Sitting the vocals in the mix.

[music-tech]

As for the verb on the vocals, I probably overdid the reverb/delay. I put a bit of both on there. Tried to use the reverb to give a sense of space, but I very well may have over done it, i'll check again when my ears are fresh. I admit that i'm very weary of using any sort of chorus/flanger/phaser on my vocals, mainly because i've never done it before. I'll also give the EQ more of a dip in the lower-mids as you suggest to see what happens. I dipped at around 500hz, but I do EQ'ing very catiously as i'm not entirely accustomed to doing it. I'm used to more drastic changes in sound, and EQ is about being subtle.

Don't be afraid or EQ or effects/processing if it serves the song. I know that there are many "purists" out there who think you should only use subtractive EQ, and some people don't even like to use any compression at all. However, the sound of modern music is NOT about being realistic and pure -- it's a totally fabricated sound. Rock music, especially, has plenty of EQ and compression on just about everything... don't be shy if the song/track calls for it. Hip-Hop/Rap music, and any electronic generated music, is not based in reality anyway (most of the drum and synth sounds don't exist in the real world beyond the electronics), so feel free to process away as needed. But, again, it all depends on the song and the tracks and what feel appropriate to convey the message of the song and add some excitement. Playing it too cautious and always doing "safe" mixes can lead to boring predictability. Sometimes it's the little mistakes, or different things, that jump out at you at make things seem more exciting and special.

Steve

[lavoll]

Kim (and others) do you have a "shopping list" like that for mixing instrumental/classical/miroslav type of tracks?

[Kim Lajoie]

Kim (and others) do you have a "shopping list" like that for mixing instrumental/classical/miroslav type of tracks?

A shopping list of what? Gear? Reference tracks? Production tricks? Methodologies?

-Kim.

[bduffy]

Hey Kim - just so you know, I'm trying a particularily bitchy mix your way (well, I'm doing the mix-the-kit-then-vocals-method), and the results from the get-go are quite dramatic! I never realised how powerful a dip @500hz could be! That cleaned my vocalist right up; I hardly had to do anything else to him; he even behaved better in the compressor. I always thought the big problems usually occured more in the 300hz range, that's usually where I do a lot of cutting, but maybe not wide...like I know I should...

So, I've added the bass and I'm about to start raising everything else a litle bit. This just might get me through this goddamn song that I've mixed, like, 200 times. It's funny, I should know this stuff, but I'm just too busy sometimes to be objective about it. It's great to have access to great musicians who can share their methods; mixing alone blows.

Anyway, thanks Kim, Kilroy, Kingston, Kritikon (what's with the "K"'s?), bmanic, FaX, who else...(hell, even that guy who suggested I build my own compressor from dried leaves and snot), and all you wonderful KVR folk, too many to mention, for helping my mixing improve tenfold!

Sorry, just had to get that out! I'm off to mix!

[Kim Lajoie]

Hey Kim - just so you know, I'm trying a particularily bitchy mix your way (well, I'm doing the mix-the-kit-then-vocals-method), and the results from the get-go are quite dramatic! I never realised how powerful a dip @500hz could be! That cleaned my vocalist right up; I hardly had to do anything else to him; he even behaved better in the compressor. I always thought the big problems usually occured more in the 300hz range, that's usually where I do a lot of cutting, but maybe not wide...like I know I should...

Narrow band dips are usually only useful when there's a strange resonance that needs to be fixed independent of the tone (typically a bad room). For general tone shaping, keep it wide.

-Kim.

[bduffy]

Hey Kim - just so you know, I'm trying a particularily bitchy mix your way (well, I'm doing the mix-the-kit-then-vocals-method), and the results from the get-go are quite dramatic! I never realised how powerful a dip @500hz could be! That cleaned my vocalist right up; I hardly had to do anything else to him; he even behaved better in the compressor. I always thought the big problems usually occured more in the 300hz range, that's usually where I do a lot of cutting, but maybe not wide...like I know I should...

Narrow band dips are usually only useful when there's a strange resonance that needs to be fixed independent of the tone (typically a bad room). For general tone shaping, keep it wide.

-Kim.

Yeah, that's what they say, and I see why. I guess I've always been a little reluctant to do wideband cuts like that. But no more!

[lavoll]

Kim (and others) do you have a "shopping list" like that for mixing instrumental/classical/miroslav type of tracks?

A shopping list of what? Gear? Reference tracks? Production tricks? Methodologies?

-Kim.

Production tricks and methodologies

[Kim Lajoie]

Try Philharmonik tips and tricks for starters.

-Kim.

[lavoll]

cool, hadnt seen that one bookmarked.

[bduffy]

Hey Kim, if you're still listening: what saturation plug-in would you have in mind for cooking the tracks without adding much compression, as per your method? Vintage Warmer? The new Samplitude AM plug-ins? Voxengo Tape Thingy?

[Kim Lajoie]

At the moment I'm using Kingston's RetroBand and Voxengo Voxformer. I use RetroBand when I want a "designer fuzz" (designer "hair", really ), and Voxformer when I'm going for a more "so hot it's overdriving" sound.

I actually really like the saturation in Voxformer, whereas Analogflux Tape Bus didn't do anything for me. There's no accounting for taste.

T-RackS has got a nice sound when it overdrives too, but it only gets there when I've already pushed it past massive compression and limiting. It's great when I need THAT mega-squashed sound, but things would get way too muddy if I applied that to everything.

I'm interested in checking out the new Magix plugs, but I'm not in a hurry. Sascha's style is usually too transparent and subtle for my taste. I prefer to turn my sound into a truck, and then be able to pull it back to where I want it.

-Kim.

[Martin E]

Great thread and very informative. Thanks for that guys.

The thing I'm usually struggling with is to get the bass sit right in the mix. Often the bass is muddy and unpronounced.
When I cut down the lows on the rest of the instruments (except the kick of course) say below 100Hz. What treatment should I give the bass itself?

[music-tech]

Great thread and very informative. Thanks for that guys.

The thing I'm usually struggling with is to get the bass sit right in the mix. Often the bass is muddy and unpronounced.
When I cut down the lows on the rest of the instruments (except the kick of course) say below 100Hz. What treatment should I give the bass itself?

You really need to listen to the bass with all the other instruments/tracks playing so that you can hear it in the context of the mix when making adjustments. The common mistake people make is to solo the bass and make it sound big and full on its own, but then when you put everything else in, it just turns to mud.

It really all depends on the style of the music and what else is happening, as far as instrumentation, and also how you want the kick drum to sound so that the bass and kick drum aren't fighting each other.

Many times in heavier rock music, with lots of heavy guitars, the bass is just going to get lost and sound like mud if it's all big and full by itself. In those situations, I usually end up rolling off quite a bit of low end from the bass and boosting, or creating, the harmonics and finding some frequency range where I can give the bass some definition and it's own little spot to poke through the huge wall of sound created by the guitars. Once you get this sound working in the context of the mix, if you solo the bass it will some really thin and wimpy on its own, but will sound great when the whole mix is going. If there are spots where there is a bass "solo", or just bass and drums, then you may need to do a separate EQ for that section, or automate your EQ, to put some of that low end back end during those parts, or tame down the harmonics and other boosts you did. I usually split those sections off to a different track and process the bass differently for when it's really exposed.

I find I have to roll off low end from bass in other styles of music as well... again, it all depends on the rest of the instrumentation and how dense the mix is.

The thing is, the human ear will psycho-acoustically fill in, or recreate, missing fundamentals if the harmonics are still there... so, you can actually filter out the fundamental frequency of the bass, and as long as there are enough harmonics there, the ear will fill in that missing information. This is the basis for some of those bass maximizer plug-ins... they create more harmonic content to allow you to filter out some of the mud from the bass, while still making the bass seem bigger/fuller and louder.

Other ways to generate some harmonics and get the bass to cut through some more is to run it through some amp simulators or distortion plug-ins, with just enough distortion to give it some edge and bite, but without it sounding like a distorted guitars. These plug-ins will often times roll off some low end for you as well.

Basically, though, the simple answer for fixing muddy and undefined bass is to simply roll off low-end with a low-shelf or high-pass filter until that mud is gone and the bass sits right in the mix.

Of course, you need good full range monitors and a properly treated room to really hear what is happening down in the low end. And, let's not forget that a great bass sound starts with a great player playing a great instrument, or at least a really good bass sample or synth patch played well.

Steve

[bduffy]

Great posts, thanks, music-tech and Kim!

So Retroband, eh? So we're talking about putting that on every instrument (offline, obviously!) and turning it up until it seems like a little too much? Don't get me wrong, I use saturation all the time, I just never heard of it done quite like this, on everything except the lead vocal - although I realise that this is happening all the time on tape and analog gear. And we are talking about rock/pop/modern music here, right?

Music-tech, what do you make of The Kim Method?

[Martin E]

Many times in heavier rock music, with lots of heavy guitars, the bass is just going to get lost and sound like mud if it's all big and full by itself. In those situations, I usually end up rolling off quite a bit of low end from the bass and boosting, or creating, the harmonics and finding some frequency range where I can give the bass some definition and it's own little spot to poke through the huge wall of sound created by the guitars. Once you get this sound working in the context of the mix, if you solo the bass it will some really thin and wimpy on its own, but will sound great when the whole mix is going. If there are spots where there is a bass "solo", or just bass and drums, then you may need to do a separate EQ for that section, or automate your EQ, to put some of that low end back end during those parts, or tame down the harmonics and other boosts you did. I usually split those sections off to a different track and process the bass differently for when it's really exposed.

I find I have to roll off low end from bass in other styles of music as well... again, it all depends on the rest of the instrumentation and how dense the mix is.

The thing is, the human ear will psycho-acoustically fill in, or recreate, missing fundamentals if the harmonics are still there... so, you can actually filter out the fundamental frequency of the bass, and as long as there are enough harmonics there, the ear will fill in that missing information. This is the basis for some of those bass maximizer plug-ins... they create more harmonic content to allow you to filter out some of the mud from the bass, while still making the bass seem bigger/fuller and louder.

Other ways to generate some harmonics and get the bass to cut through some more is to run it through some amp simulators or distortion plug-ins, with just enough distortion to give it some edge and bite, but without it sounding like a distorted guitars. These plug-ins will often times roll off some low end for you as well.

Basically, though, the simple answer for fixing muddy and undefined bass is to simply roll off low-end with a low-shelf or high-pass filter until that mud is gone and the bass sits right in the mix.

Of course, you need good full range monitors and a properly treated room to really hear what is happening down in the low end. And, let's not forget that a great bass sound starts with a great player playing a great instrument, or at least a really good bass sample or synth patch played well.

Steve

Thanks Steve.

I already tried some of your suggestions in the song I'm working on. And I immediately had a more defined sounding bass in the mix. Great. Only question I have just to get it right: in which frequency area would one normally boost the harmonics of the bass. I know it will probably depend on the situation and the initial sound of the bass. But maybe there's more or less a common demeanor in this.

Martin