Templates and temples

 I've posted a few times on forums about this and a couple of people have asked elsewhere so I thought I'd do a quick post about the mix templates I use and why.

Why templates?

Tackling the last bit first, why use templates at all? I mean, all songs are different right?

Well, yes they are but templates are not there to force you into certain ways of working (unless you want them to be), they're about speeding up your work flow.

So lets start with the first template that appears on most of my mixes, my 8-bus template:

Most of my tracks will have vocals, guitars, bass, keys, reverb, percussion, and ear candy of some kind.

So I have these 8 tracks set up as receiving busses for applying bus-level effects and rough balancing.

They're also linked to a Korg Nanokontrol2 control surface so I have buttons and faders for instant muting, soloing, etc.

They all have a channel strip plugin on that is linked to another control surface, a Qube Mobie One, so I have all my core controls mapped to physical buttons, knobs and faders (I have a BCF2000 as well). 

Which is good because I hate mices.

But the point is, with one 'insert track' command, I get all this set up and routed.

Drums in the deep

So let's move to the next template: drums.

Sometimes I record real drums but more often I'm using Abbey Road vintage drums via Kontakt. And because Kontakt is the spawn of the devil you do not want to be trying to set up multi-channel routing every time you load an instrument - that way madness lies.

So channel one here is the kontakt instrument then I have the individual mic sends to separate channels, and then three sub-bus channels (click the picture to see all the channels): parallel compression, delay (just for the toms), and a crusher (for everything except the cymbals).

These will all route to the drum bus in the 8-bus template above and again they all have a channel strip plug-in on.

If I'm recording real drums I'll generally start with the same template and just get rid of the kontakt track and any others that aren't needed.

Sing like you're winning

My vocal template is complex because it's cunning. Not because I'm cunning, but because I've copied someone who is.

Actual recording happens on channel 1, it then might get multed out to channel 2 if I want to process loud and quiet bits separately (or some other kind of split for effect). These feed the parallel compression track that does a lot of heavy lifting to balance out the overall volume in a nice way.

The two VCA channels are the cunning bit, thanks to an article by Mike Senior, allowing me to easily do manual fine tuning on an actual fader rather than needing to use a mouse. 

And then finally there's a bit of extra reverb for the vocal. The reverb and parallel compression channels will generally be heavily de-essed.

A sense of space

I have other standard templates for things like guitars, bass etc. but they're all fairly standard and boring so I'll jump straight to the final template, for reverb:

We'll work from right to left to talk through this one. The right-most column has the main reverb on it, it's then fed by the three channels to the left, the front, middle and back delays. These have different length delays and EQ settings to simulate the effect of sound travelling further through air. This helps to add a bit of front to back depth to the mix.

The three columns on the left are for various effect reverbs, that will be automated in and out during a mix to add ear candy when needed. Which is a slightly simplified version of a set up used by Chris Lord Alge.

So that's it, templates to speed to things up.

In a similar way I have a standard plug-in chain for the master channel that I'll generally bring in once I've got the core of the song together and then mix into.

On experiments with social media...

 Anyone who normally follows me on twitter may have noticed that I'm no longer using the platform. 

Sometimes you just have to say enough is enough.

I have, in consequence, joined the exodus to Mastodon. So far I'm enjoying it and I'd recommend it, my handle is @DrewStephenson@Mastodon.social should you want to reconnect there.

And if you do, well you might enjoy something I'm going to experiment with, which will be microblogging about the production process of my new album.

There'll be stuff about the writing process, the collaboration process (which is new to me), the recording, mixing and production side and probably a few sneak peaks of the tracks along the way.

Join usssss...

Oh yes, and the new EP is out on all your favourite streaming and download platforms, and available to buy here: https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/album/a-god-for-the-lost-and-losing

Band on a budget - the recording process part 21

Been quiet from me again recently, mostly because there's not been a great deal to say. Lots of listening and tweaking for the most part but we have added some additional percussion parts to the tracks and also had a listen through to see where there were things we could strip out.
I'm pretty certain a decent producer would do more of the latter but having been so close to this stuff for so long it's hard to have any kind of objectivity.
Anyway, last weekend I spent a few hours mastering the tracks. Mixing and mastering the material isn't a recommended approach but we're a bunch of cheapskates and couldn't afford a proper mastering engineer. So I fired up some reference tracks, massaged some levels, and lo I was happy with the sounds.
Then I listened to them over the week, compared them to some more modern stuff, and lo I was not happy.
Fundamentally the low end wasn't there compared to the reference material (it would have been fine in the 80s!), I'd overdone the brightness slightly, and I also identified some issues in the individual mixes that somehow I'd missed over the last year.
So today I am mastering again. Multi-band compressor acting below 100Hz to give a bit of that modern bass response, reduced the high-shelf EQ by half a dB, and then some mix fixes on specific issues within the tracks.
I'm not going to be sharing any links this time I'm afraid, because hopefully the next time you'll hear these will be as the finished article.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 18

Righty ho, well, our guitarist came over a couple of weeks ago and we completely re-did the guitar part(s) for Words.
Took about two hours to get the sound we were after, the core part done, and then the more complex bit of recording the solo whilst he came up with the parts - but that doesn't seem unreasonable.
I must fess up at this point and say I made a mistake with one of the recorded parts whereby I duplicated the two channels I'd set up but didn't notice that in doing so Reaper doesn't automatically set the inputs the same as the duplicated channels. So instead of my two new channels recording mics 1 and 2, I had two copies of mic 1. Because both channels were recording fine, and the bit we were recording was tonally different to the stuff we'd already tracked, I didn't notice until later.
Fortunately the mic that was recorded was the main one for that particular part.
Anyway, I mixed it all up and came up with this: https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/words-20171105/s-Kh5N7
That I was reasonably happy with until I posted it to be reviewed on the Sound on Sound forum.
I am no longer happy with it.

Feedback I need to work on:
There's a harshness around 2kHz, especially at the end section.
The electric guitar is a bit too loud (I'd thought this myself on a re-listen).
The acoustic is too thin, lacks lower mids (I had thought about this as well but was willing to trade it off against things going too muddy).
The distortion on the vocals at the end is too much.
Needs a bit more reverb to make the whole thing sit together.
With the exception of the bass and vox, everything is too compressed. It's a mush.
The guitar solo disappears too much in mono. Might be worth separating that out of the rest of the guitar work and bringing it a bit more central.
Vocal levels need to vary more, to breath with the song a bit.
Low mids are bit empty (see comment about avoiding mud above).
Vocals are a bit dry.
Vocals are a bit thin and, linked to that, a bit too loud. Could probably do with a bit more de-essing as well.
Are the backing vocals in or out? Need a decision on that.

The frustrating thing is that, with the exception of the reverb and vocal thinness comments, I think that deep down i knew most of that anyway. I'd just convinced myself that was good enough - or at least, as good as I could get it.

So now the question is whether to try and rescue it from there or start again.
Decisions, decisions...

Band on a budget - the recording process part 14

Well I have been doing quite a bit more work on Words and it now sounds like this:
https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/words-20170826/s-lsaXF
Still needs plenty doing to it, e.g. all the main stems will need some volume automation to bring out (and down) different bits throughout the song, the piano bits will probably need some decluttering, it still needs a couple more bits of ear candy - some kind of back vocals bits and some rhythmic bits.
Aside from all that there's a bit of in-band debate about the synth part and whether it is required or not, and this comes down to what we want the end product to sound like.
I shall be parking this one for a bit now though as I've got a bit too close to it for any objective analysis. I think it's shaping up the right way but a bit of distance is required before any next steps.

So now I just have to choose what to work on next...

Band on a budget - the recording process part 11

Thank you to everyone who's been reading along, especially if you've been emphathising with the guitar tracking issues, so far it has been every bit as challenging as I was expecting.

Sadly however now it all slows down...

I'm back at work tomorrow, so from now on we'll be looking at occasional weekend time and snatched evenings here and there.
We are in a bit of a pause period anyway though, I have one more bit of recording to do (some organ sounds via my guitar pedal) and then it's tidying up the guitar parts and sending all the stems over to the guitarist for him to record his parts. All of which is pretty dull and mechanical really.
The interesting bit really starts again when we've pulled all that lot together, got some basic 'faders-up' mixes for everyone to listen to, and start thinking about how we want to produce the songs.

All of which will have to wait to for a bit, as, dear reader, will you.

Thanks for staying with me this far, I'll be updating again with each bit of progress along the way but it will be far more intermittent.

Because this is the internet, here's a picture of a cat:

Band on a budget - the recording process part 7

It's been a while since the last post as real life has got back in the way, as it usually does, but I now have a bit of time off so I'm hoping to make some progress over the next couple of weeks.


First off is listening back through what we've got, confirming the best takes and applying any fixes where we've got issues on the recording.
We've got a few pops and crackles in places that will take a bit of surgical correction but most of it doesn't look too bad (I think there's a function to do multiple simultaneous edits in Reaper - need to check how that works precisely) but there's one chunk that is concerning me a bit more. The best pass of Denmark Street has an extensive chunk of crackling on the bass line and I'm not sure we're going to be able to rescue it. I'll have a quick look at the other takes but I think the best solution is to re-record it. Fortunately we just DI'd the bass so this should be pretty straightforward.


Further lessons for next time: I mentioned previously that my note-taking hadn't been as comprehensive as I would have liked. Thing to do next time is just leave the mics open after a take and get everyone's opinion straightaway. That way, at the end of each take, I'd have comments like, "that was the best one" or "nope, I screwed that up in the middle" etc.


My mixing set-up

Like everything else in this little escapade my mixing set-up is also at the budget end of things, however I've been able to make a few tweaks along the way to speed up the process. From input to output the set-up is roughly like this:


Input
Focusrite 8i6 interface - as well as the Tascam that we used for recording I have this focusrite permanently connected at home. It's a good little unit that allows me to put in overdubs and run separate outputs for headphones, my Yamaha THX10 (that I use for small-speaker-monitoring) and my main monitors.


DAW and template
Having recorded in Reaper it would be crazy to mix in anything else (not that I have anything else other than a really old CubaseSX) but here's where we get into the templates that I mentioned in an earlier post. My standard project template has 40 tracks set-up, 32 of these are set up as standard audio tracks and have ReaEQ and a focusrite compressor in the first two slots of the inserts. The other 8 are labelled as bus tracks for Vox, drums, bass, two guitars, candy, blank and the dummy master.
The candy one is for any little extra bits of ear-candy in a track, the blank one gets used either for extra instruments in band work or parallel compression if I'm doing more acoustic stuff.
I have the template set up like this so that I can use the couple of bits of hardware that you can see on the desk.
I also have the Sonarworks reference 3 plugin on the master channel - this little bit of code is designed to take the measured frequency response of your headphones and then apply an EQ correction to make them as flat as possible.


Hardware
The Behringer BCR2000 (bottom right with all the knobs) has been configured to work as a basic transport control and channel strip. By linking it to the ReaEQ and the compressor using midi commands I'm able to have hands on control of a 6-band EQ (frequency, gain and Q-factor for each band) and the compressor controls (threshold, ratio, attack, release, input and output gain). It also has a few other things set up: track mute and solo, track FX bypass, record prime, EQ bypass, compressor bypass, track volume and pan, master volume and pan, master FX bypass (for use when switching between headphones and speakers), master mono and the basic transport controls. For complex reasons this only works on the first 32 channels - hence the template.
The Korg nanocontrol (with the sliders, mid-right) then controls my 8 bus tracks. It's set up with volume, pan, mute, solo and track select for each bus track, plus a few more useful transport controls (the cycle button and marker set and steps being the most useful).
This took ages to set up but between them it gives me a much more tactile control and has speeded up my workflow considerably.


Monitoring
The output from the focusrite goes in three directions:
Headphones - I generally use a set of Beyerdynamic DT990 pros (the 250 ohm versions) which are driven just fine from the focusrite headphone socket.
Grot-box monitoring - I have my Yamaha THX10 guitar amp set up as a small-speaker monitor for checking how things will translate to things like portable speakers or radios.
Main monitoring - the main output goes to a Musical Fidelity E100 amplifier and from there to a set of Dynaudio Audience 50 speakers. This is Hi-Fi gear rather than studio gear so it can be a bit more flattering and bit less revealing that I'd like, but it is good kit and it's not the weakest link in the chain.


The room
Which brings my nicely to the room I mix in. It's a nice shape and size (13'x10'x8') but it has no acoustic treatment at all. I've never tried to measure it but I doubt it has particularly good properties in any aspect. Hence I do most of my mixing on headphones.




So there you go, that's what my world is going to look like for the next few days!