If you’re like me, then you probably find yourself wrapped up in this mentality all too often…

You read an article about how someone mixed a record, or you talked with someone about a particular way to record an instrument, and the next time you’re working you begin reflecting on what you read or heard. Then you end up constantly second guessing yourself.

Now you begin to scrutinize every little thing you do in the studio – where you place a mic on an acoustic guitar, how you select gear, or your workflow for making a record in general. I do this all the time, and not with just making records, I catch myself doing this as it relates to all kinds of different daily routines.

The latest is with my mixing workflow. Lately, I’ve been catching a few discussions on blogs about the best way to approach building a mix. I recently found myself trying a couple of these techniques for starting and building a mix. And boy, did I make it hard for myself – this specific advise was not working!

That’s when the lightbulb went off. I asked myself, “Why am I doing this?” There was nothing wrong with the workflow I had been using before. It actually served me quite well. But for some strange reason, I too often get in my head that I need to try something else, just because I happened to read about it a couple days prior.

Making records is a daily learning experience. But there are also a lot of instances when you need to recognize that you already know something, and move on. If you have a technique for accomplishing something that works really well, don’t abandon that approach just because someone else came up with another method.

Record like you record, not someone else. It’s easy to get sucked into the notion that the way someone else does it is better than the way you do it, just because.

If you build great mixes by starting with the drums, then stick with that.

If an EQ inserted before a compressor typically sounds best to you, then it is best.

When trying out new methods, if the new technique does not seem to improve your workflow fairly quickly, then that’s probably your indication that you should stick with your current way of doing things.

Yeah, there’s times when you can learn a better way to do it. But there’s also times when you need to be confident that the technique you already use is sufficient. To do it any other way is not necessarily an improvement (and it could make things worse).

Ever heard the expression, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

//Jon
Webiste: jonstinson.com
Twitter: @stsn

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

[I was aiming to post every day this week, but alas I've been in crisis mode since Monday. I'm Back from a fatal hard drive crash that nearly took me completely out this week. I got REALLY lucky-I recovered nearly all my files. In any case, below is the post I had planned to publish on Monday...]

If you’ve been reading my recent posts over the last couple weeks about recording individual parts of the drum kit, then I bet you can guess what I’m going to say about recording drum overheads…

The best approach to capturing a great, well-balanced overhead sound is the most simple, quickest to set up, and phase friendly miking method. You guessed it, this means using only one mic.

This mono approach to capturing a drum overhead sound I learned all about from a great friend and mentor, who is a very talented engineer. It took me a while to warm up to the idea of using only one mic to capture the overhead sound of the kit, but once I tried it and really dug in, I was very pleased with the outcome.

As I’ve explained before, the less mics you have on a source, the less phase issues you come up against. And the less phase issues there are, the more hi-fi the sound of your recordings. You can’t be any more phase accurate than one single mic.

From a mixing standpoint, using just one mono overhead, condenses and centers the kit within the overall mix of the track. When placed directly in the center of the stereo spectrum this way, the drums are set up to have a nice punchy impact that supports the mix in a natural way. It’s kind of like the primary pillar of a an architectural structure that supports the whole building.

Additionally, a mono overhead simplifies the aspect of recording the cymbals. An interesting observation that my mentor pointed out is that when you record drums with multiple overhead mics, often the cymbals can cause momentary phase-like anomalies that sound a bit ugly. Using one overhead eliminates this, as there’s no chance for timing discrepancies between multiple overhead mics.

So here’s what I recommend:

Start with one well-placed mic centered over the twelve o’clock and six o’clock positions of the snare and rack tom respectively (from the drummers viewpoint), and anywhere from one to five feet in hight over the kit. This gives you a balanced sound from all the elements of the kit in relation to the cymbals. Next, listen and adjust depending on certain specific factors, such as the player, the style of music, and the aesthetic of the band and song. The initial placement should get you 90 percent there, and the adjustments you make after listening will fine tune your sound the rest of the way.

But what about the stereo image of the drums? If you’re worried about sacrificing the stereo image of the drum kit on account of this mono overhead approach, here’s a couple things to consider:

• You can rely on other mics, such as a hi-hat mic, tom mics, and/or room mics to create the stereo image of the kit
• Are mono drums really that bad? A lot of great recordings-both new and old-have mono drums

So that’s my favorite approach to recording drum overheads. I certainly still employ other overhead techniques from time-to-time, but this mono overhead technique has indeed done me well. Give it a try sometime. I bet, just as I was, you will be pleased with your result.

//Jon
Twitter: @stsn

Is it that your tracks bleed on one another?

Is it that you weren’t very meticulous in dialing in sounds?

Is it that the guitar is slightly out of tune?

Is it that you have a really abrasive snare sound?

Is it that your lead vocal track sounds sexy?

Is it because you didn’t use a click track?

Is it because you recorded to analog tape instead of Pro Tools?

Is it because it was recorded on a four track cassette?

Is it because you didn’t use automation when you mixed?

Is it because you used “old school” gear and FX during mixing?

I have worked on some records where the lead vocal bled all over the drum tracks, but you would never know it.

I have produced records which I recorded live, with minimal isolation, but the final mix sounds as polished as ever.

I have worked on records that were tracked to analog tape without much EQ, but the final mix sounded totally clear and defined.

Everything in record making is subjective. Even the rules are subjective.

So just what is it, exactly, that dictates that a recording sounds raw?

Last Tuesday, Mother/Father – the band I’m involved with in a management capacity – released their new EP, Physical Heaven.

Physical Heaven is the latest project to become a part of my production/recording/mixing portfolio, and I (as well as the rest of the team) are excited about finally being able to share this release with you.

You can listen to Physical Heaven in full here:

Buy Physical Heaven on iTunes

Buy Physical Heaven on Amazon

Buy Physical Heaven on Radical Notion Digital

Other production and recording notes:

Produced, recorded, and mixed by: Jacquire King
“The Hours Witch” produced, recorded, and mixed by: stinson
Additional production by: James Robert Farmer, David Miller, stinson, and Willie Forreal
Additional engineer: stinson
Mastered by: Richard Dodd

At my studio I often run into a problem when recording: I run out of resources.

I prefer to record all basic tracks live with the whole band, and often times this approach to recording leads me to run out of resources-mics, cables, mic pre’s, inputs, etc.

Although this really only becomes a problem when I’m recording five or more people at once, it happens often enough that I find myself having to work inside this challenge on most sessions where basic tracks are recorded at my studio.

My philosophy on recording allows me to approach a limitation, such as the one described above, as a catalyst for creativity, instead of viewing it as a disadvantage. I believe working within certain limitations causes you to make commitments on the spot, which in the end puts a more organic and natural feel on the character of the recording.

When I’m faced with the challenge of having to pick priorities for what mic will get used where, one of the first candidates for omission are the room mics. The reason I’m so quick to lose the room mics, is because I’ve developed a little mixing technique that allows me to recreate the room ambience in a very natural sounding way, which I will describe below.

Artificially Recreating Natural Sounding Ambience

1. Assign all your drum tracks to a stereo buss.
2. In your DAW create two Aux Inputs, and assign both of their inputs to the same stereo buss. Name the first Aux Input “Dry,” and the second Aux Input “Wet.”
3. On the “Wet” channel, insert a reverb plugin. I prefer to use a convolution reverb, because a sampled room sounds so much more natural than a totally synthetic reverb.
4. Turn the “Dry” channel up to 0dB, but leave the fader on the “Wet” channel all the way down for now.
5. Take just a few minutes to balance your drums while listening through the “Dry” channel. Don’t spend too much time on this initial balance, as you will fine tune it in a moment. Simply get the basic pan/level balance that feels right to you.
6. Once you’re happy with the basic drum mix, pull up the “Wet” channel to a good audible level. You may want to bring down the “Dry” channel just a little bit. You want the “Wet” channel a bit louder than it will be in the final mix for now. At this point you are not trying to get the final balance, you’re trying to get a sense for how the reverb sounds.
7. Spend a few minutes dialing in the settings on your reverb plugin. In most cases you will want to find a sound that most closely resembles room mics set up to capture a whole drum kit or band. However, some projects may call for something different. Use your judgement to determine what sounds best in the context of the mix you are working on.
8. After you have finished dialing in the settings on your reverb plugin, you should now begin focusing on the balance of the “Wet” channel against the “Dry” channel. As you balance these two channels together, you may find that you want to fine tune the balance and pan of the individual drum tracks from step five.

That’s it! Once you’re happy with the overall balance/pan of the individual drum tracks, and the “Wet” Aux Input channel with the “Dry” Aux Input channel, you should have a drum mix that includes some natural sounding ambience. Experiment with including or excluding certain drum tracks from the submix, such as overhead mics.

You can take this a few steps further by taking this entire submix, and incorporating the buss compression technique, or adding a bit more reverb of a different type to just the snare drum. You can also use this technique on something else entirely, such as an electric guitar submix, or a horn section submix.

Hope this little mixing tip helps you achieve a natural sounding ambience to your mixes when you don’t have the resources to record with room mics. As always comments are welcome. If you end up using this technique, post a link so we can all hear your mix.

Disclosure: I am in no way connected to the Mellowmuse company, or the Auto Time Adjuster plug-in. No one approached me to write a review. This is not an advertisement. I am in no way getting any form of compensation for writing this blog post. I’m simply excited that there is a finally a tool that will allow us Pro Tools LE users to have a form of automatic delay compensation, and that this tool is inexpensive.

Here’s something I’m pretty excited about. Auto Time Adjuster (ATA). I was flipping through the latest issue of Tape Op when I came across ATA in the gear reviews section. If you spend a significant amount of time working in Pro Tools LE (like me), I’m sure you’ve grown frustrated many times when dealing with plug-in latency. The lack of automatic delay compensation in Pro Tools LE can create so much extra work and stress.

While ATA isn’t perfect, it’s definitely worth it in my opinion. Using ATA in your sessions will further complicate the signal flow, unfortunately. But that’s still not even close how complicated things can get when having keep track of manual delay compensation times, or how many samples you nudged specific regions. Save if anything changes.

No more manual plug-in latency compensation. And it’s only $49.

Take a look at the website, which has some tutorials. http://www.mellowmuse.com/ATA.html

Compression is a great tool. And I love the way it sounds when applied as an effect of sorts.

But I think everyone can agree that compressors have been used pretty generously in record making over the last fifteen years. If the amount of people who hit Producer Notes because they put some term relating to dynamic compression into Google is any indication, I’d say compression is the number one thing people are interested in regarding recording and mixing music (Buss Compression is one of the most viewed posts on this blog). And I’m not even going to start up on the loudness war.

But why not trade out the compressor for automation? Most DAWs and consoles have fantastic automation capabilities these days. Why not simply turn up the track when it needs to get louder, and turn it down when it needs to get quieter?

I understand that there are particular contexts in which automation can’t do the job (which is really a very specific amount of contexts), but for everything else, why not automate it?

From my experience I find this approach lends to a much more musical, open, natural, and, (not so) ironically, bigger sounding recording/mix overall.

Any thoughts?

Can people identify your work by listening to the records you produce, record, or mix? With every project you are a part of, you should be working with this in mind. Work to establish your identity so that when people think of a certain style of music, or a certain kind of instrument, you’re the person whose name comes up in the conversation.

You should become so familiar with a certain style of music, or a particular kind of instrument, that you understand the most accurate approach to best capture and represent that music or instrument within a recording. At that point, not only will you become known for your ability to produce, capture, and mix these recordings, but your name will become synonymous with that musical style or instrument. The production will superimpose perfectly over top of the artist’s music and sound, and in turn appear completely invisible in the recording. Moreover, once you understand the rules of capturing these recordings better than anyone else, you will also know how to creatively break the rules, making for a much more interesting and rich recording.

Think about how Chris Lord-Alge is known for his ability to mix power-pop and mainstream rock, Brian Eno as the guy who produces ambient music, Joe Barresi and his ability to record rock guitars, or Stephen Street for his work in the British alternative music scene.

Just like these guys, work to become the go-to person for a certain style of music, or for recording a particular instrument.

Until now, I have focused all my posts on topics such as motivation, organization, inspiration, marketing, networking, etc. An important requisite to becoming a successful producer/engineer, is to have a knowledge of and become good at these less obvious business traits. But those skills don’t do much for you if they are not built on top of the more overt traits required, such as practical recording and mixing techniques. One of my goals for this blog is to provide useful tips on how to record/mix/produce music in the studio. So this week I am going to move away from talking about the business end of making music, and get into the studio.

Over the course of the week past, the topic of buss compression came up twice in conversation with a friend. In recognition of that, today I am going to illustrate this technique, using an example applied to the drums. Buss compression is a very versatile mixing tool. You can use this technique on pretty much any instrument you mix. It’s applicable to virtually any style of music, wether loud and aggressive, or natural and organic. However, you must use discretion. It’s not always the proper tool for the job.

If you are unfamiliar with exactly what buss compression is, it is a technique that refers to taking a group of instruments, which are all of the same type (i.e. a drum kit, rhythm guitars, background vocals, etc), creating a sub mix of them through an available set of busses, patching the sub mix through a stereo compressor, and blending the compressed signal back into the main mix. This can be done on either an analog mixing desk, or in a DAW. The result is a more defined sound because the audio material is essentially doubled. Since it is an exact copy (except for the compression effect), the phase coherency causes the audio to be reinforced. Buss compression is also a more flexible way to use compression, as the effected audio can be blended with more control. It is most commonly used on drums, but as mentioned before can be used on other groups of instruments.

Setting Up
Setting up buss compression is a fairly easy process. In my example I will illustrate the process first in the analog domain on a mixing desk, then in the digital domain, using Pro Tools. Both applications I will describe using a drum kit as an example.

Electrons and Neutrons
Working on an analog mixing desk is perhaps the most straightforward way to use buss compression. Start by selecting two unused busses, such as busses one and two. Assign all the channels for the drum returns to those busses, and patch the outputs of these two busses to the inputs of a stereo compressor. Some of my favorites for this application are the API 2500, Chandler TG1, Neve 33609, and the SSL G Series stereo compressor. If you don’t have one of these compressors at your disposal, any stereo compressor will do the trick. Bring the outputs of the compressor back into two open channels of the mixing desk, and pan those channels hard left and right. It’s preferable to use two channels adjacent to the drum returns, but if you don’t have any nearby use what you can. If your console allows for it, include these two channels in your automation/solo group for drums so that when you solo all the drum channels the compressor is included. That’s it concerning setup in the analog domain.

1′s and 0′s
In the digital domain, setting up for buss compression is just a little bit more complicated. My example uses Digidesign Pro Tools, but the setup should be similar in most DAW’s. The first step is to create two stereo Aux Inputs directly after all your drum tracks. These are going to serve as the returns of your unprocessed and processed drum sub mixes. You want to set up these Aux Inputs next to all the drum tracks so that you don’t have to constantly scroll (if at all) to adjust the settings. Make sure you pull both faders of the two Aux Inputs all the way down, as your DAW may set them to unity gain (0dB) by default.

After you have your two Aux Inputs set up, name them “Drums Main” and “Drums Comp” or something similar. Personally, I like to name mine “Drums Clean” and “Drums Smash.” Set the outputs of all your drum tracks to busses 1-2 (or whatever is available). Then set the inputs to both Aux Input tracks to busses 1-2. To complete the signal routing you want to set the outputs of the two stereo Aux Inputs to whatever you use as your main outputs, typically this is outputs 1-2. Lastly, you will want to Command-click (Ctrl-click in Windows) on the solo buttons for both Aux Inputs, so that when you solo individual drum tracks, you will not mute their returns (solo safe).

The first stereo Aux Input is the main buss return for the drums sub mix. Think of this fader as a semi-master fader for the drums. But do take note: it is important that you use an Aux Input for this application, and not a Master Fader, as these two types of channels process digital information differently. The second stereo Aux Input serves as the return for the compressor. This is just like patching the output of a compressor to two open channels on an analog mixing desk. On this Aux Input, you will want to instantiate a compressor plug-in as an insert. My personal favorites for this application are the Waves C1, the Chandler TG12413 Limiter, McDSP Compressor Bank, or the Bomb Factory BF76 plug-in’s. No worries if you do not have these plug-in’s available, use what you have. And that’s it for buss compression setup in the digital world.

Smash It Up
Now that we have completed the setup for buss compression in both the analog and digital domains, we will set the initial settings for the compressor, wether analog hardware or a software plug-in. Since we have not started building a drum mix, these settings will serve as a starting place, and will need to be tweaked later. You want to start with a moderate amount of compression, and adjust as appropriate for the type of music you are mixing. If you are using a hardware compressor start with the ratio somewhere in the range of 6:1, and the threshold at 0dB, or somewhere close. You will want to set the attack and release settings of the compressor in a way that accentuates the percussive quality of the drums. For now just set the attack moderately fast, and the release moderately slow. Leave the make-up gain setting at 0dB if your compressor has one. If you are going the digital route, start with a ratio setting around 6:1, threshold around -16dB, and make-up gain around 0dB. Leave the attack and release settings at their default state. When you begin to balance your drums, you will want to keep an eye on the gain reduction meter. Overall, you want this to be somewhere in the range of 6dB to 10dB of compression, depending on how aggressive of a sound you are going for. If you want to get really aggressive, then you will want to shoot for 10dB or more of compression.

The Fun Part
Now it is time to start building a drum mix. Start by pulling all the faders down for the drum tracks. Set the fader for “Drums Main” or “Drums Clean” to unity gain. The “Drums Comp” or “Drums Smash” fader you will want to start out by setting in the range of -18dB to -12dB. You don’t want the compressor return to be too loud at this point, but it is important that the level be loud enough so that you can hear the effect the compressor is having on the drum mix.

Balancing Act
Begin building your drum mix by balancing the tracks as usual. As you balance all the different elements of the drums together, the sum of all the tracks will change the way the compressor reacts with the mix. It takes a bit of time to balance all the different drum elements together along with the two stereo Aux Inputs. At this point you can begin more accurately dialing in the compressor’s settings. Begin by fine tuning the attack and release settings. Set the attack just slow enough so that the transients of the drums become emphasized. The release should be set so that the volume of the audio returns nearly to 100% by the next drum hit. All of this is going to be dependent on the tempo and style of the drum part. The idea is to set the compressor so that it will pump with the beat of the music. Watch the gain reduction meter as you balance things out so you can see how hard you are pushing the compressor. More importantly, however, use and trust your ears when making these adjustments. Continue building a mix, changing the levels of individual tracks/Aux Inputs/compression settings depending on how aggressive or natural of a drum sound you want. For loud, heavy rock music you will probably want more obvious and aggressive compression. You can obtain this by setting the ratio higher and the threshold lower, then balancing level of the return channel louder in relation to the rest of the drum tracks. If you want a more natural and organic sound, you can obtain this by setting the ratio of the compressor lower, the threshold higher, then balancing the level of the return channel quieter in relation to the rest of the drum tracks. It requires a bit of patience, practice and experimentation to get it just right.

Not Too Much Flavor
Buss compression is a mixing tool that puts a lot of options in the hands of the engineer. It’s worth the time investment to become familiar with this technique. But be forewarned, using buss compression just because you can is a mistake. It is important to always make sure you use a production technique that compliments the sonic landscape a piece of music has already created. Fight the urge to overuse a skill just because it’s the newest thing you have learned. As always, moderation is key.

In Use
Try buss compression out in your next mix. Try two different versions of a mix. First try it out on drums, and then experiment with it on another group of instruments. Let me know how it goes. I would love to hear your results, so post comments with links to your mixes. Good luck, and have fun.