Entourage Paul Tucci
EntourageForum Replies Created
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Jesse,
Hell yea it’s a good idea, however, I don’t think the most important point of the “Only mid-range” story is the most important one to be considered.. Certainly listening to a bandwidth limited mix will show you if the killer kick drum you’ve created that is shaking the NBA’s balls even makes an appearance in a small speaker listening environment. There’s harmonics of the low stuff and attack of the kick that can be used to imply the presence of the kick without the low end present. Does the musical story get told if the speaker system is less than ideal, and probably more typical of many listeners’ situation?
My takeaway is that the actual topic is about changing perspective whilst listening. The small mono speaker on the shelf listened to off axis or even from outside the room is like downing a couple slices of ginger to cleanse the palate when you’re out for sushi. New perspective to be sensitized to the new taste. …From the audio perspective, if I let go the attachment and pride I feel about inflating up those basketballs to above league standard and listen with fresh ears…am I still in the game? For the football fans amongst us, and Patriot fans in particular, it Deflate-Gate, but reverse polarity.
I used a version of this thinking in my years being responsible for making sure that what was in the preacher lady’s heart made it to the audience members’ hearts. Highly intelligible was the goal. When walking around the outer concourse and poking my head into every seating entrance area I could check my success. Also I could see which vendor had the freshest pretzels. A man has got to have hobbies, you know.
PT
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Nate,
This sounds like a job for a detective. The YLM screenshot of the other song is a mere 10 seconds long. Not sure if that’s an issue here or not. I’ll go listen in on Spotify to both and see what you’re chasing.
PT
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Jesse, yes. I’ve had this one in the lineup for a good long while. It’s free, and if you use a fractional octave setting you’re comfortable with…useful. The Slope editor function is the Devil.
PT
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Drew,
There’s nothing like a big ol’ bass bomb from Phil or an acoustic bass to grab peoples’ attention. There’s a certain joy to be had with a big PA and subwoofers 🙂 . That acoustic bass can own the low end, especially in your genre.
So the lowest fundamental of an open E on the 4 string bass is 41Hz. Capturing it is a different story. You have to have those freqs recorded on tape/in the computer before you can can process them to fit in the music. EQ alone may not work if the relative level of 40 is way lower than the 100Hz area as your graphs showed. Multi-band compression won’t help much if there’s precious little content down there.
One trick I’ve used in similar circumstances is when the kick drum doesn’t really have deep bass but I want deep bass (without utilizing a sample) is to low pass a duplicate channel of the problematic instrument so that only low freqs are present. Then drop it down an octave via whatever tuning effect you have available. Where you low pass (high cut) the dupe channel is critical. If you want more below 50 Hz, I’d aim that low pass filter at 100ish Hz with a steep filter. Feather the newly created deep bass into the mix against the original. High passing (low cut) the original bass channel may clear some mud from the combination of sounds. It’s a cheat but effective if you can’t capture the low end off the pickup or microphone of the original recording.
PT
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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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Drew,
Happy to help and look forward to putting an ear to your creation. Do me a favor though, if Dana and my name are in the same sentence, please do put his name first. Know what I’m sayin? We are, after all, in his house. 🙂
-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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👂👂👂