presenting...LimpyLoo's TIP DU JOUR!

[brian trageskin]

 

Ha, I had that book! I didn't realise he made a video of it too...

 

It's life-changing. But really, beneath the 80'sness lies a great wealth of information.

 

oh yeah i remember that video, i should go back to it and learn.

 

welcome to ulillillia

 

grab my book, "the legend of the 10 elemental masters"

 

 

 

[Guest A/D]

3) Gain Staging = As insane as it sounds, if you mix on a computer then try having each of your instruments peaking at no higher than -10dbfs. And likewise with the master bus. This will give you an insane amount of headroom and for a couple reasons (which I can talk about if anyone would like) your mixes will likely sound markedly better.

I corrected this to match your later post, and I'm interested in hearing more about this. I will obviously just try it myself and report back eventually, but I'm curious as to the theory behind it. It's come up in plenty a mixing discussion and I've never heard the reasoning.

[brian trageskin]

Ps : a simple thing that improved my mixes dramatically : proper gain-structure (or gain-staging). Headroom makes everything better and easier. When it comes to digital meters, Green is good and red is bad.

 

Basically, get the most balanced ratio on every raw track between its perceived loudness (RMS, often mesured by VU meters) and its peaks. Use a VU-meter like Klanghelm VUMT, calibrate it so that its 0 equals -18dB FS (for 300ms).

 

Check on every raw track that the VU-meter's needle dances around 0 and that your peaks not exceed -9dB FS (max -6dB FS) on your DAW's meter. Repeat it for every individual raw element of your mix

 

Keep in mind though that the heavier in low frequencies the signal is (like kick drums, bass lines, drones, pads), the most important that RMS/peak ratio is.

 

For something like a snare drum, or hi-hats... anything that isn't dense/heavy in LF, or something with lots of transients, just watch the peaks and never exceed -9dB FS (-6db FS max, again).

 

Then slap VU-meters on your busses and master buss and target 0 on the VU-meters.

 

Voilà, you can start moving faders, EQing, compressing etc....

 

You'll most likely never have a single peak above -3dB FS on your master buss.

 

You'll have a healthy mix, with a great dynamic range and a great ratio between its perceived loudness and its higher peaks.

 

You'll never overload a plugin/effect anymore (yes, some softwares are calibrated for moderated levels), you'll never fight against too crowded mixes either.

 

If you're worrying that your mixes will sound quiet, record/mix in 24bit instead of 16bit.

 

Which means you'll switch from a 96dB dynamic range to 144dB of dynamic range.

 

Which means that you'll have a huge dynamic range for your mixes, even if it peaks at -10 dB FS. S/N ratio won't be an issue no more, so the volume can be raised at mastering without any damage to your mix.

 

I hope it helps.

 

edit : please ignore my previous post it's quite similar to this one but I think not as clear. It's sometilmes hard to get technical in a foreign language you know !

 

*takes notes*

[Nil]

Note that gain-staging is totally different than lowering your DAW's faders : gain-stage occurs before applying any kind of processing, while faders operate post-Fx and only controls the volume at which you feed buss(es).

 

You can also apply gain-staging-like approach to (soft)synths. un-drive a MS20 filter, crank up the resonance and listen to it sing.

[LimpyLoo]

presenting: LimpyLoo's

TIP DE JOUR #8: Random Bits of Advice 2: Electric Boogaloo

 

1) Assigning Each Instrument Its Own Frequency Range = My favorite way to get an mix with great clarity and focus is to actually partition specific frequency ranges for each instrument. That's not to say there isn't overlap, but rather the bulk of the instrument's energy is one specific spot. One example: I've found myself using kicks where the fundamental thump is up around 125-150hz (usually because it's been pitched up), so I'll HPF it at 100hz and leave everything underneath for the bass so the low-end isn't all muddled up. On the other end of the spectrum, perhaps you LPF your hi-hat at 8-10khz (as well as HPFing it at, say, 250hz) so that a synth or other instrument has free reign up in the high-end.

 

2) "Frequency Swapping" = If you have alot of frequency-overlap then one option is "frequency swapping." Let's say your bass extends down to 50-60hz and the fundamental thump of you kick is at 80hz: you could boost 3db at 80hz in the kick and cut 3db at 80hz in the bass. Or if you have a few synths occupying roughly the same range higher up in the spectrum, maybe you make it a habit that whenever you boost a frequency in one synth you cut it in the others (and vice versa). This will help avoid frequency masking and will give your mix greater clarity and focus.

 

3) Subtle Use of Effects = More and more I've been learning the role of subtlety in using things like reverb, delay, phaser, etc. Of course effects should be regularly abused as well, but I think there's room for both in nearly every mix. Often drums can greatly benefit from a touch of reverb (or perhaps delay) where you can't really hear it per se but you can feel it, and you notice it when it's gone. I usually HPF and LPF the reverb track so it doesn't take up alot of space, and then just tuck it away somewhere in the stereo field where it adds the most depth. Furthermore I find most synths (pads or leads or basses or whatever) will benefit from a miniscule amount of tremelo/warble, not enough to notice but just enough to hear that the synth's pitch isn't completely static. Or if your track uses a single unchanging snare sample throughout, putting a very slow, very subtle phaser on it will slightly change the timbre each time it hits without actually sounding like there's a phaser on the snare drum. Subtlety.

 

 

4) Rid of the Grid* = Grids are just one of many ways in which our DAW makes decisions for us. Sometimes it's exactly what we want, but sometimes we want something wonkier, something with more nuance or character. Depending on whether you wanted it to have a nervous energy or a laid-back energy, perhaps you might nudge your snare uniformly ahead or behind the beat. Or maybe all of your hi-hat hits are slightly late. Maybe all of the kicks on '1' are slightly early so the track feels like it's constantly pushing forward. My current obsession is emulating the timefeel of Brazilian drumming (which does not cooperate with a 16th-note grid whatsoever), and I've been very pleased with the results. Anyway, just something worth considering next time you're working on a drum track.

 

5) Mixing Each Section Of a Track Separately = I've heard about this technique from a number of disparate sources (from Ministry to the Beach Boys to Motown etc) and I'm very intrigued by it. So the idea is, usually tracks are mixed in a very linear fashion, where each section has the same approach/vibe/effects/settings as all the other sections. Well, what if you mix each section on its own (as if it were its own track) and then once you have mixdowns all the sections, dump them into a new project and paste them all together? If nothing else the result would be interesting. A one-step-further variation of this would be to have each section of your track use completely different gear (e.g. different bass, different snare, different reverb, etc). Anyway, blah blah.

 

 

 

 

Alright, X-Files time.

 

-LL

[cear]

On with Subtlety and Rid of the Grid; here's a nice trick for you Renoise users (not sure how you do it in piano rolls..but I'm guessing maybe there's even a standard MIDI effect in Ableton that does it).

Turn on the Delay column of your track (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+D).

You select all your notes of a percussion element, you know things like hats/rims/etc perhaps a bit too wonky on kicks and snares, Right Click on the Delay check mark in the Content Mask. Press Ctrl/Cmd+H (Humanize) -a few times maybe- et voilà your shit is off the grid. (Well it's all going to be pushed forward, a bit more work if you want to push things backwards, too bad there isn't capability of negative amounts yet.)

 

Explanatory image:

[Guest Adjective]

Right Click on the Delay check mark in the Content Mask. Press Ctrl/Cmd+H (Humanize) -a few times maybe- et voilà your shit is off the grid. (Well it's all going to be pushed forward, a bit more work if you want to push things backwards, too bad there isn't capability of negative amounts yet.)

 

maybe you could enter a negative value in the track delay so it's a few miliseconds early, and then humanize after? i think track delay lets you do negative values, i don't have renoise access atm

[cear]

Nope sadly you can't, you'll have to cut/paste the note a line back and give it uncomfortably a positive amount.. Has been discussed a few times on the Renoise boards, with taktik (Renoise creator) agreeing to this way back. I so hope the feature will be in the next version. (:

[Friendly Foil]

I'll have to try some of this mixing stuff. Not very good at these super fancy terms, but I'll try and make sense of it.

[LimpyLoo]

I'll have to try some of this mixing stuff. Not very good at these super fancy terms, but I'll try and make sense of it.

 

Which terms? I can clarify if need be.

[Friendly Foil]

HPS is High Pass Filter and LPS is Low pass, right? And I guess all the hz stuff is eq-related.

Am I on to something? I have zero technical knowledge

[LimpyLoo]

"HPF" = high-pass filter (aka "low-cut")

 

"LPF" = low-pass filter (aka "high-cut")

 

"hz"= hertz (aka "cycles per second")

 

 

these might be a good place to start:

 

 

[Friendly Foil]

Imma watch those tomorrow. Thanks!

[LimpyLoo]

Imma watch those tomorrow. Thanks!

 

No prob, man.

 

And feel free to PM me if you wanna talk about any of this sorta technical stuff.

[luke viia]

Limpy: Teach us some circle of fifths tricks?

[LimpyLoo]

BOC uses alot of long circle-of-fifths passages

 

 

e.g. "Whitewater" and "Peacock Tail" etc

 

alot of variations on the "Hey Joe" chord progression: Cmaj Gmaj Dmaj Amaj Emaj

 

hmm...everytime you change the key up a fifth (or down a fifth) the scale only changes one note

 

 

but honestly aside from its mathematical elegance the circle of fifth never struck me as very useful or important

[luke viia]

that's cool, just thought I'd ask. I use it pretty often as a catch-all visual aid for related chords and for building progressions, inverting chords as I go and trying to add weird colors if things sound too Bacharachian...

[LimpyLoo]

that's cool, just thought I'd ask. I use it pretty often as a catch-all visual aid for related chords and for building progressions, inverting chords as I go and trying to add weird colors if things sound too Bacharachian...

yeah it's very useful for teaching and for tying things together