more depth in the mix

  • Thread starter Thread starter lurek100
  • Start date Start date
lurek100

lurek100

New member
Hi guys,
I'm pretty big fan of porcupine tree and been listening in absentia album quite a lot recently.
I would like to ask you what could I do to get such a depth in my mixes.
Unfortunately the mixes I do sounds a bit flat compare to porcupine tree.
I know that Steven Wilson is great sound engineer and he mostly do his recordings in proper studio but
maybe you can give me some tips.
 
The best way to *have* depth is to *use* depth.

Record everything from a foot away and your mixes will sound flat. Record from a foot away to 3 feet away and your mix will be two feet deep. Record from a foot away to the back of a 50 foot room and you get the idea.

You can throw reverbs and delays around all day to "fake it" -- But the signal a mic picks up from a foot away is totally different than the signal it picks up from 2 feet away. Or 10 feet. Or 50.
 
While Massive has a point, I would wager there's something more to it, including clever engineering.

I'm listening now to Gravity Eyelids off that album and there's a lot going on. The pad in the beginning is wide and full of verb. The crunky drums are either live drums that have been lo-fi filtered and looped or a loop from an instrument (kinda reminds me of a Stylus RMX loop). The vocals are upfront at first, giving it a feel of intimacy, and have just enough reverb to make them sound spacious without being awash. There are also some subtle delay tails coming off of the slightly louder parts.

The song then builds with more synths and stereo overdubbed vocals that get pushed back a bit. The impression of depth evolves as the song's arrangement does. The backing vocals are almost entirely wide-panned and layered.

The drums are almost certainly close miked in the "standard" fashion but have a fair amount of short room verb, either real or added later.

All the elements are masterfully mixed and arranged with lots of contrast going on.

The heavy part is a stock standard rock mix with close miked drums with a good rooms sound and hard-panned close-miked guitars. The depth during this part comes from layering synth sounds with an according amount of verb to make them sound distant.

So contrast, to a large degree, is a function of depth. And visa versa. Same with so-called "width". If everything is deep, nothing is deep. If everything is wide, nothing is wide.

My 2c.

Cheers :)
 
All of the above are totally right.
I would add to that eq.....if too much things are bright, there will be too much elements (or worse, all the elements of the mix) at the front.
So some darker sounding elements in the mix will produce depth-of-field. The way you pan your bright/dark tracks will add too.
As mofacta said..contrast.
 
Steven Wilson is a very good engineer. You said it yourself.

He also has lots going on all the time if you listen carefully, even in sparse passages, and he uses dynamics very well. It's not magic, it's getting good sounds to start with and knowing what to do with them. It takes time to learn. Lots of time.
 
depth in a mix is probably one of the oldest challenges in mixing. It a combination of dynamics, dry vs wet, levels, and eq.... which is duh kinda, but the truth. Steve's work is impeccable when it comes to layering. He is a master of his craft. Of course if you listen to older PT cds, like "Signify", it's not nearly as robust sounding as "the incident." Like all good engineers he's learning from experience and just working it.

One tip to start with, and most pros will tell you to start this way. pick your core instrument(s) and build around them. Whatever the hero is (drum and bass, or vocal, or guitar) let it stand out in front, then make the other instruments fall in around or behind it. If everything has the same importance, nothing stands out. Don't be afraid to make something very wet and quiet, or put a pass filter on something so that it only takes up a small frequency range. The trick (if there is one) is to let every instrument have its own place in the mix, however subtle. If you listen to Steve's mixes there is a LOT of stuff going on, stuff that you probably don't even hear immediately in the mix, but if you were to solo his tracks, you'd here a bunch of stuff going on in very subtle ways.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top