David Katauskas said:
IOW, how can effects be used transparently to make a mix sound better?
Weellll...effects *are* effects, if they were "transparent" they wouldn't be "effects".
Most of the ways they are used is to make a mix sound better by actually applying the effect (e.g. "that vocal would sound better with a little verb on it.") There are, however, some guidelines in the *way* the effects are applied - the methods used for applying the effects - that sound better in a mix than others. A couple of them do have a sort of "transparency" to them in that they are not obvious to the ear. For example:
- Delay is often used to best effect when you match the timing of the delay to the tempo of the song. A starting calculation would be to take 60,000 and divide it by the beats per minute in the tempo of the song. The resulting value will be the length in milliseconds of a quarter-note at that tempo. Set the delay time to any multiple of that value (you can set to to half-notes, quarter-notes, eighth-notes, etc., whatever works best for the song), to "synch" with the tempo and it will often enhance the sound of the track being delayed stronger and more naturally than some random delay setting.
- A good general rule in reverb (
very general, there are exceptions) is that if you can hear the reverb, you've got too much. Often when you apply it to an individual track (which is how it's done 99.9% of the time) it sounds fine, but when you add that track to the mix you can't hear it. This is especially true in denser mixes like heavier rock. Many rooks will react by going back and applying more effect to the individual track. This is often not a good thing to do. A good test to perform first if you can't hear the effect in the mix is to play the mix without the effect. Can you now notice that it's missing, even though you couldn't "hear" it when it was there? If so, leave it alone. This is a case where it may seem "transparent" in the mix until you take it away and there's a "hole" where it used to be.
- When applying reverb/delay to a "busy" track, you might want to roll off some of the low end on the wet signal to improve definition. Conversely, if the track is more "open" and less busy in it's arrangement, you might want to add some low end to the wet signal for fill. These ideas of course are dependant on what's happening in the other tracks as well.
- Pitch can be used to make small corrections in vocal misfires or in instruments that are badly tuned. But if you have to use too much pitch correction or use it too often on a track, you're much better off re-recording the track. See the current thread on useing the Antares 3 for more on this subject.
G.
