Recording - October 2012 - 61

of the audience watching the band. If there is a big problem with some tracks, you should be clearly aware of it at this point. Break it down After you get comfortable with the song and really understand the parts, then it’s time to break it down again. I usually start by soloing the rhythm section, bass and drums first. These are the core of a pop-rock or jazz mix, so get them right and the rest is easy. I look for interactions between the bass and drums and start to decide how eq might help that interaction. Do I need to make room for the kick, is the bass too bright or dull?

days typically I use a Neve-like eq followed by an API 2500 (as shown in Figure 2), and this bus gets some serious eq and compression. Then I mix this under the dry uneffected bus to gain punch and sometimes even a little distortion or dirt. The bass could have a similar treatment, but now I use a compressor with a wet/dry control to achieve this. Hint: slow attack and long release tends to work best for bass; if you use an amp and DI, check phase—you might want to bring the amp and DI tracks into alignment. You can then bus both signals to a single aux and compress them together to keep the phase coherent. Once you feel good about your drums and bass, start bringing in your rhythm elements.

There is a plethora of stuff written about the specifics of eq-ing bass and drums; time and lots of mixing will give you the experience to know whether you need to knock 200 Hz down in the bass or add 70 Hz to the kick. Use your ears. Try to do subtractive eq first, and in narrow bands. Add eq in subtler and wider bandwidths. For example, add a lift at 12 kHz to the overheads to bring out shine and simultaneously cut around 5–7 kHz to give some room for the snare track to pop. Don’t be afraid of using the highpass filter to clean up mud. For example, your hi-hat does not need 100 Hz (or quite a bit above that), so cut it hard! Similarly, toms should be treated to minimize excess low-end buildup that will smear your bass/kick relationship as well as your overall stereo image. I send my drums to two buses; one has no effects, the other bus (that I call parallell) has an eq and compressor. These

Start paying attention to your overall gain, and be mindful that there is a lot of stuff yet to come. Adjust trims or input levels accordingly. Again, do not fear the lowpass filter on the rhythm guitars or even piano; worry less about what they sound like solo and more about how they fit in the track. Think about your panning of the rhythm elements, also think about arrangement and build—do you really need four tracks playing the chords in the verse? Things like that. Always try to simplify so you will have more contrast with complex sections of the tune. I try to get the vocal in next—this is the focus track so start focusing on it! I am still avoiding automation, my goal now is a better version of my first listen-throughs, hopefully with more punch, space and dynamics. As I get the vocal in, I start to work with reverbs to define my spaces. The drums generally get their own space, the vocal its
RECORDING October 2012

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Recording - October 2012

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