Christmas

Things are pretty well wrapping up for the year around here. Just wanted to wish everyone who I worked with this year a Merry Christmas or Happy (insert holiday of preference here). It was a great year and it is awesome to finally have CoLabs up and running. There are lots of exciting plans for 2007 and I look forward to making great music with all of you in the new year. See you then!

Anthony

Arranging = Mixing

A beautiful and well conceived arrangement is essentially the same as a great mix.

Mixing concepts share many parallels with orchestral arrangement. The spacing and panorama of an orchestra, the conductors control of dynamics and the wide range of tonalities and timbres in the instruments are all core concepts for many mix engineers in their approach to the mix. Even if you never work on traditional or classical styles, the concept stays the same. The music should have depth, a sense of dynamic range, and a variety of sonic colors. These decisions are made at both the arranging stage and the mixing stage.

I rarely work on classical styles or orchestral recordings, but I have taken bits and pieces from the school of thought that there is essentially no difference in approach between mixing or arranging an orchestra and mixing a hard rock project with lots of layered guitars. My feelings on arrangements that work the best are pretty simple:

1) Loud is relative, so play/mix things softer and with more space to create more impact on the loud portions instead of trying to play harder/turn thing up on the loud portions. 100% is all you have so make it count when you get there.

2) Play Less/Play more: An orchestra usually adds whole instrument parts in or takes whole parts out at a way of developing dynamics as opposed to always having everyone play something. Lots of bands feel that they need to have a part for everyone at all times and as a result, the dynamic range and impact suffers. A verse with four layered guitars, drums, bass and big vocals is cool, but it's tough to go up from there on the chorus. Try drums and guitar only under the lead vocal or bass and drums only. I do this in mixing all the time where the arrangement is too dense and the verses need to be thinned out some. Makes for a much more interesting listen.

3) The mix should pull you in. I like to balance things in such a way that you are pulled into the sound field. Practically, this means placing the lead vocal (or lead instrument) at a level so that when the listener turns up the volume to hear the words, the rest of the mix is at a level that seems to envelope your head. Basically, any really loud element that causes the listener to want to turn down the music or be "pushed out" of the sound field is avoided. Additionally, I try to pan things a little wide so that the vocals have lots of room to live in the middle without any loss of intelligibility. If you have used the previous two concepts in the arrangement, this is pretty easy to accomplish. Sting's Desert Rose Album is a really good example of this. You can't listen without being sucked into the sound field!

These are all elements that are common to both mixing and arranging and could work either way. Hope you find that useful!

New Stuff

I recently wrapped up the mix on the Amber Schneider album that I have been working on for the past few weeks. I'm quite pleased with the mix and used a number of new techniques on this project that I thought I would share.

1. Parallel compression: The new versions of ProTools (I'm on 7.2) allow for plugin delay compensation which makes this trick possible. You could do it in older versions, but it required a lot of fooling around with delay settings, etc. Basically, this technique is where you split a signal and only compress one of those signals. The combined sound is thicker and more controlled then the uncompressed sound while sounding less compressed and "pumpy" then the normal approach of just compressing the one signal. I have used this technique on drums and sometimes vocals in the past but on this album, I found myself using it a lot more. I was quite happy with the results. This is a great way to get a vocal to sit in the mix without squashing the life out of it. Also, probably one of the best tricks to use on drums to make them sound powerful and fat without killing those ever important transients. SNAP!

2. Minimal EQ: This is somthing that I have been leaning more and more towards. When I engineered the tracking sessions for this album, I tried to capture a really clear picture of the songs at that stage. I selected mics, pres and eq when necessary to get the sound "in the neighborhood" at the end of the tracking session. The session players where great and most of the sound was there so we just massaged a few things to get everything gelling at the tracking stage. Also, Craig Learmont (producer on the album) did a great job on getting really clean sounds in his overdub sessions. I the end, most of the mix was a matter of balancing levels, not "sculpting" things out with eq. I really like mixing albums this way. It truly feels like you are working with the music and not against it. Kudos to Craig, the players and Amber for their hard work on getting it right at the tracking stage.

I look forward to hearing these songs on radio and seeing what kind of response it receives. Blessings on your career Amber; the album was a blast to mix!

Later

The Mix is a Medium

Mixing usually gets lumped into categories with other elements of the recording process. You know, studios offering "mixing/mastering" services, the guy who mixed the album gets credit for "engineering" or "producing". I've been given credit for producing albums where I was never in the room when anyone was recording.

It's always funny to me, but I guess people don't really understand what happens in the mix and how big of a deal it is to the final product. It really can make or break an album. I've heard (and even worked on a few) projects with massive budgets that either rushed or skipped the mix process that in the end sound pretty embarrassing. On the other hand, I've heard albums with essentially no budget where people have taken their time and the finished product sounds really great.

The thing is, mixing is an artistic medium. The song and all of its recorded parts become your palate of colors. The impact of the music, the spectral balance between all frequencies, the dynamic range, the size and depth of the sound field; these all become elements that the mixing engineer carefully manipulates in the mixing process. A skilled mixer can pull out the best elements of a song and present them in a way that feels natural and true to the music... or not. A mix is more then good vs. bad. Any given song can come out of the mix process a dozen different ways, each good in its own way.

I have always felt that the key to a great mix is it's transparency, so to speak. The best mixes I have heard initially dazzle me with their sonic beauty, but then seem to disappear as I get lost in the song. These mixes let the music speak for itself and don't try to impose an artistic direction on the music that it doesn't naturally call out for.

A little abstract and obscure, I know. But you likely know what I'm talking about if you love listening to great music and, by extension, hate listening to garbage.

Next time you are listening to a piece of music that you feel is really great sounding. Listen to how the recorded parts are arranged in such a way that it supports the natural artistic flow of the music. It may be a lush string section that envelopes your whole head in it's soft swells. Or it may be a piercing guitar part that jumps out at you hits you in the middle of you forehead.

You can learn to appreciate a lot more music out there if you listen not just to the music itself, but the medium it is presented in.

Trying to copy a mix...

Ever tried to perfectly copy the mix of some project to the artist's "favorite album" 'cause they asked for it to sound "just like so-and-so"? Trying to simulate what you hear on a well recorded album is actually a pretty good exercise for learning how they got that sound and to train your ears to hear things in the studio. For example, most people start out mixing (for the first time) with the bass too loud the drums too quite and the vocals kind of buried under it all. Comparing your crappy mix to a beautifully mixed album in a similar genre will show you that your balances are way off and you can start compensating and training your ear in the studio to get closer to the finished product with out any referencing.

The problem with this process is that, ultimately, you will be mixing to copy the sound of a mixed and mastered album. The result will be that you get your balances to where they sound ok (usually with a lot of compression) and then you have your mix mastered (usually compressing and limiting it some more) and all of a sudden your mix sounds flat and squashed.

Bob Katz speaks to this problem in his book, "Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science." He notes that the albums that we reference our mixes to are mastered and have a greatly reduced dynamic range in comparison to music that is only in the mixing stage. So, we compensate to try and match the sound, over compress, send our stuff to mastering and end up with a really squashed finished product. Obviously a mastering engineer with good ears will know to lay off the compression when the music is already so flat, but the damage is still done since it is unlikely that the material will leave mastering with no compression or limiting. Bob Katz points out that this likely is happening on a large scale all over the world and as a result our music in becoming less and less dynamic.

Just think... that album you are listening to as a reference was probably mixed to compare to some other mastered album as a "target sound" and they ended up with a reduced dynamic range. Now you are trying to match that final reduced dynamic range in your mixing stage!

You get the point.

Basically, if your mix sounds (dynamically) just like that album you are trying to imitate, you are likely overcompressing. Your drums should pop, your vocals should jump up slightly, if someone is playing harder, it should get louder!

If you can anticipate the compressed sound that may be introduced in the mastering stage, your mixes will translate better and you will be a lot happier with your mixes!

Staying Fresh...

I often find maintaining a state of creative "freshness" a challenge. I will have these periods of creative energy where I can create, write, mix, produce, whatever, for days on end without feeling drained. Then, usually within a week or so, I seem to lose momentum and creative work seems to feel a little more like work.

I take this seriously, because I don't consider mixing to be a mundain, mechanical task in anyway. For me, it is one of the areas where i feel I draw on my creativity the most.

A few months ago I stumbled across a podcast on iTunes called, "The Accidental Creative". It focused mainly on this idea of creative rhythm. I would definitely recommend checking out the podcast and even the website. Tod Henry (the guy running the thing) runs an 'e-coaching' program through the website specifically for creative types. I've found this stuff to be really helpful in understanding the dynamics of working in a creative field where I have to "create-on-demand." The general idea that is put out there is that all creative people (all people?) have rythms of creative energy or drive that include peaks and valleys. Basically, the idea is to align your life to work with those peaks and valleys, not against them.

Check it out, I've found it helpful.

The Accidental Creative

The Best Mix

Over the past few years I have come to find that the best mixes I have produced all have one thing in common: the don't suck to listen to.

No, seriously... I'm talking about before they are mixed. I believe that mixing is just the final artistic expression of music through a technical medium. Ideally, I'm not adding or taking away or trying to dramatically change what is there, but only presenting the artists work as it is meant to be head. This only works really well with music that has been well written, arranged, and recorded.

I've always heard people say things like, "a well written song plays itself" or, "a well written song arranges itself." Really, what starts well at the beginning, will finish well. A good arrangement is crucial to a good mix and the arrangement is dependant on a well written song. So I would say, "a well written, arranged, performed and recorded song pretty much mixes itself."


If you are in the studio or considering making an album/demo/whatever, here are a couple tips that will help you music translate well when it comes time to mix:


1. Write good songs. It sounds obvious, but the trick is to not settle for a catchy hook or two plus a verse and a chorus. A good song will contain the rhythmic, melodic, harmonic and dynamic "DNA" for how everything will play out in the recording and mixing process. Don't get to attached to your songs. You will likely need to make changes and maybe even just scrap a few. Get outside critiques from people who know what they are talking about. The more you write, the more you mature and the better your music will be, so write often. If you have only ever written seven songs in your life and you want to record a seven song EP, you are probably jumping the gun.


2. Start with simple arrangements. If you are in a band, focus on a really solid rhythm section and how the vocal sits over it. Vary your dynamics by adding and taking away whole parts, as opposed to everyone just playing all the time but at different levels. If you are writing on your own, focus on that one instrument (usually guitar or keys) that carries the song and make sure that it is simple enough to allow for a whole band to play along while still 'leading' the song rhythmically and melodically. If in doubt, simplify! From a mixers perspective, less is often more.

3. When recording, shoot for convincing emotional performances, as opposed to 'perfect' ones. If you haven't got your guitar part to your own song 'right' after 30 takes, your probably trying to hard and not focusing on the emotional content, but mearly on everything sounding surgically clean. Oh, and while your in the studio and recording guitar... turn down your distortion! From a mix perspective. Nothing is harder to make sound "big" then a wall of layered guitar parts, all with power chords playing through chainsaw like distortion. Turn your distortion down and just play a little harder when you need more crunch. The end result in mixing is a much "punchier" mix that ultimately sounds bigger.

Hope that's helpful.

A quick update...

Thought it would be good to give a quick update as to what's going on at CoLabs these days. Well, I just got back from one week in Florida and I'm getting ready to take on a mix project that will be pretty exciting. It's a pop-country thing, kind of like Carrie Underwood. The first single "Fearless" which I engineered and mixed is already getting some decent rotation around western Canada on a number of radio stations. My good friend Craig Learmont of MuzikHaus Records has been producing and doing a really good job with this project. It will be a fun one to mix and I'm really looking forward to it!

The mix studio, which I have been constructing over the past three months, is nearing completion. In the past, I have mixed out of other studios, but this mix room will greatly improve my efficiency and quality since I have it tuned up the way I want it. Also, I've outfitted the studio with a really great Pro Tools HD 2 Accel rig with all Apogee A/D D/A conversion which is a dream to work on. This studio really is a representation of my own high standards when it comes to a mix space and equipment used.

Finally, I'm playing bass for my friend Corey Doak at the GMA Covenant Awards Showcase this week. Should be fun. I used to play bass and tour around with Corey back in college. Check out his website and his music @ www.coreydoak.com

That's it for now.

Peace

Executing Musical Concepts Well

Navigating the complex space of an abstract creative concept can be a bit tricky at times... especially if you are doing it with a group of people.

Over the last couple of days, I have been out of town producing a demo for a very talented artist I am currently working with. We went into the studio with a couple of session players and laid down bed tracks for three songs. I always find it a challenge (although an enjoyable one) to translate the abstract creative concept of a song into concrete arrangements that a session player can 'latch on to', so to speak. In the past, I have usually put together rough "sketches" of where the artist and myself feel the songs should go. I play most of the parts, edit the song and come up with a general arrangement that feels good. When we went into the studio this time, we tried diverging from these "sketches" so we could let the songs speak for themselves and allow the players to approach them with no preconceived notions. Obviously the idea here is to allow an abstract creative concept (a song) develop into a concrete musical arrangement by letting each player interpret the concept in his own unique way. I think this works well with "bands" and groups that regularly rehearse and perform together, but in a studio session with hired players... I'm starting to think, "not so much."

The problem is that all musicians approach all music with some degree of preconception about what they think it should sound like. With some genres, this works in your favor. Country music for example, has a very defined style of arrangement that good session players will automatically turn to when put on the spot to come up with something. So does blues, jazz, funk, polka, Broadway showtunes, and pretty much any other genre that sounds like something that has already been done. But, when you are going for something new, different, and unique, you really have to have a somewhat developed idea going in that supports the creative concept so that other musicians can then adopt that preconception in support of the artist's concept.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants, but sometimes the producers role is to get people onto a different set of shoulders.

You love to mix?!?

So, with all the different avenues one could choose to travel down as a career path in the music industry, why would I put so much attention into just mixing?

I remember the very first real mix I ever did. It was a recording project that I was putting together while in college. I remember taking these different tracks that I had recorded and actually making them sound like a record! It was the coolest thing. I mixed it in a recording studio that was on campus at the time and remember feeling like I totally understood this space - this recording studio thing. Truth be told, the mix was pretty muddy and there was way to much compression on everything, but that didn't really matter at that point. For me it was about discovering an artistic medium that I never even knew existed!

I went on from college to produce a lot of indie albums, engineer in many genres, and collaborate with people in making all kinds of music. All along I kept coming back to the mix as my favorite place to "live" in the studio.

I've come to realize that a great mix is a key element in realizing artistic vision. It's the point when all your hard work up to that stage comes together. A bad mix that doesn't represent the artist's vision or support the songs or focus your attention appropriately can really wreck an otherwise great project! A great mix, on the other hand, makes good music sound amazing and really pulls you into the song. It's the art of this process that I'm so driven to perfect!

What we do...

So what is CoLabs all about?

Well, in a nutshell, I mix albums and draw on a collaborative network of music industry professionals to do everything else.

The whole company is based on the idea that most talented creative-type people in the music industry are really good at one or two main things. However, there is a pretty big trend for studios, independent-producers, small labels, etc. to offer the 'one-stop-shop' model. This is the one where they offer everything from songwriting and producing to graphic design and publishing your music, and everything in between. It's not that they aren't good at what they do. It's just that they aren't the best in all of the areas they claim to offer services in. It may be a really great studio that is a great place to track your drums but that also offers 'CD duplication' on the side. Or a record producer who is truly talented but ends up playing all the parts on his clients albums to save on musician fees.

flexibility is great and having a broad skill set will serve you well in the music industry, but, I believe, to really get ahead you need to know where your true talents lie. For myself, I have worn many hats in the studio. Musician, engineer, producer... but when I really looked hard at what I was doing better then anyone else and what I really had to offer, it was the mix. I LOVE to mix albums! I have been fortunate enough to have gained some recognition for my mixing work and have had a fairly steady stream of projects to work on.

So what happens when an artist asks me to produce a record (ya, I still produce albums, the other thing I do really well)? My personal studio is small and (specifically) only set-up to mix albums. Well, I have made lots of good connections in the local music/recording scene and I know where to go to get the best for each stage of the project. I know songwriters, producers, session players, studio owners, mastering engineers, etc. and they all offer a specific creative service better then anyone else!

It's a pretty cool thing to make an album this way. The best part is that it usually costs about the same or sometimes less then the "one-stop-shop" approach. Also, way more creative people get to work on that one project, and its better for the whole local industry!

So that's it in a nutshell. Cool stuff really does happen when people collaborate.

Here we go!

Collaborate: work jointly on an activity, esp. to produce or create something

Colabs: One part crazy idea, one part music industry experiment, one part lifelong dream; a really great sounding mix, a network of trust and integrity, a really cool job!

Here we go!

Hopefully you have found this blog because, like me, you have a passion to work in the music industry. Maybe you are an artist trying to make a career out of your music. Maybe you are a record producer or a recording engineer wanting to get better at what you love. Maybe you just love music and like the idea of people actually work together for a change!

The music industry is a complicated thing and an odd place to try and build a 'career'. Hard work, genuine talent, a never-ending desire to grow, flexibility, passion; a music industry career requires a lot out of you is you hope to succeed. And even with all that, you still aren't guarantee success in an industry as fast changing, unpredictable and organic as this one!

But, if you are like me, you know that it is all worth it to be in this place. A place where you can get up every morning knowing that you are going to use all of your passion and talent, even if it only connects with one person. We are creative and we must create! I often say that I never chose to work in this crazy industry, it chose me.

From one creative person to another, thanks for following your passion and not taking the easy way out. There are many things about the industry that I would like to be part of changing so that things will be better for all of us. As I share more about Colabs and what it is we are about, maybe we can find ways to work together and make thing better.