If you’ve never read about Hajj, you will no doubt find it interesting and worth your respect, regardless on your feelings of religion in general. Here’s a cue to go with the trek that people make at least once in their lives — often at the expense of their own life.
Rolling out lots of masters in the next week. First up is a piece from 2007 that never got the proper master treatment. Now, it’s finished. Enjoy!
There were many questions about the original piece “Keeping the Peace”, specifically about the strings and Duduk. I had more than a few people casually wonder or ask what they sounded like in more isolation. That is, to say, a bit more prominent.
With that in mind, I began to just…”tinker” is the technical term, I think…and began to do a “backdoor” remix. You might say I arranged the ending slightly for a reprise, bringing out the strings and the solos (both vocal and woodwind).
So, without further ado, here’s a shorter reprise of the main piece. Enjoy!
I’m glad to be done with this one. I originally started it in October of 2008, and could never quite get the “mix” right.
B Duduk (Center)
I’ve come to learn that Eastern instruments tend to occupy the same sonic range, so when you begin to mix and match them, the mix and master can become total “mush”. So, it wasn’t until tonight that I had patience in a mastering role to clean up some of the mess.
As with previous posts, a lot of this is inspired on the images, stories, and videos I got from friends in Iraq. The solo instrument that you may not recognize is the Duduk. It’s an Armenian instrument, and I employ it in music frequently. However, unlike all my other tracks, this is a B Duduk, with a slightly more harsh and breathy sound. I thought it could go head-to-head with the violin solo better.
The percussion consists of many layers, but the one that will likely stick out the most is the tabla ensemble, which has been run through…I can’t even remember what stack of filters…to give it that sharp, electronic sound. Likewise, all the guitars have been run through many, many iterations of Guitar Rig to get that “distressed” sound that seems to fit in well with the overall vibe of Eastern music.
Enjoy.
This one is definitely an outlier in terms of the music I normally come up with.
A lot of work went into this one. Specifically, making sure the saxophone, guitars, and other instruments have a perfectly-crafted vintage sound. There is also convolution reverb in play to model a jazz club. A lot under the hood, and a new vocalist to boot!
I mastered in Adobe Audition 3 as usual, and used the Waves plug-ins to craft my vintage sounds. The final master is the ever-reliable L2.
Mellow out, and enjoy. It was a pleasure to deviate and produce some downtempo jazz.
A quick peek into what I’m working on…which just happens to be a remix for NIN’s “Discipline”.
I’m to the stage where I’m finalizing the vocals and chord progressions, and I thought I would pull back the curtain and explain the process start to finish. Enjoy the attached MP3 for an unusual take on re-tuning Trent’s vocals.
Believe it or not, people sent me messages on Vox asking questions about production. Ever the charmer, I thought I’d start answering some. Just keep the lavish praise coming!
Okay, so. Let’s talk about vocals for music. And a little about vocals in general. You radio production people (like I am) probably need to hear this. If you’re one of these people that “hard limits” or otherwise drastically compresses vocals, please stop. Otherwise, I’m going to have to start hunting you down and showing up at your studio to stop you.
People, I don’t have that kind of time.
When you hard limit or overly compress any audio, you ruin any potential for its dynamic range. This is especially true of vocals. A giant “square” peaking at -1 dBu isn’t going to be very expressive. And it’s going to really piss off anyone who masters your audio. What’s more, realize that your material — be it radio production or music — is going to be mastered again in the audio chain. Mastering often purposefully removes dynamic range to maximize the loudness. Anyone who’s listened to the radio knows what I’m talking about. TV and CD’s, too. Realize that when you over do it, your audio’s going to sound like hammered awfulness on the other side.
The key to compressing and processing vocals is in the subtlety. If they’re not loud enough, bring down everything else in the mix. Don’t just pump up the vocals. I realize clipping in the 32-bit real is impossible, but still…dynamic range is your friend.
On the topic of loudness, let’s talk about standing waves. Ever been somewhere and noticed that the audio had a ground hum? That’s a standing wave that’s easy to detect, but what about when it’s in your audio you don’t even know it?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recorded vocals only to realize later than there’s a sub-audible hum in the audio. Probably from the damn air conditioner or some outside noise. Since the human ear can’t usefully determine loudness or direction of extremely low sounds, you may not even notice it’s there. Similarly, you may not realize how loud it is, and how much of your sonic palette it’s stealing.
If there’s “junk” in your audio, it’s going to hold back how loud you can make the mix…and how clean it’s going to be. It’s not uncommon to eliminate unnecessary noise, hums, and standing waves and be able to make that element 6 to 9 dBu louder overall.
Not only is this a good habit for details work like garbage, but it’s also a useful philosophy for mixing audio in general. Does EVERY element in your mix need the FULL sonic range of 20 to 20,000? Does that bass drum need to be using the high end? Do your vocals need to be dipping down into the 50 hertz range and messing with your bass line? Does the violin need to be hitting the subwoofer?
No, no, and no.
Get in the habit of notching, shelving, or equalizing your audio to account for this. Budget the frequencies in your mix more.
There are number of ways to go about this. The quickest way to get rid of standing waves in your audio is to use a scientific filter. You want a “high pass” filter, which means that you designate a frequency (120 hertz in the example to the right), and everything AT or BELOW that threshold is increasingly more quiet as the frequency decreases. You can change the slope of the shelf by adjusting the “order”. The higher the order, the more steep the shelf.
For clean vocals in music, this is the exact preset I use. Unless you’re using a booming voice guy like Lonnie Perkins, Chris Corley, or Don Lafontaine, shelf the crap out of vocals.
If you’re a little more technically savvy, you can play with the parametric equalizer in your DAW. I’ve displayed a screen shot of Adobe Audition 2.0’s version to the left. With more time and tweaking, you can make parametric equalization sound much better than a simple shelf.
Retreating into basics is common for beginning audio editors and engineers. And when I say “basics” I mean “graphic equalizer”. It’s a lot less cool, but you can still create an effective vocal shelf (shown at right). On a long term basis, you’re much better off taking the time and learning to use the parametric EQ function in your DAW. It’s much more precise, and it also forces you to think about your audio in frequency space terms.
If you take anything away from this…let it be to stop over-doing it with vocals. Let the radio processing or your mastering engineer take care of that. Preserve as much dynamic range and color in the original as you possibly can.
