Low Cuts

  • Thread starter Thread starter bdam123
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Also, about this whole music business thing. I know a lot of working musicians/engineers that make money producing and mixing but that doesn't necessary mean they are competing with the Major labels.

The industry I wanna get my foot into is Top 40. As much as I don't like radio, thats whats gonna get me the most $$ to then pursue my real musical endeavors. So when it comes to how my mixes should sound I'm not gonna sit here and say don't mimic a huge hit and go try to make my record sound like a Stevie Wonder record. The guys that mix major label records and mainstream hits got their jobs for a reason. If anything I wanna sound like the guy that mixed the last Britney Spears record.

I've read how Mastering guys all think records are over compressed nowadays because everyone is fighting this loudness war. I'll trust that most of these guys know what they are talking about but the labels want a certain thing and that what gets them paid.

For the musicians here that get to make music as an art form, you guys are very lucky but in my field the integrity goes out the door. We're catering to other artist. I sit down and make tracks not based on what I think is good but what I think a potential client will think is good. All those hits you hear on the radio that those pretty young little scarlets are singing, chances are a group of musicians (mostly male) sat in some studio somewhere and crafted that song. The game is fucked up, I'm the first to admit that but I got bills and a mouth to feed.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
put the idea in your head that this racket was not a discipline
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Ive done it every day for a year...for the first few months I did nothing but read...I practise and record every day during the week sometimes for eight to ten hours sometimes less if Im not motivated..I still consider myself a n00b even after this effort

SouthSIDE Glen said:
anybody could do with just a few hundred bucks and a few days of effort
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I doubt very much if "anybody" could, but many can...Ive bought very prudently and mostly used lower end of the scale stuff and still managed to spend a few thousand..Im lucky to have the ability to play a few instruments and to have had some training when younger or this would be even more difficult

SouthSIDE Glen said:
it adds a dimension of complexity to the hobby that you didn't bargain for
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Nope not really...I can grasp most of the concepts pretty easily but need to practise and get many more hours in

But you (and a million others) have been lead to believe by someone that anybody could do it
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where would you get that from anything Ive posted? no wonder people call you pompous..re-read that??

you should be asking questions of where those who misled you about that to begin with
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Im not misled?? yet you think your word is gospel??

...Ive never heard one of your mixes...Ive heard plenty of the mixes from the producers that I have seen in tutorials...yet I still question what they do



you make quite a lot of assumptions....
 
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kcearl said:
Ive done it every day for a year...for the first few months I did nothing but read...I practise and record every day during the week sometimes for eight to ten hours sometimes less if Im not motivated..I still consider myself a n00b even after this effort




I doubt very much if "anybody" could, but many can...Ive bought very prudently and mostly used lower end of the scale stuff and still managed to spend a few thousand..Im lucky to have the ability to play a few instruments and to have had some training when younger



Nope not really...I can grasp most of the concepts pretty easily but need to practise and get many more hours in




where would you get that from anything Ive posted? no wonder people call you pompous..re-read that??




Im not misled?? yet you think your word is gospel??


Im sorry I question you...Ive never heard one of your mixes...Ive heard plenty of the mixes from the producers that I have seen in tutorials...yet I still question what they do



you make quite a lot of assumptions....
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I dont even know why I explained myself to you


I should have stuck with my original two word answer :D
 
bdam123 said:
Ok, lets all just put this aside. LOW CUTS FOR EVERYONE!
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welcome to the audio forums...tread lightly or you'll be told how much of a silly n00b you are over and over again even after your fourth grammy and shifting 3 million units ;)
 
bdam123 said:
SouthSIDE, I don't understand how one would develop their ear before they started mixing. I've been a working musician and producer for the last five years and I don't do shit else but music. No hanging out, no going to the club, nothing, but as soon as I started trying to mix I figured out how fine of an art it really is. Of course I can listen to a track and say, "oh thats too loud" or "damn its really got too much low end" but that in itself doesn't make my ear fine tuned enough to do in and make a professional mix. Isn't that why we all practice mixing? To get our ears better?
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This may not seem intuitive - I know I was surprised when I discovered this - but having a musical ear and an engineering ear do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. They concentrate on different aspects and properties of the sound. Yeah, there is a lot of overlap between the two, but there is just as much unique to each discipline.

I am fortunate enough to know quite a lot of very good musicians in the Chicago area, many of them studio session cats as well as self-composers and live players, some of them have been doing this stuff for over 35 years or even more, a few of them with demonstrated perfect pitch. Interestingly enough, some of them have as good an analytical ear for behind the glass as they do a musical ear for in front of it, but an equal number (if not more) that are pretty lost as engineers. And many of them admit that readily.

I have not yet figured out a good way of predicting just who will be whom.
bdam123 said:
I did pretty much 5 days of at least 8 hours of reading articles and watching videos and I got a lot of people saying that everything should be low cut. Only was it until I asked the question here was it that I got a different answer.
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Welcome to the Internet; where myth is king and where myth spreads far faster and wider than truth, because a clean, easy myth is usually far easier to understand and accept than the dirty, complicated truth, and where any bonehead with a keyboard and a modem can type anything they want without having to provide any real bona fides for what they're saying.
bdam123 said:
SouthSIDE, I understand that you prolly know a lot but you have to understand I'm a newb. I'm trying to articulate these questions as best I can.

With that, I do understand what everyone is saying. I guess this is just something I'll just learn to tweak as I do more mixes.

Oh and too address the question about my room and monitors. My room is small and square but we gave it as much treatment as we could and I'm mixing with a pair of Mackie HR824s.
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I understand where you're coming from, bdam (and BTW, I too have a pair of 824s on my home desk. :)) I don't mean to come across and wanting to be anything but helpful.

Unfortunately I can't give you any sure-fire "tricks" for troubleshooting the low end other than to just listen to the mix on a few different systems including your 824s. If you hear or feel there's a problem on the low end with muddiness, then you can attack the problem in the mix and maybe hopefully be able to address it in the tracking the next time. Otherwise, if it sounds good, it is good.

Sometimes a quality real time frequency analyzer (e.g Voxengo's SPAN) can help troubleshoot the nature of the low-end problem, but usually you gotta hear it as a problem with your ears first, because it is difficult to tell the difference between "good" low end and "bad" low end jut by looking at a frequency graph. Of course you can tell things like, if the low end is there all the time, even when the instruments are silent, then you've almost obviously have a problem. Or if you find that the ultra low end is coincident with a standard guitar strum which should not be going that low, that maybe you should be checking the guitar recording technique or attacking the problem on the guitar track and not the master bus, things like that. But if you can't hear the problem - or just as important, the lack of a problem - you may not only never know to even look for the problem, but never really know when you have it fixed properly after you've done whatever you've tried doing for it.

The problem with just automatically cutting everything down there, is that you may be throwing some babies out with the bathwater. Not everything down there is always bad stuff. Sometimes just having some extra energy down there to help balance an overall mix that's mid-or high-frequency- heavy may be desirable, for one example. If you just automatically mow down everything down there assuming that everything down there is mud, that opportunity can be lost.

G.
 
kcearl said:
welcome to the audio forums...tread lightly or you'll be told how much of a silly n00b you are over and over again even after your fourth grammy and shifting 3 million units ;)
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Lets see your Grammys, clownface. And don't give me that "pompous ass" bullshit either, I'm just as tired of your dismissing everything ever said by anybody over the age of 30 as being from a senile old grandpa. You are the age and experience bigot here.

It's amazing how I quote you from previous threads as saying you're just in this for a hobby and how you feel you've taken on more than you've bargained for, and now you vomit on me for pointing that out. I got two words for you too. I don't think you need to develop an ear to figure out what they are.

And for a guy who spends as much time as he does in the MP3 cave cracking wise, I found your absence in my recent and quite busy thread conspicuous, and your claim that you never heard any of my stuff as having just a bit of a smell to it.

G.
 
bdam123 said:
Oh and too address the question about my room and monitors. My room is small and square but we gave it as much treatment as we could and I'm mixing with a pair of Mackie HR824s.
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I'm using 824s also.... :)

Not sure how small is small...but one thing about the 824s is that they ARE rather full sounding, with a big low end, so maybe in your room the low end sounds MUCH fuller/bigger than it really is in the mix...so you compensate by cutting the low end...?

I'm sure you know about the options on the back of the 824s.
How do you have that set...the lows the highs and the acoustic space...and how close to the front wall do you have the monitors (I'm assuming pretty close if it is a small room as you say)?
 
I'm feeling lucky, I'm going with the green
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Lets see your Grammys, clownface. And don't give me that "pompous ass" bullshit either, I'm just as tired of your dismissing everything ever said by anybody over the age of 30 as being from a senile old grandpa. You are the age and experience bigot here.
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why you go girlfriend :laughings:


where have I dismissed anything here?

Ive only pointed out that what the OP is seeing and reading is being published by more than just the internet or rumour

Who's mentioned age? Im bloody 43 you dufuss <facepalm>

It's amazing how I quote you from previous threads as saying you're just in this for a hobby and how you feel you've taken on more than you've bargained for, and now you vomit on me for pointing that out. I got two words for you too. I don't think you need to develop an ear to figure out what they are.
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I never vomited on anyone...you made lots of assumptions...

I used to motorcycle as a hobby...I sunk nearly $20k into my bike and transported or rode around Europe to racetracks, I went to track day lessons, stunt school, advanced rider training...did it for over 20 years...it was still just a hobby...didnt mean I didnt take it seriously


And for a guy who spends as much time as he does in the MP3 cave cracking wise, I found your absence in my recent and quite busy thread conspicuous, and your claim that you never heard any of my stuff as having just a bit of a smell to it.

G.
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whats an MP3 cave?

What the hell has it got to do with anything where I post??

You made a lot of assumptions, I corrected you...now stop acting like a friggin schoolchild or you will make it on my dancecard and Ill make every fucking thread you post in look like the darkest recesses of the "MP3 Cave"

capiche? :)
 
oh and I havent heard anything youve ever mixed...gimme a link Ill tell you where to cut your frequencies :D
 
My frequencies would be more often if I went with blue but it makes me look like I have alot of bottom end.
 
kcearl said:
now stop acting like a friggin schoolchild or you will make it on my dancecard and Ill make every fucking thread you post in look like the darkest recesses of the "MP3 Cave"

capiche? :)
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Go right ahead. Bigger girls than you have been kicked of this board for doing exactly that.

And me, I'll be very happy to have another reason to leave this place. A jackass like you breaking federal law through internet stalking would be just the ticket.

G.
 
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