In mixing, how do you place instruments in their own space?

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austingreen
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In mixing, how do you place instruments in their own space?

Post by austingreen » Thu Aug 11, 2011 4:02 pm

My band is about to start mixing an album recorded on a Tascam 388, we're planning on mixing inside the 388 to a DAW stereo track. Standard bass, drums , 2 gtrs, vocals + 2 or 3 backups vocals at times and a 3rd gtr/keyboard overdubs here & there. Pretty straight forword indie rock ala gbv, sebadoh, kurt vile. I guess we're partial to mid-fi sounds, if that's even a term used in today's parlence.

I was curious what approaches, techniques, tips, or tricks y'all employee to help give each instrument its own space in the stereo spectrum. Is it mostly pan and vol from subtle to extreme to achive some seperation of each instrument?

I'm also guessing there may be a large portion of this done in the choosing of tones before recording to anticipate having material that glues togther while keeping some sense of independence to each sound at the same time... sounds like an oxymoron.

One of the biggest challenges I see coming up is giving the two main guitars their appropriate space, sometimes even though the equipment was different, the tones ended up being similar enough i'm fearing some of the cool stuff might be lost with so much going on in the same spectrum, eq or timbre wise.

Thanks in advance for any input!

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Post by sessionsatstudiom » Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:15 pm

Volume and pan are your friends not to mention a bit of EQ. The biggest thing if you have competing tones find a way to make them compliment each other. Pan hard left and right if necessary.

Do not be afraid to cut a few frequencies of things. This can help make it mix better with the other instruments etc.. and carve out a bit of space for things. The hardest part of recording when you are first getting started is trying to make everything the ultimate tone. But there is only so much room sonically to fit all the sound so sometimes perfect tone gets a bit compromised. But in the whole mix that tone probably sounds great. Just not perfect by itself.

Good luck on the mix. It is a fun task to mix and a challenge.

Mike
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Re: In mixing, how do you place instruments in their own spa

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Thu Aug 11, 2011 10:48 pm

austingreen wrote:One of the biggest challenges I see coming up is giving the two main guitars their appropriate space
pan them hard left and right and you're off to a good start.

if the arrangements and recording are good, it shouldn't really be too much trouble to get a 'straight forward indie rock' mix together. i would do as much as possible with just volume and panning, and then see where you're at. some things will doubtless need some eq/compression, but you can do a lot with just volume and pan.

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Post by themagicmanmdt » Fri Aug 12, 2011 7:54 am

personally -

mix in mono. get seperation there first before starting to pan.

then, usually, when you start panning L/R after they're sounding good, you might find yourself backing down on the EQ you used for good distinction in mono as you go to stereo. or, you might not! it always depends.

if you get seperation with the guitars stacked right on top of each other, you're sure going to have it when you start panning.
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Post by cjogo » Fri Aug 12, 2011 3:04 pm

Not sure what a mid-fi sound is though. But, we always start with the melody /lead vocal and work around the mix..for standard popish tunes. Pan/eq very important for placement .. If the key instrument is guitar :: thats the next in line for the mix > and so on down the line.

Zero the master .... and start to pan & automix . Taking care to set comp/limiter to each channel and decide the vibe of the effects needed for each instrument /vocal.

Although I am first a drummer -- the percussion seems to always take a back seat to the vocals/harmonies/ and the main melody of the song being created. If the bass/drums have been played just right :: they will fall in their groove to compliment the final mix.

Lead and string/horns take the last credits,,with automixing their pans both with the effects and recorded tracks .
Last edited by cjogo on Fri Aug 12, 2011 11:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by dsw » Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:21 pm

here's what I do. I'm open to ridicule....

put all the faders up equal.
pan things the way I think they ought to be.
turn faders up and down until I can hear everything the way I want.
listen for crowding and eq out the bottom of everything except the low stuff like kick and bass.
take the mix to a really good system.
realize I suck at mixing.
take the tracks to a pro.

cheers.
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Post by Justin Foley » Fri Aug 12, 2011 7:01 pm

It depends on the aesthetic you're going for. I'm a big fan of the 'you're in the room with the band' approach. When I listen to jazz records from the early 50's, around the beginning of widespread consumer stereo recordings, I'm still amazed at how the music doesn't sound dated. The best recordings at the time were done by engineering professionals with rudimentary by extremely high quality analog equipment. It speaks to me about how good things can sound with excellent microphones, a simple signal chain and a favorable recording environment.

So the thing I pay the most attention to is how the direct microphone is picking up the instrument. By experimenting with mic selection (if possible), preamps (also if possible) and placement (tedious, but possible for everyone), you can usually nail down a more flattering sound that won't need any additional processing during the final mix. This is good. You won't be forced to rely on the quality of your EQ options, which can introduce phase shift to a signal.

Second most attention, then, is the ambient recording of the instrument. If possible, I'd track everything with at least three tracks - a direct and two tracks for stereo. (I'm a big fan of mid-side recording, but the two additional tracks could also be a left/right). But even with a limit on the number of tracks, you can still do a fine job of blending the direct sound of the close mic with the reverberant sound of the distant mic(s) and get a more lifelike presentation of the instrument. The choices here can be very subtle as it's a fine line between too much room sound versus not enough. But the right amount of blend is usually a treat to hear. My favorite part of the recording process is always when I finally click on both the reverberant and direct sounds and get to hear the richness of the instrument come through the monitors.

Man. I love that.

Anyway, some folks like to use different amount of direct/room for different instruments - drums get a lot of ambient presentation, guitar a little to some, bass often none at all. I guess the theory here is that the different types of sound help cue the brain into making an additional separation between the sound sources. Over time, though, I've gravitated towards keeping the relative level of room sound the same for all instruments, even going to far as to track the whole band playing at once. While this sounds a bit unconventional, especially to hear the bass still bouncing around. But after getting over the oddness of it, I've grown to enjoy the simplicity of what I'm hearing.

If I do a good job of capturing the direct sound through mic choice/placement and blending it with a well-recorded room sound (assuming the room sounds good), mixing is often very easy - just levels and panning and I'm done. When I've accomplished

this well I don't have any trouble hearing the difference between the instruments. Of course, this assumes that the band sounded good when they were playing in the room. If there's muddiness at that point, it's best to solve confusion at the sound source - varying amp choices and settings, making minor adjustments to the drum kit, figuring out the best spot in the room to place the ambient mics.

Anyway, that's a lot of typing to tell you about how I like to keep things very straightforward and focus on a few important key aspects.

= Justin

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Post by drumsound » Fri Aug 12, 2011 10:49 pm

sessionsatstudiom wrote:
Do not be afraid to cut a few frequencies of things. This can help make it mix better with the other instruments etc.. and carve out a bit of space for things. The hardest part of recording when you are first getting started is trying to make everything the ultimate tone. But there is only so much room sonically to fit all the sound so sometimes perfect tone gets a bit compromised. But in the whole mix that tone probably sounds great. Just not perfect by itself.

Good luck on the mix. It is a fun task to mix and a challenge.

Mike
Oh so very true!!!
themagicmanmdt wrote:personally -

mix in mono. get seperation there first before starting to pan.

then, usually, when you start panning L/R after they're sounding good, you might find yourself backing down on the EQ you used for good distinction in mono as you go to stereo. or, you might not! it always depends.

if you get seperation with the guitars stacked right on top of each other, you're sure going to have it when you start panning.
Starting in mono was the first thing that came to my mind.

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Post by Sean Shannon » Sun Aug 14, 2011 1:36 am

drumsound wrote:
themagicmanmdt wrote:personally -

mix in mono. get seperation there first before starting to pan.

then, usually, when you start panning L/R after they're sounding good, you might find yourself backing down on the EQ you used for good distinction in mono as you go to stereo. or, you might not! it always depends.

if you get seperation with the guitars stacked right on top of each other, you're sure going to have it when you start panning.
Starting in mono was the first thing that came to my mind.
I recommend mixing in stereo while monitoring in mono, not mixing with all the pan pots centered and panning later.
Check your mix in mono.
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Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun Aug 14, 2011 9:07 am

Hi,

I start with all faders at about -20 (mixing ITB). All pan pots center.
Then get a basic balance in about 5 minutes or less.
PAN = left to right position of instrument.
EQ =
More top end=higher and more up front.
Less top end, lower and further back. This is from the middle horizon line and above.
Presence (more/less mid-range) is front to back.
More bottom end, lower, less low end, higher, up to the middle horizon line.

DELAY = 1,126 ft/s is the avg speed of sound. Divide this by 1000 (milliseconds) to get a mS / distance relationship. This would be 1126/1000 = 1.126 mS = one foot.

Delay can be used both for adding "ambience" and also to move things back in the sound stage.

For adding ambience, delay is to be used as a send effect, where many instruments feed one delay unit, and this then is fed to your mix. Just like reverb, but cleaner and less prone to wash out the imaging.
I try to use a short delay when using delay like this, typically 90 to 180 mS. and then I dry up the reverb if I am using one, and possibly either lower the reverb's early reflections or even mute them entirely. I NEVER USE TEMPO MATCHED DELAYS. That sounds like crap in most situations, except when the effect is used to repeat a phrase in a musical context. Ambience to me should not be married in a mathematical way to the music. It will NOT get heard in the mix. It will only make the beat after louder, and less clear.

For moving things back in the sound stage, you insert a delay on the instrument to be moved back, and use the delay 100% wet, NO REPEATS. Then, according to how many feet you want to move this instrument back, multiply 1.12 by the amount of feet to move back. eg I want the bass back 6 feet so it would be 6.756 mS of delay.

This moving back works best with instruments that are recorded very dry, or with an ensemble, so that the bleed in this microphone also moves back, helping to add to the illusion of space.

Note : BE CAREFUL OF DOING TOO MUCH, and of overloading your buffers with too many delays... typically only move a few instruments back like this, to help the creation of space. Of course, imagination will guide you, as well as listening until it sounds right to you.

REVERB = Illusion of an instrument being inside of a particular 3d space. If done right, eg you listened to all your instruments and determined the correct reverb that will work for ALL of them, or at least eh majority of the instruments, reverb can be effective in conveying the sensation that instruments were played at the same time "live", or at least that they were in the same room at some point in the production. Another use is to separate one or two instruments from the pack, usullay the lead vocal, by using a different reverb only on the lead vocal, to make it pop out, be different than the rest of the instruments. This is a good effective way of getting creative with a reverb. But doing this when you want to have the lead vocal in the same room as the instruments, is not effective.

Now that I "gave the game away" lets listen to what you do with this info.

Cheers
Last edited by Nick Sevilla on Sun Aug 14, 2011 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sun Aug 14, 2011 11:59 am

Nick Sevilla wrote: Now that I "gave the game away" lets listen to what you do with this info.
:roll:

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Post by radkins » Sun Aug 14, 2011 1:32 pm

I have found that I tend to pay attention to this long before I start mixing. Make sure that instruments aren't walking on each other. If you have two guitar players/tracks, make sure their timing is good and the parts aren't too complex and getting in each others way.
Last edited by radkins on Thu Sep 01, 2011 11:56 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun Aug 14, 2011 3:28 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:
Nick Sevilla wrote: Now that I "gave the game away" lets listen to what you do with this info.
:roll:
That'll be 24.95 plus postage and handling...
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Post by jhharvest » Sun Aug 14, 2011 4:43 pm

Mixerman's Zen and the Art of Mixing is only $16,49 on Amazon...

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