Ask A Sound Guy

Archive for the ‘Tutorials’ Category

Interesting anecdotes for musicians Overheard @ SF MusicTech – hypebot http://ow.ly/JXNO

Tweet #6470207566

The Question:

OK – here’s a production question that I’ve sometimes wondered – at what point would it be appropriate to normalize sound levels during production? At the end would make sense, but I sometimes find I want
to normalize some of the raw audio before I start working with it.

The Answer:

Normalizing is sometimes flagged as one of those production “no-nos” and seen as rather taboo by some (maybe most) true engineers. I personally believe it has it’s applications, but I’d be careful not to over-do it.

In terms of music production…
I would personally avoid normalizing all together (and I do). Things will be loud enough once you get all the way through the mixing and mastering phases of any music project.

If you normalize all of your audio and then throw a brickwall limiter on your two track master during mastering, your stuff will be loud and not much more. If you need to make your audio or MIDI louder during production, use the faders! Use a gain plugin. Or, use your compressor’s makeup gain to make stuff a little louder.

That being said, if you still want to or feel like you need to normalize your audio, you should do it earlier rather than later.

In terms of post-production…
I don’t do a lot of music recording right now. Most of what I do falls under the “post” category. When I’m working on dialog editing/mixing for a web-based application, a podcast, or something that’s meant to be streamed rather than burnt to a CD, I’ll usually end up normalizing the audio I’m working on in order to please the client.

More often than not, when you’re working on audio for things like training videos, Internet-based training modules, etc, you’re working with marketing or business-minded people. They’re not real interested in what you do or what “direction” you have for the project. They simply want it to sound clean and be loud which is why normalizing audio for these purposes is often much easier than worrying about any type of brickwall limiting.

Producing music and mixing are highly subjective things. I personally don’t believe in any book of rules, so you should always take advice like this with a grain of salt perhaps. Ultimately it comes down doing whatever sounds the best and gets you the results you want.

I’ve been trying to get more “punch” and funkyness into my house-drums for a
long time now, but I just can’t seem to cut it. I’m looking for a sound like
Justice, Daft Punk, Moulinex, that kind of goodness.

I have been told compression is the way to go, but I simply can’t figure out
how.

Also – do you have any suggestions for free or cheap samplepacks for amateur
house-people like me?

With electronic music, a solid rhythm section (drums and bass) is 100% essential. If you don’t have those two elements going strongly in your track, you can forget about any DJs using it on the floor. So it’s no wonder why we get a couple of emails once and a while about improving your drum sounds.

It’s no secret that dance music is sample-based: many artists lift kicks, snares, and whatever else they can straight from records to use in their own productions. It’s not seen as shady or slimy, it’s just something that’s done. So for an “amateur” producer, good samples (probably taken from a sample pack) is key.

For proper samples, I suggest going to a site like Loopmasters, where sample packs tend to be of pretty high quality and reasonably priced. All sample packs have demo loops so you can at least get a basic idea of what the kit will sound like. All packs are sorted by genre(s), so it’ll be easy get started.

Once you’ve got proper samples and a decent composition you can start mixing. While compression is one factor to getting nice sounding drums, it’s not the only. If you’re not working with samples, there can be a lot of EQing, editing, and other processes that can be applied to drums to get them sounding punchy and tight. But since we’re only dealing with samples here, I’ll cover the popular compression techniques:

Read the rest of this entry »

Automap Server

Novation’s Automap protocol has been out for a while, and as most Ableton users will tell you, its solid.  For their different Midi controllers, you can map automatically to the various plugins, mixer settings and instruments that you open in real time.

One of the seemingly more gimmick-aimed versions of their automap software resides on your iphone or ipod touch.  If you’ve got this $3 app and your device on the same wifi network as your workstation – then you’ve got DAW control on your phone.  I say it “seems” gimmicky because I had assumed any iphone app for so little money couldn’t possibly be practical and useful.  Automap on the iPhone, however, immediately became one of my new favorite tools.

Short Review:

Automap Controlling Pro Tools from an iPhone.

Automap on the iPhone/iPod Touch is cheap, easy to setup, relatively quick to learn and functional. It works great with any DAW that will accept MIDI based controls – Automap lets you use CC messages OR HUI protocol to control DAWs.  I used Logic Pro 9 and Pro Tools 8 LE with great results.

There are other apps like TrixMix or ProRemote on the iPhone that claim to have better UI/feature sets, but their also more expensive.

I had trouble getting panning control to work on my DAW Mixers, but considering what I’m using this control for (basic level setting and solo/mute/arm control when away from the computer – that’s not a big drawback.  Note: I got in touch with Novation’s customer support and they explained that DAW’s like Logic and Pro Tools require a kind of feedback for pan controls that Automap for the iPhone isn’t yet equipped to handle.  They assured me that they were aware of the issue and looking to fix it with an upcoming update.

On last quick note – all the links i followed to try to purchase automap 3.3 pro led me to a message saying I couldn’t purchase it in my country (U.S.) However the Novation Support team sent me this link to where automap pro is available for purchase. http://www.focusrite-estore.com/novation/software/automappro/

Hopefully none of you had this problem, and it’s just my own stupidity, but I figured I’d post it just in case.

More Details:

Read the rest of this entry »

Harrison's Mixbus

Harrison – maker of fantastic analog and digital consoles – has released it’s own take on the DAW, which begs the question Who cares?

But what makes this particular workstation unique is it’s design philosophy.  Mixbus was built as a customized version of Ardour, and re-introduces engineers to something simultaneously frustrating and inspiring: Limitations.

Harrison gives us a DAW that mimics an analog console.  They call it a “knob per function” design, which basically means each knob does one thing and only one thing. There’s also only four stereo mix buses for grouping and effects, which seems like a pain, but it’s a blessing in disguise.  How many times have you been asked to put 20 different kinds of verb on a single track? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to honestly say “I can’t do that?”

The other and perhaps most important benefit of having a limited DAW is the way limitations force you to get creative and thoughtful with your mixing. Choosing a reverb becomes an important decision when you’ve only got space for one.

Here’s a list of details from the Harrison Site:

Mixbus Features:

• Straightforward “knob per function” mixer layout based on Harrison’s renowned 32-series and MR-series music consoles.
• Precision DSP algorithms for EQ, Filter, Compression, Analog Tape Saturation, and Summing based on Harrison’s world-renowned large format analog and digital mixing consoles.
• Unlimited stereo or mono input channels (based on available CPU power) featuring High-pass Filter, EQ, Compression, and 4 Mix Bus sends on every channel.
• 4 Stereo Mix Buses (can be used for groups or auxes) featuring Tone controls, Compression, Sidechaining, and Analog Tape Saturation.
• Stereo Master Bus that features Tone controls, Analog Tape Saturation, K-meter, and Limiting to help you make polished mixes.
• Plugin delay compensation to support effects such as parallel compression.
• Comprehensive “at-a-glance” metering with peak, peak hold, and compressor gain reduction visible on every track and bus.
• Extensive DAW features via the Ardour Digital Audio Workstation.
• Supports AudioUnit plugins and any CoreAudio interface.
  

This Daw looks awesome, and for $80 – it’s worth a shot if you’re trying to make the jump from analog console to DAW.