Lately I’ve seen a lot of posts on various recording blogs about how to properly use EQ and compression to carve out space in your mix and glue the individual tracks together. It’s true, that’s certainly what these tools can help you do. And it can indeed be a confusing process to learn the best practices of utilizing these tools in order to achieve a mix well done.
But amongst all this talk about EQ and compression, (which is fun. I know people get excited about compressors. I certainly do-they’re exciting and make things sound cool), it’s important not to overlook a very simple tool that is easy to use, and does not really have a learning curve…
The pan knob.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to find space for an instrument, and help it cut through a dense mix is to simply play around with its position in the stereo field.
Perhaps you’ve got an acoustic guitar part that is in a battle with the electric guitars, snare drum, and lead vocal. It’s pretty amazing how that acoustic will suddenly and easily pop right out when you pan it (even just slightly) to its own specific space in the stereo field.
While EQ and compression can be fun and make things exciting, those tools can also be frustrating to use, time consuming, and sometimes even expensive. Maybe all that track needs is a little panning. After all, stereo remains the most popular method of sound reproduction today. Let’s make sure we’re utilizing it.
//Jon
Website: jonstinson.com
Twitter: @stsn
It will be easier when you graduate college and get an internship at a recording studio.
It will be easier when you complete your internship, and get a job at the recording studio.
It will be easier when you have a lot of label connections, and can get consistent work through them.
It will be easier when you’re able to work with a world-famous artist, who sells a million records.
It will be easier when you’ve won a Grammy, and people will trust you and listen to what you say because you now have authority.
It will be easier when someone gives you a ton of money to capitalize a recording studio that you not only work out of full time, but also own.
Except none of these things are true. It does not simply get easier. In some ways it will, yes. But in many ways, greater success and growth brings more pressure, and higher stakes.
The complexities and challenges of professionally producing, recording, and mixing records will always be a factor in your career-no matter what your status is.
The responsibility of your success is yours, and yours alone. Don’t trick yourself into believing that one day someone is going to come along and hand you success on a silver platter. And Don’t trick yourself into thinking that once you attain a key achievement that the rest is just coasting on Easy Street.
Because then you will cease to continually challenge yourself, you will cease grow, and most importantly, you will cease to truly have fun in a life of making records [because instead of enjoying the fruits of your career now, you will be constantly chasing future contentment]
//Jon
Website: jonstinson.com
Twitter: @stsn
So I was browsing one of the many recording blogs I frequent this morning, Audio Geek Zine, and ended up following a link to a new (to me) blog that I’m extremely excited about.
The DIY Recording Equipment blog. If you’re like me, the techie-geek type of audio engineer, then you’re going to love this site.
I’m sure you’ve browsed plenty of recording magazines, such as Tape Op, and seen ads for building your own mic pres, compressors, 500 series gear, etc. The idea is that you purchase kits, packages of electronic components, with instructions on how to put these components together in order to build a piece of gear that is exactly like, or extremely similar to many of the most popular mic pres, compressors, etc.
It’s a great concept, as many of the people in the DIY community know that by purchasing such kits, you’re able to build your own gear, such as an API 312, or an LA-3A, for a fraction of what the actual name brand unit would cost. It’s also something many geeky-techie audio engineers enjoy, as you’re more-or-less building it yourself.
The tricky thing about these DIY projects, however, is that there’s often a bit of variation in the build, with parts omitted from the kits for this reason. For example, say you’re aiming to build a mic pre, and the documentation in the kit says that there are three versions available, which are all based on the same base circuit. The kit includes all the components for the main circuit, but does not include the opamps, as selection of the opamp depends on what style of preamp you intend to build. So now you have to not only purchase the kit, but track down and price out the correct opamp components, which may or may not be hard to find.
Additionally, the schematics and instructions that accompany such kits are often times written from the extremely techie standpoint, and can be frequently hard to decipher.
I’ve actually never ordered and built such a kit, but I’ve had a couple friends who have. One of my friends, who is a very talented and intelligent audio engineer, ordered a kit to build a compressor that is a very close copy of the popular Neve 33609 stereo compressor. To this day he has yet to complete the project 100 percent, as there are still some parts he needs to track down. His advice to me was, that while yes, he did save money on the compressor, there is a lot of ancillary work and time involved. That to him, since he is so busy with recording projects, he simply does not have the time to devote to projects such as this. To him, he can usually justify the expense of just buying a name-brand piece of gear, plugging it in, and getting to work.
In comes the DIY Recording Equipment blog. So all this is a long-winded explanation of why I’m so excited about this new site I came across this morning. DIY Recording Equipment is a site that simplifies these complications in kit assembly. It provides a central place to buy all the needed components to complete a project, categorizes projects by difficulty/skill level, and provides a ton of education and instruction on the techie stuff that not every audio engineer is hip to.
While I do enjoy a lot of the tech stuff, I’m by no means a legit tech. Audio engineering as it relates to recording – phase, storage medium anomalies, gain-staging, how gear affects the signal, acoustical and psycho-acoustical issues, etc – I’m pretty technically minded of. But Audio engineering as it relates to electrical engineering is a topic I’m not as well versed in. DIY Recording Equipment is now my go-to tool to help me with such specialty.
Check out the site if you’re interested in DIY stuff, wanna develop more of the techie side of your audio engineering skills, or if you simply get excited about the idea of saving money on great gear. I know I do :) www.diyrecordingequipment.com
//Jon
Website: jonstinson.com
Twitter: @stsn
Every once in a while, you come across something that has tremendous impact on you, and evolves your way of thinking. We’ve all had those moments when a song or a record has an extraordinary influence on us creatively. And us engineering types have certainly had our moments when someone opens or eyes to something new in the recording arts and sciences field. I’ve had this happen to me a number of times, and each time such a new excitement is breathed into my thrill of recording that it feels as if I’m experiencing the buzz of it for the first time all over again.
Late last week was one of those moments. I hit a link on the Tape Op blog, Tape Log, which took me to a post, called “Sonic Varnish” written by producer, mixer, and engineer Allen Farmelo. What an incredibly articulate post!
Allen’s idea is rooted in the analogy of a high quality varnish, and the concept of different pieces of gear in a recoding chain inducing a tiny amount of harmonic distortion into the signal, bringing each sound to life with a thin layer of sonic varnish.
Allen illustrates this point using examples of recordings from the 60s and 70s. During this time in the field of recording, it was common practice for engineers to bounce tracks down in order to make room for overdubs (due to limited track counts). However, something I had never considered before about this process is the fact that with each bounce, each track was going through the recoding chain multiple times. And each time, a new layer of harmonic distortion was imparted on the signal. The cumulative result was a recorded work with a unique sonic texture.
I’m not going to dissect each idea in Allen’s post here, because you need to read it in it’s entirety for yourself. But I needed to share his post with you, because of how it enlightened me in such an important way. I’ve always been of the variety of engineers that seeks out harmonic distortion as a way to enhance the music I record, but after reading Allen’s post, I have a fresh way of thinking as it applies to analog recording, generational loss, and the multiple back-and-forth of analog, to digital, back to analog, and and back to digital (and so on…) that is so often a part of the process when making a record.
It’s a total travesty if you go another day in your recording career without reading this post right now. Read it on Allen’s blog here: “Sonic Varnish” by Allen Farmelo
//Jon
Website: http://jonstinson.com
Twitter: @stsn
A very significant percentage of the songs I produce, I drop the click out (mute) within the first four bars of the recording. I’ve found that most of the time this pushes people into a frame of mind that gets them outside their own head – outside the calculations of the song – and into the heart and soul of it all. Granted, there are also a fair amount of recordings in which I don’t drop the click, but it is something I do quite regularly, and even when recording genres that you would think rely heavily on the click (like dance-rock).
Typically, there’s some resistance from the group about this. It’s an initial bump of fear in reaction to someone messing with their comfort zone. But with a little gentle persuasion I can win the confidence of the room. Most of the time, once the musicians try it, it’s a liberating feeling for the band to be cut loose from the click.
But then once we are free from the click, the song’s tempo begins to speed up and slow down constantly throughout the recording. The mere thought of that happening might make you cringe. Look through that initial jab of hesitation.
Tempo fluctuations are one of the most humanizing factors in a recording.
- Instead of forcing the tempo to a constant rate all the way through the song, the tempo will organically fluctuate to it’s natural place.
- Typically, you want to elevate the energy at the chorus. This will happen naturally as the musicians will speed up slightly as they reach the chorus.
- Each musician will listen to one another more closely, focusing on the performance of the song, and playing together as a unit.
It’s all kind of like getting in tune with the energy of the song, and feeling what will best serve that song (actually, it’s exactly like that).
Pull out some of those old records from the 60′s and 70′s you’ve got in your collection. I bet what you will notice (as I did) is that A) the songs speed up and slow down throughout the recording, and B) the songs don’t always end at the same tempo they began.
There’s a reason we keep going back to these records as reference points and as something to aspire to – those folks were on to something. One of the things they were onto was the humanizing factor of letting the tempo dictate itself.
Don’t be afraid of dropping the click, take advantage of the humanizing factors it creates.
//Jon
Twitter: @stsn
Back in July, I wrote a series of posts about recording drums. Now that it’s practically September, I thought I’d compile a list of these posts here, as an easy access “table of contents” of sorts. The idea behind each one of these “recording drums” posts is to share my simplistic, quick, phase-accurate, and easy to mix approach. Less is more.
The #1 Best Drum Miking Technique
Recording A Kick Drum: Mic Selection
Recording Snare: Mic Selection
Recording Drum Overheads: Mic Selection
Recording A Hi-Hat: Mic Selection
Recording Drum Room Ambience: Mic Selection
Bonus: I actually wrote this post in August, but as it’s about percussion, I threw it in with this list. Using Household Objects As Percussion Instruments
Recording can get over-complicated way too fast. Especially recording drums. That’s when fidelity and performance captured in those recordings suffers. By keeping your recording setup as simple as possible, in a kind of ironic way, is usually when you create an environment where things actually end up sound big, punchy, full of life – creating a soundscape that is made up of multiple complex layers. Less is more.
Thanks for reading. Hope you’ve not only gotten something out of Producer Notes this August, but also enjoyed reading the blog.
//Jon
Twitter: @stsn
People skills.
Making records is more about interacting with people than it is about anything else. Great people skills can take you the distance in a career in recording, even when you may not be the most knowledgeable or the definitively most talented person to ever step into the studio. On top of that, it’s very likely that if you have great people skills, clients will choose you over someone else who may know more, or be more “talented” than you.
When I got my first studio job as an intern, there was an assistant engineer who was a huge jerk. He knew everything there was to ever know about being an audio engineer – all the nuances and ultra technical particulars of how every piece of gear worked, the science behind capturing great sounds, how to repair broken gear – everything. But he was a jerk, and a loudmouth with poor work ethic. Clients constantly asked for him to be replaced with someone – anyone! – else.
If you’re cold and stale, do the bare minimum to get the job done, and run you mouth off every minute of the day, you’re going to be asked to leave.
If you treat people kindly, if you’re authentic, honest, and genuine, people will enjoy the work they do with you, and feel good about what you’ve created together.
Technical knowledge and production skills are important. But not nearly as important as treating people right. Of all the skills it’s important to have in the studio, none of them will provide a secure, long-term path to success like having good people skills will.
//Jon
Twitter: @stsn
Last week I posted that my friends in the band o, don piano were running a kickstarter campaign to raise money for their upcoming LP, Hearts from the Songland.
Well, I’m happy to announce that they did indeed successfully get their project funded, and will be soon entering the studio with producer/engineer Jeremy Ferguson. I wanted to follow last week’s post with an update to let everyone know, and to say thanks to any of my readers who may have contributed.
Congrats to the band, glad the fundraising was a success, and look forward to hearing the results of yours and Jeremy’s magic in the studio. Have fun. Perhaps I’ll get the chance to drop by and hang on a session or two, and share in a little of that fun with you :)
While the band has reached their goal, and this project is officially funded, there are still 11 days left to make a contribution [Update 8/22/11: Oops! when I published this post, I meant to say 11 hours. In any case, this campaign is gonna be over by the end of the day today, so if you wanna pledge, do so by clicking the link at the end of this post]. If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, it’s a site put together specifically for creators to raise money for their projects. But the people who contribute don’t walk away empty handed. The creators offer items in return for the money people choose to pledge. There are nine different tiers involved with the o, don piano campaign, so at the very least you’re essentially “pre-ordering” the finished record. Which is more than worth it. As I mentioned before, this is brilliant music that creates meaning in a rare way.
Click here to make your pledge, and reserve your “pre-order”
Cheers…
//Jon
About six or seven years ago I was fortunate, as we sometimes are, to work along side a very talented individual who would end up becoming one of my dearest friends. At the time we were both working as assistant engineers for the same producer, and through this experience we discovered how much we had in common-both personally, and from a music/art standpoint.
Working with Josh on these projects, I came to realize how talented of a musician he was, and later decided to hire him to play drums on a couple projects I produced. All this was around 2007-2009.
And somewhere in the middle of all that Josh put together his own band-o, don piano.
Josh and o, don piano are now embarking on the journey of making their first LP, Hearts from the Songland, and are six days away from concluding a fundraising campaign through Kickstarter. [Update 8/19/11: This campaign only has mere days left at this point, as it ends on Tuesday, August 23rd.]
[Update 8/22/11: I'm happy to announce that o, don piano have reached their fundraising goals for this project. Congrats, guys!]
Crossing paths with Josh those handful of years ago was literally nothing short of a miracle, as he has opened my mind to so many new ways to think about music and production, as well as turned me on to a selection of bands, musicians, and producers that have had significant influence throughout my quest as record maker. It genuinely improved my career.
All this to say that the music Josh has created with o, don piano is the real thing-brilliant-and worth your contribution.
Which is exactly why I’ve written this blog post today. To candidly ask you to consider making a contribution to the realization of Hearts from the Songland.
Yes, I am close friends with Josh, which perhaps does make my credibility subject to a questionable bias. But as someone who works daily in the music business, I inevitably make friends with a lot of people who are in bands. Nevertheless, not everyone I’m friends with makes the same caliber of music Josh does. Which is the caliber of music that needs to be heard, the caliber of music that creates meaning, and the caliber of music that tells an honest story people resonate with.
So please take a few minutes to check out o, don piano, and if you like what you hear, consider contributing a few dollars to help them fund their Hearts from the Songland project.
Lastly, I do want to assure everyone that my motivation is pure. I in no way benefit from the making or promoting of this project. While I may end up working with the band on a future project sometime, my current motivation is to simply see this project succeed, and do my part in helping authentic music resonate with others as it has with me.
Make a contribution to Hearts from the Songland by clicking this link
Doubling a vocal (singer sings a second pass in unison with themselves) is one of the easiest and most straightforward ways you can bring up the intensity to a section of a song in which you’re trying elevate the energy (typically the chorus). The end result is often very subtle to the listener. Most of the time, a doubled vocal is rarely an effect that music fans consciously are aware of-they simply feel the emotional shift of a raised energy level.
A little while back I came across some video interviews on YouTube of Butch Vig breaking down some of the production techniques used to record Nirvana’s Nevermind record.
In one of the videos Butch dissects the song “In Bloom”, and how they doubled Kurt Cobain’s lead vocal, as well as Dave Grohl’s harmony vocal in the choruses. Butch pulls up each part one at a time, so you can clearly hear how this technique filled out the arrangement in a powerful way.
I’m currently in the studio with the band Kink Ador. On Monday we singled out one of the songs we’re working on, and focused on recording some background vocal and additional guitar parts for it. One of the first things we did was double the lead vocal in all the choruses.
But in the middle of recording the vocal double, I began to think back to that Butch Vig interview, and I got inspired with another idea. I liked the approach Butch took of having a different voice sing and double the harmony vocals. So I basically copied the essence of that idea, but with a bit of a spin on it.
Kink Ador is a band made up of one female lead vocalist-Sharon. The rest of the band is guys. Nick, the lead guitar player, also sings background vocals. In the middle of tracking Sharon’s lead vocal double, I got the wild idea to go back and triple the lead vocal in the choruses-but with Nick singing the tripled part.
I was a bit hesitant with the idea, but we tried it and it turned out awesome. It added another layer of just the right amount of texture and intensity to Sharon’s vocal in the choruses. The end result is very subtle-you can’t tell that there’s a male vocal layered underneath. In the end, it simply imparts a sort of gruffness to Sharon’s lead vocal, which is perfect for adding energy to the choruses.
So next time you’re looking for ways to add intensity to certain sections of a song, it may be as simple as doubling the lead vocal, or even tripling the part with another member of the band.
Here’s the Butch Vig interview that inspired this idea in the first place:
//Jon
Twitter: @stsn
Designed By :
