how did they do that?!

[The Garage]

i've noticed a lot of people asking questions about how producer A got a particular sound for band B. (just look at all the threads on the beatles, radiohead, red hot chili peppers, etc....) are there any web sites that give insights into what equipment, techniques, and tricks were used on professional or classic albums? if not classic, are there sites that break down how a particular album was recorded and mixed? i know there are a lot of general tips and techniques going around, but specific projects would be cool. i'll start off the list with one (not a classic album, seems like an indie rock band):

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/
3E5B28BE56CBC2948625697A001FD594

-teddy

 

[The Garage]

bump

 

[chessrock]

In regards to that article . . .

You know, it's obvious that Rip is proud of his work with these Happy dudes and all. And he works his butt off trying to get them as much free pub as he can. But I can't help but think it is too bad for them that they chose to work with Rip on that one.

Don't get me wrong - Rip shows a LOT of promise as a recording/mixing engineer. He seems to bring a lot of fresh ideas to the table, and I can see what he's trying to achieve, conceptually. And he has a lot of confidence in his abilities, obviously.

But to me, he falls kinda' short, because he needs to work on a few things: 1) He must learn how to use the eq to give each track/instrument it's spot in the mix. He's got so many interesting things going on, guitar-wise, and it's panned all over the place. Very cool effect, but it all winds up blending in together and sounding like one big bowl of mush.

And the bass, while sounding VERY cool in the intro, unfortunately gets all but completely swallowed up in the rest of the mix as the song goes on. After a while I found myself wondering if there was any bass guitar in it at all.

And I don't even want to get in to the drum sound. Very dead. Withered. No life to them at all. Ditto on the vocals. I crack up over one of his quotes in that article about how he got crazy with the tube drive on the snare sound to make it what he calls "fat." Huh? All I hear is this dull thud. Maybe he needs to lay off the fake tube stuff (He's kinda' got this fascination with the dbx 586 and ART stuff).

I don't purposely mean to Rip on Rip for the sake of Ripping. It just seems from his articles that he is "the" knowlege pool on all things audio. Yet I kind of get a chuckle out of hearing his mixes fall very short of confirming his apparent confidence in his own abilities. He shows A LOT of promise, but he's got a lot of improvements to make.

He could seriously benefit from a good visit to mp3 mixing clinic if you ask me.