Per collection thread

    Today I tried once more to go for a more mellow and gentle production, soft sounds. I'm not sure I managed, I'd like to be able to have a more broad range of production styles, but it's much harder to be quiet than loud, to get a sense of 3-dimensionality.


    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Continuing experiments in soft production, today attempting to go the opposite way and start out with soft sounds and then push up the treble to bring back articulation. I think this is much less controllable an approach than softening bright sounds down and seems to result in harsh a loss of dynamics in the treble. But maybe that's just how I'm doing it. On the upside though it does feel like this created a slightly better sense of distance and depth, but perhaps that's merely more hyped.


    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Quote from Per

    Perhaps Monkey_Man or one of the other studio masters can offer some hints on how to get there and what to pay attention to, what I’m not hearing that’s causing this mix to sound more up-front than it should.

    I'm no master bro' but I'll take that. :D


    Couple o' points that might be helpful if not obvious:

    You can get away with longer 'verb tails in slower music.

    That said, maybe try early reflections (no tails) first in order to get depth placement in the ballpark. Add tails to-taste and if you deem them necessary.

    Put some decent predelay on vox if you want longer, pretty tails in order to minimise "wash".


    That's all I've got for now brother...

    Thanks Monkey_Man great tips, I hadn’t even considered pre-delay. I’ll start messing with that more as I normally always have it set to 0. I hope to carry on working out how to create quiet, but can never tell what my brain wants to do once I sit down to record. I feel like mastering quiet is probably one of the big keys to creating high quality mixes and tracks that are loud too.

    So today of course my brain wanted to do some loud trip-hop instead for a very quick noodle. But I intend to apply quiet principles soon when I have more time to experiment.

    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Quote from Per

    Thanks Monkey_Man great tips, I hadn’t even considered pre-delay. I’ll start messing with that more as I normally always have it set to 0.

    That right there might be partly why I used to give you some heat back in the day when I said your lead vox sounded washed-out.


    Suggestion:

    Try using early reflections to place the vox or instrument in a certain space.

    Then, on the "'verb timeline", you place a gap (pre-delay), then the tail to-taste.


    The gap prevents the tail from becoming part of the instrument, thus preserving clarity.


    Think about it:

    You make a sound, it hits the nearest surfaces first, creating early reflections and defining the space it's in.

    The reflections continue to bounce around at much-lower energy levels thereafter, creating tails.


    How can this reality be exploited? Move those tails further away time-wise and ideally either keep their levels low, EQ them to minimise muddiness or dispense with them altogether, using them only for-effect.

    Quote from Per

    So today of course my brain wanted to do some loud trip-hop instead for a very quick noodle. But I intend to apply quiet principles soon when I have more time to experiment.

    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Beautiful clean main guitar part Per The whole track is brilliant

    Tonight I decided to be a little naughty and perverse, counter-trolling a guy on another forum who's very upset about guitar tuning. So this is about as far out of tune as I could take it before things completely broke down. I even put the keyboard out of tune :D

    I always tune my guitars each time I plug them in per session, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up


    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Thanks BayouTexan !


    Guitars are never in tune unless they have a true temperament neck and even then they’re not in tune because they’re a plucked instrument so you always have this sharpening of the note at the transient.


    The reality is that you have to tune your guitar for the specific song, check out this :


    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.


    “Out of tune” ness with guitar is really a function of arrangement and style. If you play percussively with full chords as e.g. I did here, or maybe the 13th floor elevators that I took influence from (or many other 60’s bands who had to contend with only having power amp gain and often poor instruments with little sustain) then you can really get away with strongly out of tune guitars because there’s never going to be a point where they’re actually in tune anyway. Full chords that ring out or playing at certain registers has a tendency to bring you out of tune with keyboards because of a thing called temperament, this is the spacing between notes in frequency. Keyboards have been tuned in “true temperament” for the past hundred years or so, but it wasn’t always so, guitars however inherently can’t be true temperament with standard necks, here’s an actual true temperament neck and hopefully it’ll visually explain why :


    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.


    This is also why drop-tuning (and Nashville tuning) is popular, because while it doesn’t solve the temperament issue it does keep two strings in relative tune all the way up allowing power chords that can ring out.


    So when you hear guitar out of tune it’s actually because the arrangement, or style is off rather than the guitar being out. Unfortunately once you do hear that guitar is out of tune and why you’ll realize that there isn’t an in-tune recording of guitar out there, but with any luck you’ll get past the pick warbles, chordal clashes and just enjoy that this is rock & roll. It might even shed some light for you as to why synth guitar that you hear on many modern pop and metal productions sounds so weird next to the real thing.

    Yes, I always have to detune my low E and sometimes my G strings. I will tune to pitch and then strum some chords and detune as necessary by ear. I detune more if playing distortion. The hard one for me is bass guitar on the low E since just a simple soft pluck pulls it out by 5 cents or more.


    The last mix I just did, I had to detune the A string for the double-stops so it sounded more pleasant.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

    Like 2

    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Very short one today, busy busy

    Thanks BayouTexan


    Tonights after a very long days driving :


    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.