DeeAyeMixingSignals

For my final mix project I'm working on a song Called "A Part of the Dream". Its a hip-hop song, the one that help me discover the compression lie. A major part of Hip-Hop music is vocals.They're the main focus of the song and they often over shadow the musical aspects. One thing about vocals is they tend to sound thin to me, and the vocals for this song did not stray away from the belief. As a result, I've always spent time trying to figure out how I can make my vocals sound more full.

While in school I got to learn two methods for finding a fullness in vocals. The methods are parallel compression and Lo-Fi. Parallel compression is when you send a signal to compressor that is maxed out in every parameter and then returned into the original signal (that's a rough explanations). Lo-Fi is a plugin that can add distortion that is similar to what you get from an analog console which gave signals more harmonics. The two serve their jobs well but for reason the never seem to get me the fullness I'm looking for.

The reason I got into mixing is because, like most audio engineers, I desire to be an artist but I had no one to mix my music. My music of choice, stereotypically, is Hip-Hop. My biggest problem with mixing hip-hop has always been the vocals. I always felt like I was recording my vocals pretty good but I could never get them to be consistent which would make me spend hours recording.

To connect this post to the title, my problem was compression. I've always been a wuss with compression simply because of how I was taught which was "Don't over Compress". The problem with that statement is over compressing, for most genre's, is standard compression for hip-hop vocals. The second problem with that statement is its never clarified what compressing is, which makes it subjective. But to a lot of novice engineers, much like myself, you would listen to the veterans out of respect for their experience. You later realize their experience may not have anything to do with your goals.

Hip-Hop vocals have to be slammed with compression. This is because rappers are usually screaming at the mic and moving around so the dynamics are consistently changing. I prefer serial compression at a 5:1 ration with a fast attack, then parallel compression, then stage compressing at a ratio of 3:1 for the vocal mix and master mix. All this to keep the volume of the vocals consistent. But to do this you have to forget everything you were taught about how to use compression, that's why in the case of hip-hop everything you were taught about compression was a LIE!!!

In any song that includes a Singer, typically the vocals are the focus. But equally typical in most genres of music there are certain instruments that are just as important of a focus as the vocals. For Reggae, as my last two post rambled, about its the bass. When you listen to reggae you want to listen to the lyrics to get the message but you also want to hear and feel the bass. So to perfect your listening experience you want them to interact and compliment each other.

The second, but equally important part of the bass is the tone. Finding the tone is where my reference seem the most helpful but at the seem time not. I say that because there was blatantly a tone in the bass of my reference but because of technological difference, Bob Marley music of course being recorded mostly in the 70's, I couldn't exactly match the tone. None the less the tone in the song still helped me shape out a way to make one.

The route I chose to find my tone surprised me and probably would most novice mix engineers. To start I actually began cutting some of my bass tone, I simply High Pass filtered out 108hz and made and made a steep cut at 234hz. This actually help to make the bass notes clear because it was cluttered with boominess (that's not a word but you know what I mean). After that, I gave it some upper mid and high end boost, the biggest being at 3.3khz. This just gave it more tone which ultimately helped my bass to sound like an instrument instead of constant low end. The tone in conjunction with the compression for the bass gave it the Reggae feel with all know and love.

As we know by now, the song I'm working on is a Reggae song. Reggae is known for its characteristic over powering bass. The key to the bass is getting it to interact with the vocals, so that it doesn't block them but it remains thick, heavy and present. Through a couple mix lessons I learn to get that heavy bass presence the, the trick is compression.

The compressor I used was the Bomb Factory 76. I'm not a wise with compression and thankfully with this compressor you don't have to be. I has very few parameters, make it simple especially since you don't have to dial in a threshold. My plan of action was simple give it some input, a good ratio, I chose 8db, and crank the output. The bass was easily made the focus of the track at that point.

So in the first entry I just talked about the things in a minimal summarized view but this time I'm going to talk about choosing the reference. Choosing a Reference track is crucial to outcome of the mix. Its crucial because it helps you gain a goal and when you have a goal its easier to Identify an end point. References are chosen by the song and band's "sound". While most Rappers, singers, and bands claim to be "original" usually they have an artist or band the influenced them. The trick is to get them to identify that influence. Understanding their influence can help you gain a better idea to approach recording a band and mixing their song.

The reference I chose for my project was Bobby Marley and The Wailers "Get Up, Stand Up". Like I said in the first post it was to gain an idea of how to get the thick overbearing bass sound and lead vocal interaction that raggae is known for. My reference helped me to see which musical aspects could be overlooked and which were actually necessary. Beyond the bass sound the Band I was mixing had a Bob Marley and The Wailers vibe to them which also helped with how to EQ the vocals. These are some of the things you want to think about when picking your reference.

So this Blog is about me sharing, reflecting lessons I'm learning as a novice Audio Engineer. So a good start would be to talk about my current project I'm working on which is a Reggae song call Greetings. Normally, when I would originally mix a song, I would just make sure every was recorded and then work on it til I felt everything sounded "good". The problem with that process was it would have me working on a mix for two to five weeks (one song). The reasoning behind this was I had no standard for "good" so I never had an idea of how I wanted it to sound when it's finished. I say that to bring up the fact that "Greetings" is the first song I've tried out the reference track theory while mixing. The reference track that I'm using is Bobby Marley and Wailers "Get Up, Stand Up". In particular I'm using it to gain a feel for Reggae music and try to emulate the bass presence that Reggae is known for.  So far I'm still trying to shape the bass tone, with a little eq high end cut and some compression. So far the song is where I want it to be, but the bass is coming out good so the second step will be to have it interact well with the lead vocals. I have pictures of some of my professor's notes as well, they basically explain the same thing I'm trying to explain. Its also has a poor drawing of the area I'm mixing in, its basically a bass trap and a bad place for mixing. Don't practice my bad habits.