quick tip 3: analyzer

What's an analyzer you say? Well, it's my new best friend. An analyzer gives you a display of your mix in terms of the relative intensity of frequency distribution. I downloaded mine for free, as there are numerous free analyser plugins out there, even for my RTAS Mac environment. You open across your master fader, and check out what your mix "looks" like in terms of frequncy strength. For me this opened up a whole new way of seeing my mixes. The best thing to do is bring a professional mix into your session, solo it, open an analyzer on it, and see what's happening. For me, I realized that my mixes were, more often than not, too bass heavy. Seeing the giant bass bulge pulsing along with the music, and noticing how much more constrained that same spectrum was on numerous professional mixes motivated me to take a whole new approach to mastering. Now I keep a very close eye on my low end, and work to use my multiband compressor and EQ to keep it under control. I noticed an immediate improvement in my mixes, and that was just in the low end.

quick tip 2: creating HOT vocals

Many modern recordings, particularly interesting indie ones, feature distorted or semi distorted vocals. There are many ways to juice up a vocal track, but I find that many home recording enthusiasts over look one of the best ways: using your pre-amp. We all know that there are a variety of plugins out there that can distort vocals, but often the programs are designed as amp simulators. Many people have discovered that they work just as well on vocals, however, when subtlty is required - in other words - if you want a hot, juicy vocal sound that sounds natural i.e.: isn't overtly distored, then the best way is often the old fashioned way: using preamp distortion. To accomplish this, you must have an analog preamp. Many inexpensive units are available. The cheaper ones are transistor based, and the pricey ones are transformer and (even pricier) tube based. I avoid cheap tube based pres as they tend to sound terrible. However, a decent transitstor based pre amp like my Focusrite Voice Master pro, or my old Joe Meek VC6Q can add a layer of juicy organic saturation when pushed that burries most plugins. The key is to run the mic level too hot, so that you intentionally overload your pre amp. You might feel that it would be best to track clean and give yourself more flexibility when mixing, but my philosophy is to take some risks while tracking, and accept the consequences. Often I find that a great track depends more on the initial signal hitting the "tape" than it does on mixing manipulations. Most pres have a red led over load indicator - I say, light it up!!! Of course, you want to make sure that your digital input is not going into overload. While analog distortion sounds pleasing, digital never does, so be carefull and watch your meters. Done right, however, you can create vocals that sound hot, juicy , and alive, in an organic way, that, in my experience, can not be simulated with plug ins, which tend to sound as fake as they, in fact, are.

Quick tip 1: multimic phasing tip

Many of us enjoy the versatility and added character that comes from recording a source, let's say a guitar amp such as my ever faithful Deluxe Reverb, with more than one mic. Personally I like using a 57 at the grill and a condenser of some sort at a distance. The 57 adds mid range fullness, and sounds pretty good on its own, but a well placed condensor can add fullness and just the right amount of high end sparkle to make the track sit well in the mix without getting lost. Of course, the pitfall of multi-micing - especially with an amp that has only one speaker such as my Deluxe - is phasing issues. Two out of phase mics may weaken your signal and defeat the purpose of using two mics in the first place ( getting a fatter sound with more depth.) Sometimes this phase cancellation is ok, but often it's subtle yet problematic, and many people's home recording monitoring environment isn't sensitive enough to reveal the phase issues. The result: an instrument that sounds fine in your control room, but on other speaker systems sounds oddly thin or even filtered in an unpleasing way. If this has happened to you, chances are that your multimic set up is causing small phasing problems that comb out a few select, yet audible frequencies in your sound. This is bad, of course, only when you don't like the resulting sound. If you like it, then fine, but how do we check while tracking to make sure that we're avoiding inadvertant phase cancelation? Well, here's my solution. I record in protools, so what I do is bring up my master fader and open a phase scope on it. If you don't have a phase scope (the new protools 8 comes with one!!) you should be able to download a free version with little dificulty. I then pan my tracks (the one's I'm tracking with multiple mics of course) to the center, and solo the close mic (in my case this will generally be the 57). I then bring the distant mic track down, solo it and bring it up with the 57, all the while watching the phase scope. If the scope stays straight up and down, you're in business, however, if the scope begins lurching and jumping to the side, you know that you have phase issues. If it turns out that you do, experiment with moving your distant mic around until you find a spot where you like the sound and you have little phase canellation. The one problem with this method is that one runs the risk of becoming stupidly anal about phase. Don't let this happen to you - if you like the sound, and it's a bit out of phase, track it. However, keep an ear on it in diferent speakers - in your car, and over the ipod, and make sure that the set up produces good results on multiple sets of speakers. If it doesn't sound as good as it did in your control room, work on getting that phase under control! Good luck!