Tricks to Making String Quartet Stand Out In A Rock Mix

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kslight
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Tricks to Making String Quartet Stand Out In A Rock Mix

Post by kslight » Mon Sep 16, 2013 5:54 pm

So, working on mixing this alt/rock type song and its particularly epic, recently we were thinking like the movie "Excalibur," specifically of course the infamous "O Fortuna." Not at all the same thing, but in that kind of epic.

We have a cello player on the record in another song, and so for this song he kind of put together a false "string quartet" set of takes for us, low parts, middle, high, pizzicato, a whole arrangement not just a set of harmonies.

We want this to be heard in the mix, but obviously this doesn't cut so well, just straight turning him up isn't quite there either. Already turning other things down.
Any tested true tricks? I've been playing a bit with some Sansamp plugin on some parts, which seems to work okay, if that works out I will probably go back and reamp, also got some other toys to play with like Germanium Tone Controls and Sherman Filterbank...I was just curious how far you have taken it in the past? Its a rock arrangement not a classical song so I kind of feel like we get a little opportunity to toy around with some things unorthodox to make a cello work in a rock context (like how Rasputina does, but cello is not the lead instrument in this case).

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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:16 pm

If the whole deal was tracked with cello a low cut filter and compression will be your best friends. Think of cellos as the electric guitar of the string world. It covers alot of the same range so unless you've left room for it in the arrangement you'll have to shoehorn it in with EQ and compression.
Cut as much of the lows as you can get away with. On the higher parts you can roll out tons of lows. After that I'd look at compression and/or parallel compression. If it's parallel you could probably get pretty aggressive and dirty. I've also used a master bus limiter (Massey L2007) on the final string stem to make it loud and seat it in the mix.
Strings are incredibly dynamic. Making them fit in a dense rock mix means having to eliminate most of that dynamic range. It seems wrong but works beautifully.

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Post by kslight » Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:56 pm

Yeah the "false quartet" is really just cello parts, and of course the original song was not written with a string arrangement in mind, so shoehorn it is!

I have been employing a lot of HPF but I will definitely see what I can come up with compression-wise.

Thanks.

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Post by Nick Sevilla » Mon Sep 16, 2013 7:00 pm

Yep.

I'd turn everything down together by the same amount. The whole multitrack.
Assuming that you are in a DAW, this should take 15 seconds.
Then deal with this quartet part.
Sometimes having extra headroom in your mix, makes for easier extreme
decision making. You can make bigger changes, without running out of room
for everyone.

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Post by kslight » Mon Sep 16, 2013 7:23 pm

Hmm I went pretty liberal with more HPF and heavy compression, distortion mixed to taste, I think I'm pretty happy with how this is coming out now.

Thanks Nick, but I make a habit out of keeping lots of open headroom already, and simple level changes weren't cutting it.

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Post by chris harris » Tue Sep 17, 2013 11:27 am

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:If the whole deal was tracked with cello a low cut filter and compression will be your best friends. Think of cellos as the electric guitar of the string world. It covers alot of the same range so unless you've left room for it in the arrangement you'll have to shoehorn it in with EQ and compression.
Cut as much of the lows as you can get away with. On the higher parts you can roll out tons of lows. After that I'd look at compression and/or parallel compression. If it's parallel you could probably get pretty aggressive and dirty. I've also used a master bus limiter (Massey L2007) on the final string stem to make it loud and seat it in the mix.
Strings are incredibly dynamic. Making them fit in a dense rock mix means having to eliminate most of that dynamic range. It seems wrong but works beautifully.
+1

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Post by Gregg Juke » Tue Sep 17, 2013 3:29 pm

The few sessions I've done with string section stuff have always needed three things-- compression, compression, and compression.

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Post by drumsound » Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:08 am

If you do this again in the future, consider multiple passes of each part. I did a string trio on a record, I recorded them in stereo 3 or 4 times to make them sound like an ensemble. That was on 24-track tape, if I did it today, I'd record them even more times. I played around with the mics a lot to get what I wanted, and made the cello sit in the middle, for a nice strong center.

I'm pretty sure I compressed it a good amount in the mix.

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Post by kslight » Fri Sep 20, 2013 3:27 pm

drumsound wrote:If you do this again in the future, consider multiple passes of each part. I did a string trio on a record, I recorded them in stereo 3 or 4 times to make them sound like an ensemble. That was on 24-track tape, if I did it today, I'd record them even more times. I played around with the mics a lot to get what I wanted, and made the cello sit in the middle, for a nice strong center.

I'm pretty sure I compressed it a good amount in the mix.
There are four parts, most of which there are 4 takes of each. As of right now I'm usually using 2 takes at a time, sometimes up to 4.

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Post by drumsound » Fri Sep 20, 2013 5:30 pm

kslight wrote:
drumsound wrote:If you do this again in the future, consider multiple passes of each part. I did a string trio on a record, I recorded them in stereo 3 or 4 times to make them sound like an ensemble. That was on 24-track tape, if I did it today, I'd record them even more times. I played around with the mics a lot to get what I wanted, and made the cello sit in the middle, for a nice strong center.

I'm pretty sure I compressed it a good amount in the mix.
There are four parts, most of which there are 4 takes of each. As of right now I'm usually using 2 takes at a time, sometimes up to 4.
Doubling+ really helps to make it sound like an ensemble.

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Post by E-money » Sat Sep 28, 2013 8:37 am

I find that an amp sim set to a clean setting can help string parts poke through a mix. I usually start with Amplitube with one of the Vox AC30 settings and tweak from there.
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Post by Gregg Juke » Sat Sep 28, 2013 9:29 am

>>>>I find that an amp sim set to a clean setting can help string parts poke through a mix. I usually start with Amplitube with one of the Vox AC30 settings and tweak from there.<<<<

Great idea!!

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Post by jgimbel » Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:52 pm

E-money wrote:I find that an amp sim set to a clean setting can help string parts poke through a mix. I usually start with Amplitube with one of the Vox AC30 settings and tweak from there.
Makes sense! Often when I'm finding bass guitar a little too round and not having quite enough definition, but not wanting to boost a ton of high end, I'll use a slight hint of distortion, it often can take the blanket off things, just generating a little bit of those harmonics if the fundamental isn't enough to get it to sit right.
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Post by telepathy » Mon Sep 30, 2013 8:34 pm

Cello is great in all registers, but watch out for the fact most string players won't intonate to an overdub the same way they would to another string player, playing simultaneously. the slight adjustments and variability in pitch is what makes a good section sound like a section. that might be why folks like to add a little harmonic color to multli-overdub solo parts, I'd guess, but that's not going to produce the shimmering, complex overtones of a section playing together.

even multiple passes of a smaller group, as drumsound mentioned above, is better than a single player overdubbing themselves.
get up with it

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Post by Zygomorph » Mon Oct 14, 2013 5:04 pm

Overtones overtones overtones. All of the suggestions here are spot-on and are related in that they implicitly instruct you to bring out the rich overtones that characterize the cello. Low cut + compression, distortion, etc. You've already recorded the parts, I guess, but room mics definitely help, as they add phase variance to those frequencies; so an alternative is subtle chorusing, anything time-based in the comb-filtering zone of the Haas effect may help (e.g., Multiple takes of the same part, i.e., the virtual orchestra effect!)

If you listen to the track at http://kissingclub.bandcamp.com/track/vicious-tempers, at just after 2:00 minutes, you'll hear cello quartet with each part doubled. I played all the parts. Standard smooth voice leading, but written to encompass the encompass the native range of the instrument.

I used that Rode tube mic, which has quite a bit of pleasing high frequency distortion and really makes just about everything you record through it sit in a mix like it's already finished. (Definitely "salty" if you know what I mean.) Besides that, I added some chorus and exciter (I think). Obviously this part lasts for a tiny amount of time so the cartoony quality can slide by before you have a chance to call it cheesy. YMMV.

(FWIW the lead part throughout this is also cello, but through a Metal Zone, Flanger, and Delay, and Trememlo into a Fender Deville....)
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