Perfection in your mixes.

A good mix is a perfect mix

I’ve been working on a song for a while now, from producing and recording to ultimately mixing. It’s a great song that’s been really fun to work on by a dear friend of mine. But when you’re involved in a project for so long and listen to the same song over and over again, ultimately you need a break from it.

Fatigue and tiredness from mixing is not an unheard concept. The general rule when mixing is that you should never mix when your ears are tired, so if you’re been recording or have been listening to music the whole day your mixing session is not going to go the same way as if you had rested ears.

You also need to try to step away from the mix. Because when you’re so involved in a mix you get way too much into the details, hearing things most listeners will never hear.

Dwelling on the details and trying to perfect every single note is an exercise in futility.

“The problem with perfection is that it has no limits. Normally, once you think you have obtained perfection you realize how it could be better.”

So every once in a while, take a step back. Think to yourself:

“Can I hear the song as a song instead of a collection of frequencies and amplitudes?”

If you are just pushing faders up and down, tweaking eq to and from the original mix you are never actually going to be able to finish a mix. There comes a time when you should just say to yourself:

“Ok, this is done. It sounds consistent to what I want it to”

If you had an idea in your head before starting the mix and now it’s sounding like you want it to, no amount of nit-pick-tweaking is going to make it perfect in your ears anymore.

My teacher told us, a mix is never finished, it’s abandoned. And that’s exactly what you should do. If it sounds good enough to you and amazing to other listeners, it is done.

And that’s exactly what I did. I just left it as is. I could have tweaked those guitars for months but I thought to myself: “This song is exactly as I want it to be”

Because in the end, it’s all about the song.

Getting your audio software cheaper.

Getting Logic cheaper?

Are you a audio enthusiast, always recording or mixing music in your basement? Do you like all the new software that’s coming out but don’t have any money to buy expensive DAW’s from the store.

There’s a slightly cheaper way, and that’s without illegal downloading.

Audio schools often have special deals with companies like Digidesign, or Apple. Sometimes they also have a discount going on in some local stores as well.

I know it’s not cheap to go to an audio school like SAE or Fullsail, especially if you are only going with the intent on getting cheaper software. But maybe you have a friend, or have an acquaintance that goes to one of these audio schools.

Let them buy the software for you.

That way, everybody wins. Software companies get a sale and you get a cheaper package. And you might network and get to know somebody in the audio school.

That’s it for this week. I’m in Barcelona now probably on the beach(this post was written yesterday) so I’m just going to kick back and chill out.

For you guys that are planning a live concert or a studio mixing session, check out these former posts of mine.

• Tips for better live mixing

• 7 ways to make a mix stand out

• The five fundamental frequencies of equalizing a vocal

Have a good weekend.

Essential equipment for a live sound setting.

Do you have enough tracks?

When preparing for a live sound gig, there are some things you need to be aware of. Some gigs are obviously smaller or larger than others so you need to be sure you have everything you need to make the gig run more smoothly.

When you have the rider and are more or less sure of the lineup, you can more or less gauge what type of equipment you will need.

At every concert, there are different requirements, you may need more of some things and less of others but here below I point out the things that are necessary at every concert.

1. Mixer.

• Obvious right? But what I mean is that you should be aware of how many tracks the band will need and the size of the mixer required for the gig. The size of the mixer varies if you’re mixing a 16 track rock group or a 24 track special show with different line-ups. Also be aware of extra tracks for FX returns or playbacks for example.

2. Enough monitors.

• Make sure that everybody on stage can hear themselves. So be sure to bring enough monitors. It will be a pain both for you and the band if there are monitoring problems. Having a great stage sound will let the gig run more smoothly and the band will appear more confident.

3. Decent enough P.A.

• You won’t need a huge JBL Vertec line-array for a small club so plan accordingly. When talking to the equipment rental make sure you specify the size of the venue and type of the concert. The professionals who work there will usually be able to gauge how big your system will have to be. Sure, they might make it a little bit bigger than they really have to to charge more, but it’s safe to say they’re(usually) trustworthy.

4. Outboard equipment.

• In addition to the mixer, the FOH engineer must have a decent selection of outboard equipment to help him mix. When working with analog mixers, this means having a huge effects rack with compressors, gates and multi-effects. But when working with a digital mixer such as the Yamaha’s or the Roland M-400 all the compressors and effects are built-in making the process of inserting them a breeze.

• For example, working with a rock group and an analog mixer in my opinion you will need at least:
• Compressor/Gate for the kick drum.
• Compressor/Gate for the snare. You can often get dual gate/compressors that you can use and save space in your effect rack.
• Gates for the toms.
• Compressor for the bass.
• Compressors for the vocal, if more than one then use the compressor on the lead vocal.
• 3-4 different types of effects. Drum reverb, plate reverb for vocals and tap-tempo delay are my favorites and the ones I use the most.

5. Extra cables

• Lastly, because with Murphy’s law watching closely everything that goes on in the live sound field, make sure you have backups of everything. And more often than not, that means cables. Bring more cables than you think you will ever need, because you will need them.

So when you’re preparing for your next gig, prepare yourself and make notes of what you will need. Do you have a big enough mixer? Enough monitors? Will your P.A. be enough? Keep all these questions in mind and follow these guidelines and you’ll do great.

What do you guys think? Am I forgetting something? Something I’m not mentioning? Let me know in the comments.

Staying on top of the production game

Being organized is the best way to be able to foresee problems that could manifest themselves. Pre-production is key to a good production and having everything noted and thought of will make things go more smoothly once it gets to the recording process.

However, letting your guard down while recording just because you thought you did such a good job foreseeing problems is unacceptable. Who knows what problems will manifest themselves during the recording process.

Keep a piece of paper and a pen handy for all the things you need to jot down. Having a track sheet is a great thing, but sometimes you don’t have one or just need a few notes down.

Buying a moleskine notebook dedicated to your audio-scribblings, or just having a legal pad and a pencil is enough. Just make sure you have something that you can use to jot down those details you notice in the tracking process:

• Which takes were the best ones,
• something you notice could be better,
• any extra production you could add later or pitch to the band
• etc etc…

Being on top of things is key to being efficient. And more often than not, foreseeing problems and solving them before just because you were on top of things will come in handy.

Sound-man vs Hum

I have been a sound-tech for a few years. I have lifted many amplifiers and speakers and put them in their right position. I have miked a drum-kit and plugged cables into snakes and into mixers. I would even say I am quite experienced when it comes to live sound.

But there is one thing that really kills a show.

Hum.

That’s right. Hum is one of the things that really gets on my nerves. Just try sustaining the word hum for a while.

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Annoying isn’t it?

True story. I was working on my own as a sound-tech one night. The band had called me at 2 pm and the sound-check was at 5. I also had to put the sound-system up. No problem, I can do that.

Not realizing these bands had around 24 tracks each and every band had a different line-up. Synths, computers, Glockenspiels, pianos, you name it. Everything that drives a sound-tech crazy when he’s trying to sound-check.

Finally I had the sound-system up and running and we were going through the sound-checks as normal. Everything seemed fine and we were kind of able to make these bands sound. I had no experience in sounding them before and their peculiar lineup made them it all the more harder.

When came show-time things started to go wrong. DI boxes stopped working, feedback liked to join the party way too often and although the bands sounded all right and I could more or less fix what went wrong on the way there was one thing that reared it’s ugly head that just would not go away.

Hum.

While frantically changing DI boxes and re-miking instruments on stage(all this while the show was going on, I’m fast….and invisible) something I did made the PA hum. And when you are mixing a concert with 24+ tracks you can’t go muting one and one to see which one is the problem. Luckily this happened before the third band went on so I could give a quick mute-run through the tracks to see which one it was.

Of course, it was one of the DI boxes.

You see, in this case I was suffering from a particularly bad case of ground hum. Ground loop hum is usually generated by a 50 Hz wave(60 if you live in the U.S.). In my case one of my DI boxes was somehow receiving it’s ground(or earth) from somewhere else causing a difference in voltage, resulting in the hum I heard.

Oh, please that’s always happening to me! Tell me the solution!

Oh, it is quite simple. When I finally figured out which DI box was generating said hum, I just went and flicked it’s ground lift switch. That way I disconnected it’s connection to the ground and thus eliminating the hum.

So next time you are frantically running around the stage figuring out where that hum is coming from, try checking if one of your DI boxes is causing it.

It may save your reputation.