Discuss here mixing and mastering

Btw FabFilter's youtube channel has some really fab tutorials.

In the final stages of obsessive mixing for another record and once again learning lots of good lessons, which are sometimes contradictory! Like, after working on recent tracks where I've been very detailed about EQ and transient shaping etc, I've gone back to the earlier tracks that I mixed months ago. Sometimes I'll look at an instrument and realize "oh, I literally didn't EQ this except for rolling off the low end, no wonder that cymbal sounds harsh." But other times I'll have genius mixer brain and clear up some low mids so that the kick drum can cut through, and later (in the car) realize that the rhythmic noise track that hums around 100-200 hz was literally holding the track together, and all the atmosphere and vibe is now gone.

Also watched a youtube video with a good exercise to demonstrate mixer brain where you listen to classic tracks, like 'Billie Jean', and try note all the weird choices that you would probably change if you had your hands on the controls (like perhaps turning down the shaker simply because it's the loudest thing in the mix).

What do you mean by algorithmic guitar?

I'm a big advocate for taking a lot of time to mix, listening in different rooms and spaces, listening to a lot of reference recordings. If you sit in the mixing suite with the song for too long your ears get tired and you end up making everything complacent. I just listened to some Barry White yesterday on my studio monitors (for a string reference) and was blown away at the crispness of everything. My god! Listen to this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YS7sWCG_ZE

Nobody would mix rhythm guitar, like that right-channel muted-wah part, in 2024. It's a shame, it sounds so good.

Nice to hear too that even in the 70s the French horn section was the weakest link, plus ça change etc.

Oh yeah, my partner sampled his acoustic guitar and made a MAX/MSP instrument with a bunch of different types of pattern generators, and recorded improvisations in real time with it. It's still a bit of a mystery to me tbh. Then I would edit these and record drums and other stuff (although some of the drums were my samples that went into his system first).

Thankfully I'm still happy with how that record came out, I really didn't want to let it down on the mixing end - https://thetrilogytapes.bandcamp.com/album/gurum-triads

xp

Agreed I've found that there's no substitute for listening on a bunch of systems. One revelation is that my little Anker bluetooth speaker has been one of the best references, it's revealed some things that I didn't catch in the car or on other speakers/headphones. There's no depth at all and it can make classic records sound like demos, so if a track sounds like music on it and the bass is legible, then I know I've cracked it.

I do need to listen to more reference tracks. I've been doing it when checking mixes on other systems, like to compare the general frequency spread and bass levels and what not. But I never take the step of actually pulling reference tracks into my DAW and listening on my mixing headphones. Actually just watched another youtube vid that rightfully called me out for being too afraid to compare, lol.

fgti that track sounds amazing. Ugh, like so much from that era the instrumentation is so perfect for mixing, a place for everything and everything in its place. Especially dead drums and a huge, clean electric bass. You really think it wouldn't be mixed like that today though (maybe not in terms of recording quality, but approach)? If you have two rhythm guitar tracks it seems pretty natural to pan them L/R. A lot of the James Brown stuff is like that, with one strummed part and one picked line?

Thanks Jordan, that sounds like a cool approach... and turns out it's already in my bandcamp wishlist, looking forward to giving it a listen...

Oh dang, thank you!

Speaking of 'Billie Jean', I read last night that the drums are actually 3db louder in the intro, and then Bruce Swedien does a slow fade down to tuck them in by the time the vocals come in. It's so obvious now but I never thought about it (or assumed it was due to mastering compression), it's so simple and brilliant. You get hit with "wow these drums bang" at a level that wouldn't be sustainable over the whole song.

I read ages ago that Quincy/the engineer on that album would use fresh tape for the drum beds, immediately bounce them to work tape, build the song on the work tape, and then only use the original drum bed tape when it was mix time, "so frequent replay doesn't deteriorate the transients on the drums", iirc

Regardless of the truthiness of the story, this isn't a lesson to me about "good usage of tape", more that it brought transients and their importance to my attention, I suppose

Totallyyyy. I also read someone theorizing that Thriller was engineered to overemphasize transients because they would be rounded out on cassette (and probably vinyl too), and that they're overly spiky today on digital. Interesting theory, but I don't really buy it (especially in today's world of super punchy transients).

Transients have a big Goldilocks factor for me lately, trying to find that perfect middle ground. I've mostly been guilty of ignoring them in the past (especially in search of super compressed and saturated tones), so now I'm trying to pay attention to them without overcorrecting hopefully. Or maybe I wasn't ignoring them, I just didn't know what I was doing and would solve problems by adding more layers with samples etc. The parallel processing thing has been helpful in certain instances, when it's hard to get it dialed in just right through compression though. Awhile back I heard someone say that they realized that one thing all their favorite records had in common was how the transients come across and that's haunted me ever since.

can someone here give this noob a working definition of "transients"? I do know my audio tech and sound physics fwiw

this revive reminds me of a recent interview I saw with James McNew of Yo La Tengo, talking about how they recorded the new album on their own, but sent it off for mastering "because that is something that can only be done by wizards"

Basically it's the attack at the beginning of a sound, like the stick striking a drumhead or a pick hitting a string. As opposed to the sustained tone that comes after. So sometimes you want to tame that with compression for a more even sound, but you also need them eg for drums that should 'hit' viscerally and not stroke your ears like a feather.

got it, thanks - the only other thing I knew was "that's what Rush fucked up on that album that people hated"

Haha, oh really?

https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-forum/736700-cant-stand-new-rush-album.html

Vapor Trails, I think