Tips on Recording

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    Writing on mixing is a difficult task. Tryexplaining to someone, without actually beingthere, how to paint a picture, how to play theblues, or how to remove a spleen. These ba-sic few points just scratch the surface of goodmixing habits. Bottom line, the best mixescome from well-written, well-arranged, well-played and well-recorded songs.

    This article is excerpted with permission fromTim Crichs book Recording Tips For Engineers .

    He also wrote the bestseller As sistan tEngineers Handbook. He has over 20 years

    of experience in the recording studio and hasworked on records by the Rolling Stones, Bob

    Dylan, John Lennon, KISS, Billy Joel, BryanAdam s, Cher, Bon Jo vi an d many more .

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    Mike Turner is the former guitarist of Our Lady PeaceHe partnered with Mari Dew, Caryn Hanlon, and Trevo

    Kustiak to launch The Pocket Entertainment and ThPocket Studios. For more information, contac

    www.thepocketstudios.com

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    RECORDING

    Warning! This is a danger-ous question! You may notbe ready for the explosivereaction that this may un-

    leash! The level of frustration that thiscan cause may lead to much rantingand gnashing of teeth! Unpreparedbands are a problem for the engineeron a session, and, unfortunately, most ofthose people have grown accustomed tounprofessional musicians. For the pro-ducer, part of the job is to make surethat preparations have been done for the

    studio so if the band isnt ready its atleast partially the producers fault. Ofcourse, if an artist doesnt have a pro-ducer per se, someone in the band willhave to take the reins and direct the ses-sion, usually without having done theneeded pre-production.

    Ideally, when a band plans to go intothe studio several things need to be inorder before you get there. The song isthe most important thing. If its not great,why are you recording it? If you believeits as great as it can ever be (we all startsomewhere) then you need to make cer-

    tain that the arrangement is doing whatit should be.The normal flaw is that, as musi-

    cians, we tend to think that things areas much fun to hear as they are to play.Not true. Each part of a song needs tobe represented enough that it serves itspurpose and doesnt overstay its wel-come. You know that great four-bar riffin the intro of the song that you playfour times through? Most likely it onlyneeded to be heard twice, maybe onlyonce if youre going to play it again aftera chorus as a re-intro (refrain, motif, orwhatever you choose to call it). If you

    manage to dress up the riff in differentsettings, i.e., acoustic vs. electric, or bythe use of dynamics or effects, then youmight be able to repeat it more butjust bashing away on a riff for extendedperiods doesnt do anyone any favours.If you love the riff more than anythingand want to play it longer, feel free todo that live, just dont beat the hell outof people with it on a CD.

    Okay, now your song is the best oneyouve ever done and the arrangementis tight and concise. Well done! Now,does the drummer know his/her parts?I mean really know them? You (looks likeyoure going to be the producer after all!)

    should be able to ask: What are youplaying in the second half of the secondverse where it goes to the pre-chorus?and your drummer should be able to pickit up from that point and tell you, evenverbally (Boom KA BuBoom Boom KAKKACK-A), EXACTLY what he/she intendsto play. As a matter of fact, everyone inthe band should be able to give the sameanswer not just for their own parts but,at the very least, the drums as well. Thisway theres no confusion when youre inthe studio. I cant tell you the number of

    times Ive heard arguments about howpart of a song is supposed to go oncethe band is in the studio: Why are youchanging chords on the and of four? Itssupposed to be on the downbeat! NOWAY! I always play it like this... If youknew each others parts, this discussionwould have taken place at the rehearsalstage where nobody feels like an idiot infront of the engineer at the studio. Thisis one of the things that marks some-body as a pro: knowing to listen first,hearing what needs to be played, andplaying it well.

    So, now you have a great tune with atidy arrangement. Everybody knows whatto play and those parts all agree. Next,make sure all of your gear is in perfectcondition. Do you want a permanent re-cord of how you were substandard? Thismeans new strings and setups for theguitarists, new skins and a well-tuned kitfor the drummer, and the singers shouldnot show up hung over from being outat a loud bar yelling and smoking allnight. If you dont have top-notch gear,you should look into renting some forthe recording most studios either havesome or can help you with a recommen-

    dation on where you can get it.Your checklist is almost complete.

    You now have a great tune, a great ar-rangement, great individual parts thatwork great together being played ongreat gear in the studio. Doesnt thatsound great? Heres where the finalhurdle is. When you get into the stu-dio theres a different experience of themusic you make. It might not sound asexciting as youd thought. This is wherea little flexibility is in order. You remem-ber those parts that everyone memorizedand the arrangement that you labouredover so diligently? They might need alittle tweaking in the studio. This isnt a

    contradiction of what Ive said alreadyIf you know the song as well as you

    should, changes are easier to accommodate BECAUSE you know the songso well. Know your parts going in, budont get so attached to them that youcant hear the opportunity for somethingbetter. Sometimes the smallest changeputs excitement into a track that waslacking once you got to the studio. Thechance to get the best performances wilonly be increased by the atmosphere oachievement you will get by not havingthe session grind to a halt because youwerent prepared. Trust me, its hard tobe creative when youre dealing withsomeone who hasnt done their home

    work and is feeling too much pressureexecuting their parts in a song that theydont quite know.

    Are You Really Ready To Record?by Mike Turner

    Mike Turner is the co-founder and former guitarist of OuLady Peace, as well as a three-time Juno Award winne

    and a four-time MuchMusic Video Award winner. Hquickly established himself as a premier source for live

    recordings using a streamlined mobile live recordinrig of his own design. Mike soon had the itch to build areal recording studio, and he partnered with kindred

    music industry veterans Mari Dew, Caryn Hanlon, anTrevor Kustiak to launch The Pocket Entertainment an

    The Pocket Studios. Please contacwww.thepocketstudios.com for more information

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    RECORDING

    The reality of the MP3 revolution

    is ongoing. What is the impact ofMP3 on the recording of music?

    When first introduced, MP3compression was the only way of trans-mitting music files of any size due torestrictions on bandwidth. For this rea-son, people tolerated the inherentlyinferior audio quality. There was alsothe issue of expensive storage spacethat was also addressed by MP3 com-pression. Once again, because memorywas expensive, people tolerated the badaudio because good audio was just toomemory-intensive. Both of these factorsare becoming less and less of an issue.With high-speed Internet access becom-ing the norm and hard drive memorygoing under the dollar per Gigabytethreshold, there is less need to toleratebad sound.

    My theory is that MP3s on the Internetare the equivalent of radio in the past.Radio was revolutionary based purely onthe fact that it was without precedent. Mu-sic on the Internet is following a similarcourse based on the precedent of radio.Initially music was all over AM radio andpeople went crazy for it, millions of littletransistor radios were sold and the Top

    40 market was born. As AM becameubiquitous and the number of peoplelistening represented a sufficiently largeamount of the population, the small per-centage within that number who wereunsatisfied with the fidelity were a bigenough market to merit a new format.And so FM radio became the domainof the discerning music listener. Astimes changed and tastes evolved, itwas no longer sufficient to just be ac-cessible like AM radio was, the fidelityprovided by FM became more affordableand instead of tiny transistor radios thatonly received mono AM radio through

    a single speaker, people began to buyhome receivers that were stereo and hadmulti-component speakers capable ofgood quality sound. At every stage therewere a group of people that wanted bet-ter sound and they are still around today.Go to your local stereo store and tell methat fidelity is irrelevant. Once the in-novations become the norm and theirprices become affordable, more thanjust the early adopters will choose toupgrade. Currently we are in the earlystages of the MP3 revolution but I thinkits inevitable that people will begin torequire more from the fidelity of MP3sand that an affordable, superior sound-

    ing alternative will supplant them.

    As for the question of a singles-basedmarket, I think its always been that wayto a degree. It takes an introductorysong to get the listeners interest thenand only then will they check out thecatalogue of an artist. Unfortunately,there seemed to be a movement oncethe album became the standard to fillspace with sub-par material for the sakeof track count. If you wanted to get thesong you liked from an artist, you hadto buy the entire album regardless ofthe quality of the other tracks. With theamount a consumer buys from an art-ist becoming discretionary, people willonly buy the entire album if its all good.There is the interesting idea that, as anartist, you will have the option of makingyour material available as each song iscreated, not every 12-18 months in analbum (ie: collection of songs) format.If you are creating something to bepresented as an album, you have thatoption but arent bound to it.

    What will happen to the industry overthe next few years? If I knew that Id besleeping better at night! The only thingfor certain is that itll be utterly differentthan it is now. Most likely it will be very

    much smaller and the gross revenueswill be commensurately smaller as well.So if you want to be a rock star with amansion and lavish lifestyle, youd bet-ter have two mansions and a downrightopulent lifestyle to start with.

    I think that the record companies willstill be around but they will get out ofthe distribution business entirely. Its al-ways been their specialty to know howto market artists. I think itll also becomemore artist-driven in terms of the publicno longer being content to buy whateveris being marketed. I hope in the futureit will be quality first, then marketing.

    I believe this will be the most relevantaspect of the future industry. Not to sellsomething to a consumer by hook orcrook, but to become a trusted sourceof specific types of music. Lets face it,with the advent of affordable recordingtechnologies EVERYONE has a bandand wants you to hear their music. Thedifficulty is filtering through all of thatcontent to get to what youre interestedin. This is what the labels are special-ists in. There are still versions of aspectsof the traditional industry, for examplewebsites like www.pitchforkmedia.comare replacing print media but the im-portance of getting noticed by them is

    no different and no less difficult. Recordlabels are in the business of relationships. There are publicists whose livesare dedicated to knowing what outleis appropriate for which artist and have

    the relationship with all of them. Do youthe artist, know someone at pitchfork?Rolling Stone? The Oprah Winfrey Show?How are you going to get the benefit othe exposure that these outlets offer tothe right artists?

    Some future version of the label wilhave continued to maintain the relationships with these outlets and that will bethe value they bring to the table. This isjust one aspect of what a label does nowand the best thing is that they are a onestop shop for these and other servicesI guess you could try and outsource alof these things wait a minute, thats

    the next column!

    MP3 And Beyondby Mike Turner

    Mike Turner is the co-founder and former guitarist of Ou

    Lady Peace, as well as a three-time Juno Award winne

    and a four-time Much Music Video Award winner. H

    quickly established himself as a premier source for liv

    recordings using a streamlined mobile live recording

    rig of his own design. Mike soon had the itch to build a

    real recording studio, and he partnered with kindred

    music industry veterans Mari Dew, Caryn Hanlon, an

    Trevor Kustiak to launch The Pocket Entertainment an

    The Pocket Studios.

    Please contacwww.thepocketstudios.com for more information

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    RECORDING

    When it comes to recordingelectric guitars, there arereally no rules. However, inmy experience, there are a

    few misconceptions about the art of cap-turing a good sound. You absolutely mustbegin with a good sounding source andthis applies to miking anything. Onceyouve achieved getting the sound youwant out of the rig, then you can startthrowing up mics and trying differenttechniques. Most engineers have theirown systems built through experimenta-tion and experience but generally speak-ing, anything goes.

    Speaking with Steve Chahley, ChiefEngineer at DNA Recording Facility, somegood points were brought up. Agreeingthat every situation is different, moretimes than not, the guitarists live setupand sound doesnt apply when they getinto the studio, says Chahley. In a livesetup, gain, volume, and EQ settings aredialed in with a very different purpose inmind and that purpose is to make surethe guitar can be heard during the per-formance, which sometimes sacrificesthe tone. In addition, overdrive pedalsand such could be used live to get a bitof boost during certain parts of the song

    but in the studio, it is sometimes betterto drive the amp naturally from its nativecontrols, especially if its vintage.

    The MOST important thing to do, andif this is the only piece of advice thatyou take from this article then Ive donemy job, is to make sure that the guitarsthat youre tracking have been set up andtuned correctly. There is nothing worsethan discovering that the guitars andbass are slapping each other as a resultof poorly set up intonation and tuningwhen youve already tracked 12 songsthis way! Sometimes its obvious right

    from the start but sometimes its not. Thesituation becomes worse and worse asyou move along, especially when yourelayering guitars.

    Once youve set up and tuned, youcan now start listening to the amp. Getthe sound that youre after by adjustingthe amp while being in front of the cab,not behind it. Its common sense that themic(s) are placed where the sound comesout of, so put yourself in the place wherethe mic would generally be positionedand listen. Be careful not to blow youreardrums out! Start at a lower volumethen gradually increase it.

    Youre now ready to toss up a mic ortwo. Now this is the debatable part of the

    by Chris Tedesco

    Laying Down Electric Guitars

    piece! There is no right or wrong way ofmiking a guitar amp although there are afew things to watch out for, says Chah-ley. Speakers in general produce a SoundPressure Level (SPL) that you need to takeinto consideration when miking. This re-fers to the pressure caused by speakers

    moving air. You can distort the micro-phone easily by having the amp too loud,

    or by having the mic too close. If youreusing a condenser or especially a ribbonmic, you can actually destroy the diaphragm or ribbon at loud volumes. Placing the microphone perpendicular to thespeaker is probably the first thing to tryThe speakers face is made up of the capwhich is the smaller protruding circle inthe center, and the cone, which is thelarger circle surrounding it. Pointing themics diaphragm at the point where thecap meets the cone should give you thebest of both worlds sound. The moreyou move the mic towards the center othe speaker, the more hi and mid fre

    quencies will appear and oppositely, themore you move towards the outer ringthe more low end frequencies will appearIf youre using a two-mic set-up, then thesecond mic could be placed at a 45-degree angle and pointed more towards thecone, giving you some extra low end. Amix time, these two tracks can be blendedtogether to give you one sound. This isan example of a simple close mic guitacabinet setup. There are endless ways toplace microphones in different configurations to achieve a good sound. Settinga mic back a few feet from the cabineas opposed to a few inches will give you

    another colour at mix time.If youre using a combo amp with an

    open back, you have a few more optionsbecause you now have sound comingfrom the front of the amp, as well as theback. Applying the same technique asabove to the front, try adding a mic tothe rear to capture some lows and lowmids. Just remember, you need to flip thephase of the back mic because when thespeaker moves forward (pushes), thenthe front mic diaphragm moves inwardand the rear mic diaphragm moves outward. Without getting too technical, i

    you dont flip the phase, it will soundlike crap!Getting a good guitar sound depends

    on more than just mic technique. Wehave to take into consideration thingslike the actual mics youre using, the preamps, the compressors, the multi-trackand even the cables. You dont necessarily need a Neve pre to get a good guitasound, but it definitely helps. The keyis experimenting! Be creative with thesetup, keep mixing in mind, and tunethe damn guitars!

    DNA Studios is owned and run by Chris and DavTedesco and hosts Steve Chahley as Chief Enginee

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    RECORDING

    The bass line in a track is one of

    the things that make a listenermove and groove with the mu-sic. The way it swings with the

    kick and holds down the bottom end,both rhythmically and harmonically,forms the foundation that the track isbuilt on. As such, the recording of bassis not a simple afterthought. While itmay seem very simple to just plug inthe bass direct and go, there are severalconsiderations to keep in mind.

    First off, a great bass recording startswith a great player, a fine instrument,and the right part. There are ways to en-hance the sound and fix certain issues,but starting out with these elements isthe best way to ensure that you get goodresults.

    Use of a direct injection (DI) box isoften the first choice for many engineersand bassists, but beware, not all DIs arecreated equally. One high-quality DI isthe Avalon U5, which has a very solid,clean, and transparent sound. Manyhigh-end outboard tube preamps alsohave instrument inputs that allow gui-tars and basses to be plugged directlyin. Tube preamps can help to warm up,or add a bit of grit to, what might oth-

    erwise be a clean, yet sterile, recordedsignal.

    For many players, the crunch andgrowl that comes from their favouritebass amp is an essential component oftheir sound, so you will need to record theamp to get the dirt that you wouldnt beable to get from the direct signal alone.A large-diaphragm dynamic mic suchas the Sennheiser 421 is a good choiceof mic for this application. It can betterhandle the high sound levels being cre-ated by that fridge-sized, earth-shaking 8x 10 bass cabinet than a condenser mic,and will be able to capture more bass

    than, say, a Shure SM 57.A special case in recording is the

    upright acoustic bass. This monsterinstrument can create a lot of beautifullow end, but is vulnerable to leakagefrom nearby instruments. A commonway to mic the acoustic bass is toplace a large-diaphragm condenserdown near the bridge or the f hole.A small-diaphragm condenser canalso be placed near the neck to pickup the fine details like finger noiseand string snap, (as well as the occa-sional grunt or heavy breathing from

    your bass player!). An option to con-sider when leakage is a factor is towrap a small-diaphragm condenser in

    foam or bubble wrap and gently placeit where the bridge meets the body,facing up. That allows you to get themic nice and close. A lot of uprightbasses also have a pickup, which canbe blended with the mic(s) to help you

    get a clearer signal from the instru-ment with a minimum of bleed. Manybassists are reluctant to even use theDI when recording because the pickupdoesnt capture the same resonanceand warmth that can be heard acousti-cally. A little reassurance that you willonly be using the DI to augment themiked signal can help your player feelmore comfortable.

    By recording both the direct signaland the mic signals of the bass or bassamp, you can give yourself great flex-ibility when it comes time to mix. Bysending the direct sound to an amp and

    then re-recording it (a process known asre-amping), you can re-create or changethe bass amp tone. The direct sound canalso be processed with amp simulatorsor effects, radically altering the soundof the original instrument.

    Anytime that you are running mul-tiple signals of the same sound in paral-lel, such as the DI sound and the ampsound, its essential to check for phase.Because the signals arent taking ex-actly the same path, they get slightlymisaligned. The peaks and valleys ofthe sound wave that should be lined up

    become opposite to each other, and can-cel each other out. In this situation, thesignals are out of phase, and the bass

    may sound hollow, or all the bottom endmight suddenly disappear when the Dand amp signals are combined. By inverting the phase of one of the signalsyou can restore the sound. Most consolesand preamps have a phase switch to flip

    the phase. Often this switch is simplymarked as a 0 with a slash through itIf theres no phase switch handy, anyprofessional DAW software worth its salshould have an invert function to dothe same thing. Little Labs also makes avery effective unit called the IBP AnalogPhase Alignment Tool, which allows youto sweep the phase to make sure thayour signals are totally in phase.

    There are many other aspects to consider with regards to the bass such asEQ and compression. These choices wildepend a lot on the track and the styleof material. In general, when recording

    its a good idea to be conservative andnot commit yourself to anything thamight limit your flexibility further downthe line. In mixdown, you want to allowthe kick and bass to coexist by givingeach one its own frequency space. Jusremember that the tools you use and thedecisions you make should be chosenlike colours, to complement the parbecause, ultimately, the bass is servingthe song.

    The Bottom Endby Inaam Haq

    Inaam Haq is the senior engineer at Cherry Beach

    Sound, where he has been for 10 years. Inaam haworked with Rush, Headstones, and Not by Choice

    www.cherrybeachsound.com

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    RECORDING

    The very purpose of having multipletrack recordings is, essentially, tohave control of the sound of eachindividual track. However, with

    poor isolation/separation, there can po-tentially be a problem when recordinglive off the floor, which, in our experience,is becoming more and more popular, es-pecially among indie bands.

    Picture a room full of instruments, in-

    cluding drums, bass and guitar amps,and percussion, for example. Now, throwin 30 live mics in that same room, andyou will have an issue with isolation/separation. There is a small misconcep-tion about the two. Isolationis when youplace instruments in different rooms sothat each microphone is picking up onlythe sound coming from that particularinstrument and its ambiance, assum-ing that these rooms have a significantamount of sound proofing. Separationiswhen the instruments are all in the sameroom and are sectioned off to achievethe least amount of bleed into the otherinstruments mics. Unless you have astudio with five or more booths and aband thats cool with being in differentrooms, total isolation may be difficultto achieve.

    Even though isolation will allow forthe most control over each individualtrack, some groups need to play togetheras a band in order to get a good per-formance. In this instance, you need tohave good separation of each instrumentor youll have a nightmare at mix time.For example, when you are turning upthe guitar track, you may find that you

    are also turning up the snare drum be-cause it bled into the guitar amp mics. Ifyou add compression to the guitar tracklater on, the kick or snare might be loudenough to trigger the compressor or re-verb unit, making it difficult to control like using a PC.

    The best way to achieve separationis to use baffles, or gobos. Basically,gobos are moveable walls on wheelsor pads that can be positioned aroundthe sound source to separate it fromthe rest. Its like building a temporarywall in your live room. They are made

    up of an absorptive side (a few layersof dampening material such as insula-tion covered with a rated fabric), and areflective side (a more dense layer ofmaterial such as MDF wood, or particleboard), or a combination of either side.

    The gobos dont stop the sound com-pletely, but they dramatically reduce it.Imagine sitting in front of a speaker atmid volume. By placing your hand be-tween the speaker and yourself (palmfacing the speaker) you could block thedirect sound. Although you can still hearthe sound, it has to move around yourhand (gobo) to get to your ears this iswhat makes it indirect.

    To properly execute good separationyou need to use some common sense.

    Have a game plan in mind when placingyour instruments around the room. Tostate the obvious, dont point the guitacab at the kick drum or the bass ampSet up the gobos strategically according to priority, depending on how manyare available to you. Cover the drumkifirst, and point the amps away from eachother and from the kit. If you have touse one gobo as the wall between two

    instruments, rather than sectioning ofthe bass cab while leaving the guitarcab blaring into the openness. Anothething to consider would be drum overhead mics. I suggest keeping them alittle tighter to the kit than usual, or theymay become unusable. If youre havingtroubles with the kick drum, try covering it completely mic and everything with a moving blanket or a sleepingbag. You get a tighter sound, but youeliminate most of the leakage allowingyou to gate the kick much easier later.

    On the live floor, you must maintainenough volume from all of the instruments so that the musicians can stilhear each other reasonably well, oryouve defeated the purpose. So, turningdown the volume of the amps wont helpA great way to check if you have goodseparation is to record a small section oa song using your set-up then listeningback. What you should be listening fois the volume increase in, for examplethe snare drum when the guitar is noplaying. If the snare drum gets dramatically louder, there is too much leakage inthe guitar mic. You can apply this test todifferent combinations of tracks.

    Even desperate attempts to isolateseparate instruments, like hanging blankets or constructing temporary roomsmade of plywood, are better than nothing at all. I cant stress the importance ohaving control of your instruments oncethey have all been recorded. Just likeanything, experimentation and commonsense are key to achieving a good recording. If you cant afford to buy gobosthen do what I did, just make them. Theymay not look pretty, but unlike recordcompanies, sound is more importanthan presentation.

    Theres No DNA In This BleedThe Hell Of Isolation/Separation

    by Chris Tedesco

    DNA Recording Facility is owned and operated by Chris and Dave Tedesco and hosts Steve Chahley as Chief Engineer, assisted by T.J. BoothContact: www.dnafacilities.com

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    RECORDING

    This is one of those thingsthat you must always beconscious about during ses-sions, much like listening

    for instrument tuning, which just sohappens to carry some of the sameprincipals.

    Its safe to say that audio signalsare made up of two basic principals:time (frequency) and volume (ampli-tude). These factors make up a sinwave (sinusoidal wave) when dis-played on a graph. This is where theterm sound wave comes from. Thesin wave moves in both the positiveand negative direction. The heightof the wave represents the ampli-tude, and the length of the waverepresents the frequency. Frequencyis measured in Hertz (Hz), which isjust a fancy way of saying cyclesper second. One cycle is whenthe wave travels from zero to itsamplitude in the positive direction,then to its amplitude in the nega-tive direction, and then back up tozero (Fig 1.1).The amount of cyclesthat happen in one second gives you

    the frequency. For example, twentycycles in one second is 20 Hz and20 thousand cycles per second is20 kHz, which is also the averageaudible range for humans. We listento audio in its analog form becauseour ears work like mics. A speakerpushes out in the positive directionof the wave, and pulls back in thenegative direction of the wave. Ourears react in the opposite directionso on a speakers push, our ear-drums pull, and vice versa liketalking into a mic.

    Why am I telling you about sound

    waves?Its because phase, in essence, isthe direct comparison of soundwaves being played overtop of eachother. Lets use a portion of a 20 Hzwave as an example. If we zoom inon one cycle, we see that it beginsat zero, and travels to the positive(push) amplitude, and then to thenegative (pull) and back to zero. Ifwe put the exact same 20 Hz fre-quency overtop of it that has the

    same amplitude, we end up addingthe two waves amplitudes togetherto make a theoretically louder 20 Hz.

    If we reverse the phase on one ofthem, we get a figure eight typeof sin wave (Fig 1.2). All weve doneis started the wave from zero to itsnegative amplitude first, and thento its positive amplitude and backdown to zero. Its a mirror imagesplit horizontally. The result is a com-plete theoretical cancellation of bothwaves, which means no sound! Thiscomparison can also be made usingtwo waves with different amplitudesor frequencies. Their sum, however,follows some pretty complex physicsand mathematics. The result is analtered wave in both frequency andamplitude.How does this affect us in the realworld? Imagine a vocalist thatwants to record in the control roomusing the studio monitors to listeninstead of headphones. We can ap-ply the cancellation theory in thiscase. First we must set up a mic andspeaker on the points of an equi-lateral triangle (Fig1.3). The heightof the mic must be at the height ofthe centreline of the speakers as

    well. We have to switch the controlroom mix to mono, which meansthat both speakers are emitting theexact same wave. If we reverse thepositive and negative wires on oneof the speakers, we have just flippedthe phase of that speaker. In theory,at the point where the wave fromthe left speaker meets the rightspeaker (exactly where you placedthe mic), the sound will cancel out,leaving you with a vocal track thatamazingly has only vocal on it. Be-cause the vocalists ears are furtherback from the crossing point of the

    two waves, they can still hear thetrack while they are singing, it justsounds out of phase. Listening tosomething out of phase is causingone of your eardrums to push andthe other to pull, making it seemunbalanced and unpleasant, but itgets the job done! If you are goingto attempt this trick, make sure youdouble check that you have set itup properly triple-checking yourmeasurements, and starting off at avery low volume. If you do screw itup, you will probably get the worst

    feedback loop ever, which couldblow up both your eardrums andyour speakers, so be careful!

    Understanding Phaseby Chris Tedesco

    DNA RecordingFacilities is owned andrun by Chris and Dave

    Tedesco and hostsSteve Chahley

    as Chief Engineer.

    Fig 1.2

    Fig 1.1

    Fig 1.3

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    RECORDING

    Good quality recording hasnt become that muchcheaper over the years. Because of this, homerecording has become more popular. With a tinyinvestment, you can get some decent-sounding

    recordings right on your computer. When artists want to usea large studio to make records, then budget becomes a veryreal issue.

    The goal is to get the best-sounding recording possiblewith your budget. Sometimes, sacrificing a bit of sonics forperformance will get your further. Paying a good producer tohelp you with the music will benefit you more than paying a

    good mix engineer tomix the project. For alower budget, record-ing certain aspects athome will give youmore time to get theperformances rightrather than sweatingthe clock at a largerstudio.

    What will you beusing the recordingfor? To shop aroundto labels, to sell atlive performances

    and pass around, orboth? Figure out howmany songs you wantto record based on theintended purpose,budget, and the cali-bre of your set.

    Choosing Your RouteIf you want to shop the songs to labels or private investors,there are no set rules. Major labels today dont want to spendany money in the development of artists, so a full albumshould be a good idea. What happens if they ask you formore material? Shopping an EP should also do the trick, butdo they want to release six songs instead of 12 when thecost of reproduction is the same, for example? With regardsto private investors, they want to hear good songs, whichincludes sonics.

    Record your strongest songs and abandon the idea of fill-ing up an album with just that fillers! If youre selling themor giving them away at shows, a good quality demo could beright for you. Most people wouldnt buy a CD with less thanfive songs on it. And were back at square one! However, youcan record three songs with a lot better quality and perfor-mances in the same time you allocated to record five or six.

    Recording On A Tight Budgetby Chris Tedesco

    Budgeting Your ProjectThere are ways to get a good recording with a lower budget.Doing it all at home is not the answer unless you have next tono money. Even though home recording has come a long way,a well-built and well-equipped studio with a great engineerhas yet to be surpassed. By the time you rent equipment andlearn how to use it effectively, you may have wasted moneythat could have been put towards a larger studio. In homerecording, you still have to deal with rooms that are not acous-tically tuned, isolation issues, and terrible live floors.

    One way to do it is to budget for two days at a larger studio.

    On the first day, you could track all of your drum parts andwhatever else that you can fit in, like bass guitar or some gui-tar overdubs. Then, spend as much time as youd like at hometracking the rest of the instruments and the vocals and getthe performances right. When youre ready, use the secondday at the studio to mix. The studio should end up costingyou between $1,800 and $2,000, which will end up soundinga lot better than spending that much money on rentals.

    The other way is to track live off the floor in a larger studio.Take one day of studio time to set up, record, and mix. Thiswill end up costing you about $1,000, but you will be able toget more songs out of it. Also, this frees up cash if you needto rent instruments or to use towards artwork and duplica-tion. The following chart could be used to set a budget foryour project.

    Choosing A StudioFind a studio with great equipment, an excellent engineer,nice rooms, and, of course, a good vibe. Also, you should lookfor a studio that is willing to help your cause a place wherethey dont mind going that extra mile for you to try and getyour project on the road. There still are a few studios thatsupport artists with smaller budgets, and if the owners areinterested, spec deals are also an option.

    At DNA we try to encourage independent artists to inquireabout studio time even though they have a tight budget. Ifonly the rich could afford to record music, there is a ma-jor problem. We would like to see more independent bandsmaking good-sounding records, and if we can help all thebetter.

    DNA Studios is owned and run by Chris and Dave Tedesco and hosts Steve Chahley as Chief Engineer. Contact: www.dnafacilities.com.

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    Recording The Ultimate Vocal PerformancePart II

    John Beetle Bailey owns and operates The Drive

    Shed Recording Studios (formerly Arnyard Studios)

    in Toronto. He won the Recording Engineer Of The

    Year Juno award in 2007 for The Sisters Of Mercy

    performed by Serena Ryder, and Rain performed

    by Molly Johnson, and was nominated in 2008 for

    Something In The Air Between Us performed by

    Sophie Milman, and Im On Fire performed by Harry

    Manx and Kevin Breit. He can be contacted at 416-744-

    7468 and at [email protected], or on the web

    at www.johnbeetlebailey.com.

    Theres No Replacement For MicTechnique. Although I wouldhighly recommend having a lyricsheet in front of you, with all the

    loud and quiet bits marked so you canride the gain while tracking, the truth isthis: a singer with great technique, whoknows to pull back (or to the side) whilesinging high and loud, and get reallyclose when singing soft or low, gets the

    credit for a great vocal recording (not theengineer). When you work with a realpro, you quickly realize that you couldhave put up a tennis shoe, and theywould have sounded amazing. The sig-nal path you choose is merely a changeof character in the recording.

    Check The Polarity. It wont sound at alldifferent to you, but itll make all the dif-ference to the singer. Since we hear ourvoices largely through bone conductioninside our heads, if the signal arrivingin the headphones is opposite to whatsarriving at the ear via bone conduction,

    the singers voice will feel thin anddistant in the headphones. Have themsing a bit and give them a thumbs up

    /thumbs down signal while you toggle it,and youll be surprised. There will almostassuredly be a clear preference.

    The Dreaded Headphone Mix. If youredoing an overdub (as opposed to track-ing with the band), then the best possi-ble thing you can do is learn to live withwhatever the singer needs, give themyour mix, and deal with it. Youll probablyhave to monitor the vocal much louder

    than you normally would, but you shouldreally be hearing the same thing at alltimes, especially if youre stacking a lotof background vocal parts. Have a few dif-ferent kinds of headphones around so thesinger can choose a pair that feels com-fortable, and sounds acceptable to him orher. Although closed-back headphonesare great for isolation purposes, they willlikely feel a bit odd for singers. Open-backed headphones, where singers canhear a bit of themselves in the room arepreferable, and many singers will trackwith one ear off. Because the human earis designed to shut down when youre

    yelling or singing loud, compression can

    sometimes work against the singers, andit feels like their voices disappear in theheadphones when they sing loud. If theyfind it irritating, try to forego the compres-sion for later.

    Get A Decent Headphone Amplifier.Youve spent thousands on mics, butthe headphone amp is the $50 special.It probably sounds like crap when you

    drive it hard enough for a drummer,and when the vocal is loud enough fora singer, its probably crapping out thenas well. Spring for a better quality head-phone amp your life will be easier inthe long run, and singers will hate youless. Youll probably do better with low-impedance headphones (in the 50-75ohm area). You should probably avoid600-ohm headphones unless you havean amp that can deliver a lot of volt-age gain without clipping. Simply put,you can have about 14 pairs of 55-ohmheadphones sitting on a power amp,and still only load it down to 4 ohms.

    No Excuses About Latency. Realize thatif youre using any sort of native-basedsystem and your audio hardware haseven a tiny bit of round-trip latency, itwill be really hard for a singer to feelcomfortable with headphones, and com-pletely negates the point about checkingpolarity. If you dont have the courageand the fortitude to learn the intricaciesof the DSP mixer on your native-basedsystem, then pony up the cash and buythe real thing: a hardware-based DSPsystem that has latency measured in

    samples (not milliseconds).

    Compiling The Perfect Performance.Keep everything (even if the producertells you to trash it). If you blow awayyour warm-up pass, or any incompletetakes, youll probably regret it later. Evenif you only use one word from a take, itsenough justification for keeping it (harddrives are cheap!). Once you start siftingthrough all the takes youve collected,try to edit the performance together tomake it sound as though it was recordedin one pass. It doesnt matter if theresthree cuts or three thousand theres

    no excuse for edits that havent been

    cross-faded, leaving clicks and pops allover the place. Unless the song is go-ing to change platforms to a differentworkstation, try to avoid consolidatingor merging the audio. If youre not mix-ing the song, the next person to get thiswill be furious with your editing, and willprobably have to spend a lot of time cor-

    recting all the impossible waveforms. Ifyoure going to do any tuning, alwaysmake a copy of your vocal edits, so thatthe un-tuned version always exists. Iguarantee you that if a record label isreally excited about your production,they probably have somebody who isway better at cosmetic vocal surgerythan you are!

    Recording the perfect vocal is not anaccident. You cant control how well thevocalist is going to do on that particularday, but theres a lot you can control. Ev-

    erything has to go just right, but if youreprepared and you know what to expect,youll have captured that singers bestwork, and itll sound great as well!

    by John Beetle Bailey

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    RECORDING

    The best engineers I know, and Iknow quite a few, are never com-pletely happy with any of theirwork. They are always striving to

    improve. If you find yourself in the samesituation, youre not alone! Im hopingin writing this column I can share a fewcool engineering tricks Ive picked upthat will help you get the sounds yourelooking for, manage situations you didntanticipate, and hopefully make your re-cording life a little easier.

    I once asked producer Steve Berlinof the legendary group Los Lobos (whoproduced the Tragically Hips PhantomPowerand a zillion other things) if he hadany advice for aspiring young engineers.In every session, he said, theres al-ways a point where nobody knows whatto do next, and everyone is looking atyou. Youd better have an answer. Thebest advice I have is to actively work, Imean work hard, at finding your ownidentity as a producer. Figure out whatyou like I like an SM57 through Nevepreamps and 1176s on guitars what-

    ever it is. Find strategies that you knowyou can fall back on that always workfor you in almost any situation. This willchange as you learn more, but you needa starting point, and it takes a lot of con-scious effort to figure out.

    It requires experimenting and will-ingness to mess things up. I look ev-erywhere for ideas, and I dont countanything out, even if on the surface itdoesnt seem to make any sense. I re-member the first time I did a sessionwith a live band together in a huge room.I wanted separation, so I put the drumsover here, the sax way over there, and

    the electric guitar, cause it was loud-est, way, way over there. Well, guesswhat? You cant just make an electricguitar go away by moving it a few feet.The delay time between the close guitarmic and the spill into everything elsemakes this lovely, loose, echoey sound great if thats what youre looking for,but I wasnt exactly trying to make a DickDale record.

    The modern approach to solving this

    problem is simple: move acoustic in-struments into entirely different rooms,build doghouses around the amps withbaffles, or just DI everyone and overdubthings later. Unfortunately, this leavesthe recording with little sense of space oratmosphere an attribute of many greatrecords, which thankfully engineers arelearning to love again! Besides, the gui-tar tones in those doghouses are prettydarn woofy (go figure).

    Ive discovered you cant really dis-

    count what engineers were doing in the40s, 50s or 60s when they were invent-ing this stuff. They probably didnt knowwhat they were doing half the time but what they did know, Id argue betterthan we do, are a lot of technical basics.They knew mics. They didnt have muchoutboard, after all. They knew how touse mic patterns and placement to tai-lor the EQ of a sound and reject nastyleakage. They used the range of a mic,or how well it picks up when youre notright next to it, to mix leakage favour-ably. They understood acoustic baffling.

    They could successfully place and mixinstruments right there on the studiofloor.

    You can pick up a lot of great tricksfrom looking at old photos and videosas well as from your peers. Heres oneof my favourites: in a lot of rooms, youcan get the least leakage and the mostrejection by putting instruments closerto each other! How can that be? Isnt thatbackwards?

    For example, lets start with the bassamp. Stick it right next to the drums.Yep. Bass is largely omnidirectional, butspeakers are figure 8, with the sound

    coming from the front and the back. Soaim the relatively dead side of the bassamp towards the kit, and put a singlebaffle in the way to manage whats left.Itll give the sound coming out of theamp someplace to go forward, awayfrom the kit. A doghouse kind of makesthis big resonating boom that splasheseverywhere. Aim the amp towards asoft wall some distance away and youwont get too many reflections coming

    back into the kit, and the tone of theamp opens right up. Ive been able toeasily replace tracks later using this approach.

    Leakage isnt problematic, and theleakage you do get isnt terribly delayedso your rhythm section sounds tighterYou can do the same kind of thing withguitar amps, and Ive found it works evenin smaller spaces with minimal bafflingHeck, sometimes, the drummers headphone bleed is worse!

    Youll know youve gotten it righ

    when you solo the drum tracks and thinkyouve worked magic!

    Leakageby Robert Breen

    Robert Breen is a studio owner, past Chair othe Audio Engineering Society Toronto Section

    instructor at The Ontario Institute of AudiRecording Technology (www.oiart.ca), and owneof www.canadianaudiodistributors.com, exclusiv

    Canadian importer of Peluso microphones. Hpr ev ious ly wo rked as an engi ne er an d st ud io

    manager at Ocean Studios in Burbank, CA

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    RECORDING

    Find A Great Drummer

    The drummer is the single mostimportant part of the entire pro-

    cess. There is no mic, no kit, noroom, nor processor that can fix

    bad drumming. Drums are an acousticinstrument, and in relationship to rock,pop, and most mainstream music, they areconsidered just that a single instrument.If they dont sound balanced and pleasingwhen you hear them in the room with thedrummer, chances are they wont soundany better in the final mix.

    Tuning, SchmooningHead selection and tuning seem to be themost overlooked, understudied, and mis-

    understood skills in the entire recordingprocess. I could write an entire article onthis alone. Drummers all seem to have thesame answers about this: Well, I kindajust put my heads on and turn the thin-gies till they dont buzz and stuff. Couldyou imagine if a guitar player came in thestudio with absolutely no idea how to tunehis instrument? It seems ridiculous to me,too. Bottom line learn to tune drums.

    Use Your HeadsAlways start a recording with new drumheads! Which ones?

    Put simply, the thinner and more basic

    the drum head, the longer the resonance,the more overtones you'll hear, and themore natural the sound. Thinner headswithout damping devices in their designare easier to tune. Heavier and more com-plex heads dry up the sound, which can bea very desirable effect depending on thesound you are after. Coated heads havemore crack in the attack and a smootherdecay while clear heads give a clean ar-ticulate attack, lots of resonance, and big-ger low end response, especially on toms.Learning to mix these attributes with goodtuning and drum choices can make very

    powerful sonic differences. A note to thedrumming world: Your bottom heads dowear out. Really!

    The SnareSnare drums go a long way to definingthe sound and vibe of a recording. This isone of my starting points when comingup with the overall sonic picture of a proj-ect. There are a million and one options;learn what they all sound like: steel, wood,brass, copper, size (12", 13", 14", 15"), depth(1 " all the way to 16"), cast rims, woodrims, plus hundreds of top head and bot-tom head choices. Learn how to mix and

    Recording Drumsby Murray Daigle

    Murray Daigle is an 18-year veteran of the Canadian ainternational music scenes with a reputation spanning t

    globe for his work as a producer and sometimes artiMurray also owns and operates MDS Recordin

    one of Canadas premier recording facilitie

    match to get the desired tone and attitudeyou want.

    Ease The StrainMy HUGE pet peeve is the strainer orsnares. YES, these definitely wear out andmuch faster than you think. Also, drum-mers seem to have some compulsionto tighten them until they almost com-pletely stop buzzing and totally dampenand detune the bottom head. DONT! Itssupposed to buzz. If you want less, usea smaller strainer. Remember, once youstretch it out, thats it. If you are getting astrange or uneven buzz, its probably be-cause your strainer is over-stretched and

    ruined or your snare is tuned poorly. Whenyou put a new one on, stretch it out slowly just enough to make it buzz evenly.

    Mic Em UpMic position is something that is tough toget your head around. It seems that thecloser you put the mic to the drum, themore isolation you should get. This isntnecessarily true, due to the laws of physicsand the way sound travels, and isolationisnt really the goal. Getting extremelyclose to drums with mics usually doesntresult in a very big or natural sound.

    I will mic a kick drum anywhere from 3"

    off of the beater head inside the drum, tojust outside the resonant (outside) head.Sometimes, I add a second mic up to 3ft. away if I want more outside tone. Goin the control room and use your ears tomake the decision.

    For the snare, place the mic on a15-degree angle (almost horizontally)pointed toward the centre of the skinabout an inch in from the rim. In thiscase, getting the mic a little closer cangive you some proximity effect (or lowend boost), but still experiment and dontbe afraid to get two or three inches awayfrom the drum.

    With toms, I am usually between twand six inches away from the top hea

    Drummers who keep their toms closer toflat position (most good drummers do) wmake your life a lot easier. This generalproduces much better tone for two resons: the stick has room at the drummerfully-extended arm position to hit the drunear the centre, with a lot of power; it alslets you get the mic angled facing straigat the centre of the top head, which is thmain sound source.

    For overhead mics, I generally use streo pairs: always two of the same micsprefer large-diaphragm condensers, bmost engineers favour small diaphragmI have had incredible success with botThere are, however, a lot more reasonablpriced high-quality small diaphragms othe market these days. So, if budget is aissue, I would go that route. Experimewith position until you like what you heaI normally like to start about 48 over thtop of the snare drum, using it as the cetre point for my stereo image.

    Now with a close or spot mic on eery drum and stereo overheads, you apretty much ready to go. Most engineeand producers add room or ambienmics as well. I have mixed sessions witas many as six or eight of these in di

    ferent positions, capturing different nances of the room. If you are new at thiI suggest starting with one. Place it as faway from the kit as you can get it at abowaist height. Keep it a foot away from anwall. One common trick with this mic to compress the crap out of it during mdown. Then add it to the mix sparinguntil it gives you the amount of attitudyou are looking for.

    If you have a rack full of Neves or Fcusrite Reds, use them on everythinIf not, use the best quality preamps ycan get your hands on for the kick, snarand overheads dont sweat the toms an

    room mics as much.Check each line at the preamp stag

    and make sure nothing is clicking or ditorting. Get good solid levels going inyour recorder or computer, but leave abo4dB of head room. I promise, the drummwill play louder when the music starts.also leaves a little room for the occasiontransient or peak that pops up.

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    RECORDING

    The TruthIt has been said many times that studiomonitors are the most important pieces

    of gear that an engineer owns. I agree.In fact, there are only two pieces of gearthat have significantly changed my hab-its and improved the quality of my workovernight. The first was the computer-based DAW finally leaving tape behindfor good. I dont pine over memories ofthe good old days trust me, its WAYbetter now. The second was my pair ofGenelec monitors.

    I was actually roped into buying themby a very clever sales rep. My studio wasin a serious growth spurt, and I was look-ing at buying a lot of new gear in theinterest of upgrading to increase myclientele and rates. He lent me a fewpieces of gear to try, but insisted I takethe Genelecs. At the time, I wasnt un-happy with the cheap monitors I wasusing and I didnt see monitors as some-thing clients would notice or be willingto pay a higher hourly rate for.

    Out of nothing other then curios-ity and a slight case of gear-slut-itis, Iplugged the monitors in and put on aCD: Michael Jacksons Dangerous. I lit-erally thought I could reach in betweenthe speakers and touch his voice. I knewit was a good-sounding CD, but I had

    never heard it like that.Next, I put on one of my mixes. Ev-erything sounded wrong. Elements Ithought loud were muddy and buried.The mid frequencies were harsh anddisconnected, and there were a lot oflow end bumps and noise jumping out.My first thought was, Wow, these ex-pensive monitors suck. But being apretty open-minded guy, I decided totry a remix trusting the Genelecs. I wassure the mix would sound terrible whenI took it out of the studio. I could tellbecause all the settings on my consolewere wrong. Every time I EQed a track

    heavily or added a lot of compression, Icould hear all this distortion in the topend. I also had to be very careful dial-ing in mid frequencies, as the speakersonly seem to like things seated in certainpositions. I also had to make careful fil-tering choices to pull the bumps, mud,and wooliness out of the low mids andbottom. Nothing on my console lookedright, but somehow the mix seemed toglue together better; there was moredepth and the clarity was incredible.I burned a CD and headed for my car

    to listen, then to my home stereo, thenthe cheap boombox at my girlfriendsplace, then to the bank, and then to meet

    the sales rep and pay him for my newmonitors.

    The fact is that good monitors tell thetruth. They allow you to make the rightdecisions. Without them you are flyingblind.

    Lesson learned: buy the best moni-tors you can possibly afford!

    Shop smart avoid the hype and buyquality. There are a lot of great monitorsout on the market today. Go with pow-ered monitors. There are a lot of tech-nical reasons for this, but for the mostpart, they are always better. Look forthe most even frequency response and

    low distortion. Any other quality comesdown to taste.Here are some helpful guidelines to

    help you get the most from your reallycool new speakers.

    SymmetryBest case is a completely symmetricalroom. Then placement of the monitorsthat is symmetrical in relation to theroom boundaries, both horizontally andvertically. If your right monitor is 6 ft.from the right wall, then the left speakershould be 6 ft. from the left wall. Pay at-tention to the ceiling as well, and take

    note of any irregularities in the verticalplane.

    LocationIdeally, no speaker should ever be lo-cated within 4 ft. of any untreated wall.Generally, this increases the low-endresponses and results in an overly boomsound. But how realistic is that in yourproject studio? Do your best. If you haveto have them up against a wall, get someacoustic treatment behind them that willabsorb some low frequencies.

    The TriangleThis part is absolutely essential. Position your monitors so that they make

    an equilateral triangle with your mixposition. The distance between the twomonitors should be 1.25 - 1.4 times thedistance from you. The speakers shouldbe angled in toward you slightly between 15-30 degrees is usually abouright. Even with small nearfields, youwant to be at least a metre away.

    HeightThe height of the speaker is often overlooked. You should always check themanufacturers recommendation forthis because it can vary significantlyIf you lost your manual or there is noinfo available, start by getting the midway point between the woofer and thetweeter on the speaker at about ear level. Try some mixes and see how theyare translating.

    ObstructionI know this may seem obvious, but makesure there is nothing blocking the pathbetween you and your speakers. Ideallyyou dont want anything even close thacan cause uneven reflections. When edit at home on my laptop, the screengets in the way because my monitors

    are far back on my desk. When I flipthe screen down, there is a significandifference in the sound. Fortunately, dont ever mix at home.

    Take A StandIf at all possible, buy professional, studio-calibre speaker stands or at leassome kind of acoustic isolation producso that your monitors dont sit directlyon your desk or consoles meter bridgeThe vibration through the surface, deskor console causes very undesirableresults.

    Read The ManualThis is just good overall advice whenbuying new gear. New monitors are verysophisticated in their design and manyhave electronic and acoustic modelingcomponents that need proper set-upto work properly. Also, keep in mindthat manufacturers are always striving to bring cutting-edge technology tothe marketplace, which can graduallychange or even be contrary to acceptedstandard practices.

    Monitors & Placementby Murray Daigle

    Murray Daigle is an 18-year veteran of the Canadian and international music scenes with a reputation spanning the globe for his workas a producer and sometimes artist. Murray also owns and operates MDS Recording, one of Canadas premier recording facilit ies

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    Why do you need to master

    your album? Doesnt itsound good the way it is?There is a simple answer

    to that. No, it doesnt. Chances are youralbum needs mastering and not by theperson who produced, mixed, or re-corded it. It needs to be mastered by areal, dedicated, experienced masteringengineer. Look at almost any album youown. Its probably been mastered by afull-time mastering engineer. Almost100 per cent of the top 100 albums (cur-rent and all-time) have been profession-ally mastered. Is your album recorded

    so much better than those?Mastering is one the most misun-derstood parts of the audio produc-tion process. Its importance is oftenoverlooked, and mastering becomesan afterthought. In reality, masteringis extremely important. So why is itthe one stage that some people seemwilling to compromise? Youve spentso much time and effort writing, re-cording, and mixing your music. Whywould you sacrifice all of that work tosub-par or no mastering?

    Mastering is more than just makingit louder. Its a third party, an objective

    ear. A mastering engineer is someonewho knows how to make your collectionof songs a record. Its not just about ad-justing the way your music sounds, butalso the way it feels. Only in a properlytuned room, with the right gear, can amastering engineer ensure that yourmusic has the right feel. There is ameta-physical aspect to mastering: youstart with an intention with your musicand during the production, recording,and mixing process that intention canget further and further away. Masteringcan help push your album back towardsthat intention.

    Mastering rooms are much moreaccurate listening rooms than most re-cording or mixing rooms. The acousticdesign of the room is one of the mostimportant parts of mastering a goodmastering room sounds better thananywhere else, yet translates to anysystem. If it sounds good in the master-ing room, it should sound good almostanywhere. Only a room specifically andprofessionally designed for masteringcan sound like this.

    Recording is taking the instrumentsand vocals and putting them on indi-

    vidual tracks, and mixing is taking the

    individual tracks and putting them downto left and right stereo tracks. Masteringis taking the stereo tracks and puttingthem together to make an album. Its thepolish on the gemstone, the finish on thedeck but it also can be the nail in thecoffin. Bad mastering is worse than notmastering at all.

    The loudness of your music is a veryimportant part of the mastering process.In fact, adding gain to the audio will af-fect the way it sounds and feels morethan any other processing. Sometimes,a mastering engineer will use EQ just

    to adjust the sound back to the way itsounded before it was made louder. Thereason for this is the Fletcher-Munsoncurve the way your brain hears themusic at different volume levels. Thisis not only applied to speaker volume,but also to the gain applied to the mas-tered audio. When you change the dy-namic relationship of the music, youalso change the tonal structure of theaudio.

    Any audio engineer can make analbum loud. Its about how you getloudness. Gain staging, compression,peak limiting, and converter clipping all

    add to loudness and sound different. Agood mastering engineer will know thebest combination to use (or not to use).Sometimes doing almost nothing is thebest thing for the project.

    Look at these two example waveforms:

    They are sourced from the samesong, but would you believe they both

    sound as loud as each other? Wave-form A has more dynamics, more air,and more space, and would sound bet-ter on the radio, your iPod, and on yourstereo. Waveform A makes you feel bet-ter when you listen to it. Waveform Ahas been properly mastered using anexpensive, high-quality analog/digitalhybrid mastering chain and an experi-

    enced mastering engineer. Waveform Bis hyper-compressed. When you listen,it gives you ear fatigue and makes youfeel uneasy. Waveform B has been mas-tered unprofessionally using all plug-ins not to say plug-in mastering is allbad. There are some great masteringplug-ins; however, if plug-ins are thestudios only choice for mastering, youmay want to question how dedicatedthe facility is to mastering. Does theengineer do mixing one day and mas-tering the other? A dedicated, experi-enced mastering engineer will bring aspecialized set of skills to the masteringprocess.

    Why should you master you album?You should master your album becauseyou care about it, and because you putyour heart and soul into it. A masteringengineer has dedicated audio skills, aproper room, and very expensive gearjust to ensure that no harm comes to theintegrity of your recording. Your musicis worth mastering and needs it.

    Why Should You Master? by Noah Mintz

    Noah Mintz is a Mastering Engineer at LacquerChannel Mastering and the creator of

    enhancedMP3.com technology.

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    RECORDING

    1Try to start with a faders-up mix. Justpush the faders up dont worry aboutEQ and pans. Just push the faders upand get familiar with the track. Dontjust dig into the mix. I like to really getcomfortable with what Im listening toand then start to think about the endgame, and where things should be.

    2 I think some engineers changefrom song to song, but what I like to

    do is start with a really cool kick drumsound. Once I do the faders-up mix,I clear the board, and then I pull mykick drum tracks up. Im a little insanewhen it comes to recording kick drums Ill use four mics sometimes andsome drum samples as well, and thenwell blend them all. Ill compress, EQ,and get a really good kick drum soundbecause, to me, thats the whole foun-dation of the mix.

    3Add the rest of the instruments with

    effects. Once Im done my kick drum, Iadd the snare and the rest of the drum-kit. I then use effects whether itsreverbs, compression, or EQ. I thenbuild my bass and my guitars, and thenI add vocals.

    Im always thinking about the vo-cals, and oftentimes Ill have the faderup, but have it muted. Ill mute and un-mute the vocal just to see how thingsare going with the vocal, and really tryto get everything to gel together.

    4Stereo bus compression. To me, itssuch an important part of the mix. Imfortunate that we have an SSL consoleat Rattlebox Studios that allows me tohave a kick-ass stereo bus compressor.That is the reason we got the SSL. Thathas actually changed my life its thatone component of the board that justglues everything together for you reallynicely. Im not talking about a lot of com-pression; just maybe pulling it 2dB andit just really glues everything togetherand makes things sound tight.

    5Think about ways to add excitementto your mix, and move away from linear-sounding mixes and get it to be dynam-ic. Sometimes it takes me a while to getthere. Ill start mixing, and obviouslyits going to be linear youre getting aglobal sound for everything. Then youhave to think about carving things upand making the verses different fromthe pre-chorus, which is different than

    the chorus. Bob Ezrin always called itcolour changes. Think about the mix interms of colours, and all your differentcomponents need to change.

    Its all about getting that excitementout. When bands write songs, theyreusually pretty dynamic and exciting.The verse is more tamed-down thanthe chorus, and its easy to mix thosedynamics out. If youre not careful, itends up really being linear a vocalwith some stuff underneath it, when itshould really move and change. If youthink about it as a puzzle thats beingput together, you dont have to be afraid

    to mix the guitars a little too loud be-cause when it goes to mastering itsgoing to get tucked anyways. For me,its really about getting that excitement.For example, when I was mixing the ACollision record, I mixed a lot electronicelements with aggressive rock, almostin a Nine Inch Nails or A Perfect Circlesort of vein maybe a little poppier.Theres this one song called Clay onthe record that was a really difficultsong to track. It had lots of big guitars,and I was finding just that the versewas sounding almost bigger than the

    chorus, which is a big problem.I re-thought the whole thing. I re-corded it and produced it, but maybeI wasnt thinking about my end gamewhen I shouldve been. What I endedup doing on the second day of the mixwas to come back and say, We reallyneed to change this. We just needed totake things out of the verse and screwit up a little, and EQ things differentlyin the verse than in the chorus. Just be-cause youve tracked it doesnt meanyou have to leave it in your mix takestuff out. I took some guitars out, I fil-

    tered them a lot, and when the chorushit we thought, Whoa, where did thatcome from? I treated it like they weretwo separate songs. The verse was likean electronic song, and the chorus wasa big rock song. It really worked thebandmembers thought, Wow, this iskiller! What did you do here? It was anexciting thing.

    Brian Moncarz began honing his organic productionstyle 10 years ago in various Toronto area studios.

    A musician himself, Moncarzs list of credits include,The Junction (Universal Music), Kyle Riabko (Aware/Columbia), Silverstein (Victory Records), Pilot Speed

    (formerly Pilate, Maple Music), Rise Electric (featuringLukas Rossi, EMI Publishing), Machete Avenue

    (Underground Operations/Universal), and Moneen(Dine Alone) see the feature this issue plus

    engineering gigs with Bob Ezrin and David Bottrill(Tool, Silverchair, Peter Gabriel ). Brian and

    David Bottrill have opened Rattlebox Studiosin Toronto as a joint venture. Check out

    www.myspace.com/rattleboxstudios.

    10 Tips For A Great Mix Part I

    by Brian Moncarz

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    by Brian Moncarz

    RECORDING

    6 Six is something that Bob Ezrin told me and its something Itotally live by: dont be polite. He would always tell me, Yourebeing too polite. Dig in with that EQ. Dont be afraid to boost4 kHz by 8dB if thats what you need to do. It took me awhile

    to get that. I was always like, Im doing too much, but really,if its whats needed and it sounds good, do it.

    As long as you trust your ears and have confidence in whatyoure doing, its going to be great. It takes a while; it takestime, but if you can master that and live by those words, itstrue. Dont shy away from adding that bottom end if its whatsnecessary. Thats a big one. Once I understood that it changedthings for me.

    7Use delays, reverbs, and compression to create depth inyour mix. Thats something I learned from Dave Bottrill. Hesa master of adding the 3D elements to music just by addingreverbs. Hes the master of reverbs. Thats a huge thing I tookaway from him, just mixing with him to not to be afraid toput the reverbs on. As long as youre careful and dont make itsound too wet, itll actually add that 3D quality to the mix. Tome, it goes back to that earlier point about excitement becausea mix that sounds really nice, full, and deep is a good mix.

    8This ones just a funny thing, butget rid of all unnecessary noises andcut around your toms. I dont do thisfor everything, but do it a lot of thetime especially more recentlywhere Ive been doing a lot of big-ger rock records. What happens isthe toms resonate the entire time thedrummers playing the kick drum.Its just inevitable. You find the first

    transient, make a cut; you sort of letit decay and put a fade in and cut,and do that for all your tom hits.

    It can be a little tedious, but itmakes a world of difference. Anotherthing I learned from Dave was to gointo the mix and make sure thatthe guitars arent left up if theyrenot doing anything and getting ridof all that unwanted noise. Now ifwe were doing roots rock, I mostlikely wouldnt cut around the tomsthere. Thats a nice instance whereresonating toms are part of the drumsound. Its sort of genre-specific.

    Brian Moncarz list of credits includes The Junction,Silverstein, Pilot Speed, and Moneen, plus hes alsoengineered with Bob Ezrin and David Bottrill. He and Bottrillopened Rattlebox Studios i n Toronto (www.myspace.com/rattleboxstudios).

    9Switch it up. Dont get stuck in a rut. Often times what Ildo is Ill download a trial of a plug-in or something or bring apiece of gear in that Im not used to using, just to do somethinga little different. If you keep doing the same thing all the time

    you become so cookie-cutter and boring. You dont grow asan engineer or producer, and I constantly want to experimenwith different things.

    I come from that school of lets try this! Try everythingIf someone makes a suggestion for a mix, dont say no. I findbecause you tried that crazy idea it led you to another ideaand that was the idea that actually made the mix. People areso quick to say, No, it wont work, but if someone in a bandsuggests something, I always try it. It makes the mixes betteall the time.

    10Trust your ears. It doesnt matter if its the first projecyouve mixed. We all listen to music. Weve all spent our entire life doing it because we love music so if you know it ornot, in the back of your mind you have this wealth of musicainformation stored there that you can reference at any timeDont be afraid to bring in albums that you love when youremixing.

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