Recording - October 2014 - 37
article on mixing vocals, but I will keep it
short and sweet here, since we are talking about the "whole" mix!
The last few spices: effects
Sprinkling the magic seasoning before
you plate your creation and adding the
finishing touches is obviously very important, but should not distract you from the
things that matter most. There are two
quite vulgar figures of speech that, despite
temptation, I've successfully avoided this
far in this article to keep my Editor
happy... but it ain't my fault if they are true
and fit the context perfectly, so here I go,
censoring myself with a few asterisks.
One is: "you can't polish a t*rd" and the
other one is: "s**t in, s**t out."
Make sense? What these bucolic pearls
of wisdom are trying to teach us is that it
really does matter where you start from.
No amount of reverb, delay, flanger, or
other effect you might have up your sleeve
is going to fix a bad track or mix. What
this means is that you should feel free to
creatively use whatever effects you want to
use to enrich your mix, but you shouldn't
be forced to use such effect to make up for
the lack of something else. In other words,
if you have messed up your meal because
the salt dispenser fell out of your hand and
now you have half a pound of salt in your
dish, no amount of sugar or water will ever
fix that. Throw it away and start over!
That is another reason why I don't subscribe to the "fixing it in the mix" philosophy. Get it right from the start; that way
you don't have to try to hide things later. In
fact, you should never try to hide things!
Mixing is about exposing things, making
them more clear, more audible. It should
never be about obfuscating and concealing. If you are in the lucky position of having great recorded tracks played by great
musicians, you can deploy your reverb
strategy and add any other crazy creative
effect ideas you might have.
When I say "reverb strategy," what I
am referring to is this: some people
argue, and they have a point, that if you
are trying to create a realistic representation of what the band would have sounded like if they played in front of you, you
need to choose a reverb that fits the context and stick to that reverb throughout
your mix. I have used this method on
some mixes and I like it in principle.
However, more often than not, I use my
own personal approach: adding reverb
only when I want to hear reverb and to
what I want to hear with reverb, even if it
isn't spatially and physically realistic.
After all it's not a science project, it's art!
If I want to hear a room reverb on the
snare, a plate on the vocal, and a hall on
something else, I will do just that... Or I
might even use the same type of reverb
for everything but with different amounts
and with different returns. Sure, I could
RECORDING October 2014
37
just send different amounts of audio to the same reverb unit, but often I use different
reverb units (or even different instances of the same reverb plug-in) and I dedicate one
hardware unit or plug-in to one specific instrument. This also turns out to be helpful
when you do stems at the end of your mix; you can actually submix, say, all the drums
plus the reverb of the drums into your drums stem without also hearing the return of the
vocal reverb send into the drums, or vice versa.
Everything but the kitchen sink?
Have you ever wondered why food is so much better in Europe than it is in the US?
Have you ever eaten a tomato in Italy? Have you ever tasted yogurt in Switzerland?
Have you cooked with butter in France? Well, here's the secret: Less is more! Without
side-tracking too much, I will tell you that at the heart of the European cuisine that
everyone tries to replicate Stateside lies true simplicity and goodness of ingredients. In
the US all of our food is pumped with preservatives and the ever-present corn syrup.
How does that relate to mixing, you ask? Simple: don't ruin your mix by adding
things that you don't need! That goes for everything: EQ, plug-ins, etc.
When I was an apprentice engineer and I was cutting my teeth on local punk bands
in Europe, I used to sit there and EQ the crap out of every single track I recorded. Now
http://www.dpamicrophones.com
http://www.dpamicrophones.com
Recording - October 2014
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - October 2014
Contents
Recording - October 2014 - Intro
Recording - October 2014 - Cover1
Recording - October 2014 - Cover2
Recording - October 2014 - 1
Recording - October 2014 - 2
Recording - October 2014 - 3
Recording - October 2014 - 4
Recording - October 2014 - 5
Recording - October 2014 - Contents
Recording - October 2014 - 7
Recording - October 2014 - 8
Recording - October 2014 - 9
Recording - October 2014 - 10
Recording - October 2014 - 11
Recording - October 2014 - 12
Recording - October 2014 - 13
Recording - October 2014 - 14
Recording - October 2014 - 15
Recording - October 2014 - 16
Recording - October 2014 - 17
Recording - October 2014 - 18
Recording - October 2014 - 19
Recording - October 2014 - 20
Recording - October 2014 - 21
Recording - October 2014 - 22
Recording - October 2014 - 23
Recording - October 2014 - 24
Recording - October 2014 - 25
Recording - October 2014 - 26
Recording - October 2014 - 27
Recording - October 2014 - 28
Recording - October 2014 - 29
Recording - October 2014 - 30
Recording - October 2014 - 31
Recording - October 2014 - 32
Recording - October 2014 - 33
Recording - October 2014 - 34
Recording - October 2014 - 35
Recording - October 2014 - 36
Recording - October 2014 - 37
Recording - October 2014 - 38
Recording - October 2014 - 39
Recording - October 2014 - 40
Recording - October 2014 - 41
Recording - October 2014 - 42
Recording - October 2014 - 43
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Recording - October 2014 - 45
Recording - October 2014 - 46
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Recording - October 2014 - 48
Recording - October 2014 - 49
Recording - October 2014 - 50
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Recording - October 2014 - 58
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Recording - October 2014 - 68
Recording - October 2014 - 69
Recording - October 2014 - 70
Recording - October 2014 - 71
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Recording - October 2014 - 73
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Recording - October 2014 - 76
Recording - October 2014 - 77
Recording - October 2014 - 78
Recording - October 2014 - 79
Recording - October 2014 - 80
Recording - October 2014 - Cover3
Recording - October 2014 - Cover4
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