Language

[the finger genius]

I'm mixing a record (which I also recorded) and I received a request from the band to make most of the individual instruments sound more "beefy". Interestingly enough, they also commented that overall the recording seemed a little bass heavy (tone, not bass guitar.) In fact, they also asked me to turn the bass guitar up.

So I guess I have two reasons for posting this:

1. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to make something beefy while removing some low frequency? In this case there is a violin, saxophone, electric guitar, bass guitar, and accordion, although generally the accordion and sax are never playing at the same time, the rest of the instruments usually are. I was thinking that compressing the electric guitar rather than making it darker might help.

2. This is why it's under people skills: I find the language we use to describe sounds to be really interesting. There aren't really defined "colors" as we have with light / vision, and it seems that so much is left to interpretation. I'd love to hear more stories where an artist asked for something that left you scratching your head, or made you think of sound in a new way.

[mikeyc]

I'd love to hear more stories where an artist asked for something that left you scratching your head, or made you think of sound in a new way.

My favorite was when I was working on a guitar track with a band and the guitarist (a little tipsy) kept yelling, "More Maiden, Mike! More Maiden!"

As for "beefy," I'd try compression to see if that's what they mean, maybe play with the low mids instead of the lows. Beefy is so much more ambiguous than ballsy...

[Jay Reynolds]

I had a client who wanted me to make his Reason drum tracks sound "more emotional."

To his credit, when I got the mixes the way he wanted, he'd say "now it's special." I thought it was goofy at the time. But the more I think about it, isn't that what a well-done mix should sound like to the artist?

[cgarges]

Bass player: I want you to put some more highs in my lows and some more lows in my highs.

I really heard that on a session once. That was almost 8 years ago and I'm still trying to make sense of it.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[cgarges]

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to make something beefy while removing some low frequency?

I can think of two things to try.

If you have high-pass filters available, try high-passing everything in the mix and then start taking the filters off one by one, starting with the bass guitar. See if there's a point where that helps in the overall clarity. I often find myself taking out the really low stuff, but boosting a bit higher up-- like rolling out some stuff from 40Hz down, but boosting 80. You can try this and switch the EQ in and out a couple of times until it sounds clear in the bottom, but not aneamic. If you make room in the sub area for the lower stuff, it's often easier to get a mix that sounds like it's got more low end overall. You can also make it seem louder if there's more headroom in the bottom.

You can also try getting the mix to sound nice and thick (loud bass guitar, etc.) and then put an EQ across the stereo buss and take out a tiny bit where the most low frequency buildup is happening. With a good EQ, a move like this can work wonders just by taking out half a dB at the right frequency.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[minorkeylee]

You mean you don't have an upper-low-mids presence knob? What the hell kind of studio are you running?

I label mine 'Beef'.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I did a major label record a few years back and when it came time to mix my job was to run interference between the A&R guy and the mixer. He would call a few times a day and say things like "it needs to make the shoulders roll" which I would have to translate to something like "more tamborine please". This went on for 2 weeks. Thank god it paid well.

[Jay Reynolds]

"it needs to make the shoulders roll"

Was this what they were talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnYYK07lGFc

[bestmixerever]

After a few years you'll become fluent in 1. crazy and 2. musician, which is doubly helpful because most musicians are crazy. I had a 105lb rapper who wanted me to add "more bass to my vocals". ??? "Ahh, you're not exactly Barry White"...."Yo, add more bass to my vocals with some eq's"...."Well, I can't add to something that's not there"..."Add more bass to my vocals!"..."Ssssure". I slapped an EQP1A across his vocals and turned up the gain to 11 @ 100hz. It sounded like he had a gag ball on his mouth. He gave me this I told you so look and the next day I called the label and requested that I receive NO credit on the album for mixing.
Ask the band for a reference. Beefy means different things to different people. To me, beefy is a T-Bone for 2 @Old Homestead and to others it's a thin slice of veal.

[the finger genius]

I should have mentioned that I already have a HPF on all tracks except for kick and bass guitar at about 100Hz (frequency is shifted up and down per instrument depending on how it sounds, but most are around 100Hz.) I think I'm going to try compressing the guitar, and maybe subtly trimming some lows from the mix buss as well. I think it's also affected by the fact that there is a guitar part at the beginning which is kind of on it's own and panned pretty hard to the right, so I'm going to try moving that to the middle and see if that gives him a beefy feeling.

[TapeOpLarry]

Let them take it to someone else for mixing so they can find out that it's not your fault that they're not happy...

[JohnDavisNYC]

Well, it is kind of our job to understand the clients, isn't it?

The first thing I think of when someone says 'beefy' is an all analog mix...

I guess that your problem is also unique to the modern, in the box way of mixing, because if the client is there in the room, I would just start trying different things out on one of the instruments until they started hearing 'beefy', and then apply a similar sonic approach to the other instruments.

I find that those kind of problems are only unsurmountable when the client has no fucking clue what they want to hear.

John

[the finger genius]

Well, it is kind of our job to understand the clients, isn't it?
John

I agree 100%. One of my favorite professors used to say (a long, long time ago) that the most successful among our class would most likely be the ones who could get in the heads of an artist and make it sound like they wanted to sound. He used a very similar example, except I think he spoke of someone asking him to make a guitar tone more crunchy. And you're right that this task can become much more difficult when an artist isn't present during the mix.

Let them take it to someone else for mixing so they can find out that it's not your fault that they're not happy...

I sent them a new mix where I did exactly what I thought they were looking for, even though I wasn't really happy with it. I let them know in a gentle way that I wasn't happy with it, and why I thought what they were asking for might ultimately hurt the mix and song, and I got a great response from the guitarist saying that he hadn't really thought about how changing his guitar tone might impact the other instruments in the recording, and that he also preferred the old mix for the same reasons.

Ultimately, these are good friends of mine, and I want them to love their recordings. Also as musicians, I wouldn't really expect them to know or think about these things. In fact, I think the arrangements of the songs are actually wonderful in that they allow each instrument to shine at certain points throughout, and before the mix changes I though everything had fit together very nicely.

So the bottom line is, I'll probably try a few more things, and one or two more revisions to see if I can come closer to what they're looking for. Wish me luck!

[Snarl 12/8]

More compression!

[Aquaman]

my job was to run interference between the A&R guy and the mixer. He would call a few times a day and say things like "it needs to make the shoulders roll" which I would have to translate to something like "more tamborine please".

Hilarious! I'd love to see more of these A&R Guy -> Actual Musician translations! Can you remember any others?