Entourage Paul Tucci
EntourageForum Replies Created
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Drew,
I’m guessing here that these are all separate tracks that you or the engineer have discrete level control on to send to the reverb. If that’s accurate, see if keeping the bass reverb-free (TM) allows you to sneak the reverb in more gently without it crossing the line into too much. Another approach to try might be high passing the reverb return. Allowing only low-mids (200Hz ish) and above into the soup’s seasoning to give the illusion of a room’s space but avoid the inarticulate mumbling of a sloppy low end.
I’m gonna learn something here also when Dana shares his thoughts.
PT
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Patrick,
This is a sweet song, I’m happy to hear that you expanded the arrangement. In fact, I was wanting to hear the “band” more. Your mix leads with the vocal upfront, never allowing the band to be equally important (to my ear) so I did this to your song to give the band’s contribution its due. See if it sounds/feels different in a good way to you.
PT
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I think we may find out that Dana will put more importance on the attack and release times of the compressor than the ratio. Too quick an attack time and the transients won’t get through leaving your music unnaturally squished. Too slow an attack time and the result will lean toward not processing the signal enough. Those sub millisecond settings available on some devices are dangerously sharp. I find the 40-50 millisecond attack time more transparent and therefore, to my ear, more musical. The longer release times of 100 (ish) milliseconds seem to compliment the 40-50 millisecond attack times allowing more control (gain reduction) but not at the expense of audibility. My recent forays into moving away from stock settings has informed my opinions. Your mileage may vary.
PT
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Jesse,
Finally, a category here at MIX PROTE-GEOPARDY that I can run the table on!
Let me get right to the point before I veer off on a tangent… What you’re hearing, if you have but one monitor, is by definition, mono. The musical sources mixed into your monitor mix buss is separate from what drives the two channel (or more) house speaker system. The panned stereo channel inputs feeding the house system can retain their stereo image but the channel inputs feeding your singular monitor speaker combine to one output signal. Even a stereo source, ie, your backing tracks, become mono when individually dialed into the monitor output buss. Chances are your mixer person du jour is putting equal level of both channels into the monitor buss thinking he or she is doing the right thing.
I’ve been taught a better way and have employed this technique successfully. Instinctively we know this every time we check a mix in mono. When all that luscious stereo spread sound field collapses down to mono, whatever is in the middle of the mix gets a bit louder. We have twice as much of that info in the newly created mono monitor mix now. Both the left signal and the right signal contain audio information about the middle that get added together. Science would say a +6dB change would occur to that middle signal compared to the signals that are hard panned. Those hard panned signals would not combine to a greater than original level because they exist in only one half of the sources to be combined. What I learned to do was combine the two signals, Left and Right, together BUT drop one of them by approximately 6dB. Yes, there’s a level loss to one sides’ content, but the resultant mono signal is far less different compared to an equal level addition that over emphasizes the typical middle panned content of kick, bass, and vocal. It works!
I wholeheartedly agree with Dana’s baller rider suggestion of having two wedges provided in a stereo configuration for you. I also agree with Three 6 Mafia when they said “It’s hard out here for a pimp!”
“I’ll take Rap Lyrics for $600 please Alex.”
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Big C, I live in the box, on AT M70x headphones with Sonarworks software correction, rely on Ozone’s collection of genre specific reference curves and my time in live audio for guidance in tonality. I can’t offer up anything regarding your specific question, but damn, you do ask good questions. PT
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I think it’s really a gain staging question.
You could send all the signal you want as long as you don’t overload the input to the verb. If you clip the verb input, that nasty digital schmutz will be baked into the verb return no matter what level you choose to use at the fader. You will have boxed yourself into a corner of somewhere between quiet distortion or “Oh Fuck!” fader dependent. In the old days, analog gear would be quieter when operating at healthy, but below clipping levels. The newfangled digital stuff seems to have a much better S/N ratio allowing a bit of slop in gain staging. There’s an argument to be made that the resolution of the reverb would be finer if all the digital bucket is filled with signal. No idea how audible that would be.
-@PT
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No, I did not move any drum hits in time but I did remove the very last side stick/snare to decouple the the soft landing of the last vocal phrases from hard time to suggest a musical retard .
PT
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Patrick,
I’m glad you dug it and were inspired to better your supposed final mix. Careful though, while pursuing perfection one can run the risk of never getting stuff released into the world. As a listener, I’ll take sentiment now versus perfectly-polished someday maybe. Though, as a creator, I’m also guilty as fuck.
So what did I do? … excellent question. I got inspired by the tenderness and the delivery of the song so I started asking myself what have I got to work with here? It’s a prayer, and your first intended listener may think it’s all cringe for a generation or so until he or she understands. So, let’s make this thing as beautiful as it can be. With the vocal out front that far it felt like a lecture rather than encouragement. With the supporting instruments back that far in the mix, the kid would metaphorically miss out on the wisdom of the village. I’m guessing you chose the kick drum to represent a heartbeat in the instrumental opening. I chose to bump it up a smidge to let the listener get it in the first couple measures. I chose to taper the bass guitar’s sustain to allow the cymbal swell and the tom fills to be uncovered, and be briefly featured going into the chorus. I tried to give the bass line a little lope rather than the repeating whole notes. Subtle stuff but it helps the song breathe dynamically. I chose gentle intensity over bombast. My intent was the polar opposite of that Alice Cooper song, Dead Babies. What a knucklehead!
To Dana’s question … Yes, both separation software to create stems and mastering on the 2 buss.
Patrick, I did run your mixed song through some AI separation software to extract the drums, bass guitar, vocal, and the AC Gt/strings/KBs into 4 stereo stems. That allowed me finer control of the mix. Neve console strip emulation and judicious use of tube saturation and EQ on all input channels to help them sound natural and intimate. Your vocal had all the closeness and breathy quality to be intimate but the “band” needed to match that level of goodness. All according to my ears of course. (We should have a Mix Protege specific acronym to say that shortcut style.)
My ST buss output channels had yet another Neve output channel emulation with a tube saturator and tape deck emulation native to my Cakewalk software and then a mastering chain inserted. I used a mid-side compressor to give the middle a 90Hz shelf, just a couple two tree dBs to add some weight to the drums and bass that lived in the middle and then cleared out just a bit of sonic space for the vocal to occupy with a little cut at 400-600 Hz. I painstakingly clip gained your vocal line by line to have it sit closer to the band’s dynamic. That was work.
A little 4:1 compression to bind mix together, a limiter to say “That’s all folks!” and the tiniest bit of parallel process digital clipping to add realism.
It’s not the specifics mentioned here that are important, it’s the reasoning behind the moves. Let that be the takeaway.
PT
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Jesse,
You’re quite welcome. I had a further thought this morning regarding the middle content build up. I would guess that a Mid-Side process would do the trick more elegantly. Process the stereo signal and drop the overall level of the Middle by 6 dB and leave the Side untouched. Voila.
I have a question for you also. Does my gig tomorrow qualify as baller level? MP3 playback for some aspiring dancers who years ago were pooping in their pants. I didn’t think so either. 🙂
PT
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👂👂👂
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Very informative reply. I should have used the word “egos” instead of politics in my question. That would have conveyed my hopes of a group think to determine the best mastering choice. PT
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Don’t forget the Sonarworks headphone correction software.
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I was hopeful that the mixer’s opinion was in play. It only makes sense to me that if the band chooses the producer who hires the mixer, the producer ought to “let the mixer cook” as the kids say. Each level of mgt finding the right people who in turn, find the right peep for that intended flavor of presentation. If everyone is aligned, the magic might could happen more easily. I’ve only experienced that on the live audio side of the world and it’s a pleasure to work with those that ask for you (me), provide the tools, and clear the path for you (me) to do your thing. Cool, I crossed three generation in wordplay. PT (me/he/him)
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So I’m curious. In your experience, what’s the politics of who chooses the mastering engineer? Logically, that task should fall in the producer’s realm. But if the producer is much more musical than technical, who’s opinion matters most?
