EQ Magazine - October 2008 - (Page 42)

MIX BUS Alan Moulder (mixer, left) and Tony Diodore (vocals, guitar, producer of BM LINX). ALAN MOULDER ON MIXING BM LINX by Jeff Anderson New York-based, electro-rock band BM LINX recently enlisted Alan Moulder to mix its upcoming Craze Factory release. Moulder—who is considered one of the U.K.’s preeminent alt-rock producers—has worked on many hit records for groups such as Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Depeche Mode, the Killers, and Marilyn Manson. “There are a number of different elements to deal with here,” says Moulder of the BM LINX project. “Some songs have programmed drum samples, and others are played with acoustic drums. There’s quite a bit of sequencing, as well as vocals, guitar, electric bass, and synth tracks. The songs are a bit more aggressive than the band’s previous album, and we wanted to retain that quality in the final mixes.” How did you approach the drum mix? This is not an overly elaborate recording of the drum kit—which I like. They used three mics for the kick—inside, outside, and a sub [a speaker is placed in front of the kick and used as a “mic”]—a snare with top and bottom mics, the toms, and a couple of room mics. For the kick, I used about 25 percent of the speaker mic, and then equally balanced the inside and outside mics. I routed all three sources to one mixer channel so that all the EQ and compression blended together. What compressors did you use for the combined kick track? The kick track was processed with the SSL’s channel compressor, but then I sent the signal—along with some of the other drum tracks—to a few different compressors, such as a Neve 33609, an Empirical Labs Fatso, and an Elysia mpressor. I use different combinations of these compressors for different bits of a song. For example, I may bring in the mpresser for the choruses, and the Fatso for the verses. How much of the room mics do you blend into the overall drum sound? The song I’m working on now only has a rear room mic. I didn’t do any compression or EQ to it. Levelwise, it’s positioned where you barely notice it, but it definitely makes the drums sound bigger— especially the kick sound. You really notice it when you take it away. Did you use any samples to beef up the drums? I used a couple of very subtle kick and snare samples just to fill in some stuff I couldn’t get with EQ tweaks. All the samples were MIDI mapped to match the attack of the acoustic drums. What about ambience effects? There was a bit of a room sound from an Eventide H3000 on the snare, along with a Lexicon PCM-60 Room preset on the kick and snare. What about all the synth tracks? Did you fatten them up at all? The sounds were pretty much there. I used SoundToys FilterFreak to take off a bit of the top end. FilterFreak gives you four or five ways to saturate a signal, so I could also make the synths sound dirty, fat, clean, or overdriven. How do you ensure the electric bass doesn’t get swallowed up by low-end synth parts? I had a miked bass sound—no DI—and I ran it through Native Instruments Guitar Rig to give the tone a bit of a growl. I wanted Guitar Rig to accentuate the bite and attack of the bass strings. The synths are dealing with the low end, 42 EQ OCTOBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

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

EQ Magazine - October 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Smashing Pumpkins Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Steinberg Cubase 4 Studio Meets Stage Gear for the Studio and Stage Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - October 2008

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