One more for mixmkr!!!

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sonusman

sonusman

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A little funk this time buddy. Hope you like funk. These guys are funky. I like funk! :)

This is the musicians that make up that band Silky who I posted a mix of. (sorry, had to delete the Silky cut to make room for this one).

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=2270&alid=349 "This Is My Cut" is the song you want.

Too bad I only get 15MB of space. Maybe next week I will take down BMW and put something from The Heavy Brothers on nowhere radio for you to hear. Another funk band but with a full horn line and a male vocalist. A groovy band!

A little info on this one.

Most of these songs were learned by the musicians in the studio and tracked after they got the arrangement down. Usually about two or three time through the song. The keyboard player usually had all the parts worked out and would allow the musicians to improvise on solo's only. Drum fills were negotiable! :) Anyway...

Mostly again Mackie and ART pre's with AT 4033's for overhead's on the kit, a GT mic on the snare, RE 27 n/d on the kick, SM 57's on bottom snare and tom's. Forgot what was exactly used on most other stuff. The sax was the GT mic, and accounted for the rather harsh tone. Lot's of 4Khz roll of on the console mixer at mix time to soften it up.

LXP 1 and a smattering of a ADA multi effects processor delay for effects.

Compressors were 3630 on kick and bass guitar, usually a composer on the snare and sax, usually an ART Dual Levelar on the keys.

Mixed on a Soundcraft Ghost outputting to a ART Dual MP to a Lynx One soundcard at 24/48. Mastered in Wavelab using QMetric and Waves L1 (didn't have the L2 back then...too bad, the L2 is a MUCH nicer limiter and would have helped a lot on this mix!!!).

This was one of 4 mixes that made the CD release (on Lauan Records... http://www.lauan.com ) that I mixed without the keyboard player "helping" out. I played some things somewhat conservative, and didn't a few things the way I really wanted to because he tended to like taking the mixes in a very different direction. But this mix is very close to something that I would have done without those considerations.

Anyway, enjoy!

Ed
 
Fantastic! That section with the horn ride around 1:30 is all mixed beautifully. The band is tight as hell too. Thanks for sharing!
 
Oops, forgot to say that this was all tracked on Black Face (Type I 16 bit) ADAT machines using the onboard converters using the BRC word clock.

Also, just remember that we used a AKG 421 on the guitar via the ART. The Bass was DI'ed via his Alembec head and a ART pre.

Thanks for the compliment SLuiCe! :) They were a fantastic band to work with!!!

Ed
 
hey, Ed,

This mix is so clean!! I can't believe the keys/organ can be heard that clearly! I am working with some synth/organ tracks lately, and it's been a pain in the butt to have them heard clearly without turning th volume up...especially when distortion guitars are presented

If you don't mind answering, what's a good starting-point in terms of EQin' for keyboards/organ tracks with guitar tracks?? I wouls love to have my mix 1/100 as clean as this!!

Great work!

AL
 
VERY cool! Kinda reminds me of The Crusaders. This is my type of stuff....ooooh sax ride,.....(stops and listens hard).....and a good one too! Nice section work and I love Baris.
Nice sounds, the drums really sound good and the keys are great too. I found the section to be a little 'synthy' sounding. That's something that I hear all the time on big name recordings so I guess it's just hard to mix horns. It's all in the mids for horns, to my ears, especially aroung 800hz.

This is very cool, I'd buy a CD of this stuff.
 
Well, luckily this project didn't have any distorted guitar for rhythms!!!!

This keyboard player has a very good tone on his own. The organ was one a real B3 and Leslie cabinet. I forgot which amp we used to amplify the Rhodes. Possibly a Fender of some sort! :) B3 was usually a pair of condensors on the horn and a condensor on the bass speaker. Usually I use a pair of 4033's on the horn and a C1000S on the bass.

The Rhodes I will often use a C1000S. On this, I believe it was a SM 57. I am sorry that I can't be more helpful on the keys. That stuff moved VERY fast and we were switching shit around very quickly. This guy will literally get a take with one practice run then his real take!!! He IS that good. So keys were a blur of recording.

I will say this. With keys, you have to be very careful about the tone you generate!!! I hate the process of recording synth's myself! It is more joyess when the player already has some great sounds dialed up, but when they don't, it can take a LONG time to create a tone that is appropriate for the recording. In this type of music, massive alteration of the sound will be very obvious, so you have to capture it right because at mix you will not have the "luxury" of doing any hard tweaking on the keys!

Keep plugging away at it! Don't assume that you will get the best tone on a synth on a DI!!! In many cases, you will find that amplifying it with any number of different amps will help create the texture you want. I am not beyond running a digital synth through a guitar amp to create a different sound that will work. Synth's are one of the few instruments that MIGHT benefit more times than not from some type of "exciter" while tracking. Somehow introducing distortion to the tone often makes it come alive. The D/A converters on many popular synth's are horrible!!! :) NEVER trust that you will find many useful tones from the presets!!! Hopefully, you have a synth that allows you some editing of the wave form. This is where you be able to create something cool. Others may have success with the preset's on synth's, I usually don't. I usually have to try heavy modification. I will try to find a couple songs with synth that I had to do some funky stuff to and let you hear. Maybe next week.

Thanks for the nice comments A1A2!

Ed
 
i love this chicago style music

Those Adat 16 or 20 bit machines do an incredible job... many pro musicians still record with them.

Very tight.. nice!
 
Very nice stuff. ......and very well put together. Great keys.....


.........very clean!
g
 
Wow...sounds great.

I used to play jazz way back when (trumpet). Still love it, just don't have the chops for it anymore (so I play country :p :D)
 
Thanks for all the info, Ed. My synth does allow some wav tweaking (gotta study the manual now!!) and I will definitely try plugging it thru a guitar amp and see if I can get something useful out of it.

Do you take mono out from keys then make your own stereo track or? I know it can be done in both ways, but just wondering what apporach you took.

Thanks for posting again, looking forward to your next one!

AL
 
Now that is some phunky stuff! Sorry, we're not allowed to dance at work.

Real smooth work Ed. Excellent definition on every instrument!

Twist
 
Ed, this is supurb and I love the music. I remember giving you shit one time about black faced ADAT's and I gotta laugh now. Only one negative, and that is all the "trash" that you hear in the breaks(silences). Something really tough to eliminate without some automation or editing, I suppose. The sounds are really full and present, and have a nice punch to them. Something you don't usually hear with the grade of equipment you used. Everything about this is good, from the instrument balance, to the sounds of the instruments themselves, to warmness/fullness, punch...and those keys...... all of it.

A while ago, I used to have the privaledge of recording some of the decent ensembles when I was at Berklee in the 70's. The kind of players who were monster readers, and players, of course too. This stuff made those memories come flooding back, with this kind of music, and the way that good musicians just seem to make things "just go right". Your a lucky SOB to be surrounded/involved with talant of this caliber. I wish I could say the same, as living in the boonies and doing mostly my own stuff, those days are long gone.

out of a 10, I give you a 9.97 for this... really nice.
 
Hey mix, thanks for the nice comments on this.

I agree about the breaks. What really sucked was the the drummer kept a hi hat going during those break's and automating the mutes was very difficult because if they were too tight it sounded very weird when everything came back in. Oh well....Also, some of that noise just might be the system noise. When I mixed this, I had to setup the old Echo Star Studio gear in my bedroom and I probably didn't track down all the noise in the gear like I should have. I wired up about 3 days before we started mixing and had about enough time to somewhat learn how the room sounded (barely though....NO acoustical treatments at all in this room...just a regular ol' bedroom...I am wondering if maybe some of the possible system noise wasn't noticeable because of external noise around the room...?)

I DO feel lucky that I get to work with musicians of this caliber every once in a while. I get so tired of bad rock bands that can't play in time or in tune, or get a decent tone on their instruments!!! It is refreshing to get something from time to time were little to none of that happens! :) These guys are a great bunch of guys to work with!

Those old Black Face ADAT's were not too bad at all really! I quickly learned how to get decent enough sound to them. Instead of relying upon old techniques of sound to tape, I just went with what sounded good. I knew one big difference between digital and analog recording was that in digital, you would pretty much hear back what you monitored while working up sounds. I was actually somewhat greatful to not have to somewhat "guess" how to track stuff for it to sound good on playback like with many lower end analog decks (and even some more expensive one's!!!). Although, I still miss some of that "gel" in cymbals and guitars that decent analog provides!

Anyway, glad you enjoyed it. Next week, you will get a little taste of The Heavy Brothers. :)

Ed
 
Man that's a tight thumping sound. That rhythm track feels like someone slapping me in the back of the head on the beat!

But when I mixed another track of POD against it and listened to the mix I could see you traded some clarity for volume.
 
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