EQ Magazine - January 2008 - (Page 45)

from the instrument and the amp. We hardly used any plug-ins at all. I hate the phrase, but it was important to me that the sounds on Long Live Me were ‘old school.’” With a somewhat strict “no plug-in” rule in effect, mix engineer Mudrock (Godsmack, Alice Cooper, Avenged Sevenfold) was challenged to find hardware solutions to processing needs. To pump up the bass, he resorted to an old re-amping trick. “Andrew played back the direct bass track through a Genelec studio monitor, and miked the Genelec using the woofer of a Yamaha NS10M speaker, explains Ferro. ” “It’s a trick that he usually does to capture more lows from a kick drum, and it added some nice subwoofer-type bottom end to the direct bass track. During the mix, we always used a blend of the direct tracks and the two miked tracks. ” Of course, this approach produced mammoth booty for the bass, which limited how much low-end wallop could be generated by the kick drum. “The bass definitely had more low end than the kick drum, says Ferro. “So we ” boosted the midrange on the kick a bit so that it had some bite. We also added a little high end so that the impact of the beater against the kick drum had a nice snap, but wasn’t too clicky in the mids. You need to ensure that the bass frequencies don’t get too muddy, but you still want the rhythm section to be thick and powerful. ” Keeping frequency ranges relatively separate wasn’t the only strategy Ferro employed to ensure his bass punched through the mix with authority. He also worked to craft arrangements that kept the musical parts from smacking sloppily into each other. “I wrote the parts so that each instrument had a specific role, he says. “For ” example, I was adamant that the two guitarists never played exactly the same parts, and I was just as adamant that the bass didn’t compete with what they were doing. I lock into [Lords drummer] Chris Collier’s kick drum, but I tend to be right on top of the beat, or a little bit in front of it, and I made sure the guitars played complementary parts that stayed out of my way. I was also careful that my parts didn’t interfere with the guitars. Most every song was played with a pick so that my attack was clean and clear enough to ensure people could hear these rhythmic distinctions [the lone exception was “Say What You Will, which Ferro per” formed using his fingers]. ” A final creative decision to mix to analog tape—and then run the mastering session completely from the analog mixes—really served to capture the classic-rock vibe that Ferro wanted for the album. Mudrock mixed the Pro Tools sessions to a Studer A80 2-track running 1/2" tape at 30ips. He also calibrated the deck at +6dB to slam some hot levels to tape for maximum warmth and coloration. “I didn’t want a new-metal-type sound—all super clean and layered to death, says Ferro. “This album is pretty ” much all room mics and direct mics, and the mixes are just saturated to tape to get all that wonderful bottom end and midrange grit. But, at the end of the day, whatever we did, we did to get the song across. That was the big concern—not how loud the bass was going to be. ” www.eqmag.com JANUARY 2008 EQ 45 http://www.keyboardmag.tv http://www.keyboardmag.tv http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - January 2008

EQ Magazine - January 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Robbers On High Street Rafter RTX Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings Toolbox Rahim Dimmu Borgir Wu-Tang Clan Special Feature! Mastering for Musicians Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drumheads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 IK Multimedia Virtual Instruments Yamaha MSP7 Shure KSM137/SL K+H O 300 & O 800 Sonica Livetracker Apple Logic Studio Novation XioSynth 25, Audio-Technica ATH-M50, Samson G-Track

EQ Magazine - January 2008

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