Recording - July 2012 - 8

Note to faithful writers: When sending your letters by email, please remember to include your name and where you hail from.
When is mixing not mixing? Dear Mr. Stamler: I am a student composer and percussionist. I recently read your article on recording doumbek [“The Doom Of The Doumbek”, available in our online Resource Library—MM] and I was deeply fascinated with it, as I just finished composing a piece which heavily featured doumbek and other percussion. I have just finished recording it, and I was hoping that you might provide me with some insight as I begin to mix it. I was not involved with the recording process and unfortunately all the instruments were recorded on a single track, but still any mixing advice would be appreciated. I work in Logic Pro 8. Thank you very much! Here is the piece, entitled “Landscape For Modern Ensemble”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI-s1syO7bc
Noah McKee Via email

Paul J. Stamler replies: Dear Mr. McKee: First of all, I like the piece. A lot. So let’s talk about the recording. As far as mixing advice is concerned, I can’t give you any, because you won’t be doing any mixing; that’s already been done. What you’ll be doing is remastering—applying various tweaks to the already-mixed track. Is the track you have the same as the audio in the YouTube video? If so, I think it’s pretty decent, which gives you something good to start with. What is the format of the track you have? A .wav or .aiff file, I hope? In any case, the controls you have available to you are equalization and dynamics control. It’s hard to tell from a YouTube video (they slice and dice the audio pretty fiercely), but the equalization sounds pretty good to me, and you probably don’t need to mess with it. The thing you can do with dynamics is probably best done manually rather than via compression. I would bring the very-low-level parts of the piece up several decibels; the first marimba solo, in particular, seems a little lost. Other parts where the instruments get quiet could also be brought up; the piece has a lot of dynamic range, which works in a quiet concert hall but doesn’t work in most listening environments. In the average room, the quiet parts will disappear unless you turn up the volume significantly, at which point the loud parts will flatten the listener against the back wall. If you turn up the quiet parts on the recording while remastering, you can get the dynamic range to a place where it works for most listeners. When you’re turning up the quiet sections, begin and end the zone you’re messing with at zero-crossings—that is, at the places where the waveform crosses the zero-signal line. If Logic lets you smooth transitions when turning stuff up and down, use it; otherwise, you may have to create short “fade-up” and “fade-down” zones at the beginning and end of the boosted section. Always listen carefully to the transitions—do they sound natural? If not, go back and redo them. Don’t forget to save an un-messed-with copy of the track separately from the one you’re working on, preferably on a different drive and certainly in a different folder. I trust you have a good pair of monitors speakers to do your remastering (it won’t work well if you try to do it on headphones), but don’t leave it there; burn a CD of the remastered track and listen to it in various environments on various systems. That way you’ll find out whether your remastering translates for different listeners. In the case of this piece, I’m not sure I’d listen in the car, which I usually recommend for pop music. Car listening demands a very restricted dynamic range, which will short-change your listeners in other environments. Ideally, you’ll have a chance to re-record the piece in a situation where you have some control over how it’s done. If I were recording it, assuming a room with good acoustics, I’d use a pair of mics in ORTF configuration to pick up the ensemble as a whole, with spot mics on the marimba and the top and bottom of the doumbek (the top mic would also pick up the tablas). I’d record these to separate tracks, then in the mix I’d use the spot mics very sparingly on an as-needed basis, sliding their tracks in the DAW to preserve phase match with the stereo ensemble mics. Good luck! You have a somewhat difficult situation to work with, but on the other hand if the track you’re working with is the one from the video, or one of similar quality, you’re starting from a good place. Peace—PJS Correction In the May 2012 issue, in our report from the studio of Jason Gutierrez on the making of Fanny Franklin’s CD Get Wet, we failed to specify that Fanny Franklin not only wrote and sang the songs but also was the producer of her project.—LzR

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RECORDING JULY 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI-s1syO7bc

Recording - July 2012

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