Sources for engineering skills

Eric V

Eric V

Inquiring mind wants to know
Now I know NOTHING replaces experience, and I will have plenty of experience in time. I am very dedicated to learning. But are there some websites that you know of, and/or some books that you would recommend for learning the fundamentals of mixing? I know I could Google it, or browse Amazon, but I would rather get direct input from the membership because I know that I will probably get some good recommendations straight away, as opposed to fumbling around the internet. Time is money, hahaha.

I am primarily interested in rock music, progressive rock, etc. An example of what I am looking for would be sources that include micing placement, frequencies that clash and how to fix them, monitor placement, how to create space in a song with panning, FX, learning basic mixing do's and don'ts, etc. Thanks for any input you might have. It would be very much appreciated.
 
I just ordered Bobby's Owsinski's Mixing Handbook 4th edition for Kindle. Under $20. Thanks again BSG.
 
LazerBeakShiek said:
Time is currently $6.13.

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You're bored aren't you? I get notifications three times in a row to see what the response is, and it's time jokes. *sigh* I would think Prime Time is a better place for joke responses. I am fine with a couple jokes, but come on now. I'm trying to learn more about home recording and I really do appreciate responses like the first one by another member so that I may do so. Again, nothing personal but sheesh.
 
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The snag with our industry is that it blends knowledge with experience and so many times, advice from one source tends to contradict because the cntext is a bit flexible, or even warped.

The internet never seems so useful as a book, but books sadly are not as good as they were. I learned many facts from the Yamaha Live Sound handbook years back. Full of useful facts and figures and hints, but it was very deep and very dry and so much flew over my head, until somethng happened and I remembered the hint!

I realise you want fast progress but your question contained this .... "micing placement, frequencies that clash and how to fix them, monitor placement, how to create space in a song with panning, FX, learning basic mixing do's and don'ts, etc."

You mentioned you know experience is best, but all these things are so experience based that even something like mic placement is difficult to state. I know what I do, and I know where my sartng point will be for miking up, say, a guitar. It always involves a quick strum of the open strings, or with some sessions, getting the payer to play something so you can hear what it sounds like. I'll then wander to the mic box and come back with an appropriate one - but I don't know how I do it? Memory probably - thinking back to a past session where miking was similar. Then you get the conflict with other people. I rarely use two mics, preferring one in just the right place. Others automatically grab two mics and blend them. That's their first way to do it. Not for me. Frequencies that clash? For my music styles, this is usually left hand piano, double bass and maybe low strings fighting with a drum sound.

I've recently abadonned what I have always done with my monitors and have a very unconventional placement - half way down my studio, firing back towards an HF treated wall. A bodge for one recording I had to work on quickly, and I liked it so much I moved everything around to allow this to be permanent. It's a stupid system on paper but I know these monitors well and it sounds so much better - for me - my music - and the room. Making space depends on the piece doesn't, so you experiment and use whatever works best. I again often pan my bass quite a bit which helps split the bass from the left hand piano - conventional wisdom has bass central as if it's an unbreakble rule, but now I'll be found putting left hand piano at say ten to twelve and the double bass at ten past two, and a hole opens up in the middle. If it sounds good, it is good.
 
Panning bass instruments is an interesting case. I do it, but I apply a special filter to bring the bottom end of the frequency range back to center. I have two reasons for this. First, it can be oddly uncomfortable in headphones to have the low frequencies away from center. It's a fairly unnatural situation in real life because LF below about 300 Hz isn't blocked by our head. We have little or no directional sensitivity in that range. Second, I want all the woofers in a speaker system to be contributing to the LF. A system will run out of headroom sooner is all the LF is being reproduced by one driver.
 
He He! If you record an orchestra, where are the basses? On the right. Squeaky stuff on the left and progressively bossier on the right - then, to mess it up you put some of the horns on the left so they don't annoy the trombones and tubas on the right. Church organs typically have the bass coming from wherever the builder could fit in tall pipes. It's only since the advent of big band that bass crept into the middle. Bass and drums suddenly moved to centre, and the mids and highs moved to the extremes. Jazz and pop followed the trend and of course once the 80s started and bass fired the pickup out of the groove if one sided, we stuck with it, and it became convention. Funny how so many recording techniques were originally 'invented' to solve problems, but we think of them as being done for quality reasons. With jazzy upright basses we went through the period where you trimmed out the fundamental tone and hit the harmonics for the slappy sound. The classical composers were very powerful. Need more bass, get more players. If still not enough take an existing instrument and make it physically bigger. They really pushed development back then.

(CYNIC HAT ON)
Then we invented bass players who spent no time playing bass notes but wanted to play chords and high twiddly bits.
 
With distant (i.e. classical) mic techniques, there's not going to be much LF in one channel that's not in the other. So you can put the LF sources wherever you want and the bottom end still lands in the middle.
 
rob aylestone said:
The snag with our industry is that it blends knowledge with experience and so many times, advice from one source tends to contradict because the cntext is a bit flexible, or even warped.

The internet never seems so useful as a book, but books sadly are not as good as they were. I learned many facts from the Yamaha Live Sound handbook years back. Full of useful facts and figures and hints, but it was very deep and very dry and so much flew over my head, until somethng happened and I remembered the hint!

I realise you want fast progress but your question contained this .... "micing placement, frequencies that clash and how to fix them, monitor placement, how to create space in a song with panning, FX, learning basic mixing do's and don'ts, etc."

You mentioned you know experience is best, but all these things are so experience based that even something like mic placement is difficult to state. I know what I do, and I know where my sartng point will be for miking up, say, a guitar. It always involves a quick strum of the open strings, or with some sessions, getting the payer to play something so you can hear what it sounds like. I'll then wander to the mic box and come back with an appropriate one - but I don't know how I do it? Memory probably - thinking back to a past session where miking was similar. Then you get the conflict with other people. I rarely use two mics, preferring one in just the right place. Others automatically grab two mics and blend them. That's their first way to do it. Not for me. Frequencies that clash? For my music styles, this is usually left hand piano, double bass and maybe low strings fighting with a drum sound.

I've recently abadonned what I have always done with my monitors and have a very unconventional placement - half way down my studio, firing back towards an HF treated wall. A bodge for one recording I had to work on quickly, and I liked it so much I moved everything around to allow this to be permanent. It's a stupid system on paper but I know these monitors well and it sounds so much better - for me - my music - and the room. Making space depends on the piece doesn't, so you experiment and use whatever works best. I again often pan my bass quite a bit which helps split the bass from the left hand piano - conventional wisdom has bass central as if it's an unbreakble rule, but now I'll be found putting left hand piano at say ten to twelve and the double bass at ten past two, and a hole opens up in the middle. If it sounds good, it is good.
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Nice! Thank you Rob, that was very informative. I like the fact you got into detail with examples of bass frequencies. Thanks so much.
 
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bouldersoundguy said:
With distant (i.e. classical) mic techniques, there's not going to be much LF in one channel that's not in the other. So you can put the LF sources wherever you want and the bottom end still lands in the middle.
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Right at the moment, my friend and I are recording in his basement. So we are going direct with everything in terms of instruments. Not even micing guitar amps. But I have not tried vocals there yet. I did scratch tracks here at my home to test input levels, but have not tried vocals in my friend's basement as of yet. I'm thinking I will get better results here, but you never know. Like Rob said, just experimenting is very helpful. Thanks to all who have tried to help, I really do appreciate it so very much.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
With distant (i.e. classical) mic techniques, there's not going to be much LF in one channel that's not in the other. So you can put the LF sources wherever you want and the bottom end still lands in the middle.
Click to expand...
Thank you BSG, I feel more at ease with putting bass where I want as long as it serves a purpose and in these examples, to clarify the sound.
 
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