This page is not working right
Archive for the ‘Techniques’ Category
Friday, April 20th, 2012
This post was sent in by Joe Clar at JoeClarMusic.com. I’ve expanded on it to include a few additional resources. These additions are identified in italics. The original post can be found here.
De-Essing Approaches
I was recently working on a song and the sibilance was just a little too much for me. Like anything in audio there several ways of accomplishing the same task and different people will have different opinions but these are a few ways that I found to be effective.
1. Automate Each and Every Sibilance (The Manual Approach)
There’s a thread with this in Gearslutz (link) that offers a very good solution. It is basically to put a trim plug in and then automate the volume of the trim plug-in on each sibilance. This way is also completely free and similar to compressing by riding a volume fader.
Advantages- No artifacts, Cost-effective, You can choose how much you want to decrease each sibilance, Doesn’t interfere with volume automation for the track and you can bypass the plug-in or go back and tweak if needed.
Disadvantages- Can be time consuming if there are lots of background vocal tracks or doublings, Can’t be saved as a setting that can be applied to future or similar vocal tracks.
Photo from Gregory Scott’s Gearslutz post
“I put this on a trim plug so it’s separate from volume automation, makes it much easier to edit as the mix progresses.
If you slide your first two nodes to the right, you can let as much or as little transient thru as you’d like. If you add nodes, you can put the transient at one level and the ess at another.
Each sibilant (ess or tzz or chhh or fff) is tuned by ear, so the amount of control is unparalleled. Once you get up to speed, you can do a whole track in about 5 minutes. Sibilants are very easy to spot visually, they’re much denser and faster than anything else on the track.”
-Gregory Scott – ubk
A variation of this tip is to use clip gain/item volume or other pre-FX gain adjustment in your DAW to turn down the volume of the offending areas.
I recently set up an action in REAPER to speed up this process [split selected area, turn item gain down 2dB] I have the action assigned to a convenient keyboard shortcut. I have another to boost and another to mute. I’m using these a ton for de-essing, breath reduction, leveling vocal and dialog dynamics, and similar tasks on instrument tracks.
Recently I was mixing a song called Mother Earth, every time the word “Earth” was sung the TH sound was held too long. No one makes a De-Ether so I knew had to figure out a manual method. I found the best way to was to reduce the TH section of the waveform by 2dB and time compress it by about 60%.
2. Use a De-Esser Plug-in (The Automatic Approach)
When a De-Esser plug-in is set correctly it can be fast and easy. However it usually takes a little time to find the problem frequency, then to set the threshold so it doesn’t get triggered by other material, and then to have it work for many different sections of the track. There’s quite a bit to take into account and you will most likely need to automate some of the parameters of the De-Esser to get it right. There are some videos on Pensado’s Place that go over this in the Into The Lair Section. Pensado’s Place is definitely a show worth checking out, he is very knowledgeable, a Grammy Award winning mixer and a genuinely nice guy sharing what he has learned working in music.
Fab Dupont has a great video demonstrating the how-to and differences between 6 popular de-essers.
One method I found works for me when using a De-Esser plug-in is to set the frequency band to be fairly wide and to use a shelf shape instead of just notching out a narrow frequency band. Usually the offending frequencies fall between about 4k to 12k but I’ve gotten good results using a hi-shelf shape at 6k and about 6db of gain reduction. When I was using a narrow band it wasn’t really taking out all of the harshness that I wanted. I also have read using multiple narrow bands but I would most likely use the manual method before resorting to this.
Advantages: Once set correctly it can save you from having to automate each sibilance, It can take out just the upper frequencies and leave the un-offending frequencies in tact, Can be saved as a preset so if you recorded many tracks with the same singer, the same microphone in the same studio then it should be pretty close for each vocal track, The attack and release times can be set on some De-Essers.
Disadvatages: Can sometimes need automation to get right, If the De-Esser is triggered too much it can give the singer a lysp.
Note: De-Essing can also be thought of as frequency dependent side-chain compression. A multiband compressor has many similarities of a standard De-Esser plug-in and is a good way to visualize what a De-Esser is doing.
Conclusion:
There isn’t really one way that will work for every singer in every song so experimentation is required to find out what’s best for that particular situation.
Posted in Audio Editing, Plugins, Techniques, Virtual Effect | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
double-neck guitar optional
Double tracking is a very common recording/production technique for almost any genre of music. When it comes to rhythm guitars, this technique is almost a standard method of recording with single tracking used only for solos.
This is also a technique that is often confusing for beginners.Double tracking simply means recording the same part twice and panning each to opposite sides. This creates a wide stereo spread based on the unique nuances in timing and dynamics of each performance. This is the guitarist playing a section of the song perfectly, then repeating it as closely as possible on a second track.
This isn’t the same as recording in stereo, using two mics, using a chorus effect or duplicating and delaying one side. Some of these techniques are ways of ‘faking’ or ‘automatic’ double tracking, but are simply no substitute for an expertly performed double track. There must be two separate performances for the effect to work.
How To double track guitars
- Record mono rhythm guitar, with either a microphone on a real amp or virtual amp. This track would be panned center.
- When a good take is achieved, and any punch ins are finished, go through the recorded track and tighten up any timing issues.
Here’s how it sounds with the first guitar along with drums. The guitar is in the middle.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
(warning heavy metal!)
- After editing, pan this guitar (and any extra mics for this performance) to the left.
- That was perfect, now play it again! Make a new track and pan it right.
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 using the same guitar, pickup selection, amp, microphone and any other variables unchanged. Making a change will increase the stereo width but will often result in an unbalanced tone.
Here’s the same part with the doubled guitars.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This repeats for each section of the song and if there are multiple guitar parts written or two guitarists in the band, usually each will be double tracked. If there are two guitarists in the band, there could be some confusion. Guitarist 1 plays all his parts twice, guitarist 2 plays all his parts twice. In a simple song this would mean 4 tracks for the rhythm guitars. Often this gets up to 12 or 16 tracks pretty quickly. Guitar solos are usually right up the middle or ‘stereoized’ with other techniques to make them pop out.
You have to be careful playing the doubled part, if it’s too far off from the original it will make a unwanted ping-ponging effect especially in headphones.
Quad Tracking is exactly the same, but you record each part 4 times. Each take has to be perfectly in sync or it just sounds like a terrible mess.
Poor alternatives
So why can’t we just duplicate and delay/shift the recording a little for the same effect? Well, simply because it sounds like crap and I’ll show you.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This is what happens when you copy the original mono recording, delay the copy by 20ms and pan each hard left and right.
Similarly, why not use a stereo chorus?
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Still sounds really bad compared to double tracking. I’m not saying don’t ever use Chorus, just don’t use as an alternative to the big wide powerful double-track sound.
I hope you have found this article useful.
Any questions? Let me know in the comments below.
Posted in Recording, Tutorial | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
Nick Lewis is mastering engineer at online mastering studio Brighton Mastering. Check his music production blog for more tips, tricks and opinions.
5 Tips for DIY Mastering
As a mastering engineer, I would always encourage home recordists to send their music to a professional for mastering. Aside from finely tuned monitoring set ups, ultra-high-end equipment and the benefit of experience, a professional mastering engineer offers a valuable second opinion.
However, if budgets don’t allow or if you’re really set on doing it yourself – here are 5 tips for DIY mastering.
Essential Mastering Tools
Reference exhaustively
One of the most difficult things about mastering (and mixing for that matter) is maintaining objectivity. Your ears will always get used to what they’re hearing and if you’re bogged down in the same track you’ll very quickly find you can’t see the forest for the trees.
The solution? Rack up at least one similar track in your DAW project to constantly refer to and give yourself a reality check. You’ll never match it exactly but it’ll give you a good idea if you’re on the right track.
Check, check and check again
Unless you’ve dropped a cashbomb on your monitors, and crucially, your room acoustics, you’ll need to compensate for a less than perfect monitoring environment.
That means every time you think you’re done, burn it onto a CD, check on your hi-fi, check it in your car, on your iPod, round your mate’s place, anywhere you can think of. If you can’t depend on your studio set-up to reliably translate you need to check the long way in as many real world situations as you can.
If in doubt, take a break
If you’ve been at it for a while, been checking against your reference track(s) and checking on as many playback systems as you can find, but still can’t tell if it’s right – take a break.
It happens to the best of us. Sometimes, listening to it again is not the solution. Leave it for an hour, a day, a week even and then come back to it. You’ll find that things become a lot clearer. And it’s remarkable how much louder things will sound when you haven’t been listening to them for hours on end.
Give the limiter an easy ride
One of the most common mistakes in DIY mastering is relying too much on the limiter. Brickwall limiters and loudness maximisers are not a magic bullet – they will not give you the loudness you’re after by themselves. Or at least, not in a pleasant way.
Achieving commercial loudness is by and large a matter of EQ, gentle compression, possibly some light distortion/harmonic excitement and finally the limiter. A good rule of thumb is to let the limiter impose no more than 3dB of gain reduction. In practice though, many mastering engineers use much less.
Leave the multi-band alone
Another common misconception about modern mastering is that multi-band compressors are essential. In actual fact, unless you have a good reason for doing so, you’re likely to do more harm than good with multi-band processing.
Break out your best broadband bus compressor and leave the multi-band for specific tasks. As long as your mix is good enough, you won’t even need to think about multi-band compression.
Multi-band processors are most commonly used by professional mastering engineers to target specific problems e.g. de-essing or taming the bass. Rarely are all bands used, and even rarer is using them for bus compression.
Mastering is about making a big change through a series of small changes. If you find yourself making radical changes with one processor, chances are you’re doing too much.
Nick Lewis is mastering engineer at online mastering studio Brighton Mastering. Check his music production blog for more tips, tricks and opinions.
Posted in Mastering, Techniques, Tutorial | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
Whenever I’m stuck in a project and don’t know how to continue I take a few minutes to try something different and generally opposite of what has already been done.
This could be making the long lush reverb really short, or running the vocals through all my guitar pedals at once, or making the drums really thin and lo-fi, or one of my favourites – copying and reversing a sound.
weird processing chain for a synth
Sometimes this little diversion from routine results in something cool that helps make the mix special or leads me to 2-3 other ideas and gets things exciting again.
If it doesn’t work, then I can feel better knowing that my first instinct was probably the right path already and I just needed a break.
This doesn’t have to involve effects either, changing to a different set of monitors, or headphones and continuing for a while this way can really help too.
Give it a try in your next mix.
Posted in Circuitbending, Commentary; Rants and Jokes, Mixing | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Today I’m sharing something I’ve been doing a lot lately and can make mixing a lot of fun.
Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy analog delay pedal
Use guitar pedals for mixing
Plugins are great but its just not the same as running sounds through real analog circuits. You can send sounds out of your audio interface, tweak the pedal settings and even ‘play’ the pedal to do realtime automation. It can be a lot of fun to work this way.
For the demonstration I’ve recorded an electric guitar directly into my DAW with Amplitube for amp and cabinet simulation. I’m going to then run the signal through an Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy analog delay pedal.
Here is the sound of the direct guitar.
Direct Guitar
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Here is the guitar with the Amplitube 3 plugin added (stereo, amp+speaker+mic)
Guitar + Amplitube
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Now I’m going to run the sound through the pedal. To do this in your home studio you need an audio interface
with a couple spare analog outputs, if your interface has 4 analog
outputs, that’s perfect. (more…)
Posted in Gear, Hardware Effects and pedals, Mixing, Techniques, Tutorial | 9 Comments »
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
This is a guest post from Samuel Allen of Extreme Studios in Perth, Australia. This article has been edited, the original can be found here.
This is a quick how-to for the technical aspects of preparing a master CD in Wavelab. This article does not explain audio processing techniques for mastering such as How to make a song louder in mastering, How to use Ozone for mastering, or How to use Multiband Compression.
I personally master in Wavelab, which is pretty straightforward for Cubase users, as it supports VST plugins. Although, it can be a bit counterintuitive when coming from Cubase if you expect it to work in the same fashion. If anyone is interested I can go into a more in depth tutorial about fade ins/outs on tracks, crossfading, etc, but for this one I’m just going to show how quick and easy it is to create a duplication ready DDP or physical master with ISRC code, EAN/UPC code and CD text embedded and ready to go.
New Audio Montage
Step 1 is creating a new Audio Montage, do this from the floating panel by clicking the button as per the image below, after which you want to select Stereo, CD compatible, 44.1khz from the dialogue box which pops up afterward
(more…)
Posted in Mastering, Tutorial | 8 Comments »
