Mix Technician or Mix Artist?

You know some days when you mix, everything just feels right? You're own creativity seems to be leading you to the right EQ, compression and effect decisions, without ever overthinking anything or loosing perspective. On the contrary, we all have those days where we can't seem to grab the right sounds, we're constantly unsure of our settings and mixing becomes a chore, not the joy it should be. Think about those days where you're on top of your game. I bet they're the days, for whatever reason, that you don't have to do much editing, patching or , and you spend the majority of the the balancing and most importantly, listening. Maybe that day can be every day, so long as you spend some time at the start of the day getting things in shape... let's have a look.

Sound engineering is a weird game. There aren't many jobs like it, that's for sure. You spend the day constantly switching between using the left and right lobes of your brain, all whilst listening intently with both in order to make technical and creative decisions. It can be fatiguing and without proper management, you may end up with less than satisfactory results. Take a painter, for example. The painter begins a painting and will spend the majority of their time using the right, creative side of their brain until their painting is done. There are exceptions of course, some painters like to draw grids and paint methodically, but my point is that the painter wastes little energy on switching lobes and uses it creatively in their painting. An accountant on the other hand, spends most of their day using the left, logical side of their brain. Mathematics requires little creative thought and as a result the accountant has more brain energy to focus on the task at hand than if he were to stop and do something creative every ten minutes.

The sound engineer spends the day balancing that fine line of artist and accountant and potentially doesn't draw a very good picture or get a very good tax return. The following paragraph describes a sound engineer diving into a mix as they usually would. The sentences typed in red indicated time spend using the left side of the brain, and the blue the right.

The engineer pulls up the the fader for the overhead microphones and then balances the kick drum with the overheads with their eyes closed, listening to the music. The engineer decides the phase relationship between the kick drum and overheads is not satisfactory and begins to align tracks in the DAW. The engineer rebalances the kick drum and brings in the snare drum to a satisfying level. The engineer decides the kick drum now needs some equalisation and patches in an equaliser, thinking about the inputs and outputs required and following the logical signal path. Listening for what suits the style of music, the engineer applies some equaliser settings.

As you can see, the engineer has already made many swaps between creative and logical thinking, and they haven't even pulled a drum sound yet. Imagine how much more efficient this process would have been if a few things had been taken care of before the engineer began balancing, namely an EQ already patched over most channels and all phase relationships checked. The solution, as far as I can see is to arrange your day so that you can spend a significant amount of time using one side of your brain, and limit the amount of swapping required.

So, I will take you through how I like to mix a typical pop or rock tune for minimal energy loss and maximum time spent mixing like an artist.

1. Organise the session (if you are working from a DAW): Left Brain

I begin working by having a listen to each track in solo. At this point I can check if anything has been labeled incorrectly or not the way I am used to and fix it if so. I'm also making mental notes about what a track might need applied down the line.

With all the tracks labeled correctly, I begin to check the phase relationships between things like close drum mics and overheads, and guitar amps that have been mic'd with two mics. First I might try simply flipping the phase on the close mics to see if it yields a better result, or I may have to zoom right in and manually line up transients. After a while you get pretty good at hearing when phase is a problem.

Now that all your tracks combine well, do a save-as, you never know when you might want to go back to this point! I often insert a simple, low CPU using EQ on every track at this point. It will be useful for when you want to filter out the low-end of guitars and vocals later down the line. If it's appropriate, I do any editing between vocal lines and between tom hits at this point. This is an important one. If you're going to do it, do it now, because I can guarantee it wont be very much fun when you're writing automation and setting EQs and compressors to decide you need to sit there editing for an hour before you continue!

The last thing to do is sort out your routing in the session. If you use drum masters etc, set up, label and rout your auxiliaries and busses and while you're at it, set up a few plug in send effects like reverbs and delays. Life will be a better place to be in three hours time if you decide you want a bit of delay on the vocal and all it takes is turning up a fader and playing with some settings.

Save-as and let's move on...

2. Patching: Left Brain

Remember when we were listening to the tracks in the session earlier? Hopefully you were making (mental or physical) notes about the sounds and what they might need... 'That kick drum is weak as piss, but my Pultec is great for fixing sounds like that', 'The snare drum is fine but needs a little top end, the 1073 plug-in will be fine for that'. Great! You've passed. If you don't remember having any of these thoughts, then strait back to the start, don't pass go. Anyone who owns some recording gear, weather it be hardware or software, knows it intimately. If they don't, then they've got more gear than sense and it's time to slow up the spending and mix a bit more often. You build up a bank in your memory of the times your gear has worked for specific sounds and after a while you get very good at guessing which particular processor will be just right for your sound. This is where you put it in to practice.

Patch that Pultec across the kick drum, insert that 1073 across the snare, and do the same for the rest of the tracks that you can already ascertain need a helping hand across the polished mix finish line. Set all of your processors so that their parameters are flat and bypass all of your units. Now when you go to give the kick drum a bit of thump in an hour's time with your Pultec, you just need to hit the bypass switch and start playing. If you hadn't performed this step earlier, you would immediately snap back into your left brain whilst you think about which points on the patchbay to use and where the signal is going.

Now I'm not suggesting for a minute that you'll be able to predict exactly what plugins and processors you will need to apply to your sounds later in the mix, but you're cutting out as many brain state switches as you can. You will undoubtedly have to patch something in later, or decide that what you guessed would work doesn't, but we've minimised switches.

3. Get mixing!

Your tracks are in phase, everything's edited, you've got reverbs and delays set up and you've got processing ready to apply when you need it. All that's left to do is start balancing and enjoy it. You'll spend the rest of the day (hopefully) in mostly you're right brain and you should be able to stick at it longer and achieve better results. Take a break every 15-20 minutes and just walk out into the hall or something, it'll give you hours more mixing stamina.

While you're at it, try a couple of things for me.

1. Mix with your eyes closed as much as you can. It's like a magnifying glass for your ears!

2. If you mix with a mixing console or a control surface, move your computer screens away from in front of you're face and put them somewhere off to the side. I don't know why but you'll hear better.

'Til next time,

Nick

NF Audio

www.nfaudio.com

nick@nfaudio.com

NF Audio + Earthling Designs: Looking out for number one

Just recently I have had to make a very important decision about the direction of my life. The mastering facility I work for is moving complexes and as a result there is no work there until the new studio is open. Despite the fact that I do a lot of recording work on the side I am unable to support my lifestyle on that alone.

So I reach one of life's many crossroads of sleepless nights, small numbers in bank accounts and looking around your living room for things you could put on eBay to make some money to buy lunch. I could get a job making coffee in a flash. I spent the majority of my years at university doing it for a crust and there is work everywhere for those who can do it. Yet, I am too proud. The day I was able to work in professional audio alone and leave my part time "shit-kicker" job behind was one of the best of my life, and to walk back into a job like that would feel like a major step backwards in my career.

What I am essentially saying is everyone who does anything in this music game wants to make a living from it, and who can blame them? It's great! So I said to myself one night, "fuck it, I'm a sound engineer", I'm not going back to a crap job for crap pay just to survive until my work exists again and began to plan how I could pull this off.

Which brings us to the point of this blog... where NF Audio is now. As you can see by the new banner at the top of the blog, I've got new digs (seems like I'm moving studios more often than I'm using them, I know). The new place is shared with Earthling Designs, which is sweet by me as I can get him to build me cool stuff and I can record his cool stuff.. It's called symbiosis or something, I think.

In a drastic career change I've actually put my skills on the (soldering) iron to use, and even stranger is that it's actually working! Enter the new branch of NF Audio: NF Audio Pro Audio Products. I've been building Reamping and Direct Inject units (see pictures) and they're selling like hotcakes. Brilliant!

Of course I am still doing lots of audio work. I'm mixing an EP for the Little Lovers in the coming weeks and next month recording the fantastic Bill Gibson singing on Ryan Elsemore's (Scruffs, The Wake Ups, The Stiffies) solo album.

So the moral of the story is that you have just read a self indulgent rant about me. No, seriously, it is that if you want to be something, a musician, and artist, an engineer, just decide that that's what you are and go do it, you'll find a way.

While you're hanging abouts, go check the new website too http://www.nfaudio.com/

Cool,

Nick.

RIP Alex Chilton

Sadly, yesterday saw the passing of brilliant singer and songwriter, Alex Chilton, of Big Star fame. Alex, along with Big Star were responsible for some of the most influential guitar-pop/power-pop music ever written, and his work is amongst the most covered ever, I would hedge a bet.

Here is a quick version of Big Star's "Thirteen", which I recorded this morning as a bit of a tribute to the great man.

http://www.thewaitups.com/thirteen.mp3

For the technically minded amongst us (and since this is a technical blog after all), Guitar was recorded with a Rode NT5 through a Urei 1178. Vocals overdubbed with a Rode NT1000 again through the 1178. The guitar and voice saw a tiny bit of ITB EQ and compression then the mix went through my DIY SSL stereo compressor.

Solo Record

I write a lot of music, as in HEAPS, especially lately. Pretty much every time I sit down at the guitar lately I've written something. Not that much of it is good, but when there's this many songs getting written, a few of them have got to come off!

I think every songwriter will agree with me, we all go through phases of how we write. One month it might be sitting down at the piano, the next it might be playing with ideas as you record them. At the moment for me it's acoustic guitar. The thing about acoustic guitar is, you can almost hear exactly as you would like the band to play as you sit there and play and sing. Writing on piano I find is sometimes more conducive to writing solo piano and voice songs, as opposed to whole band ones... but that's just me. Writing as I record for me is generally an absolute disaster, ending with a thousand overdubs and experimental ideas and sounds, but not much resembling the song I intended to create in the first place.

So more about this record...

I started the first song, Good Enough for You, at my lovely new studio in Bondi (which I am absolutely loving by the way). All the songs are pretty much going to have the same instrumentation and I intend to record them all in the same manor to try to inject some common thread to the record. Some of the songs are slightly different to the others, so I'm hoping the recording will tie it all together.

Before I go into detail about recording this first song, I wanted to talk about the general aesthetic I'm going for this record, and how I'm going to go about it. I want this record to kind of sound like crowded house in the drum department, Beatles kind of Hofner bass sounds, slightly edgy and rough around the edges for the guitars and topped off with some modern, clean, up-front vocals.

I'm recording vocals and acoustic guitars to ProTools to keep them pretty clean and noise free, then they'll be transfered to 1" 16 track tape where I'll overdub the rest of the band instruments. Kind of backwards to how a lot of people work but there's no wrongs or rights here...right?

Anyway, so I tracked the acoustic (Rode NT5, about 12 inches from 12th fret) into PT first along with a click, then I spent some time getting the vocal performance ( just right (another reason I'm using tools for vocals is so I can cut together different performances more easily). With a solid basis for overdubbing onto done, transferred to tape and began layering on some electrics. I love the limitation of tape in this regard. I have been known to go way too wild with the guitar overdubs from time to time, and with tape there's just no option... you have to leave tracks for your other stuff! I mic'd the guitar amp with an sm57 and NT1000, summed to one channel via the desk, into a Joe Meek compressor and then a evans analogue delay. I took the delay off for the rhythm parts, using it only for the lead lines.

Anyways, that's probably enough banging on about this recording, I'll post if anything interesting happens along the way, and maybe I'll post some recordings too.

'til next time,

Nick

Sugar, sit a while.

In the words of Tim Rogers "It's been a long, long while."

But stuff has actually been happening, that's why I haven't had time to write. I don't have any particular subject to flood the interweb with this time, but I did want to note what's been going on in my world as far as music and audio goes.

The most recent monumental audio incident to occur is that Pete and I have packed up gear from the Annandale studio and moved to a new joint in Tamarama. It's a bit further in the car but the studio has much better isolation, a better load in and is generally more comfortable. The new studio features the following.

• Digidesign Pro Tools Rig 16 in, 16 out.
  
• Allen and Head 24 Channel all analogue mixing console
  
• Tascam MS-16 Analogue tape machine
  
• GSSL Stereo Mix Buss Compressor
  
• Earthling Designs Green Pre
  
• Joe Meek TwinQ
  
• Nuemann W193 Mono Parametric EQ
  
• Focusrite Dual Channel Strip
  
• Evans Analogue Delay
  
• Alto CL2 Compressor Limiter
  
• Waves Mercury Bundle Plugs (who cares?)

The Wait Ups (my band) have been gigging up a storm and our self engineered and produced 3rd EP is coming along nicely. We're just about to do final revisions on the mixes and then it's off to Turtlerock Mastering (Camperdown). The final product is going to be released in Digipack format with a felt CD holder, so no scratches!

Upcoming Wait Ups Shows

11th Aug: Hopetoun Hotel

20th Aug: Annandale Hotel

28th Oct: Oxford Art Factory

Audio Work:

Currently mastering a double CD compilation for electronic label ZeroHour. Pete and I have quickly realized that it takes a long time to even listen to two full CDs of music, let alone do anything to it. It's sounding bitching though.

Going into the studio in the next few weeks with Airbridge to record a four song EP.

Thanks everyone who reads,

Nick and Pete (well mostly Nick.)

Recording Eush - Pt 1: Live Tracking

I recently went with Sydney band “Eush” into the studio to record two songs, which I would also eventually mix. Having recorded them before and seen them play live, I knew what to expect, but that’s not to say nothing unexpected arose during the session! These sessions were amongst the most fun I’ve had recording a band, but at times, equipment failure and time constraints became frustrating. I’ve documented the recording session in this blog so that if you like any of the sounds on the recording, you can have a go at recreating them. Assisting me on the tracking sessions was Pete Kossen.

The first session was dedicated to tracking the two songs live with the whole group playing together. Eush is a three piece, consisting of James Waples on drums, Sean Van Doornum on guitar and vocals and Nick Hoorweg. Each member is a talented player; in fact James and Nick are amongst the busiest players in Sydney when it comes to Jazz. Eush however are certainly not a Jazz band, hence I didn’t approach these sessions like a Jazz recording at all.

Setting up the band to play live in the small space was a challenge, but by no means impossible. We started by micing the drum kit at one end of the live space. James uses a very minimal setup which always makes the engineers life a dream! Using just one mic on the kick, one on the snare and a pair of overheads, we achieved a solid drum sound very quickly. Normally on a small, jazzy kick drum like James’s I’d have used a soft, round sounding microphone but the first track had a very sharp, percussive rhythm to it, so I instead emphasized the beater slap using an Audix D6, which has a naturally scooped frequency response. It was funny actually, one of the assistants from the studio walked by whilst we were getting a drum sound and said “D6”, to which we replied “Correct!” This goes to show the instant recognition of this microphone’s sound!

SCX25 Frequency Response

D6 Frequency Response

The snare grabbed some attention from a Shure SM57 (I know, boring), and the overheads were covered by a pair of Audix SCX25s. These mics are relatively uncommon but I find their naturally rolled off top end flattering on a Jazzier sounding kit. First comical moment of the session came here when James found a cymbal that had the word “ping” scrawled onto it in permanent marker. Upon setting it up for giggles we realized that’s exactly the sound it made. It ended up making it onto the tracks and you can probably work out which one it is.

With the drums sorted, we ran the bass through an Electroharmonix valve DI/mic pre, known as the MP-1. The box belonged to the studio, and I’ve not really been able to find much info on the unit. I wanted to get my hands on one or build a clone because it sounded really nice, but no schematics or info seems to be floating around. Might have to open it up one day and take some pictures and get Lachlan Colquoun to do a bit of backwards engineering. I’d have liked to put a mic on a bass amp but because of the limited space it wasn’t really an option. We could always reamp the bass later if need be.

Sean’s guitar amp was place in the adjacent booth, with a tie line running from the main space so he could stand with the rest of the band, which, by the way was very important. Never encourage band members to play in separate rooms or overdub their parts just for the sake of making your job in the mix easier. We miced the amp (Fender Deluxe) with an SM57, about 4 inches from the grill. After a quick listen I had Pete rotate the microphone around the capsule until it took the bite out of the high end.

With this set up the band rolled about 5 or 6 takes and we chose the best one. Not the one with the fewest technical errors, but the one with the best feel and groove. Technical errors can often be corrected, or add character if you just leave them, but there is no way of injecting fake groove into a tune.

The second song featured upright bass instead of the electric. We took both a DI and a microphone signal from the bass, which sounded great with the right blend between the two. Microphone of choice was a Neumann u89, which captured the growl and tone of the bass fantastically. We placed a gobo between the bass and drums to minimize the spill, but provided the band pulled off the take together, spill wouldn’t be much of a problem.

Again we rolled about 5 takes of the song and selected the better one. We wrapped up the first session here, but not before backing up our session to a few sources!

Go make a record.

Stereo Microphone Technique and Human Hearing

Far too many audio engineers simply throw up a pair of microphones in a common stereo position when they feel the situation calls for it, without consideration or an understanding of why we use stereo techniques, and how the techniques were derived in the first place. From drum kits to orchestras, we can’t get enough of the illusion we can create that is stereo.

In order to create unforgettable stereo recordings, it is probably best we understand how our ears perceive and localize sounds. Using two ears alone, our brilliantly designed hearing system can accurately pinpoint the location of any sound, whether it is behind, in front, above or below us. The ears actually have little to do with it, and it is mostly thanks to hard work by our brain.

Three factors are taken into consideration by our brain when we hear a sound and need to decide where it is coming from. Firstly our brain detects what is known as “inter-aural time difference”. This is the delay between when a sound arrives in one ear and when it reaches the other, for example; a sound that emanates from the left of a person will arrive in their left ear before the right, thanks to the fact that sound takes time to move.

Secondly, the brain will notice that the sound is louder in one ear, obviously the ear closest to the sound source. To test the theory, feel free to fire a shot close your ear, Kurt Cobain was a budding audiologist did you know? Finally, our brain will calculate that the sound in one ear is slightly duller in one ear. This is because as we know, high frequencies are easily absorbed by practically anything, and in this case are being absorbed by our head before they reach the ear furthest from the sound source.

So, to recap that little section, a listener who hears a sound on their right hears a louder brighter sound in their right ear, shortly (and I mean milliseconds) before hearing a slightly quieter, duller sound in their left. Almost in real time, the brain puts this jigsaw together and the listener knows where the sound is coming from, which is incredible considering at the same time it dredges up memory to realize what the sound is, opinion to make a judgment about the sound and nervous reaction to respond to it. OK, the part we’ve been waiting for; I’ll explain what all this has to do with stereo microphone technique.

For the most part, when using two microphones in stereo we’re attempting to replicate a natural stereo spread, the way we would hear the instrument or ensemble if we were to stand in front of it. By understanding how our ears perceive and localize sound, we’re a few steps closer to being better at this replication. Common stereo techniques employed by just about every audio engineer out there will replicate one or two of the three factors mentioned earlier, but very few can mimic all three. Crossed cardioids (XY) for example, will translate amplitude difference, but not time difference, as the two capsules are located in pretty much the same position in the air. Spaced pairs (AB), can on the other hand emulate arrival time differences and amplitude differences, but don’t replicate the spectral change caused by high frequency absorption.

The only way to achieve that third factor is to place something with a similar density and texture to a human head between your microphones. I prefer to use a real severed head, but short of that you can use some high density foam gaffed up into a head like ball (sticky eyes optional), or get your hands on that Dummy Head microphone by Neumann. That mic was actually used on the latest Radiohead record on piano and voice on some songs, and whilst it doesn’t sound overtly stunning on speakers, do yourself a favour and have a listen to those tracks on headphones…brilliant! The reason it doesn’t sound amazing on speakers throws up a bit of a conundrum, and you’ll need to consider this on your next stereo recording.

Whilst capturing a recording that takes into account all three of the abovementioned factors produces exceptional results for headphone listening, it is less good for speakers. This is because once the sound leaves the speakers for the listener; we experience all three factors again. Sounds that were captured louder in one microphone will be perceived again as louder as it leaves one speaker, sounds that took longer to reach one microphone will again take longer to reach one of the listeners ears, and sounds that were duller in one microphone will be dulled again by the listeners head. As you are probably gathering, this secondary processing doesn’t matter too much when it comes to time difference and amplitude difference, but two rounds of spectral difference only results in an underachieving stereo image.

So what can we take away from this? Primarily a better understanding of how common stereo microphone techniques relate to the workings of our ear and brain, and secondly, a better idea of when to choose a particular technique. Radiohead primarily distributed their latest music as a download, hence most people who obtained it would probably listen on headphones.  In this case, using the Dummy Head microphone was a wise choice because most listeners will enjoy the incredible realism of the technique. On a record destined to be primarily listened to on speakers, maybe XY or AB would be a better choice. Think about it next time you whack a stereo pair above that drum kit.