New Monday #6
Happy Monday
Uh oh! We’ve wound up in Britpop, the early 90s music movement that brought the world bands like Oasis, Pulp, Suede, the Verve and Blur, amongst others.
Britpop is very English, with songs about English themes sung with English accents and harkening back to the English Music Hall tradition, which was the Empire’s version of Vaudeville. Obviously Britpop builds on music by The Beatles, Queen, 10CC and David Bowie, but also stuff from the 80s like The Smiths, XTC, the Cure, et al. Blur in particular channels Mott the Hoople. Singer Daman Albarn does a killer Ian Hunter impression.
Aside from Oasis, none of these bands did much in the US, which is a pity because there is some first-class songwriting, and, like a lot of music out of England, fantastic production.
Especially Blur. If you’re into extravagant production, listening to Blur for a few days will definitely give you a bunch of ideas.
Here are some mixing takeaways from several days of squinting at the Parklife album from 1993. By the way, these are just good mixing ideas in general.
The more sources you have, the more they should be MONO
And this makes sense if you think about it: stereo mic’ing adds width and phase shift and ambiance, all of which will turn into sonic clutter as more and more of it gets added in. So, think one mic, one source, or 1 input one keyboard/amp simulator. On most of the mixes on Parklife the drums are mono down the center.
Think CONTRAST rather than Reverb
You’ll get more depth and drama out of a mix when most of it is dry and only a few things have reverb on them. Again, the more stuff you throw into a mix, the more things get masked, and reverb and echo really mask things up. Listen to good mixes and you might hear a very wet drum sound in there, but chances are it only sounds wet when it’s highlighted by the arrangement. When it’s part of the mix, dry it up. When it’s by itself, wet it up.
Think CONTRAST Left and Right
Use the left and right and down just leave stuff in the middle. Especially on songs that are headphone ear candy. Parklife has things panning everywhere, in some cases languidly migrating from one channel to another. It’s fun! It’s interesting! It’s easy to automate!
Often on Parklife, a percussive part might be on the left, and something smoother and more sustained on the right. Or a percussive part is layered over a sustained part of the same channel so the two parts contrast rather than combine. In general these guys not only thought about what they were playing, but how it was going to fit into the big picture sonically.
CONTRAST by Sections
Contrast by sections. The verse has a distinct sound from the chorus. Perhaps the verse sounds spacious and the chorus sounds claustrophobic. There are clicky guitar parts on the verse and legato parts on the chorus. Change things up, in other words.
THIN Things Out!
Good lord, if there is one thing to remember it is this!
Everything is thinned. There’s an octave between 200Hz and 400hz, and there’s an octave between 2000hz and 4000hz. But one octave has only 200 little frequency guys between the two while the other has 2000 little frequency guys in there. But what is up above 2kHz? Cymbals? Violin overtones? Annoying keyboard patches?
Contrast that to what’s down between, oh, 150hz to 900hz. Like, EVERYTHING lives down there. Just about every instrument or vocal range has most of its fundamentals in that range. It's like the kitchen at a party: everyone wants to be in the kitchen. So, to get ridiculous clarity, either you arrange things — not everyone gets to be down in that area at the same time — or you have to thin things way way out. So, the bass gets its little own space, the guitars get their own little space, etc. Think of an elevator. There’s a weight limit. You can have a lot of people in it, but they have to be skinny.
Thin out the vocals. If you back a singer a few feet off the mic in a pretty dead room you get a thinner vocal that blends well in a mix and doesn’t have a huge amount of muddy warmth. Yes, you can shelve out the bottom end, but it is better to just not record what you don’t want. In general, to me it sounds like Blur isn’t constantly close mic’d. There’s true acoustic space involved.
Focus Focus Focus!
Parklife (and really, almost any good record) is mixed like someone directing a movie. During a movie, the director points the camera and tells the audience “You’re looking at this now.” A good mix works the same way: you’re listening to the vocals now, and now you’re hearing a drum break, and now it’s a guitar solo, etc. In other words, the listener is guided. The arrangement does this, and the mixing does this. PICK what is important. Make it louder. Change what is important on occasion. Let importance shift from part to part.
A Question and an Answer
We got an interesting question last week. Loyal reader Keith asks: “What plugins does Dan use? Is only Korneff or does he use others? The answer: Dan uses mainly Korneff stuff. In fact, often we develop a new plug-in because Dan has been using something from some other company and wants to improve on it. So, Keith, Dan uses the plug-in he designs all the damn time. And Luke almost exclusively so because he doesn’t feel like wasting time auditioning things. He just wants to rock and roll.
A Question for YOU
New Monday keeps evolving. We need some feedback from you all on how to make it better and more useful to you. We want you to be excited and inspired at 10am on Monday when you check your email. What do you like? What do you want more of? What do you want less of?
Dan and Luke
