Chris: Alright Steve, good to see you man. Good to be seen on the second episode of studio stuff podcast. How do you handle bad recording? This when mixing your own music but you know especially your clients music.
Steve: Yeah and I think us kind of bedroom warriors as a career have either made or encountered. Yep. A lot of bad recordings. Yes sir. Okay I started in my parents the back spare bedroom of my parents house outside Los Angeles and we were in the directly in the landing flight path of LAX airport. Oh wow. And so you know and this was before isotope and all the stuff I'm sure we'll chat about at some point today but it was you know literally there just be this point where we're like playing everybody was just like stop what they were doing because the 747 was going and those things are loud and it takes a while like they are from where you first year after where you stop hearing them is is quite a bit of time. It is. And you know when you've got you know at that time when you're got a you know high school or with a cello in my parents spare bedroom waiting for a plane to finally leave the flight.
Chris: Oh that's good.
Steve: Area over the house. So yeah beyond that yeah lots of lots of bad recordings. Did you start on tape? No.
Chris: You missed the tape era? Actually I worked once on tape when I got out of audio school which I learned everything in the box. Yeah. That's cool and then it was like a friend of mine had a friend of his you know the studio. Just a brand new studio and you had like a tape machine all that stuff you know when you ask me you want to take over the studio and yeah take over the session and here's the tape machine here here the keys and so I was like I had no clue and I kind of I didn't even know how his patch worked and you know even XR connections and everything. So I like instead of using the all the established connection pass and just like passed all the XR cables across the passenger doors in between rooms. The guy came in you was pissed. Yeah. He gave me a bunch of a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah so you don't know what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't actually.
Steve: Thanks for asking. Holy don't. You left me.
Chris: Exactly.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah and then it was the yeah for for me I came in right it kind of the eight track digital ADATs and D88s and all that and man we made a lot of bad recordings with ADAT machines like just not their fault. They didn't help.
Chris: You know I never experienced ADAT as an engineer. Yeah. But the better was playing with we reported you know using ADATs and stuff and the lead singer was the engineer at the time at that time and yeah used ADATs a lot.
Steve: I think I had six of those things man and yeah people that live through that era will understand but yeah trying to sink you know six six of those things up and you get rewind to go back to like location one and one of them wouldn't stop. Oh yeah. And you'd hear it speeding up and there was this dash and everybody live through this nose the dive for the power button before it hits the end of the tape and spins here. So yeah I think that that era between you know like good thick analog and where we are now there was this kind of weird era where the technology was not helping us make good recordings at all.
Chris: No computers. Yeah. At this time you know I remember you know it was a session I was part of and the bass player was recording some bag vocals. Yeah. Everything was on ADAT you know and that one time was like can I have a bit more reverb but that part was recorded. So every time the engineer backed up to the recording point we always heard that little parts before punching in you know. After like five, six takes he gets out of the roof like what's happening with the reverb man there's so much reverb. Every time the engineer was saying like man what's more reverb?
Steve: Yeah so yeah but I think living through those eras and even now now you know now we're in this time where it's kind of the opposite problem where stuff is so cheap and easy to record that I find out from the mix especially mix side when people send me stuff to mix. You know they were like yeah that guy will get it later right like the and then you realize you're that guy and you're later and now is later and so yeah there is definitely some laziness laziness or just don't know better. Right?
Chris: Yeah but let's face it you know there's a lot of you know you go on YouTube there's a bunch of videos on mixing people love mixing videos. Is there really? But is there a lot of recording videos? Oh I see where you're going you know that's the thing you know every time like every time I make a recording type video I don't get as much use as a mixing video.
Steve: Yep yep for some reason so so the hard work up front piece. Yes. Like many things in life. Yes. He wants to be the prep chef. Nope. He went over the guy with the pan and the fire.
Chris: Or even really comment once I remember he was like comparing the mix with the masters engineers you know comparing their mixes and saying yeah but you know it's not fair because the songs they mix the tracks they mix it's like super well produced and it's like super well recorded they only like doing the final touch ups of the mix you know. It's like yeah that's the point. That's the point.
Steve: Everybody should have that problem. We should all the tracks are great. Yeah. And those guys worked through all the stuff we're talking about. Yes. At some point they were like pop out and like pop their soother out and do great tracks to mix right. It's like they had to go through the jet plane era as well right. Dog barking dogs barking. Oh the dogs and the dog clausing. The dump truck the trash truck. The stuff you don't hear till later because it's a lot more. Right. Yeah. So what what's an example of a bad. Oh a bad recording. You hit you solo a track and you go this is bad. What is one that comes to mind.
Chris: Oh okay man okay the list is there's quite a little could be a long list but let's start with the basic stuff especially since we're working inside a computer. Yes. In the box. Yes. So digital clipping.
Steve: Ah ha ha ha.
Chris: Digital clipping over saturating tracks but digitally saturated not nice. Saturation. I'm not talking about. I'm not the log saturation. No. Not the good kind. Not the good kind. The bad kind. The bad kind. The kind that you're like okay what am I going to do with this.
Steve: It reminds me of when I was young young lad in California we had out in the yard it just pops in my head I've never thought of this before. The the the bugsapper. Yes. That sound sounds like a big fat bug getting zapped by that blue thing. That sound it's just not pleasant. The crackle. I love that. The crackle ending in death. Yeah that's pretty much it. In this case you're the you're the fly. I'm the fly.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. So that would be a sign of a bad recording for me you know.
Steve: And it and then the question always comes to my mind I'm like how did this happen. How is this allowed to exist. Well you were doing the rest of the things and playing on top of that base track that's digitally distorted for four and a half minutes. How did nobody go. Oh the bugsapper. You know what I mean. Totally. I guess that's a whole other podcast right. Totally. How does this allow to happen podcast.
Chris: But now the problem is how you fix that. How do you fix now it's now it's on your screen. Because I'm stuck with this.
Steve: Yeah. You're the.
Chris: That happened recently. You're the guy. The one that makes it was working on. You're the guy who's doing line online one line of the vocal.
Steve: What did you do after you cried. Yelled it.
Chris: Whoever recorded it. No lucky enough I had also a bunch of back vocals at the same time that line was running. Some co lead vocalist also. Yeah. So I was able to tame that down and but I used a tool in ozone restoration tool. Yeah. D clip. Yeah. Tool. Praise. But it was an intense clip. So like where you can see it. Yes. Like the little. Oh yeah. Good. Yeah. Definitely. So D clip helped a lot to reduce at least that amount of the. The track. Yeah. Yeah. At least. But it was still there was still some left you know which I was kind of stuck with you know so right at that point just try to blend that into mix. And somehow it could sound cool. You know. Yeah. It works with sound. Yeah.
Steve: And like this episode not at all officially brought to us by isotope. At all. Because these are some tools. They are tools now that exist. Yes. Companies like isotope make a lot of great.
Chris: Yeah. For restoration stuff.
Steve: They're great steps right. Start there. You still have to do some digging some hard work like an amazing like the old school method still works for me which is a lot of times just go find another place in the song where something is and steal it. Copy pasted. Yeah. And then you can get some tips from the other chorus or whatever right. Same singer. We'll do the same thing even if it's like kind of the wrong word you can kind of get away with you could some stuff. You could.
Chris: So there's a bit of a bit of that when there's a lot of repetition going on it's pretty easy you know in my case for this part was like the kind of the vocal throw. Yeah. The last chorus which wasn't anywhere else in the song and I was like I'm yeah.
Steve: But there's also a lot of chaos.
Chris: There was all ideas going on.
Steve: So that chaos safety. It's not doing the soft first verse. New. Yeah. Yeah. This is the worst. So so yeah stealing for another part of the song EQ is another one. It's amazing how often.
Chris: So what would you do?
Steve: Well it's amazing off. Yeah. If not D clip and sometimes for me it's it's stacking tools right. Like sometimes something like isotope will see it as a D crackle. Yes. On top of a D clip on top of a what I write. So there's there's great great stacking of tools and it's just time. Like the answer for a lot of the stuff is just time. There's no there's no preset that fixes. Like when there's the data isn't there. Right. Like you have to create it somehow. Yeah. Using other tools. So you and inverting things and like you know there's there's there's stuff and things. So anytime is the short answer. There's no one answer.
Chris: And that is in song. And that is in a case where you're dealing with a client's mix. Right. Where you can just rerecord that part.
Steve: You can't even yell at them because they're so kind. This is such nice people that gave you this. They should have known they didn't but they're so kind. I thought who do I yell at?
Chris: It was like what one situation I remember one situation where I had a baseline base recording where for some reason I don't know how that happened. But everything was kind of low past. Well the only thing I had from the base sound was below 250 Hertz. That's it. So what do you do then? You can't rerecord the base at this point. Nope. This one that would be my first thing. Yeah. Record the base. Let's do it. Yeah. Do it right. And let's move on. You know but no. Okay.
Steve: What do you do now? So my wife's already sent me back to the city. She didn't care. She didn't care. My kids didn't care. Nobody cares. Give me a loan in a room carrying. This is the situation. Yeah. I mean it's just EQ. It's an EU game for me. Like there's something there you can steal. Right. And then sometimes it's for me all. In that case I would kind of find something in the curve that I get and then I'd steal a little bit more from that. And then like so.
Chris: You build it up. Again it's time. But I still on my side for this situation I duplicated the track. So you know the first original recording was good for all the low end part of the base sound. And I use just harmonic distortion used to create new frequencies. Yep. Those fundamentals you know. Yeah. Exactly. So like keep creating keep generating with with saturation. Yeah.
Steve: You know. Distor this is when you add distortion.
Chris: Yeah. Distortion. Yeah. Yeah. That will add more frequencies on the top end of the base. Yes. The mid range and stuff and you just blend that up with the the original. Yeah. And stuff you know.
Steve: So I was able to manage and I wear a multi band compression expansion. That's another one that would help there in in my mind. It's just yeah. There's fine something. Yeah. And just and it's time. Time is the answer to a lot of these things. There's no totally. You look you know you go Google the problem and you end up in a forum somewhere. And one guy's like this is how you do it. And you try the thing and it does nothing. Nothing happens when you do his thing. Yeah. You're right. And somebody else is you try it. Nothing happens. And you find one you're like hey that kind of works. Right. I had a weird one. This is a weird one. Okay. And it was true story. And it was it was my own doing. I recorded a lead vocal. The girl then left the country to go travel the world to find herself with some friends in a van. And I am sitting there with this vocal. And for some reason I had the opposite of siblings. Every s was a lift. No way. A lift. No. For the whole song. It was this. And for whatever reason it passed in the speakers in the room wherever I was when I went to mix it. And I had since moved from the barn to the yes. Smaller place for whatever reason I hit play and I was like oh oh. It was like okay. Instantly. It was oh oh. What did you do? And so it was this whole thing and I googled it. And it was a googled it was buried in a form somewhere. And somebody was like it was in take a de-esser and then take it all the way to 10. And then invert the phase and then send to it from a bus. It was this whole thing. Oh my gosh. And so I had this reverse de-ess thing going. Nice. And it was awesome. And then I EQ that to be an s and it was like perfect s's. So much so that it lives on my template now. This whole little thing I created just went into the template.
Chris: Do you think it's going to ever happen?
Steve: And I call it the lisp. The lisp. The lisp.
Chris: The lisp.
Steve: The lisp bus. I don't know if it'll ever happen again. Hopefully not. That was my own doing. That's the first for me.
Chris: Like you're not doing.
Steve: It was amazing. I have to show it to you. Exactly. It was pretty cool. I was pretty proud of myself and some guy on the Internet. That's so cool. Thanks for him guy. That's. Man.
Chris: Okay. So that's one thing. I got another one. Okay.
Steve: Go ahead. Phase. Yes. Go.
Chris: Phase. Professor. This is like a normal professorial. But you know when it comes to drums, especially this is where it's going to happen most often. Yep. On drum recordings, acoustic drums. It's, you know, we can always fix that in the mix, you know, which is not very complicated. You know, there's tools also we can use. Yes. There's awesome tools. That's really cool. I actually don't use the tools yet. I'm pretty sure if I start using them, I'm probably going to be hooked. Yeah. But I tend to do everything manually. Yep. You know, like for drums, I'm going to, okay, listen to the overheads first. Yep. Bring in the kick, bring in the snare, making sure those are punchy and you know, work well. And do the best I can with that, you know.
Steve: So do you typically timeline drums?
Chris: I try not to. So what when I first do the phasing, fixing stuff on drums, I'm going to do with without timelineing my drums. A reason is simple, you know, especially when we deal with, with room mics. Yeah. There's a reason why in the very nice drum room, we have those placed further away from the drums. Yeah. You know, it creates more distance. From the source to the mic, which creates a bit more of that room effect.
Steve: Yeah. We're off on a random tangent, but while we're on it, overheads to the snare.
Chris: Again, I start without timeline. I'm going to switch to phase first, the polarity first, see how that goes. Yeah. And if it doesn't work for some reason, which it happens, I'm going to timeline.
Steve: Is phase the responsibility of the mics guy or the, the track giver? Oh, you know, we're kind of talking about problem tracks. But I realize we're kind of talking about something that isn't possibly even a bad track problem.
Chris: I would say it's the responsibility of the one recording to begin with. So like acoustic guitars, for example, especially when it comes to guitars, you know, I, I'm more forgivable when it comes to drums. Yeah. It's a bit more complicated, you know, as long as you have like a good mic placement going on, even if the phase is not, you know, 100% correct. I'm always going to take phase anyways, you know, even if you worked on it or not. Or acoustic guitars, electric guitars with two microphones, everything that you add more than one mic, you need to check the phase when you record.
Steve: Like what brought this question to mind when I asked it a second ago, because phase in and of itself isn't bad. You just fix it with a click or a twist. It's, it's when phase is permanently fixed. That's the problem. That's, that's right. In my head where I started in my heart, it feels like piano, right? You get a piano track where the two mics are out of phase. If you flip the phase, they're still just equally out of phase. Yes, exactly. Right. So those kinds of things, you remember that's like partial phase? Yes.
Chris: And that's, that, that can happen. You know, this could be a good tool. Like I know that UED has won the, I forgot the name of that plug in little labs. Little labs on the pile. Yeah. I had little lambs in my head.
Steve: Little lambs. You're sleepy. I'm counting little lambs.
Chris: But yeah, yeah, little labs. That's a great one when you can, you know, partial. That's great. Yeah. That could be a lifesaver and you, this type of situation, in case of a record, a piano recording, yep. That went wrong.
Steve: Yep. Uh, another one that pops into my head on the questionably delivered tracks list is room, room, room on a something, room on a vocal room on acoustic. Okay. Now we're talking about snare, snare in a slappy rip. Yes. That kind of, but I think vocals. Vocal is the worst in a, in a badly treated room. Vocal is when you can hear the drywall. Oh yeah. That kind of that. Oh yeah.
Chris: That, we've all been, bedroom vocals. Yeah. Where the, the recording was made a bit more further away from the mic.
Steve: It literally sounds like they're in a bedroom recording vocals.
None: Yes.
Chris: Without any bed. Right. Yeah.
Steve: And empty room. More pillows. Yeah.
Chris: That's always a challenge. You know, the best step I can, you know, tell someone when it comes to recording in the bedroom, for example, where we don't have a lot of treatment going on and you want to record vocals, going in the closet. You know, that could be a good, you know, good way to, to, to start, you know, go in a closet where the closet is full of clothes. Yep. And ideally, yeah. And record your vocals, you know, or just record closer to the microphone. You're going to get more proximity effect. Of course, you can fix that later on, but it's better to have more proximity effect. Yeah. More, more of a buildup in the low mids. Yeah. Then lots of room.
Steve: If it comes with bedroom sounds, yes.
Chris: Where do you go first? My, it depends. Sometimes it could fit with the, with the mix. Yeah. Just put the whole band in the bedroom. The bedroom plugging all the way. That's it.
Steve: Put on bass, some cars, some drums, more drywall. That's what this mix needs.
Chris: Hi, you should design a drywall plug. Drywall plug. That's what we should do.
Steve: The plug is not selling. I wonder why. Sunk my whole life savings into the drywall plug-in.
Chris: But yeah, so I would start, yeah, I would start by evaluating it. Can I manage to, to, to make it work in the mix? But the problem is when you add compression, you add all that treatment. Yeah, brings it back. It brings it like even louder sometimes. Yeah. So there's some tools. Once again, you know, do you refer stuff, you know, that you can apply. If you do it too much, it sounds to you, it starts to sound fake. Yeah. And you know, always be careful with that. But maybe a small amount can go a long way.
Steve: And EQ, too. Go ahead, Woody. Yeah, the room, the room definitely has an each. And the sound. You can see where it's building up a lot of times in the sound, right? So there's something to that for sure. On the, you said proximity, P-Pops. What's your go to?
Chris: P-Pops. Usually I fix that with a high pass filter, also the time. It's on the low end. Yeah. You know, that will happen mainly below 100 Hertz, sometimes above, but not like a lot, you know, a high pass filter, bit of taming on at the around 100 Hertz. It's going to do the trick. Maybe just the dynamic EQ on those frequencies can work well also.
Steve: Yeah. I've gotten really good at just visually doing it. There's that too. You just like you zoom in and you can see the thing. You don't get it. I'll just chop it out.
Chris: You wouldn't probably going to have like what?
Steve: For five Pops on a song, depending on how poorly the track was recorded, which happens to be the topic of the day there, Chris. We're talking about like 10 Poppers here.
Chris: These are 10 Popper tracks.
Steve: That's a lot of editing. Yeah.
Chris: So do the high pass thing first? Yeah. Manually reduce the rest.
Steve: How much time do you spend with? Because I have just recently really gotten into them as a concept. And I've done my entire life without them. And I feel bad that I've done that, that I've neglected this in my mixes up so now. Okay. Multi band compression. Yes. Built into an EQ. So like even in like Pro Q3, getting in there, looking at the lumpy hump and then solving
Chris: your problems. So multi band compression or dynamic EQ?
Steve: Okay. Yeah. Multi, sorry. Sorry, professor. Multi band compression soured me on dynamic EQ earlier in my life because multi band compression just made me angry. Okay. Personally, I could never get it to do what I needed it to do. It's very close. Now for whatever reason, and even just in Pro Q is where it started with just finding the hump and then make dynamic and let it do a thing. Yeah.
Chris: It's amazing. I use that all the time. It's amazing. I love it. I love it. Honestly, like, you know, I was just teasing you a bit with the multi band and dynamic. But you're right. But it's not a huge difference. You know, it's like... But I tried it years ago.
Steve: It's the way it was designed. When it was just... When it was iffy. It does the same thing. Maybe. And then just stopped using it because it didn't help.
Chris: Yeah. It was easier to go in EQ and... But it's just a bit more precise, a bit more manageable, more flexible, you know, compared to a broad type of dynamic...
Steve: So back to our bedroom sound.
Chris: Like something like that.
Steve: Yes. That's where I find or even like, I think sound radix makes it and it's called the surfer. Okay. EQ. That's the problem. It'll move and follow it. Yeah. Like it's that kind of...
Chris: These tools... What about tooth?
Steve: That... You know, these still my beating heart.
Chris: So there you go. These types of... And now bloom. Resonance, presser. Now bloom, I didn't try it yet. Oh, it's sexy. But I saw a nam. Oh, that's beautiful.
Steve: It's a thing of beauty. I just need a minute. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Plugins do this. I'm at this point in my life. Where plugins speak me... Make me need a minute. Oh, good plug-in.
Chris: Oh, good plug-in.
Steve: Oh, it's a good design. Oh, is there... What's better than a... When you're in a problem area and you find out plug-in and you're like, you did it. You did it. Like a soo there's something. You're like, you just made my own thing better.
Chris: They're great tools.
Steve: The cymbals just got better. Whatever. Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, brightness. That's a huge one. Overly bright. Okay.
Chris: A fireland that's... Oh, yeah. That's in the violin sound.
Steve: That is the worst, man. Yeah, you get that creaky... That is the worst. Those kind of tracks... Is EQ?
Chris: And there's also when it comes to singers' performance. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve: I'm gonna put that in the... They get brighter and louder. They get brighter and louder. They get excited. Yes. By the third chorus, it's... Yes. Do you find... I find myself doing it more and more lately, just breaking things off on to separate tracks.
Chris: I do that, you know. I do that. Especially if I... It's different.
Steve: Yes. Yeah. Reverse chorus. Versus... I used to just automate and how all these plugins turning on and off. And I realized, I got unlimited tracks. You can do... Yeah. I'm just...
Chris: And unlimited plugins. Copy, copy, copy. You know, you get to a point when you... Especially on vocals. You know, you have that verse, very quiet verse. Yes. And then the chorus comes in, so locked up higher. Yes.
Steve: Like... It's a whole different singer. It's a completely different singer.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, technically. It sounds like anyone. It's a different singer. Yeah. On a graph. And it's louder. At this point, yeah. Just start over. Shove that off.
Steve: Yeah. Start over. That's a huge problem fixer for bad tracks for me. It's just more tracks.
Chris: Yeah. That's it.
Steve: You treat them differently. Yeah. Rather than chasing problems with automation. Yep. Just make that one problem. Give it... Give it that problem section its own track. I'll do that a lot too.
Chris: Right? I'd like to think of other problems when it comes to bad recordings.
Steve: It used to be... Some of it used to be's aren't as much. Like it used to be like, oh, the levels are low. By the time I pull it up, I've got all this noise. It's not the problem.
Chris: Some of those problems are just gone now. No, with the amount of bitrate we have. Yep. It's like so much dynamic range. Yeah.
Steve: The biggest ones for me are too much room. That's a common one that I encounter quite a bit.
Chris: Room noise. What about lots of civilians on a vocal? Yeah. By not probably not using the right microphone. Yeah.
Steve: That fits the voice. I've pointed at the wrong part of their mouth. There's that too. It's a huge one. That's it.
Chris: Have you done a video on that yet? I have full course on recording.
Steve: The importance on moving a mic in inch to the right. Oh, yeah. Changes your sound.
Chris: Totally. Actually, I have a full chapter on civilians, you know, the way you can position the microphone. Different ways to avoid that. I should watch that. I should have to take that down. You should. I was about to suggest it. Let's see how this podcast sounds. I heard your stuff.
Steve: Before you criticize me, I want to see how this podcast sounds.
Chris: I heard your last mix. You definitely need to.
Steve: I was adding siblings. Enlist the list mix. So too much siblings. And the DSSers are like, there's a lot of plugins we talk in this could be a whole episode, but like how many EQ plugins do you actually need and that kind of topic, right? We're on DSSers to me. One of those things where if I had 15 of them, they would all do different things to one person. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean. Like one DSSer works great on Tuesday and on Wednesday. It's useless. And vice versa. It's amazing those things for me a lot of times.
Chris: So you probably have your go to DSSers. You work with a lot.
Steve: I have my list of priority lists that I'll work through. But some of them just don't touch certain singers as well as others. You're right. Yeah.
Chris: It's a fascinating. I have like science. I have like, I use a lot lately and I've been using for the past, I wouldn't like say six, seven months. That seems to work on most of the things I mix.
Steve: And in combination too. Yes. I'll do that a lot too.
Chris: One faster, one slower. And I do one at the beginning of the chain.
Steve: Yeah, exactly. After I be cute. Take out our like garbage I've added.
None: Exactly.
Chris: One of my favorite DSSers is the SR by Black Salt Audio. Oh, it's good. It is.
Steve: It's good. It's so easy. And that actually is one of them for like, and it was like a dollar when I bought it. Right? Like they do this amazing sales and I got that thing. I got the silencer. Oh, I think because of the yield. I think because of a video you did, you popped up on Facebook and I was like, it was like, this is like 11.30. Oh, so this big beard appears on my screen. I'm trying to watch my talk show. And here's you. I just wanted to see people fall off a trampoline or whatever. And I bought it and then I got on their mail list. And now I have like all their stuff. They just keep doing amazing sales. But yeah, that DSSR did change. And so it means like that one Fab, Fab filter like those two together.
Chris: The other one I use is, oh, what's the name again? It's the AI type of DSSR. Let me find it. I'm going to find it. They're all doing that now. Now it's in my laptop right in front of me.
Steve: It's convenient. It is. It's almost like it's recording the audio as we're talking right now.
Chris: It's all in a bowl, I think. Oh, I don't know. The company that makes it.
Steve: I've seen it. Yeah, they're super AI people.
Chris: And there DSSR is so good. Is it? Yeah. It's the one I'm missing. It's called the Smart DSS.
Steve: Yeah, the Smart DSS. Well, that's a well-named Smart DSS. There you go. The other name was so obvious you didn't trust it. I wasn't smart enough to remember the name, but the DSSR is smart. Yeah, DSSR. So do you ever manually?
Chris: On this one, I usually put it at the front, you know, just on top of the chain. I let it go, tweak a bit.
Steve: That's it, you know. Yep. Yeah, there are a couple of singers that everyone, I still have to get in there and do the work, get in there, draw the S's. I do it manually. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Chris: Oh, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I actually have like a preset, a key commands, trade on my stream deck. Wow. Just to do like a manual DSSR straight and Cubase. Chop it off. D-U. That's it. Very fancy. Look at you. One click. Look at you. That's it.
Steve: It takes me like three clicks.
Chris: Dude, you need to jump on Cubase. Forget about Pro Tools, man. This is where it happens. I have a course. I'll fix it with that. Fix it with a course.
Steve: Oh.
Chris: So the important, I'll have that to say that, you know, the important parts, one of the most important part of music production is the recording part. Yeah. You know, the quality of the recording, the right techniques, the right performance. I put that in the same basket, you know, poorly performed.
Steve: A bad song, poorly performed and badly recorded. It doesn't matter how many 1176 emulators you got.
Chris: It's not going to help. It's not going to help. You know, and we have tools, you know, when we talk about pitch correction, you know, the pitch of a, it's part of the performance, you know, when the singer is way off and the pitch is all over the place. Yeah. There's some stuff you can do, you know, you try to avoid to get to that point too often, you know, but of course, you know, I'm going to use a pitch correction tools.
Steve: From a, from a big picture standpoint, I'm sure we could just rattle off bad stuff all day. Yeah. But from a big picture standpoint, if you get one through 10, you know, if, if our heroes, mixed guys are getting, you know, nine recordings and then mixing it to a 10 plus and you get a two quality recording, how can, how high can you get it with hard work and plugins
Chris: and skill and surprisingly enough, you can get pretty high. But it's going to be way more challenging. That's it. That's all I have to say. More time. Yeah.
Steve: For sure. For sure. And I find, I think you mentioned it earlier and it's, it's a great trick. If I get an album of, you know, questionably recorded stuff, that becomes the sound of the album. Yes. And there's a lot of my favorite albums on Spotify or whatever that have that sound over the years, right? Where it's indie or whatever word you want to use for it. And it's emotionally not perfect.
Chris: For example, Sue and Stevens. Yeah. I think the album Illinois was recorded with the bad at the lower sample rate than 44.1 by mistake.
Steve: Yep.
Chris: Yep. Recorded everything within the M57. Love it. If I'm not mistaken, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah. But one, like one cheap microphone, you know, there's a few of those albums. But the emotional in this album, the arrangement, the song, the songwriting, when, when was that air performance? Ah, back in, was it like beginning of the 2000? Yeah.
Steve: Like right. And that's a formative mix years. For me, yeah. Mine was, mine was Damien Rice. There you go. Yeah. That album, just like a hotel room album kind of thing. And just it didn't matter. But the magic was there. Like if it had been recorded perfect, it would have made me sad. But something about it, it all worked together. Right. So there's a bit of that. With the performance and the magic of the arrangement. So all of that to say, yeah, there is, you know, poorly recorded stuff can be saved if you're intentional about it. And there's communication with the artist like, Hey, I notice you recorded this along with a $4 microphone. Don't do it again. But are you okay with? Right. So yeah, it's not the end of the world to get bad tracks. Yeah.
Chris: I guess that's the, you know, when you get a bad track from a client, the first thing I do, especially if I know I'm going to work with this client again, I'm going to have a conversation for sure. And he's going to, that client will appreciate that.
Steve: Yeah. Just speak with love often. Yeah. Speak with love. Don't do it immediately. For sure. As soon as you have played, don't send an email. Sleep on it.
Chris: Always sleep on it. And also, you know, I forgot one other. I would go with the last one for a badly recorded situation where the tracks are overcompressed at the recording stage, which brings a full, that could also be on a full podcast. That could be a full podcast. Recording with effects. Yeah. Do you record with compression? Yeah. You on the way in.
Steve: It's a clean. Did you overly commit on this?
Chris: Or do you overly commit? Yeah. That happens once. Yes. There's stuff you can do, but you know, but it's a bit more challenging when you, especially with a vocal, when you get a vocal that is super compressed on the way in. It sounded great for the person recording the vocal, but then you get into the mixing stage. Okay. There's no more life, man. On this vocal, it's completely dead.
Steve: That becomes the sound of your album. Yeah. There's a couple of things you can't recover from.
Chris: Yeah. I think that'll be one of them. There's ways you could, you could maybe expand a bit, you know, sleep that around, but it's going to be a challenge.
Steve: Yeah. That's the thing. Yeah. My buddy, I was, I was working way back in the day. I was my student in Orange County and I was working. It was like two in the morning and I was grinding away on, on something like that. And my buddy, Jeff, who was kind of one of my partners in the studio, walked in. He's holding a beer and he's air sticking up, but he just goes, buddy, you can't save them all. And then he walked out and I was like, you know, I was like 19 at the time and it just, for some reason it just hit me differently.
Chris: He said it.
Steve: I was like, this is it. This is it. You go, this is the sound of your album. This is what you made. And so love it. And everybody's okay with it, right? At some point. Once it's released, you know, love it. Move on. Move on. Move on.
Chris: Okay. That was cool. I was cool. Wait, I think we have a question. There's one that was based on a question actually, you know, this whole topic about bad recordings, but we do have a question, a question of the day. How are you so good in just hearing what you need to, to adjust in frequencies when using EQ? I'm guessing it's probably a gift and long experience, but I'd like a breakdown of what you're listening for that may be impossible, but I'm interested in developing my, developing my ears to get the right EQ. So first, that's assuming we're good at that. Yeah. I'm good with that. I want to speak based on that's a big statement right there.
Steve: Yeah. Thank you. What other people have said?
Chris: Man, EQ, that's, oh man, that we could do like a full series only talking about EQ. They're sure we will meet aspects of EQ and, but the question is mainly what do you listen for when you EQ a sound? First, if I'm going to start on this one, I always on everything I mix, I high pass, low pass, cut the mids. And that's it. Call it a day bounce and I'm good. That's after you load the preset though. Of course.
Steve: You start with the preset.
Chris: Okay, we're not doing that.
Steve: No, I think the, I mean, there's forum saying that's how you do it. Yeah. If they say so. If they say so, question one for me is always, what am I trying to achieve? Yeah. Right? Like I'm, I'm, I'm digging around in EQ, but am I trying to darken it or brighten it or what am I doing? So that's question one is what am I trying to do? And so to me, sometimes you just stop and think, right? Like I know this sounds weird. I know I got to bring these background vocals somehow make them louder, but the, but I'm already at 10 and I got to make a brighter. So I make it brighter. Okay, brighter. So I make a brighter, but if I just make, turn them up, the low income too. So do I need to, like, so it's kind of like, what are you trying to do, right? And if I just crank the vocals, there's all the low junk that comes. So start there. High pass. Or headed your way already. There you go. But that's it. And then do you solo or do you EQ in the soup? Typically.
Chris: Oh, that's a good question. I want to make your background vocals brighter. What are you going to do? It's in the context of the mix. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to, in that case, I will a queue with everything on. I'm not going to solo. So it's good to, like you point out like little things when it's weak, you know, that it's a bit harder to get in, you know, the context of the mix. But, um, and just to craft a sound, it's good. I don't mind soloing tracks, you know, but all the main decisions and final decisions are made in the context of the mix. So that's mixing. Mixing is all about what? The relationship between all the tracks we have in front of you. It's literally the word. It is. Literally.
Steve: Mixing. So, so it's very fair what you're trying to achieve. I think that's step one through nine for me. And the last step is just doing it. Yeah. And I don't think it's a, I don't think the talent isn't doing it. Like I know brighter's brighter means high, high means high. You can just scrape around until he goes, oh, that one.
Chris: It's not a bad thing to know what R.D. I would say like the must known frequencies, you know, the frequency that works most per instrument for common, you know, common moves. So if you know that, uh, okay, if a vocal, for example, does it to muddy? Yeah. Okay. You know that you can tweak around 250 Hertz. Yep. 300. You can do it with a female or male vocalist and you can, you know, clear that up. Yep. You want to add more brat, the brightness to a sound. You can also shave off the low end and not the limit, you know, the mid range, the low mids that will bright up also the vocal. I think the most important thing when it comes to EQ and a lot of people that are starting mixing are getting confused with that. You know, they, they see an EQ as an effect. You know, I'm going to add some EQ. I'm going to add frequencies. I'm not going to add anything. I'm just going to bounce the volume of existing frequencies of a signal. It's, it's volume knobs. It's like a mixing console, you know, a bunch of hundreds of volume per frequency range. That's it. That's all it does. You're just boosting what's is there or reducing the amount of what is already there. That's it. So if you take it this way, I think it's going to be easier to figure out what you need to do. You know, if you have too much of this, okay, you can add volume, you know, more volume out of these frequency opposite frequencies or, you know, bring down those frequencies and, you know, crushes sound this way.
Steve: The last, last thing I would say is to our earlier discussion of tools, something like a ProQ, you can see it. You can see now where your sound is building up. Like there's this huge mound at 300.
Chris: So you think that could be misleading at some point or I don't, I think it's a great place
Steve: to start. Yeah. If you've got to hear, if you're mad as muddy and I know around 300 is my mud, I can see the mud. You will. You used to have to hunt and pack forever. You will. If you start there, then you're into what do I widen, how much? Now you're into some skill and some trial and error. But yeah, use the tools, man. If it's telling you, if it's telling you the answer, start there. We don't got to murder ourselves yet.
Chris: Trying not to over-eque you also.
Steve: Oh, praise you that. Yeah.
Chris: You know, yes. I guess there's a time where you can over-eque. Yeah. But for the most part, volume's good too. Volume's good. Turn it down. Exactly. You know, if you end up like, you know, I'm cutting 250 Hertz, cutting, you know, I'm you know, 500, cutting the mid range. Just bring down the volume at this point, you know. Yeah.
Steve: Your sound is just too hot. Yeah. And the other thing to not be afraid of is automating EQ. Oh, I love that. That's a huge one. That's a huge one. I love that. That is your friend. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One chorus is different than the other. Just bypass and un-bypass that other EQ.
Chris: Yeah. So what to listen for, listen to the relationship between those tracks together, focus on the main elements of your mix, usually what kick, bass, snare, vocals. You're such a drummer. I know. Unbiased for a reason. Kick, kick, snare.
Steve: Drums and the singer.
Chris: That's a good mix.
Steve: That's a good mix. You've got to unmute the other tracks.
Chris: But honestly, if you nail the tone of the vocal and the drums, everything that is in the center basically, every element based, everything that is in the center of the spectrum, if you nail these, the rest is going to be very easy to blend.
Steve: It's good.
Chris: I hope that helps. I hope so too. Yeah. So if it does, come back next week. If it doesn't, come back next week.
