Recording - September 2010 - 2

PUBLISHER:

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER:

Thomas Hawley Brent Heintz

EDITORIAL

EDITOR: Lorenz Rychner ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Mike Metlay WEB EDITOR: Justin Peacock MÚSICO PRO EDITOR: Fernando Curiel
CONTRIBUTORS

Mix Three little letters that can strike fear in the hearts of newbies, lead to platinum careers for some specialists, and constantly demand the fullest attention from the rest of us. No matter how well the music was written, performed, sequenced, sampled, tracked, and edited—it’s the mix that will determine the success or failure of the recording. Fix it in the mix? Most professionals will tell you that is the wrong approach to take. Instead, track it right and the mixer has a better chance of getting the mix right. Fix it in mastering? Mastering specialists will tell you that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. For this issue of Recording, we tried to distill the essentials of mixing into concise advice, worthy of being pinned up on a nearby wall for constant future reference. Sean Shannon condensed the essentials into just ten steps. Much of it deals with the items you have to get right before you touch the first knob or fader, real or virtual. Heed the advice he offers, and increase your chances at a successful mix, again and again. Pro Tools, these days from Avid, has a vast user base, from the entry-level versions to the top-of-the-line setups, and with the recent accord between Mackie and Avid over the use of Pro Tools M-Powered 8 software, that user base will increase even more. We asked Mark Hornsby to take those who are less familiar with Pro Tools through the essential steps towards a successful mix using Pro Tools. Since it is often the go-to-mix format for projects that were tracked in other formats, Mark begins with the steps needed to see “what have we here” and “how can we deal with this material”. He, too, came up with ten steps in the right direction. It’s a decimal world, it seems... I had the pleasure of attending a performance of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra that was being recorded in 5.1, and broadcast live, from a perfectly inadequate little space in the bowels of Denver’s Boettcher Hall. Experienced engineers Mike Pappas and assistant Joey Kloss pulled it off with nary a bead of sweat, and with some minimal but exquisite equipment that proves that less can indeed be more. The mix? After rehearsals and two prior concerts to get it finessed, by the time I got there on the Sunday afternoon, it was set-itand-forget-it. Sitting in the sweet spot in the improvised “control room”, I spent the most relaxed time I have ever had around professionals who know what they’re doing, and nobody raised a sweat. It’s not just about technique, of course. You need the right tools. One of them is the new generation of Mackie’s Onyx mixers, the Onyx-i models that have integrated FireWire (previously an add-on option) and much more—our review starts on page 30. More studio tools, hard and soft, are written up in this issue for your evaluation. Our website has much to offer that couldn’t find its way into print, and many years’ worth of previous articles await your perusal in the Resources section, so make good use of all this information that is meant to help you achieve much— Happy Recording.

Sean Shannon, Paul Vnuk Jr., Mark Hornsby, Gary Eskow, John Rossi III, Bruce Kaphan, Todd Gascon, Marty Peters, Scott Dorsey
TAXI METER

EDITOR: Kenny Kerner
ART

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(303) 516-9118 RECORDING MAGAZINE (ISSN 1078-8352; USPS 002-298) is published monthly, 12 times per year, by Music Maker Publications, Inc., 5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301-3523. Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 email: info@recordingmag.com

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RECORDING SEPTEMBER 2010

Recording - September 2010

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