Recording Tips from the Music Factory: Source is Everything
Many times in a mix the big picture gets overlooked for one or two individual sounds. It takes many years of ear training and experience to know what to listen for when crafting a mix. Some common mistakes are when people focus on one or two sounds rather than how everything fits together. I was reminded of this beautifully during a class this week.
True Story:
It was guitar recording day in our Introduction to Audio Engineering program.
We had a song written by one of our students almost completely tracked and just wanted to add some tasty blues riffs to finish things off. So we set up 5 amps, tried a few guitars, mics and pres and were ready to track.
Myself, with 26 years recording experience, our guest session player Glenn, with over 40 years playing and many years recording experience and all of the students narrowed the choice down to one single amp and guitar we all felt was absolutely perfect for the material at hand.
We recorded a pass and had a listen through the monitors. Everyone was focusing on the guitar playing, which was phenomenal, thank you Glenn, but no one was noticing the guitar added nothing whatsoever to the mix. It sat right on top of the vocals and some other elements and just didn’t cut through at all. It actually made the vocals harder to hear and made you work harder to hear all the elements of the song.
Filling in the gaps
Realizing there was a hole to be filled in our frequency range we set up a lowly, inexpensive tube amp that we all felt was unimpressive during the shootout. This amp, while fairly unremarkable, sat lower in the frequency spectrum and fit absolutely perfectly in the mix filling the song out immediately without us having to do anything at all to the sound. No EQ necessary, no shifting of other instruments. It just worked beautifully.
So the moral of the story is always take the extra time to get the right source for the mix. We could never have transformed the first amp to do what the second did all by itself.
When recording try to picture your mix before you start tracking. How many instruments will you be working with? Where do you want them to sit in the mix? What tones will compliment each other? Knowing this in advance will help you plan ahead and get the best results before you ever reach for an EQ.
Mix Down Tip
Try to avoid soling channels unless for brief periods and only for specific tasks such as setting a gate or cleaning up unwanted frequencies. It’s the frequency balance of the entire piece that matters, not the individual instrument.
Chad Nesrallah is the Director of the School of Recording Arts, Band Coach here at the Music Factory and producer at Fat Dog Studios.
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