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.

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 budget - the recording process part 9

Well, that's the vocals done. Pretty happy with what I've got over the last couple of days even if it has taken longer than I'd have liked. Not for technical reasons this time, just because I was knackered this morning and didn't get going 'til lunch time and because of the competition recording yesterday afternoon (which went quite well I think, and I now own a shiny new mic, see below:

We'll give that a spin at the next band practice methinks).


As for the actual vocal recording, that's largely been hassle free. Just a case of setting up to try and minimise room noise, getting the mics aligned to minimise phase issues and then setting levels. Very much stuff I've done before lots of times, the only difference being using the Art pre-amp to try and add a bit of colour - to be frank, I'm not sure it's made a great deal of difference but I'll have a more analytical listen later. There's certainly nothing I'm unhappy with there.


Next up is recording my acoustic guitar parts.
Arguably this should be pretty straightforward as well but there are a couple of complications:
1) a couple of the parts are quite complex, particularly Northshoremen, and
2) I've never really been happy with the recorded sound I've got to date.


So for the rest of this afternoon I'm going to experiment with some different mics and placements to see if I can get something better. I'm pretty certain I should be able to. I can't believe that it's an issue with the kit - no matter how budget my set up, I'm sure it's capable of what I'm looking for.


Right, enough prevaricating, let's crack on.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 8

Today, I shall be mostly recording vocals...*


My view for the next few hours is largely going to look like this:

On the left is a subzero tube microphone, it's an AKG clone at a fraction of the price but I've been very happy with it since I bought it, especially on my vocals.
On the right is a classic lollipop ribbon mic made by Stew at Xaudia. I don't normally tend to double mic vocals for my more acoustic/folky stuff but the band tracks are a bit more rocky so I thought I'd experiment with something.
The ribbon mic is going into one of these:

This (the box on the top) is a little tube pre-amp and I've cranked it as high as I can to try and drive the tube a bit. On the louder sections it's just beginning to distort a bit and I'm hoping a bit of judicious mixing with the other mic will give things a bit of edge in places.
Of course I'm keeping any distortion in the analogue part of the chain, overall levels going into Reaper are peaking at around -10dB so there's plenty of headroom.


Both mics are about 12 inches from my mouth and angled down from roughly eye-height. This deals with any proximity effect from the valve mic (I have it set in cardioid as I slightly prefer the sound), stops any plosives bothering the ribbon mic (could get expensive) and also keeps the vocals from sounding to bright and nasal.


So far I've recorded the vocals for Shadowbones and Words and I'm now taking a bit of a break for some lunch.
I do have another recording date this afternoon as well, it's my recorded session for the JBL competition I entered a couple of months ago, so I might not do much more this afternoon so I can keep my voice fairly fresh.


That does mean the room is going to look like this for the next couple of days:

Which isn't hugely convenient, but is necessary.
For those of you who are new to this, you may be asking, as a friend of mine has, "what's with all the duvets?"
The answer is that it's basic, but effective**, acoustic treatment for the room. The duvets act as sound baffles and stop the microphones picking up unwanted reflected sounds. Basically, I just want the sound of the vocals, not the vocals plus the boxy-sounding room. This is a side-effect of putting the microphones a decent distance away from the source but it's worth the trade-off in my opinion.


What has become clear is that I'm going to have to do a lot more manipulation of the tracks on these mixes. With a lot of my stuff to date, the vocal lines haven't been hugely dynamic, and a bit of parallel compression and some automation has been enough to keep things in control.
That's not going to be the case with this set of tracks, I'll be doing a lot more multing and grouping of tracks to get things in shape.


Right, the timer has just pinged for lunch...




* If you're of a certain age and from the UK you will have read that line in a very specific accent.
** Sound On Sound magazine did a test a while back looking at different commercial absorbers and their benchmark as a duvet: http://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/choosing-using-porous-absorbers