A very common technique in the old days was the Mixback. Basically, engineers would print whatever was going through the master bus (the stereo bus) to two open tracks on the 24-track master. Can you believe there was a time when 24-tracks was too many? Actually you can find track sheets from 8-track and 16-track recordings with lots of open tracks.

The mixback tracks were a running record of whatever was in the master bus during the session. They gave the engineer a good-sounding mix just by pushing up two faders.

If you needed to do overdubs, you’d just bring up the two mixback tracks and there was a headphone mix ready to go. Need more of something like the lead vocal? Bring up the lead vocal track a little bit and now the mix has more lead vocal. Need less bass? Piece of cake: reverse the phase on the individual bass track, slide up the fader and the phase cancellation lowers the volume of the bass in the mix! How cool is that? And yes, it really does work!

A better mixback trick: you could “punch in” the mix. If you didn’t have automation, with a mixback you could work on each individual section, punching in and out to do all sorts of difficult mix moves. And if the record company wanted changes to the mix, that was easy to do — add tracks in or lower them using the phase trick.

Automation ended the Mixback, or did it? With a DAW, bouncing rough mixes and then bringing them back into the session is very useful. It makes fixing latency issues a breeze: bring up the mixback mix, mute all the individual tracks and turn off any plugins on the mix bus. You can tweak the mixback by bringing up individual tracks, reversing the phase if you need to lower the volume of something, and then bounce that and bring it back into the session.

With a bit of ingenuity and enough ins and outs on your interface, you can even do a real mixback: route the master bus output to two tracks of the DAW (make sure you mute those tracks to avoid feedback), and then you can punch in and out of your mix just like the good old days. I mix this way all the time, punching the mix in section by section. And because it’s digital, there’s no generational loss or hiss build-up.

As a challenge, I’ve been remixing songs using just one of our plug-ins. This week I remixed with the WOW.

The video is a bit long, because I explain a lot and have too much fun, but the  video is chapter marked and I wrote some quick takeaways below.

 

Key Takeaways

• The WOW Thing adds a lot of brightness and clarity. Plan accordingly.
• The more you crank up WOW, the more stereo-recorded tracks or submixed things will gain ambiance and reverb. More WOW = More Wet.
• Plan your bottom end a bit. TrueBass has a bunch of different low and low mid frequencies to pick from, so spread things out down there. Don’t add TrueBass to the drums and the bass and guitars and keyboards all at the same frequency. Layer things down there. Like lasagna.
• Don’t ignore the potential for saturation. Overload the WOW Thing (or really any of our plug-ins) and you’ll get saturation. Saturation will add subtle compression and some high harmonics to help a track to stand out without using a compressor or an EQ.

Cutting to the chase, here’s the video I made about using the EL Juan Limiter to improve the sound of a live recording of Jimi Hendrix playing Johnny B Goode.

My friend Steve had an 8-track (remember those in Grandpa’s basement? Or perhaps your own?) of Hendrix in the West and he always played it at parties at his house. I could listen to this album for hours.

Originally I just wanted to get a decent-sounding version with some video of the actual performance up on YouTube, but then I decided to run the audio through our El Juan Limiter and the results were so good (and so quickly achieved) that I thought I would make a video out of it for you all.

The video ended up taking HOURS because I kept screwing up and restarting and on and on and on...

Here’s the big takeaway: Dan and I use our plug-in backwards. Very often we start off on the back panel, making some moves that affect the entirety of the plug-in’s response, and then we go to the front panel and make specific tweaks.

THis actually makes total sense. Imagine you’re going to do an analog mix. Before you put in a single EQ or compressor, the first thing you’re going to do is choose the console on which you’d like to mix. Big warm Neve? Punchy API? Snappy, crunchy SSL? Same thing with our plug-ins. There are controls that affect the whole enchilada, and they’re usually on the back.

When there’s a lot of bass and warmth buildup on a vocal track it gets hard to sit it properly in a mix.

The main reason for all of the buildup is using a cardioid microphone and the singer being too close to it. Getting close to a cardioid = proximity effect = too much down there and a goopy, slovenly vocal track that doesn’t sit right.

One solution might be to use an omnidirectional mic, which won’t have proximity effect (unless it’s a multi-pattern condenser), but there will be a ton of room sound recorded with that vocal, and if you don’t have a good-sounding room, that will cause other problems for you.

I’m guessing a lot of you don’t have good-sounding rooms so you feel you have to record up close to the mic. I’m guessing there are a lot of vocals being cut sitting in front of a computer. I’m guessing there’s a lot of cardioid condensers used up close. I’m guessing vocals recorded that way are a PIA (pain in the ass) to fit into a mix.

Try this. BACK UP FROM THE MIC.

When you cut vocals from about 18 inches to 2 feet away from a cardioid mic, the proximity effect is very much diminished and you get a more balanced, “thinned out” vocal recording. There are some other benefits to recording further away.

1) The vocals don’t sound like you’re right on top of the mic. This is like DUH obvious, but that bit of acoustic distance really helps.

2) You’ll get easier to deal with recording levels. Vocalists bounce around. And everytime the distance from the singer’s mouth to the microphone changes, the level goes up and down, dependending on the inverse square law.

The inverse square law says that if the distance decreases by half, the level goes up 6dB, and if the distance doubles, the level drops by 6db.

So... if a singer is 2 inches from a mic and they move a little in, say 1 inch, the level jumps by 6dB. Should the singer lean back a bit, or even shift their weight to their rear leg, that moves their head away from the mic and the level drops. If they shifted 8 inches, which isn’t much, the level drops 12dB. Have fun recording a singer that’s level could be changing by as much as 24dB depending on their movement.

And have fun getting a decent performance when you force the singer to keep their head still and in exactly the same place, take after take.

Back that singer up a foot off the mic, and now they have to move in 6” to get a 6dB level increase, and move back 2 feet to get a 6dB drop in level. In other words, that singer can now bounce around a bit and the levels aren’t all over the place.

Do this: Stick a pop filter a foot or 18 inches away and stick the singer in front of it. They’ll almost naturally control the distance themselves without you saying much, and you’ll get a free, loose, easy to record and fit into a mix vocal.

Now... yes, you will get more room sound on that performance. To cut that down, use a moving coil mic or do some acoustic treatment. I think most of those little isolation shields that people stick around a mic don’t do all that much (because acoustics).

Make a little boothie thing with blankets or stick the singer in the clothes closet facing out with the microphone facing in.

If you’re in a good-sounding room, just record the vocal from a few feet away.

If you’re getting bleed into a cardioid mic, chances are putting gobos and stuff behind it to block stuff out isn’t going to make much of a difference.

Cardioid mics already reject sounds behind them really really well. Most of the bleed getting in from behind is going to be low frequency, and not much is ever going to stop low-frequency bleed because cardioids tend to go omni a bit at low frequencies (and low frequencies tend to go around or through objects without a lot of difficulty anyway. Hard to stop bass.).

So, where is the bleed coming from? It’s coming in the front of the mic, along with the sound you’re trying to record. It’s coming in “over your shoulder."

How to deal? First, there’s the direct-to-reflection ratio. Is the direct sound getting in a lot louder than the leakage getting in? Let’s call this ratio Acoustic Separation - the difference between the thing you want to hear and the thing you don’t want to hear.

Typically, acoustic separation is defined as 26dB: in other words, the direct sound should read 26dB higher on the meter than the indirect sound. In the studio, that’s pretty hard to get, but even a 10 or 15dB difference is going to be fine. Less than that and you will run into problems.

In the home studio, the best vocal booth you have is a closet stuffed full of clothes. Set up your mic facing into the closet - maybe a few inches outside of it but pointing into it and all the clothes. Then, stick your vocalist INTO the closet facing out at the mic. Yes, they should have clothes all around them. You’ll be amazed at how dead and clean that vocal will be.

Moving coil microphones are often called "dynamic" microphones, which they are, but Dynamic is a family name. Ribbon mics are also dynamic microphones, even though no one really calls them that. In this brief thing, I'll use dynamic and moving coil somewhat interchangeably. If you're a stickler for correctness in terminology consider this your trigger warning.

Aside from the usual "Moving coil microphones are more rugged and harder to break," here are reasons why you might choose a moving coil mic in a session:

Need Less Leakage? Use a Moving Coil

Cutting a vocal in a crappy room? Use a cardioid dynamic instead of a cardioid condenser. Why?

Moving Coil mics are a diaphragm pushing a coil of wire: it's heavy and not particularly sensitive to quieter sounds. A condenser diaphragm is super light and highly sensitive. It picks up quiet sounds a lot easier, while a moving coil mic is sorta deaf to quiet stuff.

Room sound, and reverb, and leakage are usually quiet. Do you see where this is going?

Yep - the dynamic (moving coil) microphone won't pick up anywhere as much leakage as the condenser, and what it does pick up will be quieter in comparison to the direct sound (the sound you want to pick up). The net result is the track cut with the moving coil mic will sound dryer and will be easier to mix.

Boring sounding voice or Instrument? Use a Dynamic

Condenser mics tend to have rather flat frequency response with maybe a slight lift in the highs. Dynamics tend to roll off the top end a bit, and unless the mic was carefully designed, the frequency response is strange and anything but even. To me, most of them sound more gutsy and raw. To be fair, there are things like the RE-20, the AKG D224e, and the Sennheiser 441 that are as smooth as any good condenser.

A condenser on a boring or typical sounding source will give you a nice, clear recording of a boring or typical sounding source. A dynamic mic, though, will add some frequency response quirks and oddness, and that can really help to make something more interesting to listen to. Got a boring-ass singer? Stick an SM-57 in front of them and see what you get.

Moving Coil mics are compressors!

Because the diaphragm/coil assembly is on the heavy side, there's a bit of inertia to it. And that means it tends to roll off fast transients a bit. Put a moving coil on a ride cymbal and you'll hear that the "ting" becomes a "shwing." The compression of the transient is purely mechanical: there is no threshold that has to be exceeded, so the attack time is infinitely fast.

This is pretty subtle stuff, but "mic compression" with dynamic can tame a spitty sounding vocal. Elvis Costello used to use an SM-57 in the studio because of this. Also they didn't want him filling up U-67s with drool.

I love using moving coils for hand percussion because of mic compression. Tambourines recorded on a condenser are so sharp they cut your head off, and the transient is so much louder than the jingle that it becomes very hard to sit it properly in the mix. Use a dynamic and the transient gets blunted back and the jingles come up. Ditto for congas, bells, berimbau, claps - anything people are smacking around.

I hear some of you complaining, "But it will roll off the high-end!" Yes. That isn't always a bad thing. Not everything deserves to be airy in a mix. Yes, if you're making a percussion record, you want that air up there for the percussion. But if it's a vocal record, reserve that upper space for the vocals, or whatever else might be driving the recording. You don't need conga overtones competing with a piano or acoustic guitar for real estate above 10kHz.

So there you go.

I have no idea who this kid is, but I'd love to have him as the drummer on a session.

Here's the vid:

He's got so many things that I look for in a drummer:

1) He's got taste. 18, playing for parents and has got girls all around him? I would have TOTALLY been overplaying and showing off if I was him. Thank God I'm an old guitarist and not in Cleveland, screwing these kids up by playing too much, adding fills everywhere, etc. This kid does what the song and performance needs. This sort of taste is really hard to teach, and he just has it.

2) He keeps good time. He's definitely not dragging, and I don't hear his tempo swaying. He is pushing on some sections of the song and pulling back on others, but that is what you want. Time should be a bit elastic and stretch and contract for the needs of the song.

3) He's solid. By this, I mean he makes the time very clear to the other band members, and that makes it easier for them to play well. A good drummer tightens the band up. Other members play better because they don't have to worry about the time and can concentrate on what they're doing. Case in point: the song has a solo bass part at the top, and listen how authoritative and locked in that bass part gets the moment the drummer kicks in.

4) He's articulate and crisp. This is a pretty bad recording, but you can hear what this guy is doing and you can see it. He's not mushy. He hits hard, he hits right but without a lot of extra movement. His arms aren't flailing everywhere. He's relaxed, precise and clean. He would be a delight to record.

5) He listens and adapts. At 1:21 the whole group does a free form kind of wind-up, and the tempo vanishes, and then at the end of it the whole band hits the landing like Simone Byles. And then it all kicks in again. The drummer listens to where everyone is going, adapts, and then re-establishes the beat perfectly. Excellent playing.

The member of the band that gets kicked out the most is the drummer. When I was producing, bands were always saying, "We're interviewing a drummer. What should we ask him?"

My number one question to ask is: "What do you think of Ringo?"

If a drummer appreciates what Ringo was all about in the Beatles, that's a definite green flag. If a drummer hates him... run away. Chances are the player hasn't matured enough to play for the song, and for the rest of the band, and sees songs as carrier waves for fills, and performances are dead air until the drum solo.

The kid from the Cleveland School of Rock in 2018: he's a keeper.

Happy Monday. One thing leads to another.

​​​Happy Accidents

Honestly, this is the whole point: Letting shit happen and then recognizing that it's good shit (or flushing it if it's bad).

A happy accident is when something unintended turns out to be better than any idea you had or thing you tried to make.

A great song is a series of happy accidents connected by music theory. A great production is a series of happy accidents connected by moments of waiting for the next happy accident.

A good creative environment is one where happy accidents are encouraged.

Talent is recognizing happy accidents when they happen.

This whole newsletter is a happy accident. Because of google searches for Shaun Ryder last week, all sorts of content about him is popping up on my feed. Happy accident? Perhaps. But what is important is that I spotted it.

So... here Shaun Ryder discusses a GREAT happy accident:

Shaun Ryder Explains 

And here’s a link to the song he’s talking about:

Gorillaz ‘Dare’ video

Damn, that is a really catchy groove, Just two chords - like an A to a G. Gorillaz do interesting stuff.

Another fun one, this time courtesy of New Order. You wouldn’t think that a group that is sequenced and, well, orderly, would crop up here. But they do... a quick vid:

New Order Blue Monday

An Accident?

This popped up on my feed. I'm not a fan of the band, but this will scoop part of your brain out and smear it on the wall.

It's a room mic feed of EVH recording Eruption. From a talkback mic? Drum overheads? Miscellaneous leakage?

Whatever. It's spectacular playing, and in this recording context, it's pretty clear he dropped that solo like a bomb in one take.

On the album, with that goofy panning and awful reverb... the slickness of it makes me think it was "worked on." Punched in. Comp'd. Done with mirrors.

But the link below sounds like one incredible take. Leaps from one happy accident to another.

Eruption by Mic Leakage

Think about how the processing changes the perception.

Here’s a longer discussion of how this came to be.

Happy Accidents and AI

Just to tie the past few weeks together: AI can’t recognize a happy accident. It’s capable of screwing up, but it can’t decide if the screw-up is a keeper.

Remember you have a human superpower right now that gives you an advantage over AI. You have an opinion, and you have taste. Cultivate that over skills.

Dan and Luke

We hope you’re finding this monday thing inspirational and a little bit educational. Let us know how we can make it better.

We’re spending the next few weeks looking at compressors...

Punchy punchy punchy! This compressor is punchy! That compressor is punchy! Compressor X will make your mix punchy! Compressor Y adds that vintage punch! Yada yada yada!

Today, we dissect PUNCHY, how compressors make things punchy, and what you can do with a compressor to control punch. So, a bunch of theory, not a lot of history, some videos, and a thing to try towards the end.

What is Punch

Punch, as we hear it, is sort of a physical quality to a sound or instrument. It tends to cut through the mix and it tends to be bright. There might be almost an audible “click” to the sound. Punchy basses and kick drums kind of hit you in the chest at louder volumes. Punchy tracks are energetic.... I can’t describe this... argh!!

Punch = Transients"

Punch is connected to and comes from the transient of a signal.

A transient is the initial attack of a waveform. The attack, or transient, is the area of a wave envelope when the sound of the instrument goes from no signal to as loud and as powerful as it will ever be.

Big words. Don’t worry about it. You’ve seen waveform envelopes on your DAW, they look like this:

The attack, or transient, is that highlighted spot at the beginning.

The faster and louder the transient, the more punch a signal has. Drum and percussion transients are very fast and loud, so drums are usually punchy.

Bowed instruments have very slow attacks so that is why you’ll never hear an engineer say, “Wow! What punchy strings!” Bass and guitars have a very variable attack depending on if they’re played with a pick (pretty fast) or fingers (pretty slow). A slapped bass, however, has a very fast transient.

Vocals tend to have slower transients. However, certain consonants have fast transients—T, D, B, K, P. Consonants in general have shorter attacks than vowels, which are typically slow. Rap and hiphop vocals typically sound punchy because there is a lot of consonant activity. Vocal parts that are sung more have more vowel activity and thus less transient activity.

Think of it like this: the more it’s like a drum, the faster the transient. The more it is like a violin, the slower the transient.

If there are a lot of fast transients, the instrument or sound will sound punchy. If there are slow transients, it won’t.

How Compressors Make Things Punchier

To go back to our dog on a leash analogy from last week: If we are going to stop the dog from running past 10 feet, the attack would be how fast we pull back on the leash once the dog has gone 10 feet. If we pull it back immediately, that is a fast attack. If we wait a moment and then pull the dog back, that is a slower attack."

Compressors make things punchier by reshaping the waveform a bit. The transient is, basically, made bigger, which makes the sound subjectively punchier.

As you know (and if you don’t know you’re about to find out) a compressor kicks in and starts to work when the signal goes over the threshold you’ve set. Now, the very first part of the signal that goes over the threshold is..... the transient. If the compressor kicks in immediately, then it will start to reduce the gain beginning with the transient.

But what if the compressor doesn’t kick in immediately? In other words, the signal goes over the threshold and the compressor kicks in a fraction of a section after. The transient gets through untouched, the gain comes down after it, and the waveform is reshaped. It looks like this:

This is the basic way a compressor adds or creates punch: it lets the transient through.

The attack time of a compressor is a big determinant of whether or not it is punchy. Some compressors have fixed attack times, others have program dependent attack times or manually adjustable attack times, and some have a combination of program dependent and manually adjustable. But there are other factors.

The ratio can affect punch. Low ratios typically result in less punch—the difference between the transient and the signal following is is less. Higher ratios tend to have more punch. But attack time can affect this: A high ration with a very very fast attack time will not be punchy at all—in fact it will sound dull and dead if it is active on the signal for a long period of time.

Knee is another factor that effects punch. Knee... how to describe knee....

When a signal goes over threshold, the compressor applies gain reduction, which is set by the ratio. If it applies that ratio all at once, that is a hard knee. So, if the ratio is set to 8:1 and the signal goes over threshold, the compressor clamps down at full power, 8;1.

Soft knee compressors or settings gradually apply gain reduction in proportion to how far the signal goes over threshold. So, if a soft knee compressor is set to 8:1, and the signal goes a little over threshold, the compressor clamps down a little, like 1.5:1. As the signal goes up, the compressor hits harder, so the gain reduction ratio increases... 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, etc., until it hits 8:1. Another way to think of it is the compressor is trying to “ride" the gain like you might, with your hand on the fader, pulling the fader down further as the signal gets louder.

Guess which tends to sound more punchy: Soft knee or hard knee?

Hard knee sounds more punchy, because it more radically reshapes the waveform. Soft Knee compressors tend to have very very fast attack times and Opto compressors like the LA-2a have almost instantaneous attack times, as well as a very soft knee. That is why they sound good on vocals and bass, because they “ride” the gain well, but if you put them on drums, they typically dull things up (that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put them on drums and see what they sound like though).

Making a Compressor Sound Punchy

First of all, some compressors won’t ever sound particularly punchy, like the LA-2a or any of the dbx compressors that are considered “Over Easy,” which is dbx’s term for soft knee. Original dbx 160’s are plenty punchy and sound great on drums. If you have compressor with a switchable knee, setting it to hard knee will usually get you more punch.

Some compressors are punchy no matter what you do. SSL channel strip compressors and bus compressors are wonderfully punchy. Most compressors that are labeled as FET (Field Effect Transistor) are punchy. Our Talkback Limiter is FET, 100:1 ratio, fixed attack time, and is a punch monster.

Compressors that are really good at riding gain and making things sound even are usually not all that punchy. However, if the compressor has an adjustable attack, then it is quite possible to set the compressor to even things out AND increase punch. This explains a lot of the versatility of our Pawn Shop Comp. It is FET and has a really wide range of attack and release settings, which make it adjustable for almost any sort of compression task... and if you set it right it is very punchy... or slappy ; )