Comment

Layers of Mixing

Tip: This one is a bit on a the philosophical side... A perfect song to me is like this picture. The Mona Lisa is the center of the picture (obviously). And the last impression is her. Her melancholy face draws out emotion and intrigue to the viewer. But when you look deeper, there are valleys and hills behind her that add to the fluidity of the piece. I'm no art major; I’m a producer... so I’m sure someone in the fine arts could draw up a better explanation than I could. But when I look at Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, I see the value of a song. Try and follow me for a second... Lisa is the song/vocalist. The back drop behind her is the instrumentation. Perfectly in balance with one another. Leaving only the unaltered lasting impression of Lisa (the song). Any one can make a great guitar tone or even make a kick and snare sound amazing but those things are easily forgotten, as are these hills behind her. When your listener takes away more... when they take away the impression of the song in its purest form... that’s what we should strive for. There’s probably not one person in modern society that wouldn’t be able to make out Mona Lisa’s face, but I doubt anyone could tell you about the hills behind her. Lets try and aim to make songs just as memorable. Not just fly beats and catchy hooks... Happy music making.

Comment

1 Comment

Why invest in a good mic?

Tip: The reason why recording with a good microphone and a well treated room makes a world of difference! Comb filtering bass build up. Some of the culprits to why your vocal sound is not as good as it can be. To solve these problems avoid the following:

1. Using isolation filter/pads. I know they look cool and everyone seems to have them in their home studio... Though they may help with isolation they introduce issues with comb filtering. Busy street that bleeds through? use the polarity pattern in your microphone. And tell everyone in your room to shut up! 

2. Avoid recording in corners. Bass frequencies build up in corners. unless you have bass traps and etc to address this avoid recording in any corner of the room. This includes your ceiling and floor. The best place to record your vocal is in the middle of your room. A well designed vocal booth will have no parallel surfaces and will have the microphone at the center of it. 

3. Spend an extra 5 minutes to record and play back a few takes. Try to get the vocal sound to sit into the instrumental as well as possible. if it needs more depth angle it down towards the chest. needs more "in your faceness" move the mic closer. Harsh sounding high end? angle the top of the diaphragm away from singer a inch. less is more. dont tell them to step back... but to inch back. 

happy music making.

1 Comment

1 Comment

For a cleaner and more accurate decay

Setting your delay to the tempo of the song your working on is often a given... However we often dont consider doing this with our Reverbs. For a cleaner more accurate decay try changing your reverb settings to match the BPM in milliseconds.

For more Information, go here: http://web.forret.com/tools/bpm_tempo.asp

1 Comment

Comment

How to Tips: Mixing

A little trick for you aspiring engineers... Something I often do is leave the room I'm in and listen to what bleeds out. This will tell you what stands out in the mix. Listen to the bass kick and vox for starters and make sure they're audible. And also, dont forget the main riff of the song. Happy mixing!

Screen Shot 2014-07-09 at 9.53.58 PM.png

Comment

Comment

How to mix a guitar recorded poorly

Photo.jpg

What does it take to mix a guitar that is recorded poorly? Here are some of the steps I took. 1) Add a channel strip to put in corrective eq and some minor compression. 2) Add a tape emulation to bring some life to the recording made with a mediocre channel strip. 3) Compression and eq to make it fit into the mix.

Comment