MerryGold: Motherload - Mixed at Walt's Audio Engineering

[tjmtruth]

Walt's Audio,

Loved your mix. I am not usually a fan of extreme panning on individual instruments, but that approach worked really well here as every instrument is clear as a bell. I've got to learn to stop adding too many panning/chorusing type effects to my mixes....it clutters them up. Your mix really has taught me a good lesson, especially in this genre of music. Everything in your mix is perfection......loved it! .....and thanks for slapping me upside the head.....my next mixes I will stop with the doubling/chorusing plugins.....they are clouding my own mixes and I didn't even realize it.
:-)
Tom

Wow Tom, thanks for the glowing review!
At this point I'm mostly into mixing acoustic/bluegrass and in that genre I love hard panned strings. This might surprise you - there are actually numerous effects present in the mix:
-GlaceVerb
-Lexicon LXP Native
-Liquid Delay II
-Ambience
-Voxengo Tube Amp
-Waves Renaissance Reverb
-Slate Revival
-Marroquin Delay (Doubler)
-an LFO constantly moving the pan of the accordion (and other automated pans)
-EQs, compressors, multi-band compressors, etc.
-automations of dynamics, including on the master bus
Each is used for a specific purpose on a specific channel and only enough to get the desired effect. All of the small changes can add up to a significant change in the overall sound.
I think two things helped me keep it clean: 1. Keeping only what is needed (discarding or lowering tracks that don't contribute something positive) and 2. Mixing and EQing everything in mono until each part stood out - then doing the rest in stereo. It forces me to cut an EQ space for each part. If the individual tracks pop out in mono, they'll really pop out in stereo.
Thanks again for the great review!
Walt

-------------
Walt, well you hit the nail on the head. Yes, you had plenty of effects in the mix but you used them sparingly, or just enough to get the desired sound but not too much so that the ear can hear them and be distracted by them. You see, I tend to go crazy with effects....but I'm learning....less is more....! Bravo again on your mix!!!

Tom

[WaltsAudio]

Walt's Audio,

Loved your mix. I am not usually a fan of extreme panning on individual instruments, but that approach worked really well here as every instrument is clear as a bell. I've got to learn to stop adding too many panning/chorusing type effects to my mixes....it clutters them up. Your mix really has taught me a good lesson, especially in this genre of music. Everything in your mix is perfection......loved it! .....and thanks for slapping me upside the head.....my next mixes I will stop with the doubling/chorusing plugins.....they are clouding my own mixes and I didn't even realize it.
:-)
Tom

Wow Tom, thanks for the glowing review!
At this point I'm mostly into mixing acoustic/bluegrass and in that genre I love hard panned strings. This might surprise you - there are actually numerous effects present in the mix:
-GlaceVerb
-Lexicon LXP Native
-Liquid Delay II
-Ambience
-Voxengo Tube Amp
-Waves Renaissance Reverb
-Slate Revival
-Marroquin Delay (Doubler)
-an LFO constantly moving the pan of the accordion (and other automated pans)
-EQs, compressors, multi-band compressors, etc.
-automations of dynamics, including on the master bus
Each is used for a specific purpose on a specific channel and only enough to get the desired effect. All of the small changes can add up to a significant change in the overall sound.
I think two things helped me keep it clean: 1. Keeping only what is needed (discarding or lowering tracks that don't contribute something positive) and 2. Mixing and EQing everything in mono until each part stood out - then doing the rest in stereo. It forces me to cut an EQ space for each part. If the individual tracks pop out in mono, they'll really pop out in stereo.
Thanks again for the great review!
Walt

-------------
Walt, well you hit the nail on the head. Yes, you had plenty of effects in the mix but you used them sparingly, or just enough to get the desired sound but not too much so that the ear can hear them and be distracted by them. You see, I tend to go crazy with effects....but I'm learning....less is more....! Bravo again on your mix!!!

Tom

Yep - we never stop learning - the things you can learn in audio are pretty much infinite.
Thanks again for your reviews!
Walt

[gdsmyth]

Walt, thanks again for taking the time to listen to and give me feedback on my mix.
After reading your comments, I came over to this thread and listened to your mix for the first time (through Sennheiser HD380 headphones by the way).. then went back and tried to listen to my own with a more critical ear and make some adjustments.

What struck me the most in your mix was the clean natural sound that you achieved, and then also the rock solid groove from start to finish. And you made the lead vocal always prominent, which in my opinion is not so easily done here because there are three melody instruments weaving in and out in constant motion all the time and looking to draw attention to themselves. And there were lots of background sounds (in the raw wav files anyway) making their way into unintended mics that I'm sure made getting that clean sound very challenging. Whatever effects and mix techniques you might have used are not drawing attention to themselves, as what I'm hearing are very natural instrument tones and vocals. Congrats!

[LupoPazzo]

Ha ha i love it...it's not often that you find a mix on here that gets praise like this. Just curious as to how long you have been mixing for and if you got to this point by any schooling, mentoring or just self-taught. Also did you use something like Rx for the vocals? I want to try and figure out the whole new sound stage thing you did on my own but that vocal...

[WaltsAudio]

Ha ha i love it...it's not often that you find a mix on here that gets praise like this. Just curious as to how long you have been mixing for and if you got to this point by any schooling, mentoring or just self-taught. Also did you use something like Rx for the vocals? I want to try and figure out the whole new sound stage thing you did on my own but that vocal...

Hi LupoPazzo - thanks for the nice review!

I'll answer about the vocal first: The start of getting not only the vocals, but each instrument, to stick out was to mix the whole thing in mono and do all the initial EQ in mono and try to get each part to pop out - in mono. This forces you to carve out space in the audio spectrum for each part. Then when you hit that button that puts it back in stereo, it sounds bigger and you don't have to use the pans so much to get everything to pop out - the pans help this happen even more. ...so here's the processing I used on that vocal:
The vocal has a HPF at 190Hz, a gentle cut at 400Hz and a big (-8dB) cut with a narrow Q at 1.7KHz, then a gentle shelf rise from there on up.
Then came the big challenge. I did something to this vocal track I've never had to do before (other than on speech): I noise gated it. I had to do this ever-so-gently as this generally sounds UGLY. This helped de-emphasize the instruments in the vocal mic. I used Waves Renaissance (RVerb) with some pre-delay and a lot of early reflection to fill in the dips caused by the gating - what a delicate balancing act!
Then I used some gentle compression. On top of that I used a MBC (multi-band compressor) to create a de-esser from 3.5KHz to 7.5KHz - just enough to smooth out the "S" sibilance.
On top of all of this "fixing", I used Revival (Slate Digital) and added some of what Slate calls "thickness" and "shimmer". I think it's mostly adding low-mid harmonics and high-end harmonics as you might with any tube saturator, but it's probably doing a bit more than that.
This might sound like a lot to do to a vocal (6 stacked processors), but you heard the results - it was worth the pain.

In answer to your question on my background: I started messing with audio in home stereo systems about 30 years ago. I've been doing live mixing weekly for over 20 years. I'm an electrical engineer (designer of electronics) of 20 years, so that education and experience applies directly to understanding waveforms and the equipment. I had always wanted to do studio work and when the equipment began to come down drastically in price, I started into that a few years ago. That's part-time because electrical engineering is what pays the bills for me.

I must give credit to the many great audio engineers that give free education online - I've learned a LOT from them. Graham Cochran of TheRecordingRevolution is one of them that caters to us small studio engineers very well. Dave Pensado, Fab DuPont, Ian Shepherd - the list goes on... I've also had some direct instruction at Sweetwater (Ft. Wayne, IN), who brings in big name audio engineers and producers annually. They call it GearFest and it's a great learning experience. I was fortunate to grow up in a fairly musical family, too. Everyone could play an instrument and sing harmonies. I cherish that... I'm a percussionist and bass vocal myself - and play just a bit on other instruments.

I know this is a huge post - I babbled on - but the answer to both of your questions had a lot of details.
Thanks for your interest and complementary review!
Walt

[WaltsAudio]

Oh - I forgot something else about the vocal: I copied it to a second track with most of the same processing on it, then used a doubler plugin. Then I automated that and brought it in to make the vocals bigger in the chorus for emotion. Sorry I forgot that - it was an important detail.
On a smaller note, I automated the RVerb on the vocal to make it dry or wet in appropriate areas - again - to bring more emotion. Sometimes it needed to sound dry - up close and intimate...
Walt

[LupoPazzo]

Oh - I forgot something else about the vocal: I copied it to a second track with most of the same processing on it, then used a doubler plugin. Then I automated that and brought it in to make the vocals bigger in the chorus for emotion. Sorry I forgot that - it was an important detail.
On a smaller note, I automated the RVerb on the vocal to make it dry or wet in appropriate areas - again - to bring more emotion. Sometimes it needed to sound dry - up close and intimate...
Walt

No no please keep babbling on... this is great! Thank you for the details you gave here, they are very much appreciated...if there was one thing that you touched on that i'd love to know more about is the pans...so your leaving that step for after you've eq'd first?

[WaltsAudio]

[/quote]

No no please keep babbling on... this is great! Thank you for the details you gave here, they are very much appreciated...if there was one thing that you touched on that i'd love to know more about is the pans...so your leaving that step for after you've eq'd first?

[/quote]

Here's the mono mix concept: I bring in the tracks and start getting levels. I might play a little bit with the pans, but then I hit the mono button on the main mix bus. Then the whole mix is being monitored in mono.

I work on the levels and the channel EQs - maybe even some channel compression or touch ups, but here's the rule: I don't let myself hit that mono button again to bring it back to stereo until I get a good balanced mix with all instruments and vocals standing out and sounding clear. Then when I finally get to hit that mono button again, the mix comes to life even more.

The beauty of this is that it forces you to carve out space for each part, not just in the stereo image, but in the frequency spectrum.

For example, to get the bass to pop, lower frequencies had to be removed from other parts that didn't need them. Some things needed mid range and some things needed air. The big thing is that everything pops out audibly in mono and then the stereo image will be even better. I can't take credit for this method - it's been used by top engineers back as far as Abbey Road Studios and the Beatles. This just doesn't seem to get publicized much. Graham Cochran has discussed this a few times on TheRecordingRevolution. I think it's a great tool...

[juanjose1967]

you got a very good sound, Walt! And I've also learned a few things by reading the song's thread. Some things pointed out here are a regular part of my mixing procedure, like mixing in mono until instruments pop out properly good work!

[LupoPazzo]

Thanks again Walt! It was very kind of you to answer my question and share your knowledge. This is golden for me. I cannot wait to try this out