Llarion
New member
<gingerly steps into room>
OK guys, I did my mix of the now-notorious Sail Away collab. Let's start with the file, and then my commentary, of which I have a lot.
Llarion's remix
Unfortunately, the "before" version has been removed, I'd have liked to have had it as a basis for academic comparison; But for those who may have missed, it was a product of a compromised mix and EQ curve. It was very shrill, and had virtually no bottom. Randy has a hearing issue that, when coupled with his monitoring environment, essentially amounts to an 11KHz low-pass filter, which he tried to compensate for, and overshot. At least, that's how I heard it.
PERFORMANCE NOTES:
I want to keep this as minimal as possible, because this exercise, at least for me, was not about the performances, and the evaluation/rescue thereof. It is a mixed bag, but from a mix/mastering standpoint, the one thing I did want to mention was the timing/sync issues. I know it can be difficult when collaborating online to keep things in strict sync; but if you start with a universally-distributed click track or drum loop, and everyone does their best to play with as much discipline as possible; it; is possible to get a reasonably synced set of tracks. I could have nudged some things around and corrected some of the more upfront ones, but I wanted to concentrate my efforts on the mix and master, and I wanted to set an artificial limit of four total hours of work to see how much I could do in a limited span.
WHAT DID PHIL DO?
Step one was to rescue the drum tracks, which were rendered mostly bottomless. I individually EQed each track to get them back to as close to acoustically flat as I could. Once that was accomplished, I concentrated on getting the overheads and kick to sound good together. I then colored the snare and brought it into the mix. Then, I edited out all of the ambient sound from the tom tracks, leaving only the actual hits and their ringouts. (I favor doing this, because then I can eliminate any ambient phasing problems between the various close-proximity mics and the overheads. I then found a good EQ and reverb curve for those, dropped it on a bus, and assigned the tom channels to it. The drums are wetter, as is everything, actually, because I needed to try to match the soundstage that True's lead vox channel had set; she recorded it fairly dripping with a plate 'verb.
Step two was the bass part, with suffered from four competing issues; the pick attacks in the upper mids were harsh, the "punch" of the low bottom was gone, and the upper-lows to lower-mids had a wallowy resonance, and the whole track was clipping. Several passes with close-banded 10-band parametric EQs with narrow Qs recovered a good bit of fidelity; I did passes to focus on each trouble area individually. Were I going "all the way" with this, the bass part would have been a re-track.
Step three was the keyboard part; which I left alone save for a volume envelope; the only thing that was needed was the moving part, the pedal C was just muddying the waters, so I faded it out each time.
Step four was Tony's solos, which got minor EQ tweaks, and a reverb patina that brought it closer in the sound field to True's vox. Not much to do there, these tracks were in good shape, as were Gorty's guitars, which needed only level matching in the final mix. (These was one part that had 2 or 3 little licks that didn't fit too well anyway, so that track got dropped.)
Step five was True's vox. The main part for a fatter lower mid, a scooped upper mid, and a fair bit of multi band compression/limiting. True has a VERY big voice, and there were some clipping issues on some of the more "blasty" notes, so I had to be very delicate with the compression there. These would have been a re-track too, only because od the "printed" and excessive 'verb, and some wandering pitch in a few spots (I have Autotune, but did not use it; it's too difficult to be subtle with it, you hear the squared-off artifacts too easily.) The "2nd" part was kind of disjointed in terms of fitting with the first part, so I did a novelty thing with it, I threw a "telephone" EQ curve on it and shot it to the right side, so it's more of a counterpoint/afterthought than an actual 2nd part; there was too much sonic fighting going on.
Step six was adding Dogman's "clean" guitar part in, because it filled in some sonic gaps, and I liked what he was shooting for. I high-passed it, and contoured the highs and upper mids, and matched the 'verb patina in best I could.
Step seven was Randy's main comping guitar part. I turned the mono file into a stereo one; which allowed me to throw a big expander over it, and a gentle stereo chorus to give it some dimension and movement.
Everything else was just tweaks with levels and stuff, and the main stereo mixdown got some limiting, and a gentle EQ scoop in the upper mids to tame a little accumulated harshness in that register (1K to 4.5K).
RANDY, ABOUT YOUR ROOM AND MONITORING, AND OVERCOMING THE HEARING THING:
My main suggestion for you is to tune the monitoring to your ear, rather than tuning the source material to fit your monitoring and hearing challenges... Set the output monitoring EQ to electrically flat. Put in a "reference" CD that you know is a super-clean mix and master, and follows the philosophies you like in your mixes. (I use Steely Dan - Aja, and Supertramp -Breakfast in America, The Bob Mintzer Big Band - Incredible Journey, and James Taylor - October Road for my reference CDs, depending on the genre I'm working in.) LISTEN deeply to the CD, at electrical flat; to hear how your ear is perceiving the room, and the source. Tweak the monitor EQ output so it sounds "right" to you. Now, when you EQ a track, it will also sound "right" to you (and probably very shrill to anyone else in the room with you), but your SOURCE material will have more normal EQ parameters and will sound good on the outside; the key is to tune the MONITORING, not the source. I hope that helps.
Bravo to you guys for collaborating. I hope I've been able to add something to the educational experience with this little exercise. I'm no authority or anything, I just have worked with Randy's material before, and have a good feel for what it usually needs...
Cheers,
Phil
www.llarion.com
OK guys, I did my mix of the now-notorious Sail Away collab. Let's start with the file, and then my commentary, of which I have a lot.
Llarion's remix
Unfortunately, the "before" version has been removed, I'd have liked to have had it as a basis for academic comparison; But for those who may have missed, it was a product of a compromised mix and EQ curve. It was very shrill, and had virtually no bottom. Randy has a hearing issue that, when coupled with his monitoring environment, essentially amounts to an 11KHz low-pass filter, which he tried to compensate for, and overshot. At least, that's how I heard it.
PERFORMANCE NOTES:
I want to keep this as minimal as possible, because this exercise, at least for me, was not about the performances, and the evaluation/rescue thereof. It is a mixed bag, but from a mix/mastering standpoint, the one thing I did want to mention was the timing/sync issues. I know it can be difficult when collaborating online to keep things in strict sync; but if you start with a universally-distributed click track or drum loop, and everyone does their best to play with as much discipline as possible; it; is possible to get a reasonably synced set of tracks. I could have nudged some things around and corrected some of the more upfront ones, but I wanted to concentrate my efforts on the mix and master, and I wanted to set an artificial limit of four total hours of work to see how much I could do in a limited span.
WHAT DID PHIL DO?
Step one was to rescue the drum tracks, which were rendered mostly bottomless. I individually EQed each track to get them back to as close to acoustically flat as I could. Once that was accomplished, I concentrated on getting the overheads and kick to sound good together. I then colored the snare and brought it into the mix. Then, I edited out all of the ambient sound from the tom tracks, leaving only the actual hits and their ringouts. (I favor doing this, because then I can eliminate any ambient phasing problems between the various close-proximity mics and the overheads. I then found a good EQ and reverb curve for those, dropped it on a bus, and assigned the tom channels to it. The drums are wetter, as is everything, actually, because I needed to try to match the soundstage that True's lead vox channel had set; she recorded it fairly dripping with a plate 'verb.
Step two was the bass part, with suffered from four competing issues; the pick attacks in the upper mids were harsh, the "punch" of the low bottom was gone, and the upper-lows to lower-mids had a wallowy resonance, and the whole track was clipping. Several passes with close-banded 10-band parametric EQs with narrow Qs recovered a good bit of fidelity; I did passes to focus on each trouble area individually. Were I going "all the way" with this, the bass part would have been a re-track.
Step three was the keyboard part; which I left alone save for a volume envelope; the only thing that was needed was the moving part, the pedal C was just muddying the waters, so I faded it out each time.
Step four was Tony's solos, which got minor EQ tweaks, and a reverb patina that brought it closer in the sound field to True's vox. Not much to do there, these tracks were in good shape, as were Gorty's guitars, which needed only level matching in the final mix. (These was one part that had 2 or 3 little licks that didn't fit too well anyway, so that track got dropped.)
Step five was True's vox. The main part for a fatter lower mid, a scooped upper mid, and a fair bit of multi band compression/limiting. True has a VERY big voice, and there were some clipping issues on some of the more "blasty" notes, so I had to be very delicate with the compression there. These would have been a re-track too, only because od the "printed" and excessive 'verb, and some wandering pitch in a few spots (I have Autotune, but did not use it; it's too difficult to be subtle with it, you hear the squared-off artifacts too easily.) The "2nd" part was kind of disjointed in terms of fitting with the first part, so I did a novelty thing with it, I threw a "telephone" EQ curve on it and shot it to the right side, so it's more of a counterpoint/afterthought than an actual 2nd part; there was too much sonic fighting going on.
Step six was adding Dogman's "clean" guitar part in, because it filled in some sonic gaps, and I liked what he was shooting for. I high-passed it, and contoured the highs and upper mids, and matched the 'verb patina in best I could.
Step seven was Randy's main comping guitar part. I turned the mono file into a stereo one; which allowed me to throw a big expander over it, and a gentle stereo chorus to give it some dimension and movement.
Everything else was just tweaks with levels and stuff, and the main stereo mixdown got some limiting, and a gentle EQ scoop in the upper mids to tame a little accumulated harshness in that register (1K to 4.5K).
RANDY, ABOUT YOUR ROOM AND MONITORING, AND OVERCOMING THE HEARING THING:
My main suggestion for you is to tune the monitoring to your ear, rather than tuning the source material to fit your monitoring and hearing challenges... Set the output monitoring EQ to electrically flat. Put in a "reference" CD that you know is a super-clean mix and master, and follows the philosophies you like in your mixes. (I use Steely Dan - Aja, and Supertramp -Breakfast in America, The Bob Mintzer Big Band - Incredible Journey, and James Taylor - October Road for my reference CDs, depending on the genre I'm working in.) LISTEN deeply to the CD, at electrical flat; to hear how your ear is perceiving the room, and the source. Tweak the monitor EQ output so it sounds "right" to you. Now, when you EQ a track, it will also sound "right" to you (and probably very shrill to anyone else in the room with you), but your SOURCE material will have more normal EQ parameters and will sound good on the outside; the key is to tune the MONITORING, not the source. I hope that helps.
Bravo to you guys for collaborating. I hope I've been able to add something to the educational experience with this little exercise. I'm no authority or anything, I just have worked with Randy's material before, and have a good feel for what it usually needs...
Cheers,
Phil
www.llarion.com
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