highs on your processor because the provided amp at the studio just isn't cutting it, or it could mean designing a new patch on the fly because the old one sounds really weak when recorded.

All this being said, it all comes back to item #1. There was a recent project I produced where an individual sent me their guitar tracks (his playing is absolutely incredible), and honestly I didn't have to do very much to them. Some slight carving in the EQ department, and a few tweaks to fit it in the mix and his tracks were good to go. This is the best scenario . . . both item #1 and #2 fulfilled. He plays extremely well and knows his guitar sound and how to capture it. If you are having to conduct edit after edit after edit, then it might be time to circle back to #1 with either yourself or the player(s) you are working with and rethink a few things. Now, this is not to say that you will always have a choice on who plays and who doesn't. Especially if you are only a link in the chain and a producer says that a certain individual is going to play on a particular recording, then that is a different scenario. Sometimes, you are required to work with what you have been given. However, that being said, much of this blog is centered around your own studio and your own projects.

Keep all of this in mind as you work through your endeavors and remember who you are in both playing and recording. These concepts will help you tremendously in the long run. Perspective is everything!

Mix Depth: An Orchestra Conductor's Perspective

While we are cruising around the idea of spaciousness, let's discuss the idea of mix depth. To describe the semi-abstract world of mix engineering, I'm going to use a very real world example. For the guitarists reading this, set aside the guitar for a minute. No worries though; you can bring this back to guitar music and apply these concepts to many different areas.

Imagine a symphony orchestra from the conductor's point of view. This type of group can be around 100 players and requires (as I'm sure you can imagine) a sizable room in which to rehearse, and even more so to perform in. Each section extends row by row, further away from the conductor and eventually ends with the percussion section towards the back of the room (or in a performance setting, back of the stage). Due to the fact that every player in the room or on the stage, is sitting in a different spot with varying distances in relation to the conductor, the actual time it takes for the sound to travel between the two is going to vary greatly. The further away a player is from the conductor, the greater the delay in sound travel. So far, we have only discussed the physical delay between the players and the conductor. Now, there is reverb to take into consideration and depending on the size of the room and where you are standing, it will very widely. These factors create the very distinct depth that is associated with a symphony orchestra. We could spend a lot of time talking about that, however, I would like to just touch on it for the time being and head back to applying these concepts to a mix.

Stick yourself back in your mix chair, and imagine the conductor's position and his viewpoint. Now, considering we are in an artificial environment, there are lots of sneaky things one can do to establish depth in a mix. We are going to look at two of them. Remember the delay from the player to the conductor? You can add a small amount of delay to a track (or several) in order to distinguish them in the mix. Now when I say 'add delay,' I am talking about 20-30 ms. This is very specific to application though. It will all depend on what you are doing and how far back you want the track to sound (you don't want it to be out of time unless that is the vibe you're going for). Sound travels at roughly 1 ft. per ms so we are talking about mimicking sound traveling around 30 ft. If you have strings in your song, then this technique is crucial for a sense of both depth and realism (remember the orchestral imagery). This leads me to my second topic, reverb.

Reverb can be severely overused if you aren't careful so try to use it sparingly in the beginning. The use of this effect will place your mix (or elements thereof) in an environment. Be it a bathroom, a church, or a horse stall, it will be an environment that will have it's own characteristics which will in turn effect your mix a certain way. This is another topic that could become very drawn out so I will cut to the chase for this post. Depending on what I'm doing, I usually set up a reverb bus (normal bus with a reverb loaded into an effects send) and route whatever tracks I desire to it. As long as you use a 'send' on each track, you can control the send level to the reverb. To start establishing depth, only put a little (or no reverb) on the tracks that you want in the front of the mix. The tracks that you want further back, add a bit more reverb. The more tracks you have, the more you can (and should) layer to establish depth. So to wrap it up . . . based upon how deep you want your tracks to sound, and where you want to place your tracks in the mix, you can utilize delay and reverb to establish a sense of depth. Please feel free to comment or ask questions! This post was probably a little too short to explain certain aspects of depth so if there is something you want explained in a more detailed fashion, please feel free to ask away!

EQ your Mix: Creating Space

Aloha! After re-reading yesterday's post, I began thinking more about the other ways of creating space in a mix and I figured that right now might be as good a time as any for some more spacial discussion. So without further ado . . .

EQ, short for equalizer, is probably one of the most common forms of adjustment for music outside of the volume knob. Let's go old school for a moment . . does anyone remember the old boom boxes? If I remember correctly, mine had a 5-band EQ on it. At the time, I really had no idea what it was beyond making my cassette tapes sound different when adjusted. Even more basic is the typical car stereo EQ featuring treble, midrange (or mid), and bass. Often, we might change these settings based on the style of music we like and adjust accordingly to taste. What is really going on here though? Essentially we are adjusting the gain for a predetermined range of frequencies. As the names suggest, the controls on a car stereo (or basic home stereo) adjust the upper, middle, and lower areas of the frequency spectrum. Growing up, most of us have tweaked the sound of our favorite tunes in this fashion. EQ usage in mixing is WAY more in depth though . . . 

Hang with me here, this will connect to mixing. Guitarists are notorious (I count myself in this discussion) for adjusting their amps (treble, mid, bass) and sounds in the same fashion as mentioned above. For starters, this IS NOT WRONG. However, this perspective can get an aspiring artist into trouble on occasion when mixing his/her guitar tracks in with other instruments. Again, I will repeat . . . there is NOTHING wrong with adjusting your amp in this fashion when you are just hanging out and jamming. Recording, mixing, and playing with a band is a whole different story though. We guitarists love big, thick tone. At times, this tempts us to crank up the bass (for example) on our amps. In a recording situation, you can start running into issues with the bass track if you overdo it. Despite the temptation to crank the bass, the juicy parts of the guitar speak very vibrantly in the mid to upper range of the frequency spectrum. In a mixing environment, very few times is a guitar track ever going to need anything boosted down in the 100 Hz area (specifics are going to really depend on the style of music and taste, keep that in mind when reading these posts). The more you turn up a frequency that tends to sit in a different instrument's range, the more you can unnecessarily fill up space in the spectrum and overshadow important aspects of the mix. In order to combat this and help make space for your tracks, you can use what is commonly referred to as 'subtractive EQ.' All this means, is that instead of turning up a needed frequency, you turn down a different one that isn't as important or essential to that specific track in order to showcase the desired frequency to a greater extent. You could be subtracting in order to bring out something within the track itself, or you could be doing it to bring out another aspect of the mix. You can also use to it to aurally de-clutter your mixes. Check out Ex. 1: 

If you take a peek at the leftmost section of the grid (this is an EQ i used for a guitar track), you will notice that there is a high pass filter applied which, in this case, is sloping off the lower side between 300-400 Hz. The meatiness of a bass guitar tends to sit right around and below the area where we sloped off. What we have done here is used subtractive EQ to make space within the mix by removing some unnecessary frequencies in the guitar track. This paves the way for both the guitar and bass to coexist nicely within the mix.  This can help to make more space in your mix when not only used with guitar or bass tracks, but also when used on other instruments as well. Here is another example of subtractive EQ: 

Ex. 2

I used Ex. 2 to cut some of the low end boominess and some of unpleasant midrange coming through an overhead mic on a drum set. Subtractive EQ doesn't always have to appear this extreme, but sometimes you have to get nasty with the settings in order to get the right amount of space necessary to make other elements cut through. As always, it is subject to the style and the desired sound. To close, play with the settings, and use your ears. Also, use reference recordings. Listen to what other people have done to make their mixes rock. It just takes lots of practice. 

Welcome!!!

Aloha and welcome to the GTRMix blog! My goal in authoring these posts is to help aspiring musicians further their mixing capabilities in their own studios. For starters, every musician who finds this blog is welcome here. The blog title is targeted towards those of us who have selected the corruptive instrument, the guitar, as their means of expression (including myself). Like any dedicated musician, each instrument comes with its own perspective in the grand spectrum of the mix, both live and in the studio. That perspective, if not kept in check, can taint even the best song in the world. Now, there is hope!!! Don't stop reading here. The goal (again, with any instrument) is whilst in the studio, specifically your own studio, one must learn to step out from behind your pedals, rig, or drum set, and into the mix engineer's chair and depending on the situation, the producer's chair. This blog will be geared specifically from a guitarist's perspective and hopefully, will help other guitarists craft better mixes and ultimately, a better product. Don't be shy, please chime in with questions and any alternate ideas you may have!