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Mixnotes
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How to listen and make mix notes that get results

helping you help me...help you

Getting a mix that achieves your goals and vision for the song is a collaborative process.  I do everything I can to understand the artist's vision before I begin the first mix, but there is usually still room for fine tuning, and that’s why we do a revision process.

There’s a list of guidelines and procedures I ask my clients to use when listening to their mixes and preparing notes for me.  After a few times typing it all out, I had the brilliant idea (or someone near me did) to save it all so it can be simply passed to clients when they needed it. Now I’ve finally had the common sense to make it part of my website so my clients —and anyone else— can refer to it.  


Take Notes:  

Write your thoughts down as you’re listening! Memory is very shaky, and we don’t want to leave anything to chance. You can edit the notes later, so write it all down as you go.  Use a notepad, voice memo, or a note app; use whatever you like best.

Listen on Multiple Speaker Systems:

If you make notes based on just hearing the song on your laptop or phone speaker, you’re not getting anywhere near the full picture, and your notes will reflect that.
Listen on the systems through which you’re most familiar hearing music. These could be earbuds, headphones, a car stereo, or a home stereo.  Maybe the phone speaker, too; just be sure to listen in many places to get a good idea of how the song sounds to everyone around the world.  

Listen at Different Volumes:

Our ears hear differently at different volumes. So after the initial excitement of having that first mix to listen to pushes you to crank things up, pull it back and see what pops out at quieter volumes.  Does the vocal get lost?  Does the energy stay up when it’s quiet?  Is it too harsh when I crank up the speakers?  Sometimes we listen to music in the background and other times it’s cranked up so we can sing along.  This will give you yet another perspective, and you may revise your notes.

Put the Song in a Playlist:

A great way to hear the song the way your fans will is to sandwich it in a playlist with similar music to see how the song feels in a shuffle.  Your mix doesn’t need to match so exactly that its unique character is lost, but you want to know how it fits next to other music. How will it grab the listener, and how will it blend?

Get the Opinion of People you Trust:

If you have bandmates, that’s obvious, but even if you are solo, it’s good to keep perspective.  Find people whom you trust (they probably need to have similar taste in music).  Make sure they’re also listening on real speakers and —this is important— don’t prompt them!  Get their feelings on the song without priming them to pay attention to something you’ve already written down. Ask them how it makes them feel.  Is there anything jarring about the song that stands out?  What do they love about the song?  You might be fixating on a small detail that 99% of listeners will never notice. By using this process to help you consider what they say weighed against your own feelings, you can stay on target to achieve an overall good mix, not just one that fits your own expectations. 

Organize your Notes:

By now, your notes might be a long list and might even have some conflicts or contradictions within it.  Edit the list to remove these conflicts (vocal up, and also vocal down, etc.), and organize them by instrument and time as much as possible. Read them out loud to yourself as a check to see if they make sense. A confusing sentence might go unnoticed when you write/type it, but will stand out when you read it out loud to yourself.

Don’t Panic!:

If, for some reason, you get that first mix back and it is way off from the creative vision that you have for the music, don’t despair! Just communicate that immediately in a professional manner.  I do my best to avoid this by communicating frequently before the first mix and through use of reference tracks, but a misunderstanding can still happen from time to time. It’s probably not hard to get things back on track.  It’s time to communicate more about the references, and/or change those references up if you think I've misunderstood something major.  

One more thing:

Keep in mind that the process of mixing is balancing.  Turning one instrument up is, essentially, the same thing as turning everything else down, and boosting the lows in the bass guitar might mean cutting some bass from other tracks to make room. What I do to turn your notes into a mix revision is to first interpret them in the context of the song and then to make a creative choice about how best to achieve the goal.  Sometimes that’s as easy as you saying, “turn the guitar solo up” and me doing just that.  Other times the guitar solo might be covered by some other tracks or effects and changing those is the best way to make the solo sound louder in the mix.  I let the context decide.

That’s it!
Taking good notes, varying your listening environment, getting alternate perspectives, and editing/organizing the notes for clarity and conflicts will make sure your mix revision gets results!

Unusual session... For me, anyway.

I had an interesting session recently for The Small Brain Curds, a four pice band featuring Motown and soul tunes.
They wanted to record a cappella arrangements of a few of their favorites. I thought the best way to approach this with a band that’s most used to playing in a room together is to record it the same way. All live, all at once. When thinking about the best mic technique for this I asked for advice from the great Slau, and of course, he came through with an idea I had never heard of and surely wouldn’t have thought of on my own.

I placed my pair of Cascade Fat Head II ribbons with the stereo bar as if setting up for blumlein in the center of the room. The figure eight patterns of each mic facing (almost) the corners of the room. 

(I say almost because we avoid facing the walls to reject reflections but directly pointing them at the corners could have its own problems. So just off from the corners is best) 

The performers stand facing each other like an X around the microphone array. Each mic hears two voices, one on each side, and the other two voices are in that mic’s rejection nodes. With careful listening the voices can be balanced by moving closer or farther away from the mics. This allows the performers to hear and see each other easily which is crucial to this sort of recording. Each singer was about 20 to 26 inches from the mic depending on how loud they were which turned out to be far enough to avoid any need for a pop screen and problems with the ribbon’s powerful proximity effect.This technique picks up quite a bit of room sound so I was glad I put so much into good acoustic treatment but I also hung up my blankets and gobos behind the singers to cut out even more. 

 Small Brain Curds recording at Railroad Avenue

You can see in the picture I placed my Rode NT2 in omni mode in the center of the pattern also. I recorded this to a third track with the idea that I might want to mix in some high end but the Fat Head II’s gave me everything I wanted so the track was muted in the mix.
The simple two tracks made the mix feel more like mastering. Some gentle multiband compression helped to even out the high and low octave voices.

Thanks to Slau for the great technique. Another tool to remember.

A final mix from the session…

Forging Reverie Vocal Shootout!

i’ve uploaded samples of 10 different vocal microphone setups, we want you to listen to them and vote for the one you think sounds the best!

here they are, get to it!

Forging Reverie vox test . zip

just download the zip and play the high res files.  swap back and fourth until you find the one you think sounds the best and post your pick in the comments.  thanks!

more guitar, keyboard, and we might need your help...

tracked my keyboards and almost done with guitars.

keys are recorded midi into Reason 4 with stock libraries and the Abbey Roads Keyboard refill.  the challen piano and the hamond organ in that pack is unbelievable…  re-wire that back into pro tools.  maybe i’ll re-amp some of this through some pre’s or other outboard gear if it needs something to glue it to the mix, we’ll see.

for my guitars i messed around with so many odd ball placements i nearly pulled my hair out.  eventually came back to a very similar setup to what we did for Derek’s.  Cascade FatHead II edge of the dust cover and this time a 57 half way from the edge of the cone to the dust cover.  both on axis, both into my golden age Pre73’s.  i wish i had some inline HPF for the ribbon mike, it’s picking up some sub information that i need to filter out…but the pre73 doesn’t have a filter and it has this detail in the mid range that my other pre’s just didn’t.  

 

 BUT WAIT!  

(there’s more)

check back tomorrow night for a special thing we need your input on. YES YOU!  more to come in the near-to-now…

 

Forging Reverie Drum Session

UPDATE!

 

drums are done tracking, kids!  here’s a video Derek shot explaining the setup and sneaking a peek.

check it!

 

i didn’t go into much detail here but if anybody is interested i surely will, just ask.  be sure to like my vids and subscribe to my channel for more updates (at whatever lazy pace is accomplish-able)

(now back to work for me)

...not much man, what about you?

The past few weeks I’ve had a few things going on. For starters I’ve finished the conversion of my new house into a dual purpose living space/recording studio! Got the new studio set up with Pro Tools 9 and a few other bits of tasty new gear. 
Next I broke the room in with by remixing the year and a half old recording of “One Idea” by Forging Reverie. (results can be found on the demo reel)
That song was originally released on a compilation cd to benefit the Dover Children’s Home and used in the soundtrack for an indie film called “Sunblocked” from Astro Piano films. Well, one thing lead to another and I’m currently waist deep in remixing the audio for future screenings of “Sunblocked”. 
Oh yea, and as if that isn’t enough we just officially started tracking drums for the upcoming Forging Reverie album! I plan on making lots of updates and videos on the production process as we go so, I’ll go into much more detail on this soon. Until then I leave you with this teaser pick…

 

 

 

goldielocks is not welcome in the recording industry


Recording Studio Image by TomBorowski via Flickr


i got straight A's in audio school, and while i secretly feel that the experience i've had since then is actually the part that made me good at what i do, i should still be able to stand next to my framed degree and earn money, right?  what's that? you're buddy just got a cracked copy of cuebase and a couple of microphones?  so unless i have a 64 channel console and a secretary i'm the same as a beginner?

i read dozens of articles about audio and the recording industry weekly, but this week one stuck out.  Charles Szczepanek wrote for theproaudiofiles.com Setting Studio Rates 101

[read that and come back to me]

this is a topic i've had on my brain for a while and Charles' thoughts echoed pretty exactly what i'd been thinking about it.  i pay attention to new local music and much of it is very, very good.  sadly most of the recordings i hear from locals aren't well produced at all and the music suffers.  these might be great songs, but they face an uphill battle for the admiration of the listener.  now and then i come across a recording that sounds better than i think i could do.  every example was recorded by somebody great, charging premium studio prices.


Recording Studio at Berklee Colleg of Music Image via Wikipedia


in the past i've looked around at studios and how other recordists are pricing themselves.  "my recordings sound good, but i don't have quite the expensive gear so i should charge a little bit less"

after reading this article i feel like maybe i should raise it up to $40 p/hour.  is this what it takes to set me apart from your buddy with cubase on his macbook?  is there no place for mid level producers?  i know i'm not a big shot but i surely am not competing with beginners.


LiquidMolly's home recording studio. Image via Wikipedia


so what's my value?...  i think artists should choose me to produce their recording if they like my style.  if they want a clean, hollywood-polish sound they're better off going to an expensive studio that turns out mixes like that.  if they don't care about (or don't notice) the difference between my work and a garage band demo, they shouldn't spend a penny.  but if they like warm, organic, maybe a little raw but definitely natural records, maybe i'm just right.