MIX magazine Review Nov 2013, Additional content for "Three Mastering EQs"

By Tim Dolbear - www.timdolbear.com

Hey all,

My review for the November issue of Mix, "Three Mastering EQ Plugins", had a lot of extra info I wanted to add, but we did not have room.  I wanted to talk about what "sound" is added to you audio when you simply load one of these EQs before you even turn a knob.  They are doing something to your sound, so let's dive in!

So…whats going on behind the GUI face plate …

Since the Pultecs, Millenia and Waves RS-56 EQs all tout the full modeling of the hardware counterpart’s analog circuitry; I wanted to share what I was hearing by simply inserting these plug-ins onto a track and not twisting any knobs.  What’s being added?  Harmonic distortion, noise, extra EQ curve… Since just placing these onto a track changes the sound before you even start moving a knob, its good to know what signature they bring to the signal.

I did this a few ways, first by simply placing a song on 2 adjacent tracks in Sequoia. I then muted the 2^nd track which contained the plug-in.  Now I can simply hit the Solo button on the muted track to hear this 2^nd track, allowing me to switch between them seamlessly and instantly to listen for added tones and distortions.  Secondly, with both tracks playing, I flipped the phase button on the mixer to cancel out the entire shared signal and only hear the difference, showing the added EQ curve and distortions that the plug-in was adding.

The Pultec EQP-1A with EQ switched out but the plug-in on, added some low mids warmth. With the EQ switched in, but with the EQ set flat, there is also a nice sheen added to the sound, slightly more highend and even more low mids. But this is not just a frequency boost, but more of a transformer type sparkle or excitement, Hi-fi-esc.

The Pultec MEQ-5 adds a bit of the same sheen as the EQP-1 had with its EQ switched in.  But, I do not hear any difference between having the EQ switched in or out on the MEQ-5.

The Pultec HLF-3C with the low cut and High cut set to off, There is no difference to the sound compared to the unprocessed signal since there is no in/out circuit to be modeled. The original HLF-3C does not contain an amplifier or other circuitry outside of the passive EQ cut filters.

The Millennia in Class A Discrete J-Fet delivers a light Hi-Fi sheen to the sound, but it’s very very subtle. In Class-A Vacuum Tube mode, an additional, very subtle silky high end enhancement, you also get a slight bump to the low mids, but again, very subtle. 

With the WAVES eq set flat, there is a slight boost to the highs but not a lot of added tone from modeling of tubes and transformers, like you find with the UA Pultec collection. Something entire different was going on. The thing I heard, and easily confirmed through running the null test, there is actually some very fast, tube like compression taking place to the transients. 

:-)

A songwriter/arranger/producer thoughts about songwriting in 2013.

By Tim Dolbear - www.timdolbear.com

By Tim Dolbear c2013
mel·o·dy 

1. A pleasing succession or arrangement of sounds.

2. Music

a. A rhythmically organized sequence of single tones so related to one another as to make up a particular phrase or idea.

b. Structure with respect to the arrangement of single notes in succession.

c. The leading part or the air in a composition with accompaniment.

3. A poem suitable for setting to music or singing.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about why current music is so disliked by so many, including me. Basically we are bored with what we are hearing. This goes beyond the 'sludge' of bad music and ‘artist’ you find flooding Facebook and YouTube, created by people who now have GarageBand on their Macs and delusions of grandeur (a bad combination)...but this is not about or for them. This is for the serious artist and songwriters, the ones that want to strive for excellence, and create because of the love of art and not for a simple ego stroke from their friends. 

Recently, I listened through a new release from an artist I have been listening to for most of my life. They have had huge success and tons of hits.  I had high hopes for this new album, but the songwriting was…well, flat…and I had heard it all before. The artist is on their own label now so it’s not an issue with them just being forced to rewrite a hit, but more of an issue with them perhaps not trying new colors on the canvas.

Hearing this new album was perfectly timed, as I had been thinking a lot about songwriting and the future.  And here is what I found:

The next big change in music will come from a new type of use for melodies. We cannot do what everyone else is doing and has done; we must strive for better and different melodies.

It all comes down to the melody.

The Pentatonic scale, though tried and true for the last 100 years, still only has 5 notes. It’s amazing how many artists are still writing songs using only the Pentatonic scale.  Play most any current pop/rock or country song and you should be able to hum right along with the verse melody, being able to predict where the singer is going with the melody, and not for any other factor than you have basically heard it all before.

The Pentatonic scale has allowed writers and artist to stay in key with no real knowledge of music.  Many of today’s musicians and singers do not know anything different, they also do not know about scales or theory since they have relied on the Pentatonic scale their entire musical life. Both the major scale and minor scale have 8 notes, the minor Pentatonic scale only uses the 1(root), 3, 4, 5, 7.  If we are to bring out new melodies in our writing the first thing we must do is become acquainted with the 6^th and the 2^nd (9^th).  

It’s much like a lead guitar player that plays the same licks that Jimmy Page did in 1972, we see them as dated, old school, even as a beginner. Yet we accept these 40+ year old melodies when it comes from a singer. Imagine if no one ever played a D chord, and then added a sus4 to it?

When rock and roll broke out in the 50’s, the melodies were different than what had been heard prior.  Compare Benny Goodman/Peggy Lee with Fats Domino or Elvis.

When the Beatles hit, their use of melody (and harmonies) was different yet. Then think about Paul Simon, Queen, Sweet, Boston, even Disco.  When The Police came out, there was nothing comparable to the melodies they were using. Jump ahead to the Grunge movement in 1992. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana, all brought out different melodies than we heard before.  Some may say the melodies were familiar, but the chords accompanying the melody were all new.

See, we also need to understand how chords work with the melodies. An example would be how interchanging the relative major and minor can completely open up how a melody is brought across. Try this: Write a simple melody in E major. Play the E major chord underneath as you sing this simple melody. Now sing it again over a C#m. 

We also need to learn and put into use different scale modes.  My personal favorite is the Mixolydian scale; it’s a major scale with a minor seventh.  What’s yours? Is it time to learn the different scale modes and even develop a favorite one?

My challenge for you is not to necessarily travel the world looking for a strange new melody, or go so left field that Bjork is waving at you to come back, but to simply look for the changes and additions to your melodies that opens up the entire song and takes it to a new level.

A Night with Tim Dolbear: "Under Pressure - All about compression"

By Tim Dolbear - www.timdolbear.com


I will be hosting and teaching an event at Eclectica Studio (www.eclecticarecordings.com) all about compression. We will be diving deeply into the use of compression in audio production and compressor unit choices for different audio sources.

We will be covering:

• Compression, types and its uses 
• Limiters, types and its uses
• Multi-band compression
• Mix Buss compression
• Parallel compression
• Tape compression
• Compressors' affect on tone and EQ
• Compression and Limiting in Mastering. 

Date and time to be determined. We will choose this mid-week, mid-November evening evening based on participant's availability. Price for this info packed evening is $75.00.  

email for information and to reserve a spot.

tim@eclecticarecordings.com

Drum Mixing pt2 - American Drum sound/parallel processing

By Tim Dolbear - www.timdolbear.com

Hey all, So lets look at parallel processing and drums.  This is a way to build huge amounts of density into the sound.  First take your drum tracks, lets say you have a Kick, Snare, Overs, and toms, eq and level them to where you want them, then depending on the type of DAW you are on, you need to buss these tracks in a way that they play out normally and at the same time through a second track...

In Samplitude, I send all the drum tracks to a Buss, then on that Buss I send the signal out an AUX fader to an AUX track which acts as my parallel processing track. You could also just buss the drums to a Buss and put a compressor on there that allows for parallel processing, or in simple term, has a MIX knob where you can blend the dry and the compressed signals together.

The goal here is to smash the drums on the processed track and then bring it up under the main drum sound. This can make the drums HUGE sounding.

The goto compressor standard for this is an 1176, set on 8:1, with attach at 3:00 and the release set to 5:00 or as fast as possible.  You want the compressor to have a fast attach, as to not really let any transients through, and about 10db of reduction or smashing in this case. You can also make the attack as fast as possible too, set to 5:00, but you will add extra inter-modulation distortion that you may or may not want.

A new plug on the market that works good inline, meaning no need for a separate send, is the new UBK-1 plugin. It allows for mixing or blending in of the direct signal, and it does a great 1176 style sound.

I suggest that if you have not messed around with this that you give it a try.

Samplitude and Sequoia Tips and tricks...stopping at position

By Tim Dolbear - www.timdolbear.com

A few have asked me about a key command to return the play cursor to the original start position when stop at position is checked.

But, With “system options/playback - stop at position” checked there is no key commands to stop playback and return to the original position.

With it unchecked you have a few options. So you will want to flip the way of working if you had it checked before.

2 key commands:

Default keys:
Cntrl+Alt+ , is Section to play cursor/last stop position
Pause or Number block . is stop and goto current position

I reassigned the first one, and use the “.” in the number pad for the 2nd one still.

The num pad’s “.” Stops playback at current position.
The first on ( I reassigned to F10) after stop with the spacebar, will move the cursor to the position the cursor was at when playback stopped.

Drum mixing... pt 1, Phase!

By Tim Dolbear - www.timdolbear.com

I am going to go through the steps I use for mixing Drums.  I am going to start with Phase and next time move into making the kick and bass groove and blend and on from there!

The very first thing to do when you start mixing drums is to not only check the phase but to 'pick' phase. The basics are that the close in microphones, such as the one on the snare drum, when mixed in with the over head mics may have a phase different.  Bring up the overheads first and then the snare channel. Flip the phase on the snare channel and listen. No other tracks should be playing out at this point. Flip the phase back and forth and listen to the tone of the snare.  You will want to also adjust the volume of the snare track to set it to where the most difference is heard.

I mention 'picking' phase. Reason being that sometimes out of phase may actually be the sound you want. So there is no right or wrong, just go for what sounds right. Now, mute the snare and bring up the first tom track and go through the process again to dial in the tom sound.  This process is much easier if you select a ranger over a tom fill and set playback to loop.  Once you have done this for all the tom tracks, bring up all the tracks for the kit and set the levels to a basic mix.

When listening to the entire kit, make sure you listen to how the tracks interact with each other. Example the snare maybe leaking into the tom mics and blurring the sound.  Instead of messing with the phase further, simply gate out the tom tracks, or as we do now in the DAW world, cut out the tom fills as in this picture:

This works great for rock, pop, and metal, country too, but for very delicate music, such as a light drums on a folk song, you can take it a step further.  A song with simple snare/kick/overheads, can benefit from the 2 overheads being addressed separately. In this case I simple add a free and awesome VST plugin call stereo tools  ( http://www.kellyindustries.com/stereo_tools.html ) that allows you to flip the phase separately for the left and right channels.  Then while dialing in the snare, I flip the phase on the L/R overhead mics instead of the snare tracks. Also on the this kind of mix, the kick track should be check too, by flipping it's phase.

There used to be a lot of talk about sliding the tracks around to visually align the phase and timing of all the tracks to the Snare or Kick.  Basically since all the mics have the snare hits bleeding into them,  you slide forward the toms and overheads so that they are matched with the snare track visually.  They are all slightly behind of course due to time delay of the sound traveling to the mics.  I personally do not subscribe to this, but feel free to experiment.

What? Where? Why? Signal Chains...

By Tim Dolbear - www.timdolbear.com

I get asked often about the order of things, specifically during mixing, "what goes first, the compressor or EQ?"  I must say that of course there are exceptions to the rule, but generally the Compressor goes before the EQ, and specifically, you should always setup the Compressor before the EQ. So there is your what and where... but why?

Why? Simply, a compressor will change the tone and EQ curve or your audio. Compressors will operate based on the audio being feed into it, they will compress and change the levels of the frequencies present in the audio, bring louder ranges of frequencies down and bring up the other areas, the more complex the audio, the more the affect.

Take a snare drum as example, compressing it will tend to bring down the 1-2k range which hits at the start of the strike and bring up the low mids which are present in the audio after the transient...  again, a very general setting and a generalization...but the snare will warm up in tone and get fatter sounding.

Thus, placing a compressor first, setting up its dynamics and letting its do its thing to your tone, then, placing an EQ after the compressor and setting it up, dialing it in based on what is coming out of the compressor is the right workflow.

By Tim Dolbear c2012