New Mastering Challenge!

So Today, I have been mastering a 4-track EP which I only found out and agreed to do last night!

It is quite a challenge, since it is not only of jazz and theatrical music, but they are all mixes of live recordings at a theatre! Talk about approaching mastering at a whole new angle!

Multiband has been my friend through this process, since the instrument mic's pick up a lot of ambience, being in the pit and all, whereas the vocals tend to be on stage, where there is no real ambience of the orchestra. So vocals were sounding very dry against the music, plus the proximity from the vocal sounded too close and was poking through far too much.

As you can see, it was less than slight, which really isn't my normal method of attack, but it sounded great! All of a sudden the music came alive and wrapped itself around the vocal more, but the vocal still seemed very dry, almost like it was overdubbed on top of a mixed performance. I knew the mixes were rushed slightly before agreeing, and the mix engineer wasn't entirely happy with what he had done, so I knew I could make almost a mix decision in the mastering stage. 

I bussed the track to an aux, then using fabfilter pro-Q got to work carefully carving out the vocal from the rest of the track, (inverting the overall phase every now and again, unmuting the original and listening for any key frequencies I'd missed) and once I had semi-isolated the vocal, placed a lexicon chamber verb plug on the auxiliary channel, and matched the verb similar to the verb of the orchestra. It's subtle enough so that you don;t realise it's there, but you really notice when it's not there!

I love using reverbs in mastering, mainly because I seem to struggle to use them really well in mixing for some reason, but also it seems like the last tool you'd want to use! plus it can really bring a track to life, and can really glue everything together if everything seems a bit too separate, it's like using a room mic really! 

The main tools in the Job were the fabfilter Pro-Q, Waves SSLcomp and waves C6 multiband. It's not my favorite multiband comp, I have grown to prefer the McDSP range (although would kill to own the fabfilter pro-MB, it seems to tick every box, just like all of the fabfilter plugs!) but the waves one was the only multiband I owned, and still did the Job quite nicely! 

I used the Kramer master tape on the final stereo out, it's not the best or accurate tape emulator plug out there, but it can deliver some really nice character, especially if you want a bit of grunge! I know Grunge isn't what you associate with theatrical music or Jazz, but I think the over-the-top tape sound did a great job at warming the tracks up like an old Jazz record, without being lo-fi.

Whenever I master, I use a few different dynamic processors, some will barely have 0.5dB of reduction, but whatever I use, the fabfilter pro-L is always on the end! It's so intuitive, and It means I can work to K-12 metering on logic. If you haven't used K-weighting (some good reading Here!) it's great at keeping a restraint on dynamic range, sometimes during mastering, I have the habit of using too many compressors, because of the varying curves, attack times and ratios, it doesn't seem like one compressor just squashing the balls out of everything, but it can kill the dynamics without you even noticing. In fact I did dial down the final stereo bus compressor once I slapped on the pro-L and fiddled with the levels! 

This track wasn't hugely dynamic anyway since its a string quartet, in fact nothing really peaks in the whole master! but it's nice to have that assurance!

I started at 9am, and with frequent ear breaks (I have to monitor louder than I'd like to in my room to beat computer fans, housemate noise, outside noise ect.) I have just finished at 3pm. Hopefully another happy customer! will post links to the masters once they're online 

That reminds me, I never posted the final Mancheska masters on here...!

Dave Grohl

Dave Grohl is by far one of my most favorite, most respected idolised people in the public eye, in fact at all. I mean his music, yeah that's pretty cool... but I like a lot of music.

I mean as a person, as a human, especially someone who is very much in the public eye, he is so unbelievably grounded and down to earth. He never says anything controversial, nor is he a dick in interviews, in fact I've seen him in so many interviews where most "rockstars" wouldn't even bother with.

Today, I saw This. I've seen many before, but this has to be one of the best collections. They're reports of Dave not only being human, but actually a fucking awesome human.

There's a part of me that wishes the foo fighters played generic commercial pop music, maybe even some EDM, just so their awesomeness will be spread amongst more people, especially the easily influenced youth.

Anyhow, I will leave you with this, a reported tweet by the man himself (I don't use twitter so can't confirm this)

"Nickleback walk into a bar. There is no punchline since ruining music isn't funny."

Cheers Dave you Legend.

Mancheska

Recently I got an email from a local 8 piece ska band wanting to do some demo recordings with some students. Of course I was going to grab this opportunity!!!

Sadly, The day they could do was the day I have 7 hours of Uni. Luckily Chris English was on hand who handled the recording side of things with little input from me apart from some ideas mic techniques. He saved the day and got some great takes

The band - Mancheska, were awesome to work with. They are all RNCM students or ex students, so were very talented musicians and oh so tight together!!!

Sam Flynn, the leader if you will, was cracking at directing the session, I think he wrote most of the music too! Talented Fella!

The area I really wanted to sound ace was the horn section. The band consists of a bassist, guitarist, vocalist, drummer, keys, baritone sax, alto sax, trumpet and trombone. so the horns played a bit part!! We mic'd up each one with a Senheiser MD421 and then had a stereo pair of Beyerdynamic Ribbon mics to really add some lovely textures to the tone!!! I was most worried about this part, but they came out as one of the more proud parts of the session

I've been mixing the tracks the past two days, with some difficulties, the vocals have been sounding quite thin, the U87 didn't compliment the ska sound one bit! next time valve mic I think! (either a Neumann 147 or an AKG solid tube possibly)
but a bit of parallel compression, some harmonic distortion, especially in the lows from the AIR Enhancer and some bomb-factory 1176 compression, we're getting there!

I can not wait to mix these, so far I've only been able to do touch ups on headphones and on some small genelecs, but with the spirit studio on saturday with Sam, only good can come from this! Will keep this updated :)

check em out here...
http://mancheskamusic.com/
https://twitter.com/mancheskamusic
http://facebook.com/mancheskamusic
https://www.youtube.com/user/MancheskaMusic

Loosing the best track I've ever made was the best thing to happen to my music...

So my computer drowned and died, I lost all of my french house track I was making!

And with my new mac mini, I painstakingly tried to recreate it. I knew what songs influenced the original, I remembered the chord progressions I used, but it just sounded like arse. So I scrapped it. Well, I kept a few elements such as the kick drum, tempo and snare, even if they were eventually tweaked!

But I went the total opposite direction, Mr Oizo stylee! and this is the result:



I know it is possibly too similar to Mr Oizo, but who can blame me, his new stuff isn't the same (although it's still amazing, but that bass sound just isn't there!) with parallel tube distortion on the high-hats, a bass sound that opened a gate on a vinyl sample, analog gear everywhere, and a lead sound which I will simply just hint was made sampling a certain Trap music song... I've really expanded my experimentation!

Expect more of this from me, I really enjoy it! It's fun, it's not to be taken too seriously, yet still have that head-nod vibe to it and some proper interesting elements of sound.

I'm working on a samba/cowbell influenced mainstream bro-step track at the moment (don't worry it's better than it sounds) and I'm really going to get stuck in to this french house stuff!!

have a download of the track above, and yes, that is my face in the image...

Ooo New genre!...

So. Today I got some massive inspiration listening to ed. Rec. Volume 2, one of the great compilations from ed banger records. I really love the analogy saturated sounds and the amount of variation in every track.

Most people who know me well know I like nearly all music, just not house music. I know I'm one of few electronic music heads with this opinion but to me it can be too simple, too generic and there's just not much going on, no feeling. And I just find it really rare for a house tune to really take over my body (cliche I know) like a lot of music can.

However I was asked to do a Dj set over summer of which I was asked to play some French house. I Had no idea what makes house French! (wine and cheese perhaps?)

Over the past 6 months I've become thoroughly into the genre, falling in love with Mr oizo (flat beat being a favorite from when I still listened to music on a "my first walkman" cassette player!)

But today, whilst listening to some Sebastian and some krazy baldhead, it happened!

Expect it to be a while in the making, I know all the little interesting nuggets of audio will take some time!

Propellerhead's Reason has been the big powertool so far, it's a surprisingly good bit of software and has a great sound if you want some analog-esque grit, especially with the scream distortion plug in with tape saturation option! Plus Thor can be a seriously powerful engine and if you can get past the stigma around reason, you can really make some noise! Even if you do spend hours and hours with pretend wires it's worth it :)

Within logic, I made some cool glitch sounds with  the idm kit preset (sorry it just worked so well) with my beloved turnado plugin I won from sugarbytes. It's amazing at just mashing up beats to whole new levels!

Anyway there's big promise for this track, and if it goes well, then other tracks too! I'm hoping to get to use some analog gear at Ssr such as a few tasty bits of tube gear and maybe analog tape! I just want to make it growl!

If you want to know the kind of sound I'm on about, definitely check out Mr oizo and other artists from ed banger. And if anyone knows of any other artists or labels with that same gritty sound let me know!

Welcome

Welcome to My audio blog. If you know me well then you will know how much I like music, and a lot of it! if you don't then you can find out more about me here if you like! I try and stay positive, I will mainly be posting useful techniques I've learnt in music production, audio engineering and mastering, plus some of my favourite tracks (including some controversial choices!) I wan't to provoke thoughts and ideas, and there's nothing wrong with a healthy discussion every now and again.

Hopefully I won't be one of those ranting audio snobs or youtube trolls that seem to be in fashion at the moment! I'll keep it cheery and hopefully keep it interesting :)