Girls With Glasses - HB Mix

[The_Metallurgist]

my immediate advice would be for you to avoid stereo reverbs when mixing. they add far to much spectral crud and can overwhelm a mix very quickly, especially if you run in excess of 800ms decay. i never do....except when it comes to Mastering, but that's a different subject.

I'm confused about that... Are you saying you are using mono reverbs only?
Or do you use stereo reverbs but pan the send away from the source, or what exactly?
And you are using reverb in mastering? That's quite unusual. What do you use it for, and how?
Sorry to ask so much questions, but ambience/depth/spatial placement is one of the (many) areas that I'm struggling with, and you seem to have developed some useful practices.

it's difficult talking in general terms because each mix has it's own needs, at least within the individual's Vision Thang, so the approach can alter and sometimes it can alter pretty significantly. i shouldn't really use the word "never", because it's not a rule....and if there is a rule, i'll try and break it anyway, especially if i lean towards creative self-indulgence. it happens!

if you can understand the principles of sound and how we hear things to enable us to differentiate between proximity and distance (eg pre-delay), it becomes much easier in finding a solution to specific circumstances that we come across in any mix. the risk is that we stick to a specific setup and apply this across all mixes we undertake.

try experimenting on a close miked instrument. pan it hard to one side and mess around with some EQ presets and see how it sounds to your ears. then place it down the center, play with the reverb emu's panning. try mono, try stereo. does the preset bring the instrument closer, or does it drop it back in the mix....how far can it be dropped back, what sort of illusions of distance and "space" can you achieve? look at the parameter settings between the presets, as this can often give informative lessons too and help us to understand how parameter changes affects our illusion and comprehension of space. really crank a parameter from minimum to maximum so your ears get the shock treatment to help better understand the differences and how it impacts on our illusions.

i really wish i could help more, but this is a mighty subject to which there are no ideal solutions or set-ways to operate other than within the science...or outside of it if you wanna be really creative and obscure. ultimately, how we each apply ambiance and mess around with delays (delays are also part of the equation of space...so it would be unwise to neglect this side of things), is a signature of the engineer. yeah, EQ and compression is anther signature, but nothing will leave an impression more on a mix than ambiance and delay applications and where those instruments appear in the panorama.

on the mastering thing, again it depends. on my own mixes, i'll take a different approach in the mix with my ambiance strategy if i plan to drop some ambiance glue in the master. again, my approach isn't everyone's cup of tea but that's what makes us all different. if i'm mastering another's mix, then it depends on what they've done beforehand. quite often there's no opportunity and hence no benefit from doing so.....but if i have a rapport with the client, what i can do on the master might make a difference to their song beyond what they've done in the mix, to help it deliver even more emotion.

flexibility is the key....and knowing when to do what and to which instrument will be an intuitive thing rather than a calculated, pre-determined strategy based on habit and comfort zones.

in the first 10 seconds of a song, everything must make sense, whether consciously or subconsciously or we can lose the audience; it should engage their interest so we want to hang in for the other 240 seconds....ambiance and delay is part of that crucial equation. if it doesn't make sense, we will disengage.

Patrick, please do have a go at some mixes in the Library and let the forum help you.....importantly as a composer and arranger, the experience can also feed back into how you approach your own arrangements too. feel the fear... do it

catch ya laters,
Dave