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Post by Ward on Jul 5, 2019 7:10:51 GMT -6
The age-old trick of sliding the bass so it's 10-15ms behind the kick attack never fails.
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Post by nick8801 on Jul 5, 2019 10:12:35 GMT -6
I recently picked up some of the izoptope plugins and I find that their exciters are incredible on basses and kicks. They can be split into multiple bands and there are several options for the type of harmonics used to excite the signal. Really killer stuff. Also in regards to tuning, my 70’s Ludwig holds its tuning for maybe a song. A drummer friend of mine recommended locking lugs. Haven’t tried them yet but they apparently work for holding the heads in place. I also find that multiple mics can help the situation. That way you can capture attack and sustain better. If that’s not an option, the izotope transient designers are also really killer for balancing kick and bass. They are also able to be split into bands. Also, some masking is ok. It’s natural for some masking to take place as long as you’re not completely canceling out part of the frequency spectrum. Multiple mics on a kit cause and exacerbate phase/polarity problems. I used to use piles of mics on a kit and I could never figurte out why, even after phase checking everything, the kit still sounded like crap. Then several years ago I encountered William Wittman and his relatively minimalist method of micing the kit (which I have elaborated elsewhere on the forum.)
On snare in particular I now use only ONE mic of excellent quality, micing the drum from the SIDE, a few inches from the vent and two or three inches from the shell. You get excellent control of balance between top and bottom head by adjusting placement of the single mic, and since the mic is in polarity with the other drum mics you don't get phase problems. With a GOOD mic that has superior off axis response you don't need a hat mic, either.
I’m just talking about kick mics. I like minimalist micing too, but sometimes that’s not what a track calls for.
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Post by christopher on Jul 5, 2019 11:50:31 GMT -6
The age-old trick of sliding the bass so it's 10-15ms behind the kick attack never fails. This is a great trick. I recently tried this for my client who has good technique and tone but is a little slippery in the time domain. Really helps, just takes a while as have to cut and slide at every kick. Totally a relief when it’s done though, and doesn’t sound different, just makes kick bass sit better together.
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Post by theshea on Jul 5, 2019 11:58:16 GMT -6
The age-old trick of sliding the bass so it's 10-15ms behind the kick attack never fails. never heard that one - will try, thanks!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2019 16:16:14 GMT -6
Wards trick is like something I use sometime, ducking the bass with the kick in sidechain. Therefore, also they get out of the way for the moment. My absolute favorite problem solver for this is Voice of God (or the free "Bark of Dog" plugin). In principle it is nothing more than a resonating filter, but it can save a lot of time for exactly this problem. I am absolutely not a fan of boosting mids on bass or cutting it's lows brutally, except you want that Jaco sound ... Chris from airwindows has a psychoacoustic plugin, that "fakes" the illusion of the low bass, and when I tried it, I was pretty surprised how well it can work on bass tracks, if you really need to put down volume in the low end ... but I used it very carefully and prefer not to fake bass ... it is called "Floor".
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Post by Quint on Jul 10, 2019 17:50:56 GMT -6
The age-old trick of sliding the bass so it's 10-15ms behind the kick attack never fails. This is a great trick. I recently tried this for my client who has good technique and tone but is a little slippery in the time domain. Really helps, just takes a while as have to cut and slide at every kick. Totally a relief when it’s done though, and doesn’t sound different, just makes kick bass sit better together. Does anyone know if a plugin exists which, instead of using sidechain compression to duck one signal (bass) in response to another (kick), uses one signal (kick) to temporarily add delay to another signal (bass)? In other words, if someone wanted to try the bass delay trick described above without having to manually do a bunch of cutting, is there a plugin out there that can be used as a sort of sidechain trigger for delay? Maybe there is a dedicated trigger type of plugin that simply triggers whatever plugin you chain it too? Or maybe there is a delay plugin that has such a feature built in? I don't know. Just thinking out loud.
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Post by johneppstein on Jul 10, 2019 18:20:18 GMT -6
This is a great trick. I recently tried this for my client who has good technique and tone but is a little slippery in the time domain. Really helps, just takes a while as have to cut and slide at every kick. Totally a relief when it’s done though, and doesn’t sound different, just makes kick bass sit better together. Does anyone know if a plugin exists which, instead of using sidechain compression to duck one signal (bass) in response to another (kick), uses one signal (kick) to temporarily add delay to another signal (bass)? In other words, if someone wanted to try the bass delay trick described above without having to manually do a bunch of cutting, is there a plugin out there that can be used as a sort of sidechain trigger for delay? Maybe there is a dedicated trigger type of plugin that simply triggers whatever plugin you chain it too? Or maybe there is a delay plugin that has such a feature built in? I don't know. Just thinking out loud. That's a really interesting idea. Couldn't you do that by gating the delay and sidechaining the gate? Or do something similar, anyway?
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Post by dankin on Jul 11, 2019 8:45:52 GMT -6
I've always liked the bass to be behind the kick. My favorite players I've tracked tend to land behind the kick anyway. It just feels better to me. For synth bass in a more pop context, sidechaining a dynamic EQ so just the kick frequencies duck, can work well and doesn't have to sound like the typical edm sidechain. Wavesfactory Trackspacer does this, and works well sometimes. I don't use it in PT though, since the sidechain isn't delay compensated unless you are on HDX.
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Post by svart on Jul 12, 2019 7:21:32 GMT -6
I'm going to disagree (as if that's a new thing for me) and say that I don't like the way it sounds when things don't hit together. Personally I wouldn't try to make timing worse as I'm constantly trying to get the artists to have better timing, LOL.
It's my opinion that if you have bass and kick stepping all over each other, the frequencies and dynamics are all wrong. I feel that you should be able to fit them together in the frequency domain and not have them mask too much of each other. I also don't believe that sidechaining is a great solution, it tends to really start pumping the mix too much if you're also hitting other compression hard too. it limits what you can do later with the mix, I think.
As mentioned before, generally the main tone of the bass guitar is in the midrange harmonics. The kick will have a heavy fundamental in the lows, 40-70hz (when tuned properly) and some harmonic content at multiples of that. Those kick harmonics are what's going to mask the bass, so I tend to do drastic cuts to the low mids and mids on kick in the 200-700 range, and either track the bass to have a lot of mids, or boost them with EQ some if I can. I do this while pushing the drums into a drum compressor and the bass into it's compressor AND going through the master bus compressor so that the resulting dynamics are what you'll get in the mix. There is no point in trying to get things to fit and then later putting compression on them as they'll change attitude completely once you do that. If the compressors are working too hard, or you get unwanted pumping, then the mix balance or EQ is wrong and needs to be re-adjusted. This is where copious amounts of filtering can help, especially HPF on tracks that don't need low end.
I know that it's probably not going to happen for a lot of non-pop type songs, but you can find the REAL stem tracks of various popular bands that people have pulled out of games like "Guitar Hero" and such. It's quite the eye(ear) opener to hear some of the tracks without the rest of the band.
Recently I found some bass tracks for a very popular indie/pop-punk band that I was emulating for a recent session. I was absolutely astonished at how little low end was in that bass track compared to what I thought I heard in the mix, but when I A/B'd the bass track with the mix I could finally "hear" how it worked. Some of what I thought was a second rhythm guitar in the mix was actually the upper bass harmonics.
But that's how it goes I guess, and we learn something new everyday.
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Post by matt@IAA on Jul 12, 2019 7:45:33 GMT -6
I'm with you Svart. If you do it right, it should be nearly impossible to distinguish bass and kick rhythmic contributions, and rhythm guitar and bass should similarly merge. I mean, that's the whole point of the bass right? To bridge rhythm and melody?
My three favorite bassists are all because of how well they do this: Chris Wolstenholme, Tim Commerford, and Robert DeLeo.
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Post by mcirish on Jul 12, 2019 8:30:42 GMT -6
I think there are often two different scenarios. What should take the lowest part of the frequency spectrum? I tend to have the kick occupy the 50-60HZ area with a bit of a boost there. I sometimes use a 6dB HPF on the bass set to 60HZ, just to keep the bottom end from getting too messy. I do compress the bass a lot and often split the bass signal so I can add a bit of extra saturation or even light distortion to the mids without affecting anything under 200-250HZ. I'm in agreement that the bass really shines in a mix when it is more midrange pushed. A smiley face on bass sounds good in solo but gets lost in a mix. I also tend to check my tones and balances with a couple filter plugins that just give me specific ranges. From that, I can find out if the kick or bass disappear if there is nothing below 150-200, like a cell phone or other cheap consumer speaker. I think it helps a lot for me. It's just so easy to totally screw up low end, when the real clarity is going to be found in higher frequencies. Just my opinion.
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Post by dankin on Jul 12, 2019 11:37:34 GMT -6
Ultimately this stuff come down to taste and feel, and it changes with different genres to me. Some music would sound sloppy if everything wasn't hitting together, other things would sound totally wrong if they were. I agree bass needs mids to help cut through, and I personally rarely sidechain bass, but sometimes it works and feels right. The funny thing is, the records that have my favorite lowend, probably used no 'tricks" other than just great players and arrangements.
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Post by johneppstein on Jul 12, 2019 14:38:19 GMT -6
I'm of the school of having the kick and bass work together and not worrying about separating them, really. I do tend to eq kick with a cut in the general region between 200-350, but not for the purpose of "scooping". "carving", or "differentiating", I do ity becauser I don't much care for "boxy" sounding kicks. Likewise if I EQ bass it's not to "separate" it from the kick, it's either to keep it from "blooming" and muddying up the low end (particularly if the bassist has an active bass and either doesn't know what not to do or simply has crappy tone controls) or to take a bit of excessive twang off the top if the bassist is one of those guys. However I usually prefer to use a bassist who simply has a good grasp of tone, if at all possible. I'm not above re-recording a bass track if need be.
But ideally the kick and bass should form a unified foundation with neither sticking out like a sore thumb. Unless the bassist happens to be John Entwistle, of course.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 13, 2019 21:20:19 GMT -6
John Entwistle is interesting. A lot of stuff going on in the upper regions of sound, but as somehow crazy it sounds solo, in the mix it mostly works great. I mean all the noises, buzzes and sizzling he tends to have with it's Rotosound steelwound strings combined with his thunder fingers. Something similar I hear often with guys playing Rickenbackers, like e.g. Chris Squire's track in "Roundabout" buzzes and sizzles like crazy, but who actually cares. Real world bass is about fitting in a band's sound and having at least *something* original in sound or playing style ... forget about the "clean playing" you learn at music schools once you can do it and go into actual rock bands. Expression, "signature" moves/techniques/sound and of course writing great bass lines is what makes things good. The latter btw. often is the reason while a bass in a song does not sound right. Maybe it has nothing to contribute essentially, except extending the low end, then let it be this and get out of the way of everything else, melt rhythmically into the kick or other drum elements and rhythm guitar. Or you have something to tell with the bass, then make it part of the arrangement and songwriting and it sounds good, normally ... The ducking of bass with kick sidechain, that I mentioned, I personally use in very small amounts if the mix is somehow difficult, and it is worth a try, but most of the time, I avoid that and personally hate the excessive ducking of bass in electronic music. Ine trick of giving a bass more contour in the mids and highs, that I try out regularly, is reamping the bass DI track with a guitar amp and cab and mix this with the original clean bass track. Sometimes works very well. A standard Marshall will do, doesn't need to be something fancy, even an emulation will do. In some genres, esp. in the range of metal, the kick has much less low end, as one might expect or seemingly perceives. A lot of kick is made with the sharp transient, the beater smack, and works thru the mids and even hi-end. Working with reference tracks often revealed, that I use much more bass in the kick, than many really good sounding and successful productions, where I sometimes have the impression it is mixed out of the way of the downtuned bass lines. (E.g. when I listen to many newer Jinjer productions, I always have the impression of a great kick sound, but it has astonishing moderate volume in the low end, while the bass sounds unobtrusive, but has a huge impact on the music and more lows than others.) Sorry for ranting and brainstorming, I think a lot about these things since I play bass, too.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 13, 2019 21:57:40 GMT -6
Btw, you can even re-amp a kick thru a Marshall and have a second track to work with. Everything is allowed, obviously, to clean up the low end without losing instruments in the mix.
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Post by Guitar on Jul 15, 2019 12:52:57 GMT -6
If the arrangement is really good, often that can give the instruments their own spaces so that there is not so much of a mixing struggle.
If the song is really busy and dense, as is sometimes the case, you might have to fight to make space for several instruments playing in the same register.
One "trick" I like is to use an API 560 (UAD) graphic EQ on the bass guitar. You could use another brand of graphic if you have one. You can really get tweaky with the amount of high mids, lower mids, lows, and subs in your mix, coming from the bass guitar, with this API graphic EQ.
mids and saturation, what everyone has said, is the way to go more often than not for getting the instrument to speak through the mix. You might have to pull back those mids a little bit if they are adding too much to a wall of guitars. the gritty stuff on the top often doesn't get in the way and helps the notes to be heard.
I tend to fight with the bass guitar more than I fight with the bass drum. Seems more important, and more tricky, to get the bass right. I guess I don't finding mixing kicks to be a big challenge in the same way, since they are such a transient sound.
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Post by johneppstein on Jul 15, 2019 15:21:59 GMT -6
In some genres, esp. in the range of metal, the kick has much less low end, as one might expect or seemingly perceives. A lot of kick is made with the sharp transient, the beater smack, and works thru the mids and even hi-end. Working with reference tracks often revealed, that I use much more bass in the kick, than many really good sounding and successful productions, where I sometimes have the impression it is mixed out of the way of the downtuned bass lines. (E.g. when I listen to many newer Jinjer productions, I always have the impression of a great kick sound, but it has astonishing moderate volume in the low end, while the bass sounds unobtrusive, but has a huge impact on the music and more lows than others.) Sorry for ranting and brainstorming, I think a lot about these things since I play bass, too. I hate those clicky metal kicks. To me, that was the first sign that metal was "losing the narrative" during the '80s. I was working sound at a club that was regarded as the birthplace of "The New Wave Of Heavy Metal" in Northern California and worked with a lot of bands, quite a few of whom became quite well known, and my take on that kick sound is that it resulted from idiot live sound engineers (and a couple of "studio engineers" who were pretty clueless about live sound) micing kicks with 57s and attempting to get them to cut through the din because they were using mics that had no oomph or punch. It might also be because they were used to playing through PAs with inadequate low end.
At the time I was using a pair of D20s and our PA had 4 JBL 18s in a (often overcrowded) club with legal capacity of 250.
My favorite metal kick tone was and is Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor with Motorhead (RIP) - his double kicks with D12s just hit you in the chest like a mule.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2019 11:39:04 GMT -6
In some genres, esp. in the range of metal, the kick has much less low end, as one might expect or seemingly perceives. A lot of kick is made with the sharp transient, the beater smack, and works thru the mids and even hi-end. Working with reference tracks often revealed, that I use much more bass in the kick, than many really good sounding and successful productions, where I sometimes have the impression it is mixed out of the way of the downtuned bass lines. (E.g. when I listen to many newer Jinjer productions, I always have the impression of a great kick sound, but it has astonishing moderate volume in the low end, while the bass sounds unobtrusive, but has a huge impact on the music and more lows than others.) Sorry for ranting and brainstorming, I think a lot about these things since I play bass, too. I hate those clicky metal kicks. To me, that was the first sign that metal was "losing the narrative" during the '80s. I was working sound at a club that was regarded as the birthplace of "The New Wave Of Heavy Metal" in Northern California and worked with a lot of bands, quite a few of whom became quite well known, and my take on that kick sound is that it resulted from idiot live sound engineers (and a couple of "studio engineers" who were pretty clueless about live sound) micing kicks with 57s and attempting to get them to cut through the din because they were using mics that had no oomph or punch. It might also be because they were used to playing through PAs with inadequate low end.
At the time I was using a pair of D20s and our PA had 4 JBL 18s in a (often overcrowded) club with legal capacity of 250.
My favorite metal kick tone was and is Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor with Motorhead (RIP) - his double kicks with D12s just hit you in the chest like a mule.
As someone who plays metal, I feel you man. I think in the cases of extreme deathmetal or more technically insane sub-genres the hyper-realism and precision of that "click" is appropriate (listen to Meshuggah, as an example), but overall, it's become a trope. I am mixing my own bands thing now. There is a lot of double bass, and I've actively avoided that cliche. Fortunately our drummer hates that sound too, so there was no argument. I will say though, it is challenging to get all those hits to poke through with a more naturalistic approach. The sample replaced thing makes life a lot easier in that respect, but there is obviously a trade off.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2019 11:47:29 GMT -6
As for Philthy Taylor - it is easy to give the drums a fat hard kick with good lows, if the bass is essentially sounding like a buzzing second guitar. I mean, lots of distortion and fret noise up to the sizzling hi-end, very moderately low volume in the low end. That's exactly what I meant with this Rickenbacker noise fingerprint. No problem and nothing wrong with it in a 3-man band with a sound like Motörhead, though. (I still think, the Ace of Spades is one of the best rock songs ever written.) I mostly go inbetween, where there is a delicate balance needed and small changes can f*ck up everything, forth and back in half dB steps sometimes, trying out a lot until I am half way satisfied. Many genres today are so dense, like in modern Metal. The lows take a lot of energy, and this kind of music has to sound much fuller than in the 80's and early 90's, people expect flawless productions that translate perfectly not only to good hifi, but also to crappy iphone speakers, pseudo-stereo pseudo-nostalgic bluetooth kitchen radios that people call home hifi nowadays (and even musicians of today often have no better music reproduction at home, something that scares me.) Often the best stereo they have is the car hifi! So, the kick must be hearable under the most inadequate circumstances with virtually no low end at all. Otherwise a double kick makes no sense anymore. Additionally, there is still the demand for the quasi standard of loudness in the range of DR 6-8 that still is used in these genres, just to be competitive with the commercial leaders in the field. And lows take a lot of energy away from loudness, if everything should sound "full" and "impactful", meaning: everybody in the band wants to have a piece of the low end and low mids, just like the best productions with their hyper-realism and maxed out perfect balance. On the other hand I often hear local studio productions, that sound like crap to my ear, because the whole mix is the smiling face metal characteristic with the DR in this range, but with carelessly hi- and low-passed instruments and vocals. Might look good on the analyzer, might be they have learned this shitty "production trick" at a recording school, or what, it might look like "in the ballpark", if you use tools like iZotope "Tonal Balance" plugin (which is really cool for finding great mixes, btw. if used in the right way). but sounds like mixed by a deaf, total crap, amateurish at best - for full studio pricing. I would feel ripped off if someone would hand me out something like this with the remark: "That is the best one can make out of your music." Checking out a mix with modern visual tools is an invaluable opportunity for a kind of objective comparison with reference tracks, if you start to get weary, have suboptimal monitoring, or time runs up. But worth absolutely nothing, if the engineer has no taste or no ear for the song and musicality and the loudness relations between the instruments ... it is for the very fine tuning of the mix and overall balance, when the vision of the sound is already there... I like bass with much low end AND good attack in mids, and even highs, but really more on the smiling face side of things, with as little in the 350Hz area as possible, so guitars and maybe vocals and whatever meets in the range don't pile up to a mountain of dirt with the bass. I also like the kick with sharp transients in mids and even highs AND a pound in the low end as much as possible. I think, this is the magic I am after, when I mix these genres, and it can be very tricky to achieve the sweet spot of balance I am after. But I am not the only obsessed who is after this kind of mix. (Which is a good thing, I think.) If it takes time and effort, I have to take time and effort. If I can't achieve the goal, I think about re-recording, what doesn't work out, of even try to change arrangements and drum or basslines with the band, if I think that it could work out better ...
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Post by Guitar on Jul 16, 2019 13:43:49 GMT -6
Martin, your mixes sound really good. It's nice to get an inside perspective on your methods.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2019 16:21:55 GMT -6
Martin, your mixes sound really good. It's nice to get an inside perspective on your methods. Thank you for the kind words! Right, you heard some more mixes from me than others... :-) Ha, I remember you asking how I got some metal guitars full and meaty from shitty live tracks some time ago, yes, same thing essentially. They were 7-string axes, so I really let them go quite deep in the low end. Quite an impact on the sound. Not what many people would guess what a hipass for guitars should be like. It is totally ok, if this low end is just there, it does not have to be loud, but if it is missing, you instantly hear it. It makes guitars thin IMO, no matter what. They should not rival bass and kick, but just be there at least a bit south of the low mids. It makes quite a difference. And since I mixed the guitars quite hard left and right, they don't conflict as much with kick and bass, as many would expect. Yeah, I know, you can't locate bass with the human ear etc... But I am pretty convinced it does something, and it contributes to keeping instruments apart and makes things less muddy and boomy. Some other thing comes to mind with this. I balance every single song as long, as is needed to make to make it as good as I think is acceptable. Although I use the good mix of the first song of the band as a template, I listen to each song separately and start from scatch, first with volume, but also with other EQ settings where needed. This way, it can happen, that for one song I decide that I can not achieve the low kick, no matter what, then I bite the bullet and do the metal clicking kick and live with it. But in the next song it can be it works out great, then I let it be low kicking. I did this with the live EP and although one could think, that it would alter too much within, so it might sound unnatural for a live EP, nobody ever complained. But many did not expect the result beeing as good sounding, because live, small venue, shitty desk, etc... because others don't make this effort for "authentic" documentary reasons? Well, as long as all instrument are there, I think you get the better result. When you go to a live concert, you don't listen to it like a neutral machine, you listen to moods, single instruments, you see something and listen to how it sounds in the music, listening can be quite a dynamic process. So, what should authentic or artificial mean in this context? If you record a classical concert - sure, there you don't want to play games, but for heavy music nearly everything is legit to make something sound good. I mean, how natural is it, to take a sound, look into a table of frequency ranges, ah, this instrument goes from 3 to 10 kHz, and then brutally filter everything else out, as if there never has been something outside of this range (not even listening first). This is not how it works in reality, IMO. I use these hi and lo-pass filters on the Harrison EQ for creative things, not for steep digital filtering. I like the complex things going on, far from digital linearities. Hey, this hi-pass creates a nice bump in the deep mids? Cool. Thank god the default hi-pass goes quite deep with this one, just engaged and turned totally to the left. Rarely I have to bypass it, but sometimes I want to let things thru without hi-pass and fiddle around with the 4-band only... There is a huge bandwidth with modern equipment and low noise levels, there is no need to brutally filter, except it is for creative purposes or sometimes if it is really really needed....
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Post by johneppstein on Jul 16, 2019 16:34:08 GMT -6
As for Philthy Taylor - it is easy to give the drums a fat hard kick with good lows, if the bass is essentially sounding like a buzzing second guitar. I mean, lots of distortion and fret noise up to the sizzling hi-end, very moderately low volume in the low end. That's exactly what I meant with this Rickenbacker noise fingerprint. No problem and nothing wrong with it in a 3-man band with a sound like Motörhead, though. (I still think, the Ace of Spades is one of the best rock songs ever written.) I mostly go inbetween, where there is a delicate balance needed and small changes can f*ck up everything, forth and back in half dB steps sometimes, trying out a lot until I am half way satisfied. Many genres today are so dense, like in modern Metal. The lows take a lot of energy, and this kind of music has to sound much fuller than in the 80's and early 90's, people expect flawless productions that translate perfectly not only to good hifi, but also to crappy iphone speakers, pseudo-stereo pseudo-nostalgic bluetooth kitchen radios that people call home hifi nowadays (and even musicians of today often have no better music reproduction at home, something that scares me.) Often the best stereo they have is the car hifi! So, the kick must be hearable under the most inadequate circumstances with virtually no low end at all. Otherwise a double kick makes no sense anymore. Additionally, there is still the demand for the quasi standard of loudness in the range of DR 6-8 that still is used in these genres, just to be competitive with the commercial leaders in the field. And lows take a lot of energy away from loudness, if everything should sound "full" and "impactful", meaning: everybody in the band wants to have a piece of the low end and low mids, just like the best productions with their hyper-realism and maxed out perfect balance. On the other hand I often hear local studio productions, that sound like crap to my ear, because the whole mix is the smiling face metal characteristic with the DR in this range, but with carelessly hi- and low-passed instruments and vocals. Might look good on the analyzer, might be they have learned this shitty "production trick" at a recording school, or what, it might look like "in the ballpark", if you use tools like iZotope "Tonal Balance" plugin (which is really cool for finding great mixes, btw. if used in the right way). but sounds like mixed by a deaf, total crap, amateurish at best - for full studio pricing. I would feel ripped off if someone would hand me out something like this with the remark: "That is the best one can make out of your music." Checking out a mix with modern visual tools is an invaluable opportunity for a kind of objective comparison with reference tracks, if you start to get weary, have suboptimal monitoring, or time runs up. But worth absolutely nothing, if the engineer has no taste or no ear for the song and musicality and the loudness relations between the instruments ... it is for the very fine tuning of the mix and overall balance, when the vision of the sound is already there... I like bass with much low end AND good attack in mids, and even highs, but really more on the smiling face side of things, with as little in the 350Hz area as possible, so guitars and maybe vocals and whatever meets in the range don't pile up to a mountain of dirt with the bass. I also like the kick with sharp transients in mids and even highs AND a pound in the low end as much as possible. I think, this is the magic I am after, when I mix these genres, and it can be very tricky to achieve the sweet spot of balance I am after. But I am not the only obsessed who is after this kind of mix. (Which is a good thing, I think.) If it takes time and effort, I have to take time and effort. If I can't achieve the goal, I think about re-recording, what doesn't work out, of even try to change arrangements and drum or basslines with the band, if I think that it could work out better ... I hardly ever do metal anymore - in most cases I think the bands have lost it - too hung up on a stereotyped "modern sound" and not paying enough attention to musicality. The art of arrangement has largely been lost and that makes mixing much more difficult.
I came into metal via live sound (as I think I mentioned) and I learned a lot about balance and tonality from 3 guys - George Geranios with BOC, Gunji Patterson with the Dio version of Sabbath, and Dave Chamberlain with Motorhead.
About it being "easy" to get a fat kick when the bass is essentially a low, buzzy rhythms guitar, what about the balance between Bill Ward/Vinnie Appice ands Geezer Butler with Sabbath? Geezer is anything but buzzy, sizzling, or even very distorted, and Sabbath has one of the best low ends ever and great synergy between bass and drums. Most modern metal bands could learn a lot from Sabbath's low end.
Nowadays though most of what I hear just bores me - not enough balance, no real dynamics (How can it be "heavy" if there's no dynamics?) and a lot of bands don't seem to arrange very well. And a lack of real bottom, despite the rampant down tuning. I watched all that evolve in the '80s and early '90s - bands like Megadeth, Exodus, Testament, Death Angel, Machine Head, lots of others were all regulars at the places I was working.
By the early 2000s I had started losing interest. Had a bump in the late 2000s/early 2010s doing "geriatric" punk and some metal, but for the last few years i've been pretty much over it. Moving out of SF ahd a lot to do with it, too - not in contact with the old crows as much.
As the old cliche' goes "Old rockers don't die, they just go country!"
As far as the "listening on earbuds and phones" trope goes, I really don't buy that. Sabbath translates just fine (well, as good as can be expected) on those playback devices. It's just the modern version of listening on pocket transistor radios with crystal earpieces and old car radios. Nobody "mixed for" those crappy playback devices back then and it didn't stop anybody from listening.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2019 17:14:37 GMT -6
Hahaha, something similar happened around some old men of fury from my old heavy scene from the early nineties. But since we live by the coast and german folk music is more a thing of the south of our country, and country is not "a thing" here in Germany except maybe some truckers, they started a project with modern style interpreted shanties, naming themselves "Santiano". Old rockers and folk musicians doing the pirate thing exploded and they got extremely popular, everything is in the charts, two number one albums. They tour a lot in big stadiums, sold nearly 4 million longplayers and can pave a room with gold, platinum and diamond status records after 7 yrs now. Crazy. And I go back to the brutal stuff after doing electronic music for more than a decade. I guess I am not the guy for getting calm with age. I want to go more extreme than in the 90s/2000 when I left music with bands. Last round for moving boundaries. I already gave people the permission to shoot me if I go folk or blues music, because if I do, I am definitely a clone created by extraterrestrials, like in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" ... </off topic end>
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2019 17:30:43 GMT -6
As fot the transistor radio versus mobile phone speaker thing ... Sure, good mixes have always translated well to even the crappiest device. But you most probably did not have to discuss your latest mix of extreme metal with musicians that base the discussion on what they heard on their Samsung's speaker.(true story) At least the musicians of the 80s and 90s that I knew had at least some type of decent hifi equipment, that was kind of a status symbol for the love of music ...
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Post by Guitar on Jul 16, 2019 19:15:36 GMT -6
Martin, your mixes sound really good. It's nice to get an inside perspective on your methods. Thank you for the kind words! Right, you heard some more mixes from me than others... :-) Ha, I remember you asking how I got some metal guitars full and meaty from shitty live tracks some time ago, yes, same thing essentially. They were 7-string axes, so I really let them go quite deep in the low end. Quite an impact on the sound. Not what many people would guess what a hipass for guitars should be like. It is totally ok, if this low end is just there, it does not have to be loud, but if it is missing, you instantly hear it. It makes guitars thin IMO, no matter what. They should not rival bass and kick, but just be there at least a bit south of the low mids. It makes quite a difference. And since I mixed the guitars quite hard left and right, they don't conflict as much with kick and bass, as many would expect. Yeah, I know, you can't locate bass with the human ear etc... But I am pretty convinced it does something, and it contributes to keeping instruments apart and makes things less muddy and boomy. Some other thing comes to mind with this. I balance every single song as long, as is needed to make to make it as good as I think is acceptable. Although I use the good mix of the first song of the band as a template, I listen to each song separately and start from scatch, first with volume, but also with other EQ settings where needed. This way, it can happen, that for one song I decide that I can not achieve the low kick, no matter what, then I bite the bullet and do the metal clicking kick and live with it. But in the next song it can be it works out great, then I let it be low kicking. I did this with the live EP and although one could think, that it would alter too much within, so it might sound unnatural for a live EP, nobody ever complained. But many did not expect the result beeing as good sounding, because live, small venue, shitty desk, etc... because others don't make this effort for "authentic" documentary reasons? Well, as long as all instrument are there, I think you get the better result. When you go to a live concert, you don't listen to it like a neutral machine, you listen to moods, single instruments, you see something and listen to how it sounds in the music, listening can be quite a dynamic process. So, what should authentic or artificial mean in this context? If you record a classical concert - sure, there you don't want to play games, but for heavy music nearly everything is legit to make something sound good. I mean, how natural is it, to take a sound, look into a table of frequency ranges, ah, this instrument goes from 3 to 10 kHz, and then brutally filter everything else out, as if there never has been something outside of this range (not even listening first). This is not how it works in reality, IMO. I use these hi and lo-pass filters on the Harrison EQ for creative things, not for steep digital filtering. I like the complex things going on, far from digital linearities. Hey, this hi-pass creates a nice bump in the deep mids? Cool. Thank god the default hi-pass goes quite deep with this one, just engaged and turned totally to the left. Rarely I have to bypass it, but sometimes I want to let things thru without hi-pass and fiddle around with the 4-band only... There is a huge bandwidth with modern equipment and low noise levels, there is no need to brutally filter, except it is for creative purposes or sometimes if it is really really needed.... Yeah a lot of live albums can be really boring. I think they should be heavily produced, like you said. The ones I like are in that category, anyway. Even better when there's a video of the show to go with it, I love that stuff. I have a collection of DVDs that is 90% live music. For a few years there I was constantly watching/listening to that stuff. Maybe now I'm getting into documentaries, I don't know. There are some great music/musician documentaries out there.
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