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anonymous 7 July 2008

This weekend I did an interesting exercise with one of the songs that I am mixing, and learned a couple of things. I also am curios as to what other people think of this technique.

This is going to sound crazy, but stay with me. In the end the results were good. I tried a different method to find a frequency range for each part to sit in the mix. I started off with just the lead vocal, and put a 24db/octave high and low pass filter on it. I narrowed the band down until I found a small range that conveyed the vocal. It sounded like it was coming out of a little old AM transistor radio, but the vocals were clear. I added one track at a time using bands that had no overlap until I had all the tracks in, and the whole frequency spectrum covered.

The results were as follows:
Bass 20-150
Dobro 150-300
Male Vocal 300-600
Female Vocal 600-2k
Guitar 2k-6k
Mandolin 6k-20k

Even with the hard EQing it didn't sound bad like this. To make it sound good I ended up using these frequency ranges for the instruments, but not as band passes.

I gained a couple of things from this exercise:

1. It reinforced that there is more than one good way to mix a set of tracks.
2. There is a difference between EQing to accentuate parts of the track, and EQing to mix and fit the tracks together.

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Comments

anonymous Mon, 07/07/2008 - 08:33

I wish I could post a sample, but can't. Mix is so subjective that this post may be hard to comment on. It's not a critique of this particular mix that I am interested in, more just on the approach to the mix.

Has anyone else done it this way before?
Are their pit falls that as a recording engineer you see with this method?

If there is more interest, and I have time, I'll do it with one of my own works that I post to the internet.

ThirdBird Thu, 07/10/2008 - 18:22

Thanks for the idea, I am going to try it on my own project shortly.

The style is a cross between rock and funk, very similar to what the Red Hot Chili Peppers might do.

The instrumentation is as follows:

Drums
Latin Percussion (Shakers, Clave, Guiro, Djembe, Cowbell)
Bass Guitar
Acoustic Guitar
Electric Guitar
Old Electric Organ
Lead Vocal
Harmony Vocal
Hip-hop Vocal (kind of rapping)
Shout Vocal (not screaming at all, just short staccato accents)

I know there are many more instruments in my example than yours, but here is my initial thoughts, before I try it out:

Drums: No clue, wide range from bass drum to cymbals
Percussion: Probably a higher frequency, at least above 1000
Bass Guitar: between 50 to 150
Acoustic Guitar: chunky meaty sound, so maybe 150-300, also higher
Electric :i'll try yours at 2k-6k
Old Electric Organ: somewhere maybe the 6-20ish range
Lead Vocal: male, so i'll try yours at 300-600
Harmony Vocal: male, but its higher so i'll try your female range
Hip-hop Vocal: i want a really dry sound, maybe 1k-3k
Shout Vocal: not sure anywhere from 500-3k

my biggest problems are the range of the drums, how the guitars sit with the organ, and the variety of vocal tracks. Taking a look at what I have given you so far, are there any potential roadblocks ahead?

do you think this concept can be applied to panning as well? i mean start with the vocals in the middle, and then work your way out, as instruments become less "important"?

when I am done tracking, i will try and get something posted! thanks

anonymous Fri, 07/11/2008 - 09:47

Thanks mhutch.

ThirdBird,

There was a recent post from YellYo talking about using panning to separate things in your mix. (Dead Link Removed) There was some good stuff in there. The method you mentioned is what I do for the most part.

Another thing to consider is that the background instruments need less frequency space. I think of it in fractions of octaves (like a graphic EQ) on a 24 band eq, the lead vocal may get 3 or 4 bands in the middle, but the dobro fills may only get one band.

I have found that rolling off a little high and low frequency helps push them back, and keeping the front and center tracks pretty flat, and cutting the background instead of boosting the foreground helps.

sammyg Thu, 02/26/2009 - 22:09

im glad you posted this because a while back i accidently stumbled across something similar and you are cinfirming my thoughts in regards to my experience.

I was working on a mix and I had to do the "telephone" effect in this one part for the main vox, I was messing around with one of the filter plugins in nuendo, I quickly dialed up a starting point and hit play. Funnily enough, hearing the transition from "telephone vox" to normal vox, I actualy prefered the filtered vox for the whole mix, there was something about it that just worked in the mix, yet on its own it didnt sound crash hot and I would never have done that as part of my vox processing. In actual fact, it made me realise that not everthing has to be BIG and FAT and HUGE all the time. A real eye opener.

I heard you song through little ear buds, i think it sounds fine.

cheers,

SAmmyg

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