Greetings and questions, all in one!

cochise · Post by **cochise** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 2:03 pm

First off, greetings and salutations to all the songfighters out there. I've been admiring your creations for a few years now, but until recently, wasn't much of a music maker. That brings me to the questions part. I acquired some equipment from a friend ditching music so I've got:

MXL 990 mic
M Audio Mobile Pre interface
Fruity Loops, not sure what version, 4 maybe?
Acid v4 I think
some various plugins and effects, I think there's a mic modeler in there
various cables

And I have a set of Grado SR80 headphones if that helps any.

Okay, I've been playing with some tunes and the like and my main problem is getting the vocals to blend with the instruments. I either overdo the instruments or overdo the vocals, can't seem to get a more pro smoothness. I know it isn't much to go on, but I don't know the technical terms just yet. Thanks much

Cochise

ken · Post by **ken** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 2:27 pm

You might try adding compression to your vocals and instruments separately, then to the mix overall.

Ken

jack · Post by **jack** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:07 pm

a couple things to try:

play with your panning. strive for good seperation between the instruments.

play with the levels of your tracks. adjust them each to balance things.

make gratuitous use of reverb.

strive to achieve optimal signal gain at the time the track is recorded, instead of compensating for it digitally.

Post by **Lunkhead** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:22 pm

Stay something like 6-8 inches away from the mic when you sing.

Get a pop-screen/wind-filter.

Put a low cut on the vocals, between 150Hz and 200Hz, right? (A low cut is an equalizer setting that rolls off the volume of everything below a selected frequency, basically... Please don't jump down my throat about the specifics of all this stuff, engineers out there.)

Like Ken said, use compression on the vocals individually, etc. That's pretty critical.

I'd have to disagree with Jack and say use reverb sparingly. It should be felt, not heard, some say, though I suppose that's more a matter of personal taste and depends on the song, too.

jack · Post by **jack** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:27 pm

i use it much more sparingly now that i know how to mix better and avoid having to cover my errors by drowning them in reverb.

sam's right. use it sparingly, unless you need it for a particular reason.

it's like salt.

ken · Post by **ken** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:42 pm

Lunkhead wrote:Put a low cut on the vocals, between 150Hz and 200Hz, right?

That is a good point. In fact, put high pass filters on everything except bass and kick. The less mud you have down there, the better.

Ken

Phil. Redmon. · Post by **Phil. Redmon.** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 6:29 pm

ken wrote:The less mud you have down there, the better.

Unless you love mud.

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 7:54 pm

Submit songs however they come out
Receive searing criticism
Read between the lines for extraordinary tips on how to not suck
Feel the love
Repeat

cochise · Post by **cochise** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:21 pm

Wow, all great things I haven't tried much.

Okay, I've been using some compression, but I don't know how much is good or how much to what side to pan highs, guitars? I have a wind screen, but I think I was closer than 8" from the mic, probably not good.

I'm recording in a big walk in closet, seems to be the most dense room in the house. Everything else has some echo. I have something called Izotope Ozone on here too, version 2. Seems cool, but complicated, anyone have luck with it or should I leave it alone?

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 6:52 am

ozone rocks. i use it for all my mastering (that is, the last step after all tracks are mixed etc.). for a quick start, try a preset like ... "rock master" perhaps. and play with the various sections, turn all off except for one, hear the difference in the sound. move the sliders around. for my masters for songfight i usually use one of the presets, then mostly just fiddle with the eq until it sounds good. oh, and a small reverb.
others here are more expert with ozone than me...
-bill

deshead · Post by **deshead** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 6:58 am

Songfight or not, we all learned the way Roymond suggested: Do, fail, learn, repeat.

If I had to start over again, I'd want someone to tell me "learn how to EQ first." Which isn't to say the other stuff's not important, but you'll find a direct relationship between your knowledge of equalizer settings and the clarity of your mixes. Give this a read: http://www.bluebearsound.com/articles/mixing101.htm

cochise wrote:I've been using some compression, but I don't know how much is good

Here's a decent compression primer, and if you have an afternoon free, read all the articles here: http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/articles3.htm

cochise wrote:or how much to what side to pan highs, guitars?

As a learning exercise, get some Beatles records from after 1965, and study the panning.

cochise wrote: I have something called Izotope Ozone on here too

I agree with Bill that Ozone rocks, but again, if I started over I'd want someone to tell me "leave it alone until you learn how to EQ."

cochise · Post by **cochise** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:35 am

Awesome, thanks for all the links and assist. I'm going to try some things out, maybe produce a few verses of various mixes.

Do you guys wind up with 9-10 mixes before you get the right sound or is that just a beginners thing? So Ozone is used after everything else? Do you run it on the whole track or just vocals? I tried it out a little last night, seems to do a ton of stuff, graphs everywhere.

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:41 am

cochise wrote:Do you guys wind up with 9-10 mixes before you get the right sound or is that just a beginners thing?

For Songfight, depending on the amount of time I have to work on it, I'll go through 5 or 6 intermediate rough-mixes as I'm building the song/arrangement. I save only one final mix, though. Time is too short and if I love a songfight song enough I'll be re-doing a good portion of it anyway. For other projects I'll save multiple versions, but haven't found the right method to save them efficiently (I use LogicPro7). I think I'll start saving WAVs of all the final tracks, then build different mixes from those.

ken · Post by **ken** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 9:16 am

roymond wrote:
cochise wrote:Do you guys wind up with 9-10 mixes before you get the right sound or is that just a beginners thing?
For Songfight, depending on the amount of time I have to work on it, I'll go through 5 or 6 intermediate rough-mixes as I'm building the song/arrangement. I save only one final mix, though. Time is too short and if I love a songfight song enough I'll be re-doing a good portion of it anyway. For other projects I'll save multiple versions, but haven't found the right method to save them efficiently (I use LogicPro7). I think I'll start saving WAVs of all the final tracks, then build different mixes from those.

Interesting. I find I only do a mix or two. Once I finish mixing my song, I'll export the final mix straight to mp3. I give that a listen in Media Player with my eyes closed and if something needs to be changed, I change it. Usually though, my mixes translate pretty well from multitrack to mp3.

Ken

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 12:36 pm

ken wrote:Interesting. I find I only do a mix or two. Once I finish mixing my song, I'll export the final mix straight to mp3. I give that a listen in Media Player with my eyes closed and if something needs to be changed, I change it. Usually though, my mixes translate pretty well from multitrack to mp3.

I guess I was talking about the steps to a final mix. Write/Mix/Arrange are typically all simultaneous processes for Songfight songs, so I need to listen to it developing, and those are my various "mixes". Once the song is done, I do a single mix. It doesn't have anything to do with going multitrack to MP3.

cochise · Post by **cochise** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:24 pm

I don't have monitors and my headphones are great, but have no real powerful bass so I have to burn mixes and try them all over. My car seems to be by far the best, but the bass is usually thunderous there (few k in that system) and sounds good elsewhere. Not sure how the pros make it sound good everywhere. I'm sure I have a few hundred hours practice ahead...

Post by **Lunkhead** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 9:07 pm

Mixing is a whole other deal/art/etc. that people have posted about at great length in many other threads here. Try to get the most "neutral" setup you can while you're mixing, if you want a portable mix. Neutral meaning as close to the "actual sound" of the recording as possible, without influence from speakers or headphones that are louder/softere in certain frequency ranges, and without influence from the sound of the room you're mixing in. You can throw lots of money at that, but even if you do it seems like it's still a good idea to listen to your mixes on various sound systems, if you can. No mix will sound great on everything, so you could pick a few different systems and try to get something that sounds OK on most of them.

cochise · Post by **cochise** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 10:25 am

I have another Q about compression in relation to time of compressing. With our old setup we had an antares setup that compressed during recording (hardware) and all the vocals came out with the sine waves near maxed and it sounded good. Now when I run compression after the fact there are tons of hot spots and the sine form isn't full at all, it's jagged much like it was as recorded straight.

How do I normalize so that it's full all the way through? A regular normalize just maxes the highest peaks and averages.

blue · Post by **blue** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 12:32 pm

lower the threshold of the compressor.

Sober · Post by **Sober** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 8:08 pm

Heh, you have virtually the exact same setup that I started with here on SF, but you're ahead on a couple things.

Ok, I like Acid because it's easy to microtweak levels. Just Insert a volume envelope on a track, and a line should appear on said track. Then double click any place on the line, and a point will be created on a line. Double click a couple places close to that point, and then drag one of your new points. Basically, to change the volume of a small segment of a track, you'll create what looks like a bucket on that line. This is really useful when a part of a track is at a volume too different to effectively be fixed by compression.

Whew. Maybe you already knew that.

Compression is a bitch. Just mess with it.

Ozone rocks the house indeed. In the presets, I find that the 'mix master with excitement and expansion' or whatever is a good starting point. You'll definitely want to play with the multiband compressor on there, as it tends to give high-end pops on the default setting.

Get a good mic. As I've voiced numerous times elsewhere, the AT3035 is a good economic start.

Get some good drum samples for use with FL. A lot of people around here use ns-kit. My comp's freaking out at the moment, so I can't find a link.

Sing loudly.

Don't use Acid's mp3 encoder. It kills all the highs in your mix. A lot of people round here use Lame. Export a .wav of your mix, and have Lame convert it to mp3.

Get a kickass name for your band. This is a good place to start.

Now, submit 30 songs consecutively without winning any fights, bicker with some of the SF big boys, go to a SF Live event and make friends with said big boys, and then, once you start making songs of reasonable quality, cease submitting to songfight and just hover the messageboards.

cochise · Post by **cochise** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 7:24 pm

You guys are great, a lot of helpful advice. I've been playing with some things the last few days, sounding better already. It's all a matter of time to experiment at the moment. I have a few thousand samples it looks like, but am getting some help with the drums. I seem to be better with FL than anything else. I'm going to look into that mic though, mine is alright for the price, but seems to be lacking true detail (probably the artist actually)

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 7:59 pm

NaturalSound drum samples rock!