The understanding of recording, mixing, and mastering hip hop, rap, and other kinds of music is no doubt a talent and an art form. Development of this skill takes time, and requires many mistakes, experiments and life lessons. To truly benefit and prosper in audio engineering, one has to have a hunger to go through and take in the vast amount knowledge out there on recording, mixing, and mastering.
Once you begin sifting through the knowledge and applying it in a real world setting, you will come to find there is a big difference between knowing something and actually getting it. The beautiful thing is, once you finally get something, the ability to master those techniques and others becomes exponentially easier. You will find that recording, mixing, and mastering isn’t really a job anymore, it is just a part of life.
Over the last 16 years, I have had to learn many hard lessons in the world of audio engineering. A lot of times I thought I understood what certain techniques were and how to apply them, but I often was wrong or just partially correct on those techniques. Some of my most memorable times in the studio were when I finally ‘got’ a certain recording or mixing technique. You can say these were my ‘a-ha’ moments.
1. Learning everything there is to possibly know about the hardware and tools I have at my convenience.
2. Compression: Much can be discussed about this subject, but one thing that is so crucially important is getting the attack and release times correct. Compression can really lift up a performance or it can shamefully destroy it.
3. The day I realized that pretty much anything in the studio could be automated in some form or another.
4. Low and High Pass filtering is truly my friend.
5. The first time I turned off my computer screen to listen back to a mix. Blew me away how much easier it was to listen, identify, and make changes to the mix.
6. The first time I recorded and mixed in a professional acoustically treated studio. The amount of detail and separation I could hear in the frequency spectrum almost startled me.
7. How simply cutting out a little 275-375 Hz on most close mic’d tracks can remove boxiness and really bring out detail to things.
8. Getting rid of frequencies, or subtractive equalization, is so much better than additive equalization. Its just easier and more natural to take out what isn’t needed than to artificially add it in.
9. Hearing live drums mic’d through a stereo pair of C12’s and PZM’s. I finally understood where the life and dimension of a recorded drum performance came from.
10. Discovering that the more plugins I use in a mix, the more digital and artificial sounding the mix will become.
11. Distortion is a form of compression and a good way to add harmonics.
12. The first time I threw up a quick mix of raw audio tracks instead of attempting to dial in the perfect sound on every track. It increased the overall quality of the mix while cutting down average mix time.
13. It’s always good to get feedback, even if its from somebody without any musical or audio engineering experience.
14. Getting stuck in a mix, zeroing the faders, trashing all inserts and sends and then pushing the faders back up again. Valuable learning experience and test to the ego.
15. Dynamic Equalization via side chain compression. The bees knees!
16. Realizing that knowing how you want things to sound in your mix is so much more important than just knowing cool mix techniques and tricks. The tricks can sometimes help you get there a little faster though.
17. Musical arrangement is vitally important to the outcome of a mix on a song. It’s where the song can really be made or destroyed.
18. “Fix it in the mix” is a term that doesn’t always apply to every situation. Sometimes it is faster and easier to just re-record something if it is not right.
19. Parallel compression allows for smoother, natural dynamics overall and less aggressive compression individually.
20. When, after what seemed like centuries of recording amateur artists and bands, somebody of superstar status steps up in front of the microphone and shows how it’s really done. Wow!
Are you a beat producer who always has problems finding good drum sounds or patches to use in your productions? Are you tired of using cheap ‘out of the box’ sounds? Well don’t worry. It is a problem that every producer has had some point in their career. There are literally millions of drum samples out there on the market for free and for sale. It can really be quite overwhelming finding those perfect sounds.
The first good thing, if you have realized you have this problem, then you are already on your way to becoming a better producer. So congratulations. What people who claim to be producers forget is there is more to producing then just writing the song, there are the individual tracks that make up the song to consider and how each one sounds not only by itself but in relationship to the song.
Nowadays, it is important for producers to go about their craft with an audio engineer’s ears. This doesn’t mean you have to learn to become a professional engineer to make good beats, though it helps. It means learning to understand and accept when a sound or a track isn’t working in a song and what to do to fix it. At the end of the day, putting care into the way each individual track sounds will make for a better sounding song overall. Your beats will be easier to mix and sound smoother and more musical, plus will probably sell better too.
A good rule of thumb, if a sound is getting in the way or lost in the mix, is to replace it with another sound that doesn’t get lost or in the way of the song. Simple enough, but this can sometimes take time and patience. Remember, just because a synth patch or drum sample might sound cool on its own, doesn’t mean it will work with the rest of your tracks. Choose your sounds by listening to how they interact with the other tracks in your arrangement. Never force a track, that will never work.
Now one of the best places to find good drum samples are on your favorite records. Yes that’s right, your favorite records. Some would say that’s stealing, but we say that’s just sampling. So don’t be scared. Sampling drums off of records has been done since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Not dinosaurs like T Rex’s, but dinosaurs like Bruce Swedien and Bill Porter. The best thing about sampling drums off a record, is that the drum sounds you are sampling already sound really really good. Using good drum sounds that don’t need much treatment allow you the producer to better add in additional tracks and sounds into your song. All your tracks will pocket better and will make you or your mix engineer’s job much easier when mixing begins.
So, we’ve all done it at some point or another. Whether it be looking at the transients on waveforms to match tempos, watching the meters too much, or the biggest culprit – watching the graphic display on an EQ, we have all used our eyes way too much when mixing at some point or another…. How can one not with all those pretty graphics and curves.
Waves Renaissance EQ 6 Parametric EQ
This little black EQ has been a big “go to” of mine for over 10 years now. I would have to say that close to 98% of the time I use this EQ during my mixes.
I’m not going to use this time to diss the Renaissance EQ, it just happens to be one of my main DAW EQ’s of choice. Its simple to use, I’ve always liked the sound and UI on this EQ, as well as the small amount of processing power it uses up. And I’ve always liked to see the results of what turning the knobs will bring. For some reason, I have always loosely correlated that the stranger the graphic display on an EQ looks after I use it, the better job I did at equalizing the sound. This probably stems from watching engineers mix ‘ITB’ back in the early days and noticing that the EQ curves on their graphic displays were always rather strange looking. My brain almost combines the two actions together (listening and looking at the curve)…. probably to my disservice. I found it’s really hard to not look at times. Even though I started my career on analog equipment, I’ve worked the majority of that career on a DAW, Pro Tools more specifically. I’m used to that workflow and have now come to find it familiar and home.
BUT……..
Recently, I was mixing a song for one of my regular clients and the mix just wasn’t coming out the way I hoped it would. The REQ6 has always helped me get that modern vocal sound for hip hop, rap, and trap music, but this project that I’ve been working on isn’t quite that. The approach needed was a more old school approach. The mix needed a warm, personal, underground kind of sound. That’s probably not the best way to describe it, but you get the idea.
To keep the story to the point, my traditional approach wasn’t working. So, I decided to go back to the drawing board. And what does that exactly mean in the world of digital audio engineering??
ZERO OUT THE FADERS AND REMOVE ALL PLUG INS!
So I decided to start the mix over completely from scratch. Over the last 16 years of engineering, I’ve learned that it’s ok to start over sometimes. Starting over allows you to put your head into a different space, try new things, not be so restricted, which is important when mixing a song. Usually when I make this decision, it is the right thing that is needed for the mix. So what was to be my new approach?
Since I decided I wanted to try and go for more of an old school approach to this mix, I needed to try and emulate the same workflow from that time period. So, just like a real analog console, I decided to use the SAME signal chain on every channel, since a real console has the same equalization and dynamics on every channel. My trusty old Waves SSL 4000 Channel Strip seemed like a good fit for this eclectic approach.
I started the mix over, and after a few hours, it started to sound the way I was hearing it in my head, smooth, fat, and personal. The mix was much warmer and less digital sounding than my first approach. Overall, it was more balanced and sounded pretty analog for a 100% digital ‘ITB’ mix. Because of this approach, I forced myself to really LISTEN, not listen through visual ques and folley. Now just because this approach worked this time around, doesn’t mean it will always work. Each song and genre is different, as well as their requirements for what makes a good mix. What I did learn from this though is that I had become lazy when using equalizers with graphic displays. At times, I found I was using my eyes to eq sounds, and since we can’t listen with our eyes, this was having the occasional adverse effect on my mixes.
So, if you are just starting out your career as a mix engineer, may I highly recommend not getting yourself stuck into the visual part of mixing if you are mixing ‘ITB’. There are times when it is important to see what you are doing, but it is what we hear that makes the overall sound of the mix.
The problem of phase is a consistent issue for recording and mixing engineers alike. If there are problems with phase inside your song, even the smallest problems can ruin your music. It can make tracks sound empty or spectrally degraded, like something is missing. Issues with phase on a track can lead to problems on other tracks as well. These problems, as severe as they can be, can also be easily avoided or fixed, but first it is essential to understand how the problem of phase can initially occur.
This essay will attempt to discuss almost everything there is to know about phase, what is it, how it occurs, how it sounds and some procedures to deal with it.
What Is Phase?
I’m going to consult the all knowing source they call Wikipedia to answer this question.
It says:
Phase in sinusoidal functions or in waves has two different, but closely related, meanings. One is the initial angle of a sinusoidal function at its origin and is sometimes called phase offset or phase difference. Another usage is the fraction of the wave cycle which has elapsed relative to the origin.
A less scientific definition provided by Sweetwater Sound is:
Audio waveforms are cyclical; that is, they proceed through regular cycles or repetitions. Phase is defined as how far along its cycle a given waveform is. The measurement of phase is given in degrees, with 360 degrees being one complete cycle. One concern with phase becomes apparent when mixing together two waveforms. If these waveform are “out of phase”, or delayed with respect to one another, there will be some cancellation in the resulting audio. This often produces what is described as a “hollow” sound. How much cancellation, and which frequencies it occurs at depends on the waveforms involved, and how far out of phase they are (two identical waveforms, 180 degrees out of phase, will cancel completely).
No wonder why phase is such a confusing topic for people. At a quick glance, the definition is even confusing to me, but that’s why I am not a professor. At the end of the day, how does this definition apply to you and me when we’re trying to make a record? This is the part where I could go on a rant about phase vs polarity. I’ll try to break it down more simply.
Phase Vs Polarity
Lets define things a bit more starting with phase and polarity. These two words are often used interchangeably but they are VERY different.
Phase is an acoustic concept that affects your microphone placement. Acoustical phase is the time relationship between two or more sound waves at a given point in their cycle. It is measured in degrees. When two identical sounds are combined that are 180 degrees out of phase the result is silence, any degree between results in comb filtering.
Polarity is an electrical concept relating to the value of a voltage, whether it is positive or negative. Part of the confusion of these concepts, besides equipment manufacturers mislabeling their products, is that inverting the polarity of a signal, changing it from plus to minus is the basically the same as making the sound 180 degrees out of phase.
In case these definitions went over your head, Phase is the difference in waveform cycles between two or more sounds. Polarity is either positive or negative.
What it means to be In and Out of phase
When two sounds are exactly in phase (a 0-degree phase difference) and have the same frequency, peak amplitude, and shape, the resulting combined waveform will be twice the original peak amplitude. In other words, two sounds exactly the same and perfectly in phase will be twice as loud when combined.
When two waveforms are combined that are exactly the same but have a 180-degree phase difference they will cancel out completely producing no output. In the real world of recording, these conditions rarely happen. More than likely the two signals will either be slightly different, like two different microphones on the same source, or the phase difference will be anything other than 180 degrees out of phase.
In cases where the waveforms are not 0 or 180 degrees, or the waveforms are somehow different, you get constructive and destructive interference or what is also defined as comb filtering. The nulls and peaks of the waveforms don’t all line up perfectly and some will be louder and some will be quieter. This is the trick to using several microphones on a single source.
For the purpose of this article, we’re only dealing with phase. Here’s the deal, sound travels at roughly 1,100 feet per second. That’s extremely extremely EXTREMELY slow compared to light. Since sound travels so slowly, you have to pay careful attention when recording. Why? Because if the two signals are out of phase with each other, your recordings will sound thin and your music will not sound good.
The biggest problem area for phase is when you’re using multiple microphones on a single sound source, like drums or an orchestra. Depending on where each microphone is placed in relation to the sound source, the sound will reach each microphone at different moments in time. When you listen to these microphones blended together, there’s a chance that it will sound “hollow” and “thin” because each signal captured by each microphone is out of phase.
Really, at the end of the day, phase issues are nothing more than timing issues. The sounds from multiple sources are ideally meant to reach your ear at the same time, but sometimes they don’t.
3 Small Tips for Dealing with Phase Issues
1. Microphone placement – Most phase related issues you’ll deal with are simply from how the microphones are placed. Take time to listen to all the microphones you are using in your recording session blended together. Each microphone may sound fine by itself, but phase issues happen when all the microphone signals are blended together. The easiest way to listen for this is to listen to them together in mono. Also, with every additional microphone used in the session, the more chances there are for phase to occur. So it’s always best to use the least amount of microphones as possible to get the job done.
2. Plug-in Latency – Within your recording software, pretty much any plug-in you use will induce latency, or delay, in your audio. This may cause small phase problems in your mix. If you put a plug-in with 20 ms of latency on one track and not on another, the 2nd track will be out of phase with the first. This isn’t necessarily that big of an issue, but it’s something you need to keep in mind. If you used two microphones on your acoustic guitar, then use the same plug-ins on each track, so that they remain in phase with each other. Most audio software that is out today compensates for plug-in latency, but it is still something to keep in mind.
3. Linear Phase Processing – This last entry isn’t really much of a tip. It’s just something that one should be aware of. Most plug-ins process low frequency information and high frequency information at different speeds. The lows may come through the plug-in a little faster than the highs, for example, or vise versa. This is known as phase shift, and theoretically, it can affect the overall clarity of your audio. Most plug-in manufacturers have developed “linear-phase” EQs, etc. These are designed to combat the problem of linear phase shift.
