I have so much work to do at the moment I really shouldn’t be blogging, but this is just too good not to share.
The video above is number four in a sequence of song-writing tutorials posted by the awesome Artist’s House Music – if you aren’t already subscribed to their feed and Twitter account – do it now !
The post and videos speak for themselves – they contain a subtle but devastatingly effective songwriting rule:
Preserve the natural shape of the language
Watch the videos and see ! (Watch all of them, they’re great.)
But now comes the bit that made me laugh out loud and want to write this post. When you watch the video above, do you notice anything about the sound ? (Aside from what a great voice that girl has?!)
There are plenty of moments to enjoy in this video with veteran mastering engineer Howie Weinberg – not least, proof that mastering engineers really do have a sense of humour !
I want to pick up on just one thing he says almost in passing though, and amplify it. People are always asking “What is mastering”, and it’s a question that lots of people have tried to answer, including me:
But Howie’s analogy is short, sweet, and very, very, deep. He says that a mastering engineer is like a photographer who specialises in retouching images in the darkroom to get the very best out of them.
I want to make that statement simpler, and explore the idea in a little more depth.
Tracking is essentially the process of recording songs. The name comes from the fact that each instrument is recorded individually and given it’s own “track” in the mix, so that the balance and sound of each can be controlled later. Originally, “track” referred to a thin width of analogue tape, today it usually means a file on a hard drive. Performances can be “live”, with all the musicans playing at once; one instrument at a time; or a mixture of the two.
I was taught these EQ “rules of thumb” when I first started out as a trainee, to help learn the art of mixing - each EQ band influences different qualities of a mix or instrument, and I thought you might find it useful if I shared them.
Later in the post I’ve also embedded another great video by Joe Gilder. Like the one in my using compression post recently, it gives an excellent introduction to the different EQ settings and parameters, plus some great real-world examples of using EQ in Pro Tools, although the ideas are applicable to any DAW.
Before we get to the tweaks, I want to stress that these are just ideas, guidelines and starting points. Always remember the golden rule of EQ:
Balance is everything
You can’t just add a load of 100Hz and expect your bass to sound rich – the key is to get each area balanced with every other, so that all the instruments complement each other, and don’t fight. This may even mean cutting out some frequencies to stop them clashing with other instruments – you can probably loose everything below 5kHz on a hi-hat mic, for example.
Balancing the mids – roughly 200 Hz to 2 kHz – is particularly important, since this is the most sensitive region of the ear, and getting this region right is essential for things to sound warm, natural and real.
Using compression in your mixes is essential – and you need to use it right.
OK, maybe not if you play classical harp or Polynesian nose-flute – but in most genres, using compression to control the dynamic range of instruments in the mix is fundamental.
The problem is, learning to use compression isn’t easy. And it’s not helped by the fact that most explanations start out saying something like “a compressor reduces the dynamic range of it’s input by attenuating signals that exceed a pre-defined threshold”.
Or something.
Personally I don’t find this kind of description very intuitive, so this post will try and keep things straightforward. So before we go to much further:
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