Post by RickW on Mar 29, 2015 11:21:29 GMT -5
Had two free seminars in the last two weeks, on mixing and mastering. Never really understood what the difference was in the digital age, but I do now. It's amazing how a few hours spent with someone who actually knows what they are doing brings a huge leap.
I went back to Soft Aire, the guitar/cello/flute piece I did, and remixed, with more reverb and a high pass filter on the guitar. The filter pulled the rumble from the guitar out of the space the cello was in, and created much better definition, less mud. I then took the outpuf from the mix, and ran it through some additional EQ, a buss compressor and an "envelope shaper." Which is really a fancy filter that enhances tone, adding some frequencies. Do I know entirely what I'm doing with these things? No. But I experimented, and applied what I had learned. Through the stack of devices, the output got boosted up to near 0 db, where it should be. The entire pieces sounds clearer, with more presence, and at a more appropriate volume.
It's an intereting world. When I was recording when I was younger, compressors and limiters were used for their original intent, to squash transient peaks. Now they are an integral part of shaping tone. They are often stacked. The engineer played the piece he was mixing through different combos and settings, to show the subtle differences.
He also showed us the outputs of various songs, in wave form. It was interesting, some of the older stuff, like the Beatles and Stairway to Heaven, how the volume/amplitude actually builds. Stairway to Heaven didn't hit 0 db until the last couple of cymbal crashes in the climax. He showed a couple of newer tunes, including one Chili Peppers song, that was essentially a dense block of wave form. And when you listened to it, that's who it sounded. Almost no dynamic variation. That's become the norm for a lot of pop/rock music now.
Lots of fun.
I went back to Soft Aire, the guitar/cello/flute piece I did, and remixed, with more reverb and a high pass filter on the guitar. The filter pulled the rumble from the guitar out of the space the cello was in, and created much better definition, less mud. I then took the outpuf from the mix, and ran it through some additional EQ, a buss compressor and an "envelope shaper." Which is really a fancy filter that enhances tone, adding some frequencies. Do I know entirely what I'm doing with these things? No. But I experimented, and applied what I had learned. Through the stack of devices, the output got boosted up to near 0 db, where it should be. The entire pieces sounds clearer, with more presence, and at a more appropriate volume.
It's an intereting world. When I was recording when I was younger, compressors and limiters were used for their original intent, to squash transient peaks. Now they are an integral part of shaping tone. They are often stacked. The engineer played the piece he was mixing through different combos and settings, to show the subtle differences.
He also showed us the outputs of various songs, in wave form. It was interesting, some of the older stuff, like the Beatles and Stairway to Heaven, how the volume/amplitude actually builds. Stairway to Heaven didn't hit 0 db until the last couple of cymbal crashes in the climax. He showed a couple of newer tunes, including one Chili Peppers song, that was essentially a dense block of wave form. And when you listened to it, that's who it sounded. Almost no dynamic variation. That's become the norm for a lot of pop/rock music now.
Lots of fun.
