Help Mixing Shakers

[Gregg Juke]

Ditto ditto on turning them down. I usually have the best level setting success at very low monitoring levels on my smallest speakers, like practically off, translates the best at other levels.

Yeah, but don't "disappear" them. Nothing is worse than spending a couple of hours on simple shaker or rainstick tracks with nit-picky producers and engineers making you track a perfectly timed part over and over and over again for no good reason, only to have them practically mixed out of existence.

Not that that's ever happened to me........

GJ

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Nothing is worse than spending a couple of hours on simple shaker or rainstick tracks with nit-picky producers and engineers making you track a perfectly timed part over and over and over again for no good reason, only to have them practically mixed out of existence.

Not that that's ever happened to me........

GJ

Off topic but what exactly do you do to play the rain stick? I always see them and wonder if there is an application beyond the novelty factor.

[Theo_Karon]

Since nobody's touched it yet - a bit of parallel distortion can be just the thing for shakers in a dense mix. I find that a compressor/limiter fast enough to blunt the attack transient(s) of a bright shaker can often end up flattening the sound in a really not nice way, especially as the recovery time is often near impossible to get right owing to the multiple attacks in a tight cluster. So - hi pass into a distortion until the 'chunky' part of the spectrum doesn't intermodulate with the top end in a gross way (pedal, cassette deck, whatever distortion you like the top end of - in the box, decapitator on 'triode' setting works great, and already has a hi pass in front of the distortion) and then low pass the output of the distortion to deal with the fuzzlies to whatever extent is needed, then blend that in - as is often the case with parallel distortion on sources with a lot of high freq information, if done right it actually doesn't sound like distortion, but like more detail/smoother dynamics!

[Gregg Juke]

You can use it as a big shaker if you balance the fill mid-stick. Also, length of shaker and amount of angle determines duration and intensity of "rain storm."

GJ

[Gregg Juke]

Since nobody's touched it yet - a bit of parallel distortion can be just the thing for shakers in a dense mix. I find that a compressor/limiter fast enough to blunt the attack transient(s) of a bright shaker can often end up flattening the sound in a really not nice way, especially as the recovery time is often near impossible to get right owing to the multiple attacks in a tight cluster. So - hi pass into a distortion until the 'chunky' part of the spectrum doesn't intermodulate with the top end in a gross way (pedal, cassette deck, whatever distortion you like the top end of - in the box, decapitator on 'triode' setting works great, and already has a hi pass in front of the distortion) and then low pass the output of the distortion to deal with the fuzzlies to whatever extent is needed, then blend that in - as is often the case with parallel distortion on sources with a lot of high freq information, if done right it actually doesn't sound like distortion, but like more detail/smoother dynamics!

This is why I love this place^^^^.

GJ

[Magnetic Services]

what exactly do you do to play the rain stick?

Hold it like the pros do, and shake away:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iQDUOODp0H8/maxresdefault.jpg

[A.David.MacKinnon]

what exactly do you do to play the rain stick?

Hold it like the pros do, and shake away:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iQDUOODp0H8/maxresdefault.jpg

Oh, right. I guess the four foot one someone gave my son is firmly in the novelty category.

[Gregg Juke]

[quote="Magnetic Services" post_id=710883 time=<a href="tel:1523649892">1523649892</a> user_id=19149]
[quote=A.David.MacKinnon post_id=710878 time=<a href="tel:1523644044">1523644044</a> user_id=36]
what exactly do you do to play the rain stick?

Hold it like the pros do, and shake away:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iQDUOODp0H8/maxresdefault.jpg
[/quote]

Oh, right. I guess the four foot one someone gave my son is firmly in the novelty category.
[/quote]

Naw. Like I said, sometimes the longer the better, and if you want to use the bigger ones as shakers, you just use two hands, spread out a little like you are going to do chin-ups. But it's the same "curling" motion from the elbow...

GJ

[joninc]

i realize this isn't exactly an answer to your question but i record shakers and tambourines a lot and have found that recording them at a bit of a distance really helps - 1 ft away from a bright LDC isn't often gonna translate very naturally... You are using reverb to help it sit back in the distance so why not record it a little further away (like 5 feet or so)?

Also using ribbon mics can often help shave off a bit of that pokey top end.

[drumsound]

Here's something I did that was released yesterday. I used egg shakers for the eighth notes, caxixi and tambourines for the backbeat. AA CM251 omni for the shaker and caxixi, AACM67 for the tambourine, both in omni with a bit of distance. Not reverb on the eighths, but Air reverb on the backbeats.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/best- ... 1371627462

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i know that tune!

curious as to why people are suggesting HPFs....you guys have a lot of sub on your shaker tracks?

[Nick Sevilla]

I've found that the BEST way to mix maracas in a song which is not a Cumbia from Latin America is to use this:

MUTE BUTTON

[losthighway]

i know that tune!

curious as to why people are suggesting HPFs....you guys have a lot of sub on your shaker tracks?

I've gradually subscribed to the high-pass anything that ain't in it for low notes school of thought as a general approach to cleaning up incidental rumble, making space, and head room for precious db's. I'm not as compulsive about it as some, but it makes sense.

Then of course there's the "more eq is more smear and unnecessary alteration of phase" crowd, but I don't want to start a political debate here.

** Also, beyond the OCD cautionary elimination of incidental low noises, sometimes shaving off low mids which are actually in the maracas timbre can make them easier to place in the mix.

[vvv]

+1

FWIW, I consider pass-filters to be EQ because of how ya apply 'em, but really, what you are doing is just cutting the top or the bottom offa the track.

In that regard, then, there is no "smear" I can discern (as opposed to phasing when graffic or even cheap notch filters are used - usually not a problem ITB, anyway), and if any exists, it's just at the edge of the frequencies that remain; IOW, a high-pass filter at 100Hz might have some phasing around that point, (less with a higher order filter?), but I can't hear it.

And yep, I HPF almost everything - fuckit - everything.

Ain't nothin' needs < 20Hz, I reckon.

And re LPF, a lotta shite ain't need >10kHz, neither.

[Gregg Juke]

And y'all are worried about some lossy file formats...

Wait. What was this about again?



GJ