Wow. What happens when that thing hits 88 mph?
Posts by Chris Duncan
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Chris,
What a terrific reply, thank you for that man! Here's a few quick things in response...
I actually bought the Heavy Britt Pack on Tuesday night, simply because in all of the searching I did for tones, pretty much whenever I saw "M. Britt", the tones were wonderful! One of his 5150iii Profiles is now my main heavy rhythm tone, and an old Blues Deluxe is one of my clean tones (I found the Deluxe tone just hours after getting the Kemper).
I'm obviously a fan of the M. Britt stuff, but since he points out that he's not a metal guy and has less expertise in that area I don't usually make that recommendation. Even so, I think his high gain stuff is awesome (for my style of music Crank n Go was outstanding), so there may be a lot of metal applications as well. Franjoe30 writes a lot of heavy but melodic songs and his tones are always great, so you might also ping him for the profilers he uses.
I've been playing since the 70s but unlike you I've always sucked at dialing in tones, which is one of the reasons I love the profile approach. Give me an amp sim with all the knobs and I'll just make the same mess that I would with a tube amp. But a profile leverages someone else's expertise in that area so finally my guitar sounds consistently good. Well, you know, the tone, anyway.
using a headline like "Hetfield Tone" or "Pantera Tone", but delivering a Profile that sounds absolutely nothing like the album...it kind of bugs me.
Yeah, that makes sense. I just tend to have more of a live and let live attitude around here since people are overwhelmingly positive. These guys have done so much to help me (often with questions whose stupidity was of epic proportions) that I just overlook shortcomings and focus on the good that they do.
While there's one in every crowd, the percentage of typical Internet forum people who just like to argue and insult each other would have to be measured with a microscope around here. It took me a while to realize that I didn't have to brace myself for a fight every time I made a comment. It really is a strange place as the Internet goes, but then, I happen to like strange.
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- Man, there are so many terrible Profiles out there.
This is exactly what I thought when I first got the Kemper a couple of years ago. I nearly gave up and sold it after one week. (Spoiler alert: a week later I sold every tube amp I owned).
I'd been subconsciously thinking that a Marshall is a Marshall, so I was shocked at how very, very bad most of the Marshall profiles were. Eventually I realized that a profile is not an amp model, so a single profile isn't "here's everything you can do with a JCM 800." It's a snapshot of a tone that someone dialed in, a single moment in time and just one possible thing you can do with that amp.
And here's the thing. You're a metal guy, and I'm a classic rock guy. The tones I love for my genre would get you thrown off the stage on a metal gig, and in a similar fashion a great metal tone is inappropriate for what I do. You can get killer tones for both out of a physical Marshall but for a profile, it's all about who dialed in the tone and what they were using it for. So all those profiles out there that I thought were awful are probably in fact awesome - just not for the kind of music I play.
So, the trick is finding profiles with tones dialed in for the same sort of thing that you're doing. Rig Exchange isn't really optimized to search by genre, it's weighted more toward what amp / speaker cab, etc. And that's what threw me off in the beginning, because for profiles, genre is everything.
Ultimately I decided to try some packs from M. Britt, who's highly regarded in terms of quality, and they were un-freakin-believable. I bought everything he had and never looked back. However, I wouldn't recommend him for you because he's a classic rock guy, not a metal guy. The best thing you can do is get feedback from other guys here who play the same style and find out what they like, both commercial and on Rig Exchange.
If you have experience with amp modelers like Line 6, Fractal, etc. you have to reboot your thinking and get your head around the single-use / snapshot nature of a profile versus the "here's every knob on the amp" mentality of modelers. However, once you match profiles of the right genre to the kind of music you play, it's really hard to get a bad tone out of this thing. And the people here are incredible. This is far and away the most positive vibe of any forum I've ever been on.
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LOL. I cut down the bottom end on the bass with EQ because it was booming way too much. I guess I need to do some un-cutting. I think the bass track is the hardest thing to fit in the mix, at least for me. I need to learn that happy balance with the kick, bass, and the low guitar strings.
Yeah, for me the bottom end has always been the most challenging aspect. I'm currently listening in the B room with smaller studio monitors and reasonable treatment, and the bass is almost nonexistent. If you did a lot of cutting because it was booming to much, that's useful info as it tells you that your mix environment is amplifying your bass.
In addition to reference tracks, which can still let you go astray if room acoustics are too problematic, I'd try to find as many different listening environments as possible to test your mix candidates on. On laptops, desktops, in different rooms, on your phone, in your car, in your living room, in your friends' living rooms, etc.
Ultimately what you're looking for is listening in enough environments until it sounds good in all of them, and then getting an instinctive feel in your mix environment so that you know how it should sound there (even if it doesn't sound great in the mix position) in order for the mix to be "portable."
I agree with everyone else that you're off to a great start! Like Joe said, it's all about just getting into the fun of doing it. It's a never ending process (and a never ending learning curve), so this is definitely one of those things where the joy is in the journey.
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I usually don't fuss with reamping, I get a sound I like and commit it to the mix.
I use a bit of a hybrid version of this. I find that my workflow is to start with a sound that I like, but I track DI as well. As the song and mix progresses, I might mute the sound I tracked and experiment with reamping other profiles to see if there's something that works better.
However, if I do find something that I prefer, I'll then retrack the guitar with that profile. I know I could just reamp with the new profile from the DI I already have, but the feel of the guitar amp often affects how I play. So, if I'm replacing profile A with profile B, I want to play it like profile B wants to be played. You know, so I don't hurt its feelings.
And man, is it great having all these options.
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I'll try not.
You, Alan, Paul, and Gear have become my mentors on this project. I am following your advice so I know who to blame.
Who, hey, look at the time. I just remembered I have an appointment in an alternate reality...
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I've heard my voice in enough home movies to know how my speech sounds. But the only experience I have at singing is in the car at full volume with the 1000watt Kicker amp cranked, so my voice is surely drowned. The lyrics to this song have fast-paced phrases, and since I never tried to actually sing them for the song before, I stumbled and bumbled right out the box. There are parts where backing vocals are needed and I can probably handle that since it's like two seconds of singing but I need way more practice to even attempt the lyrics. I'm probably just going to post without vocals and start looking for a real singer.
It's a separate skill set, to be sure. Just didn't want you selling yourself short.
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Great stuff, man.
Coincidentally, I recently posted asking if anyone here was doing New Age music or if that was just the realm of keyboardists. Clearly it's not, although I guess these days it goes by ambient since New Age is probably a dated term.
Very cool, hope it does well for you!
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get a SM58 (instead of my 57, get a mic pre-amp
The differences between a 58 and 57 are minimal, and the audio interface you have for tracking guitar is fine for vocals. A pop filter is always good, but with proper mic technique you don't absolutely have to have one. Just pay attention to your plosives.
While I'm sure there's room for improvement (there always is), I'm guessing the thing you need most is to simply get comfortable with how your voice sounds on a recording. That's something we've all had to deal with at one point in our career. How your voice sounds to you when you talk or sing isn't how it sounds to others who listen, because science, so that takes some getting used to.
As an extension to that, I've played in cover bands all my life and have been obligated to try to "sound like the record," which is silly because I'm not any of those guys. I'm me. When I started recording my own material It was an opportunity to forget about all that and just sound like me instead of trying to sound like someone else.
If you want to work to improve your singing, that's great, but this is your music . It's okay to sound like you. This isn't a problem you need to throw money at, so put your wallet back in your pocket.
In the immortal words of Nike, just do it.
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I've just finished the solo -at least enough to what I can live with for now. The song has been extended to 4m10s. Next up is to see if I nuke the vocals or not. Either way, I'm posting by this weekend. Thanks!
I think if you nuke your vocals, it's only fair to let your wife sing.
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I think the song length standards probably grew out out of analog recording limitations. Vinyl singles could only hold so much music. Albums were also constrained by the ability to cut grooves in a 12” piece of plastic. Those limits became the defacto standard even though technological improvements meant they no longer had any relevance.
Obviously radio airplay, audience attention limits and the need to squeeze in adverts also played a part in song length conventions. Mind you the audience attention concept doesn’t really stack up in the digital generation. Technology allows almost limitless song length but audience attention spans seem to have shrunk to about 4 seconds if my kids and their pals are anything to go by ?
Yeah, I think you're right on the money about all of that, because....
Ooh! Squirrel!
I'm sorry, you were saying?
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I think the play time thing is more about your intended audience. For some genres, people expect long songs and short ones might feel out of step with everyone else. In others, the quick three minute pop / radio rule is the norm.
If you're crossing genres as you mentioned, perhaps there's math involved.
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Like anything new, it's less fun while you're trying to get up to speed, but that happens quickly.
Mixing is a completely separate thing from playing guitar or writing the song, and I enjoy it as its own pursuit. I tend to be a bit modal with creativity, so if I'm in a guitar playing headspace I won't feel like fooling with a computer, and when I'm in the zone sitting at the console I'd rather do that than pick up the guitar. When I'm doing either of those I absolutely don't feel like working on writing a book. They all get their own exclusive chunk of real estate and I tend to visit them individually.
I actually enjoy mixing a helluva lot more than tracking. When I'm recording, it often feels like the take is never good enough and can be frustrating. Mixing is more of an incremental adventure, a constant tweaking to make the song sound better. Even back in the clumsy and noisy days of tape, analog, hiss, ground loops and twitchy cables, it's always been fun for me. It sounds like you're starting to dig it, too.
My wife wants to sing backing on it but I told her no girls allowed at this time.
if you're lucky enough to have a wife who enjoys your musical side, let alone one who wants to participate, you've hit the lottery. Let the girl sing!
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Yes. I was so surprised at how much bass I had to kill from the bass. It's almost like I have to make the bass sound like a guitar in the mix to keep it from muddying up everything. So far, It's been the hardest instrument to get right -and it's like the simplest instrument of all. (Sorry Geddy Lee).
Yep, nailing the bass has always been one of the hardest things. It's difficult enough in a rock context where the bass tends to be fairly focused. I can't imagine what a battle it must be for the rap and hip hop guys who have those big, wide, expansive "whoomp" bass lines.
I am super close to finalizing the mix.
Famous last words.
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I guess it moved towards the Ambient genre and split up into stuff like Drone, Dark Ambient, Downtempo, Ambient House/Techno, Chillout...
That sounds about right. I think it moved more to a context of instrumental music without the baggage of spirituality that New Age implied.
Display MoreGive these bands a listen... lots of ambient guitars:
All The Bright Lights
The Eschalon Effect
April Rain - Leave Me No Light
Elskavon
Spot checked those and now all I want to do is sit down and play with the all the effects from the Kemper Reverb release that I never really explored in depth!
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He's done 26 albums including another two versions of Tubular bells and one specifically called "Guitars"
I have all but the last two and most of them include lots of great guitar playing and are very, very good.
LOL, I have no idea what that means
When families get together for the holidays, there are only so many chairs to go around at the "real" dining room table. So, the grown ups get to sit at the nice table, and the kids get stuck sitting at cheap folding tables, couches, or just leaning against the wall and balancing the plate on their knees.
Being a grown up has its privileges.
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Excellent Chris Duncan! I truly appreciate your detailed response!
Now, I won't feel so bad rendering and deleting, rendering and deleting, rinse and repeat this mix. I'm so dang close though. UGH!
Dude, if you ever get to the point where you never have to go through that, teach a course. We'll all show up!
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Do sound engineers ever run a global EQ over the final cut after rendering, or should I mod those frequencies inside the mix for each instrument before rendering?
I would like to run vocals over this track, so if I do a global EQ for the mix then I would have to import the global EQ'd track into a new project as a whole, and then do vocals accordingly. Is this acceptable?
It occurs to me that I didn't speak to these issues. While there's no one "right" way to mix, a common practice is a three step approach.
First, "do your eq with the microphone" is a common saying. It means capturing the source so that it properly sits in the mix without needing to EQ it after the fact. While we're here because we use Kempers, if you've ever miked a guitar cab you'll know that even half an inch difference in placement towards or away from the cone will have a very significant effect on the frequency, i.e. more treble closer to the cone, etc. While we don't need to mic a cab, remember that for a guitar, what sounds good when you're rocking out alone isn't necessarily the best tone for the mix. For example, that low end thump you like to hear can get into the bass player's turf and a mix engineer will probably put a high pass filter on it.
Apply the same thinking to vocals and anything else you track. There's only so much frequency real estate to go around in your mix. If you decide who's going to own what turf and capture your tracks with that in mind, you save a lot of "fixing in the mix" when there's too much of a frequency range on a track that you then have to carve out with eq. And that brings us to the second step. Once you have a good track, most people will typically make eq and other adjustments on the individual tracks rather than applying a curve to the entire mix. It's much easier that way as you get fine grained control.
Once you've got your tracks tweaked and the faders where you want them, you can consider your master bus for overall processing. It's common to have compressors / limiters at this point to smooth out the entire thing and also to make sure your levels are comparable with other pro mixes. You can certainly strap an eq across the master bus as well, but if you find yourself making big movements there it's usually an indication that you have a problem track or two and should really address it at the source. Personally I don't use an eq on the master bus, and while there's no right or wrong, I'd recommend that you don't, either. Mostly as a training tool to make you fix the problems on the tracks.
As for vocals, they're just one (or more) tracks in your DAW project for a given song. It's good to get at least a scratch vocal track down as early as possible, as that will help you get a feel for how to keep other stuff out of the way so that it doesn't get pushed into the background. Many in the industry consider the vocal to be the most important part of the song (yes, we all know it's really the guitar, but just sayin'). Consequently, some mixers will bring up the vocal fader first, and then incrementally bring up the bass, drums, guitar, etc. in a "supporting role" kind of mindset. That can be a useful approach. Others want to get the bass & drums up first, and build off the rhythm section, the drop the vocal on top at the end. You should experiment with both.
A big thing to remember when reaching for eq is "cut, don't boost." If the upper mids of your vocal aren't loud enough, instead of boosting that frequency on the vocals, figure out who's getting in the way (likely it's guitar and / or keyboards), and cut that frequency on those tracks. Another general rule of thumb is to try keeping your moves to around 3db. You can certainly do more (or less), but again if you're having to make a 12db adjustment on one track, it should really make you step back and ask what the real problem is.
I don't know which DAW you use, but there's a recent feature in Cubase that I just love. The eq window lets you bring up another track, and it overlays the frequencies of both in different colors, so you can easily see who's getting in the way, overcrowded frequencies, etc. I think they got that idea from the Fab Filter plugin, but it's really handy.
So, get the sound right at the source, do most of your corrections on a track by track basis, and learn to hear who's getting into someone else's turf and get rid of the problem there instead of boosting the victim's frequencies.
There are a lot of resources out there, but here's a good one for getting familiar with the basics. His audience is home recording folks like us, and he offers a lot of down to earth, practical advice that might help you get up and running.
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Looool. I was looking at new "wave" not new "age" like you said. I must be getting Forum Title dyslectic. Sorry.
They say that only left handed people are in their right mind, so perhaps that explains a few things.
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What you've just encountered is the concept of "mix portability," the scourge of sound engineers everywhere. Sounds good in your studio, but play it in the living room and the bass disappears, play it in your car and the bass blows out your rear window, etc. It's a non-trivial consideration and among the more difficult things to get right when mixing music.
The first and most important thing is making sure that your mixing environment is telling the truth. If you're playing back via speakers, then the speakers could lie, but even if they're honest, your room acoustics get a vote. Studio reference monitors are allegedly designed to be completely flat (FRFR to you guitar type guys). Most of them are pretty good these days, but there can certainly be variations. However, room acoustics are a huge issue. Your monitors can be absolutely state of the art, but sound bounces around your room like a cue ball on a pool table. Even sitting close to the monitors (they're often referred to as "near field monitors" for that reason), you're still not immune to what the room acoustics do to the sound before it gets to your ears.
Lest you think you can solve the problem by just mixing with headphones (assuming you can stand the ear fatigue), it's much more difficult to find headphones that aren't hyped in some range or another, so once again your source of truth is of dubious integrity.
Treating the acoustics in your room can get expensive, and if you really want to do it "correctly" it can involve no small amount of rocket science. Acoustics is an in depth field to study. Now, having said all that, here are some real world things you can do without spending a gazillion dollars on hiring an acoustical engineer.
The first trick is using reference mixes. Chances are good that a major label recording artist got that album mixed and mastered by pros in a pro, acoustically treated, environment. Mix portability is utmost in their minds. So, if you play a CD (uncompressed is a better choice than mp3 since it's your reference point) of a band that's close to the vibe of your music, you can match your EQ to what you hear. For instance, if the bass is too heavy through your regular stereo speakers, it's a good bet that if you compare your bass to the CD's bass on your studio monitors, you'll find that they used less. So, even if it doesn't sound as punchy in the bass when you're mixing, you can be fairly certain that if you have a similar level that your mix will sound right on your stereo, in your car, etc. Same for all other frequencies, of course.
Add a track in your DAW for the reference song. You may have to jump through a couple of hoops, but remember it's important that the reference track does not go through any processing like compressors, limiters, etc. that you might have on your master bus. You want to hear your song through your master bus, but the reference completely unaltered. Then you can mute / unmute to compare the two when mixing. You'll do frequent "car tests" as it's known, taking your mix to different environments to see how it works until you get it right. Bring your reference CD as well, and try to play them in as many different environments as you can to really get a feel for what makes a portable mix.
Next, regarding room acoustics, there are a few things you can do. I have professionally manufactured fiberglass panels in my control room and I have a drop ceiling with fiberglass panels to stop the bounce in that direction. That helped a lot, but the frequency response is still not flat. My weapon of choice was the DBX DriveRack PA2. It's a one rack hardware unit that sits between the console and the speakers. You plug in a special mic, run the analyze program and it determines the frequency response at your mix position. It has an eight band parametric EQ that it automatically sets to compensate for too much / too little in the given frequency range to nudge the curve back to flat. That made a huge difference in the reliability of my room.
SonarWorks has a reference plugin that does the same kind of thing that's less expensive, around $250. I tried their demo and it was a bit twitchy for my taste, and it's the last thing in our output bus so you also have to remember to disable it when you're printing a mix. Still, a lot of people have good results with it.
As for your studio monitors, while there are certainly superstar quality monitors that you can mortgage your home to buy, what's really more important is to just know the speakers you have. Yamaha NS-10s were industry standards, and they sounded absolutely horrible. However, the point was that you knew how a good mix would sound on them. The same applies to better quality speakers. Just know what a good mix sounds like on them and you're 99% there. Again, reference mixes are your friends. Eventually you'll just instinctively mix the bass lower than you want to hear it in the studio (until you get your environment treated), knowing that this sound in the studio translates to perfectly rockin' bass in the living room, the car, etc.
One final note regarding test mixes - don't forget your phone! It needs to sound decent through the phone's speakers. You can forget about having much bass response there, so you also need to mix your bass so that upper frequencies for transients, etc. will still give a sense of the bass "being there" when played on device that can't move air in the lower range. Also, and this is even more of a crap shoot, phone earbuds are often massively hyped on the low end. One again, listen to the mp3 version of your reference mix on your phone and see how they managed it.
If you feel like you just fell down the rabbit hole, don't worry. You'll have lots of company there. These are issues we've all grappled with, and gaining these skills is not an overnight thing. There's no "Portable Mix" button on your computer. You just have to slug it out like the rest of us. Still, if you at least know the battle you're fighting, you can avoid at least some of the nicks and cuts.
