Breaking the Rules
Feb 1, 2007 12:00 PM, George Petersen Executive Editor
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Understanding Bass Management
With Bob Hodas, November 20th
Brought to you by Ex'pression College for Digital Arts and Mix
Bob Hodas explores best practices for Bass Management in your studio, explaining how to set up a bass managed system, what features to look for in a Bass Management box and much more.
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Mastering Stories
Our December issue will focus on mastering. We'd like to hear from mastering engineersÑtell us about your most interesting mastering project. E-mail us at mixeditorial@mixonline.com.
Remix Hotel News
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Avid Presents: Remix Hotel Los Angeles| Dec. 4-6, 2008 |
Hot off an incredibly successful event in Atlanta, Remix Hotel is gearing up for its final event in 2008: Remix Hotel Los Angeles. We're busy putting together a killer weekend of panels, production and more. Keep it tuned to remixhotel.com for registration and schedule details, and be sure to check out all of the amazing videos from Atlanta and New York! .
This Month in Mix
History is filled with cases of inventions that either happened by accident or yielded results that were far from the original intent. In 1928, researcher Alexander Fleming noticed that mold spores from an open window were killing the bacteria cultures he was raising, leading to the discovery of penicillin. 3M's Post-it
Historically, the recording studio has been a ripe environment for experimentation. Les Paul's early experiments with sound-on-sound recording and multitracking took years to become mainstream techniques. Ross Bagdasarian Sr. won a Grammy Award for combining normal-speed music tracks with double-speed voices for The Chipmunks.
By the 1960s, producers, artists and engineers were more than anxious to stretch the boundaries of traditional studio operations to discover and develop new sounds. Can anyone really forget that cash-register-used-as-percussion-device in Pink Floyd's “Money”? Sure, sound effects can provide a cool musical motif, but we all have limits. How many time does anyone really want to listen to samples of barking dogs performing “Jingle Bells,” anyway?
That said, a bit of creativity (whether planned or accidental) can occasionally get you out of a rut. Are you so set in your ways that you always mike a drum kit, Leslie or guitar amp the same way? Sometimes, something as simple as switching a mic out of that cardioid setting can really open up a track. Some months ago, I recorded an acoustic bass using a figure-8 pattern, which provided the right blend of articulation with the space of the room. Hardly earth-shattering, but a nice twist nonetheless.
These days, re-amping a recorded guitar track and routing it back through a miked amp is almost standard studio practice. One odd, but useful variant on this technique involves feeding a send of a recorded snare track to a speaker taped on the top head of a snare in the studio, miking the underside and layering that signal onto the original snare track for a thicker sound. It's not as simple as triggering a sampled snare for doubling/track replacement, but if it works…
In the studio, a little experimentation and breaking a few rules can add to the creativity, but it's best to understand the rules before thrashing them. You might think recording high-level, low-frequency square waves could be fun. But when your mix starts blowing out your listeners' speakers, somebody's gonna be unhappy!
In search of truly nontraditional studio techniques, we present our annual look at “Radical Recording.” Our features editor, Sarah Jones, surveyed a sampling of Mix readers and assembled a collection of entertaining insights into outré recording. You might try a few of these on your next project, but if you do, please use caution (particularly around electricity and water), and remember that not every song is begging for an unusual effect. You'll know the ones that do.
Modern Recording and Mixing
This 2-DVD set will show you how the best in the music industry set up a studio to make world-class records. Regardless of what gear you are using, the information you'll find here will allow you to take advantage of decades of expert knowledge. Order now $39.95
Mastering Cubase 4
Electronic Musician magazine and Thomson Course Technology PTR have joined forces again to create the second volume in their Personal Studio Series, Mastering Steinberg's Cubase(tm). Edited and produced by the staff of Electronic Musician, this special issue is not only a must-read for users of Cubase(tm) software, but it also delivers essential information for anyone recording/producing music in a personal-studio. Order now $12.95
Delivered straight to your inbox every other week, MixLine takes you straight into the studio, with new product announcements, industry news, upcoming events, recent recording/post projects and much more. 