FIX YOUR MIX .com » BLOG

Whether you are an at-home audio hobbyist or a seasoned and professional Pro Tools operator, everybody yearns for the optimum working environment to produce music. Over the next few weeks I’ll take you through the various components of the digital audio workstation and offer some suggestions for maximizing its performance.

This is by no means the end-all-be-all of how-tos on the subject and I invite all of you readers out there to contribute to the body of knowledge with your personal expertise. As for me, I can only speak from my own experience as a professional audio engineer (plus a couple years in Information Technology, but we don’t like to talk about those years…). So please offer your opinions or questions in the comments below if you are so inclined.

I should admit right off the bat that I am a supporter of Macintosh computers and Pro Tools in the professional environment. The realities of the professional world decree that this is how you must go if you wish to have a successful career. I do swing every which way: I have done high-profile professional projects on Microsoft computers, Nuendo, Logic, Cubase, and tape. By and large, however, contemporary creative demands as well as the desire for portability and universality demand a Macintosh and Pro Tools combination.

Mac or PC:
Forget the I/Os, forget the gear (for now). Heck, even forget about the talent. In today’s music production world, you cannot record anything of any kind without a good computer. For the audiophiles out there, I too am a tape guy when the opportunity presents itself. However, the availability of the medium coupled with budgets and real-world artist demands often preclude the use of our beloved reel-to-reels.

So before you choose between Pro Tools and Logic and Nuendo, you have to pick the optimum machine to support those programs. When the question is posed to me there are three main distinctions that I like to draw:

1)  This one is kind of arbitrary but is necessary exposition because, when talking about technology, you will often get the conscientious objector who takes issue with the nomenclature: a Macintosh computer is a PC.

PC stands for personal computer, so the question really comes down to Macintosh or Microsoft. That kind of has a nice ring to it, so I’m curious why the debate is framed in such a manner. Apologies to those Linux supporters out there, but Linux isn’t even a wildcard in this tournament.

2)  A much more substantive and important distinction to draw is that Macintosh produces an operating system so that it can sell its computers. On the other hand, Microsoft produces computers so that it can sell its operating system.

This is a subtle difference, but very important. When your Macintosh computer crashes and you need to rebuild from scratch, you can use any OS installer on your computer. Mac doesn’t even ask for a serial number. That is because Macintosh is in the business of selling computers and the OS itself is simply a construction so that they can sell them machines themselves. That means that every component that is in the machine has an express purpose, specific to the operating system. Likewise, every line of code that exists in the operating system has an express purpose in the functioning of those components.

On the other hand, when your Microsoft (or rather Microsoft-based) computer crashes, you’ll need to have your officially sanctioned serial numbers and identifiers because Microsoft’s sole desire as a company (for our purposes) is to sell an operating system. Not the computer. If you actually go to the Microsoft store, you will not see a single computer “made” by Microsoft. The actual computers that run Microsoft Operating systems are produced by Dell, Asus, Lenovo, and *shriek* even Macintosh. Of course, the high competition for producers running a Microsoft-based platform means that the price can be significantly cheaper, but ultimately that means that the company creating your computer has little at stake in how the operating system functions with the computer itself.

3)  The third distinction deals more with what your computers are actually doing: The computer and the operating system itself has no idea what operations you are performing.

Whether it is a Mac or a Microsoft or Linux, no computer has any real idea whether you are watching a movie, editing a family video, touching up a photograph, or recording death metal. It is just doing calculations. The real question when dealing with music production is how quickly can VERY LARGE chunks of information accessed, transferred, and put to use.

Macintosh realizes this. For a very long time, the talking point about Macs was that they handled big calculations and files better than Microsoft. While this may be true from an OS standpoint, a processor or hard drive or stick of RAM doesn’t know whether it’s running on OSX or Vista. The real distinction is that with Macintosh, you can accept as a given the fact that the components within your machine are top of the line and designed to handle tasks that require large computations and throughput. Macintosh knows that their demographic has long been “creative” types rather than business professionals, so the OS and machines are all designed to handle labor intensive processes.

Microsoft on the other hand, after a certain baseline, frankly doesn’t give a damn about the components that are in the computer. There are Microsoft computers out there on the market that are designed only for web-browsing and word-processing. And rightly so, Microsoft has a huge and broad market that caters to businessmen and soccer moms and even creative types, so some machines handle large computations and have max throughput while others do not.

So from these three distinctions, it should be clear that you buy a Microsoft computer, and with the right tweaks and customizations, it can perform equally to a Mac. However, it will require more thoughtful consideration on the part of the consumer than buying a Mac with a very small set of top-of-the-line variables.

In my next article, I will examine some of the specific functions of Mac and Microsoft operating systems themselves.

I think Keith and I have spent the past few weeks kicking ourselves for not writing more and I’ve had some time to reflect on the nature setting and accomplishing goals.  Of course there is no bigger goal-setting day than New Year’s and consequently, there is no better time to than the present to check in on those resolutions.

One of the things about me that may surprise readers is that I am a bit of a health nut. Back in January I joined a posh new gym in my neighborhood. For those of you who are members of gyms, you know that there is this thing called “Spin Class”, which is essentially just a stationary group bicycling class. It’s pretty fun and is offered multiple times throughout the day at my gym, 6 days a week, and taught by various instructors.

Each instructor is a little bit different: some are overly cheery, some are doting pep-talkers, others can be downright militaristic. My very first instructor fell into the latter category.

Our first class on the first week of January had about 30 people in it. At the beginning he said that everybody’s goal should be to make it to March. Many in the crowd laughed and asked “Why not all year?”

–No, just March.

March is a good time to look back at New Year’s Resolutions to see how we’ve fared. Sadly, it is a good time to check because by now most of us have given up on them. Some studies have shown that 80% of the people who make resolutions stop pursuing them by mid-February.

Sure enough, at today’s class there were about 10 of us…

So I want to ask our readers and subscribers how your resolutions are going. Of course this blog is not about exercise, it is about making music. I joked with one of my regular clients the other day that I think I still have a hair-metal solo concept-album on DAT that just needs just a hair more polish.

When I find the time of course…

So, how is that solo record coming that you’ve been working on sporadically for the past 5 years? How is that side project developing that you used to regale your college buddies about when you had one too many drinks? What about that one dynamite song that you wrote ten years ago and swore you’d commit to tape and put out as a single as soon as you got a day job and could afford to book a studio?

The truth is that we all have some kind of goal that we want to accomplish. If you’re a reader of this blog, then chances are yours involves your art and a project that you have been mulling over for years and years and years.

Some experts say that the best way to ensure that you meet your resolution is to

set realistic goals. Personally, I hate that philosophy—it is the soft bigotry of low expectations. This being the Lenten season, it reminds me of being asked by Sunday school teachers about what I had given up for Lent. It isn’t much of a sacrifice for an 8 year-old to give up brussel sprouts and frankly I think they saw right through my clever ploy.

The real way to meet your resolutions, whether they be for New Year’s or in everyday life, is to set a real goal that you actually want to accomplish and then give yourself checkpoints along the way so you can measure your progress. If my fitness goal was to lose 20 pounds, then I’d want to set benchmarks each week so that I could measure progress. That way, I would know that if I didn’t meet my February 1^st goal that I need to try harder for the March 1^st checkpoint.

Most things that are worth accomplishing can seem fairly daunting when just looking at the end-goal. Whether that’s weight-loss or cutting a record, making a sculpture or learning a new instrument, the goal can seem insurmountable on any given day until you reach it.

That’s why when you’ve only lost 3 pounds by mid-February, it can seem like a hopeless task. That’s why the vast majority give up. Don’t be afraid of the magnitude of your goals. Don’t be afraid to set benchmarks and deadlines. And don’t let the enormity of your goal be an excuse to stop pursuing it or put it off for another year. So what if it’s March and you haven’t made any progress? Set new goals, adjust your benchmarks, and get going.

Sometimes the hardest part is getting started. That’s why New Year’s is such a convenient time. We get this arbitrary starting point to prod ourselves into doing something we know we want or even need to do.

My resolution was making sure that I continue to contribute to this blog regularly and, being the contrarian that I am, I think March is a good time to get back on track…

So, all this is to say that we have a bunch of new articles coming that you guys are really going to love.  Stay tuned!

Ladies and germs, I present to you what is perhaps my favorite release that I’ve worked on to date: In The Clouds, a five-song EP and debut release from Boston-based indie rockers The Dirty Dishes.

I mixed and co-produced the record, also sharing mastering duties with Dave Cooley (produced both Silversun Pickups records and has mastered for J Dilla, Madlib, & Polyphonic Spree). They’re something like a female-fronted Silversun Pickups or Autolux. But fresher. And maybe with a dash of Smashing Pumpkins. Listen to all five songs on Bandcamp. My favorites:

» “Deer In Headlights” (catchy, indie)
» “Stolen Apples” (fun with a hint of evil)
» “Thin Air” (epic shoegaze)

Haggle with your favorite ticket scalper tonight outside Boston’s House of Blues to catch the Dirty Dishes opening for Passion Pit at their sold-out show. And in case you haven’t noticed, these blogosphere darlings have been hyping the hell out of the Dishes:

• Passion Pit’s Top Tips for 2010 (Timesonline.co.uk)
• “Stolen Apples” featured on the front page of Myspace Music as track #1 on their Boston Bands We Like playlist
• Featured “Back and Forth” in their Diesel:U playlist
• Passion Pit’s “bands you need to know about” (Austin City Limits)
• Passion Pit’s “favorite Boston bands” (TheYoungAndTheHungry.com)

Download any song from their EP for free on Bandcamp or support the band by buying the whole thing:

• In The Clouds on Bandcamp (money goes directly to the band minus PayPal fees)
• In the Clouds on Amazon MP3 (some of the money goes to Amazon)
• In The Clouds on iTunes (some of Apple’s portion goes to me because I have an affiliate account… I mean um… what???)

http://www.myspace.com/thedirtydishesmusic
http://www.facebook.com/thedirtydishes

BLOGGERS: feel free to post an mp3 for free download. You can also embed their Bandcamp player on your page by clicking the song title and then “Share”.

Well folks, 2009 is winding down and it’s been a great year for us and the blog. My only regret* is that I haven’t had time to post more stuff, from the great people we’ve worked with lately to finishing some of the drafts I’d contemplated for months.

For those of you who have emailed us or left comments, thank you. You let us know when we’re doing something right and call us out when we’re oh so wrong. On occasion we’ve written entire posts in response to your comments and emails.

Today I’d like to formally invite all our readers to give us some feedback. What do you want from the Fix Your Mix blog in 2010? Things you’d like to see more (or less) of, specific topic ideas, etc. Leave your thoughts in the comments or send an email to blog (at) fixyourmix.com

In other news, we’re finally taking the leap into the zany world of advertising. If you have something that would be valuable to our growing readership of musicians, songwriters, audio engineers, producers, and music industry folk, get in touch and we’ll talk numbers. All of our sponsors will be hand-picked. As our guinea pigs, we’ll give you a great deal. Don’t be shy, all you have to do is email us: ads (at) fixyourmix.com

-Keith

*My other regret is that our subscription page wasn’t working when our Single Ladies analysis hit the front page of Reddit. Ha. Lesson learned.

Miss Geo is a Rhode Island-based singer songwriter. Her new album, The Story, is an excruciatingly (yes) catchy indie-pop record with clever lyrics and tons of stand out tracks. Check out “Broken Wrists”:

I’ve been meaning to feature Miss Geo for a few months now, not only because the music is killer, but because I want to talk about a lesser known service that we offer at Fix Your Mix called stem mastering. Stem mastering, sometimes also called stem mixing or separation mastering, is a hybrid between mixing and mastering. To explain how this works, I’ll tell you a little bit about how this record was made.

The Story was produced, engineered, and mixed by my good friend Rob Arbelo here in Boston. What I received from Rob was stereo “stems”–a single stereo track of drums, a stereo track of all the guitars combined, stereo vocals, bass, and a stereo track of synth/harmonies/noises combined. The benefit of mastering from stems is twofold:

1. You can’t always be sure exactly how mastering will affect a mix. Sometimes guitars get louder, the snare’s sustain increases, the kick gets lost in the chorus, etc. By effectively mixing and mastering at the same time, I was able to quickly and easily tweak basic levels and EQ while retaining the essential character of Rob’s mix.
2. One of the most often-cited benefits of mastering is an objective ear to lend fresh perspective to a mix. In my opinion, stem mastering is infinitely more valuable in this capacity than mastering alone.

I love working from stems, so if you’re a self-produced, DIY artist and want to mix it yourself without sacrificing the energy and clarity of a professionally mixed record, this may be the route to go. Or if you’ve spent months producing the hell out of someone else’s record and you’ve got a great mix that just needs a little tweaking, stem mastering will allow you to take a nice long nap while some other guy does the boring stuff!

UPDATE: We are now officially offering stem mixing at $80/song.

“Broken Wrists” was featured on Hype Machine yesterday and tons of people have been favoriting it, so if you like the song, heart/ReTweet this to bump Miss Geo up on the HypeM charts:

“Broken Wrists” on HypeM

You can also stream the full album on Miss Geo’s Bandcamp page. I recommend the tracks “Snake Soiree,” “Statuette,” and “Time Travel.”

Miss Geo links:

• Miss Geo on Myspace
• The Story on iTunes
• The Story in Amazon MP3

Key Signature: A minor, C Lydian
Time Signatures: 3/4, 4/4, 6/8
Special Songwriting Devices Used: Three-bar phrases, Polymeter, Polyrhythm, Modal harmony
Structure: Verse-Refrain-Verse-Refrain-C-D-C-D-C-Outro

Hover your mouse over terms underlined with dots (like this) for more information. If you’re following along with the album version rather than the video, subtract 5 seconds from any time stamps listed below to account for the video lead-in.

This blog mostly concerns itself with what can loosely be considered pop music, but today’s song violates what is perhaps pop’s most sacred and universal characteristic: structure. It’s not that “Ready, Able” has no structure, but it certainly isn’t your typical verse-chorus-verse. While a traditional pop song is designed to grab your attention and get to the hook ASAP, Grizzly Bear has no patience for people with no patience. And to those who wait, the payoff is that much sweeter.

A Narrative Of An Average Listener Experiencing This Song For The First Time (click to enlarge:)

“Ready, Able” starts with a sparse and confusing instrumental passage, which you eventually realize is part of the verse. Like the claymation monsters of the video that appear both happy and sad, you can’t tell whether to be scared by the droning, tribal mysteriousness of the rhythm section, or amused by the playful, almost upbeat vocal melody. You’re relieved to hear a chord–the first one in the song–at 0:42. This is the start of a new, more palatable section: the refrain.* Here Grizzly Bear builds anticipation for something that never comes. Right as the music sounds like it’s about to reach the tonic, the whole damn thing cuts back to the verse like a movie that ends on a cliffhanger, cutting to black at the most crucial moment. (And you still have no idea what “Rosebud” means…) Read more...

After the second refrain, you are led to a surprising, but also cohesive and highly gratifying climax at 1:53 (the C section) which starts on an A minor chord and continues to build throughout the second half. It’s gratifying not only because of the lush production and arrangement elements that kick in, but because it took 2 damn minutes to get to the I chord! As shown in the image above, the music video works in the opposite manner. It starts off a little odd and then morphs into something truly bizarre. To better understand what’s so off about the verses, let’s go right into a rhythmic play-by-play:

Two Time Signatures Simultaneously – Polymeter

Read the disclaimer for this section.

The verses consist of 24-beat phrases demarcated by a kick drum. It’s hard to tell what’s going on: the vocals don’t quite match up with the percussion and those harp glissandos seem to sneak up and jump out at you from behind the bushes when you least expect them to. What’s going on here?

What you’re hearing is called polymeter–the simultaneous use of 2 or more time signatures sharing a common pulse. The verses in “Ready, Able” juxtapose a 3/4 waltz (the vocals and harp) on top of 4/4 (percussion). In this case, the shared pulse is the duration of the quarter note. Only after 24 beats do both time signatures start their down beats at the same time.

24 is a good number for polymeter because it can be evenly divided by the most common beat groupings: 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8. As a consequence, these 24-beat phrases also transition nicely into the refrain in 6/8 at half tempo. Now let’s move on to polymeter’s evil twin sister: polyrhythm.

Two Types of Beat Divisions Simultaneously – Polyrhythm

Congratulations, you’re about to dive head first into the metaphorical deep end of music theory. Drummers and music nerds, get ready to geek out.

Polyrhythm is when two different kinds of beat divisions are used simultaneously (not to be confused with beat groupings–that’s polymeter). In Western music, beats are typically subdivided in half.** This type of division is called duple meter and looks like this:

One whole note = two half notes = four quarter notes = eight 8th notes = sixteen 16th notes = thirty-two 32nd notes

But there are other types of divisions, the most common of which is a triplet: when two beats are divided into three beats. For example, three 8th note triplets take up the same amount of time as two regular 8th notes.

During the C section (1:53), the lead synth (a Synclavier?) has a tremolo effect that creates 16th note tripets over the regular 16th notes of the other instruments. Here’s a simplified notation of this rhythm (click to enlarge):

UPDATE: I think it’s safe to say that this is an Omnichord, not a Synclavier.

Welcome to Polyrhythmville. And what’s really trippy is we’re in 6/8. While 6/8 rhythms are grouped in sets of 3, each beat is still normally subdivided by multiples of two. But here the total number of 16ths per measure is 18–you don’t see that number often in music–and all this on top of 12 beats–a concept so mindblowing that only underline and italics at the same time could possibly come close to expressing the insanity. Half way through the D section, we hear this pattern again with a lofi hi hat sample. We’re beginning to see the number 3 take shape as a major theme in this song: beats grouped in 3s, beats divided by 3, and finally, 3-bar phrases:

Unusual Phrase Lengths
(See our explanation of bars, measures, & phrases for help with this section.)

In pop music, chord progressions and phrases typically last 1, 2, 4, or 8 measures. Deviating from this is a great way to shake up your songwriting without venturing into odd time signatures, which often means sacrificing accessibility. It’s hard for the average music listener to dance or rock to something in 5/4 or 7/8,*** but they will have no problem dancing to 5- or 7-bar phrases in 4/4.

That being said, when great songwriters use a device like this there’s a reason for it, whether they’re aware of that reason or feel its effect intuitively. “Ready, Able” uses 3-bar phrases throughout most of the second half, providing two advantages:

• Vibe: We’re expecting 4-bar phrases, so 3-bar phrases have a cyclical, hypnotic effect. It feels like the thought is not quite finished.
• Lyrics: If the D section had 4-bar phrases, there would be a big empty space when the lyrics finish, or they would have had to write more lyrics and extend the melody. By using 3-bar phrases, Grizzly Bear is able to keep interest high while retaining their original lyrical and melodic idea.

But there’s a problem. In addition to being super weird and hip, these odd phrases are leaving people hanging. There seems to be no destination. Solution? A 4-bar phrase at the end of each section. Consider your thirst for finality quenched. There’s also an extra bar at the end of the refrain (normally 4-bar phrases) to make room for a IV-7 (D minor 7) which has a strong pull to I- in this case.

» A Rhythmic Recap of "Ready Able" (click to expand this section)

Single-Chord Harmony
(See our guides to chord abbreviations, tensions, and modes for help with this section.)

If you follow this blog, you’re already aware of the trend of rap songs without music. To the music snobs and hipsters frowning upon that concept, I am pleased to inform you that Grizzly Bear essentially does the same thing during the first verse of this song–there is no progression, only a vocal melody, lost in an enchanted forest of polymeter and the occasional harp gliss. But of course, context is everything. I doubt we’ll be seeing Ying Yang Twins comparisons any time soon.

During the second verse, Grizzly Bear seems to have added a very faint guitar or bass on the note C. It seems that the key is now C major, the relative major from A minor. With the vocal melody notes included, the overall harmony of this section seems to be a single, but very colorful chord normally reserved for Jazz: Cmaj9(13) (C, E, G, B, D, A). In other words, every note in the key except F, which would be tension 11. 11 is usually considered an “avoid note” on a major 7 chord.

But listen again. There’s a drum tuned to F#, which would be the tritone of the C major. In the absence of a natural F, I’m prepared to say that we’re not in the relative major at all, we’re in C Lydian and the chord is Cmaj7 (9 #11 13), which includes every single note of the key signature. Lydian mode can be described as foreign and magical-sounding and the second verse of “Ready, Able” is no exception. This mode is often used by film composers for dream sequences. What’s even more bizarre is that the #11 drum is the lowest note in the section, making it sound especially dissonant. I wouldn’t call the chord an inversion though, because the drum comes on very weak beats.

Other than C and tension #11, the lead vocal provides every other note in this chord. Don’t get me wrong: not all melody notes should be considered part of a song’s essential harmony, but in this case the tensions (9 & 13) come on down beats at the beginning of the 8-bar vocal phrases, the strongest beats possible during this section.

» More About The Harmony (click to expand this section)

I was unable to find good guitar tab or piano transcriptions for this song online, so this will get you started if you’re a Grizzly Bear fan and want to cover this for YouTube:

“Ready, Able” Chords – Simplified For Rhythm Guitar & Piano
(See our chord abbreviation guide for help with this section.)

“Ready, Able” Chords – Full Harmony

“Ready, Able” Chords – Functional Analysis

This concludes my analysis. If you’ve read this far, you’re probably an ultra music nerd like me and for that I salute you. I might be imagining or missing some of tensions, so if you hear anything different or disagree with my analysis, feel free to leave a comment.

» Show Asterisk (*) Items for "Ready, Able" by Grizzly Bear: A Compositional Analysis (click to expand)

I knew it was going to be loud.  I think I knew it intuitively just from the clues hidden in the mix of their timeless album Loveless.  I definitely knew it before I heard people in the parking lot spreading apocryphal stories about audience lawsuits over hearing loss.

So before we arrived at the Palladium Ballroom to see My Bloody Valentine on their 2009 reunion tour, I decided to be a good friend and buy a big jug of earplugs for my group of audiophiles in case they forgot to bring any.  Sure enough they did.

It turns out that it didn’t matter because as we walked through the gate, the ushers handed each and every person their own individually packaged set of earplugs.  That’s how you know a band is going to be loud—when the venue makes a special effort to put a set of plugs in every concertgoer’s hand before the show.  I’m used to seeing a jar of cheap plugs at the bar, but this was a clearly a very different animal.

It was ungodly loud.  Perhaps the loudest thing I had ever experienced.  My dad was an airline mechanic and on Bring Your Son to Work Day I got to experience just how loud a jet engine is.  My Bloody Valentine was louder.

During their closer, an extended rendition of “You Made Me Realize”, the band chose a single chord and extended it for 17 minutes (I know because the person in front of me was recording it and had a timer on the LCD screen).  There were people wearing earplugs still trying with all their might to cover their ears with their hands.  There were people doubled over in pain.  Frankly, I couldn’t believe the sound system at the venue didn’t explode.

The experience alone made the show worthwhile, not to mention getting the chance to see one of my all-time favorite bands.  But there were a few things about the show that made me feel cheated.  If you see MBV play live, you’ll be sad to see that there is no synthesizer player.  All those great synth hooks are pre-recorded to a tape.  Without those melodies, you are pretty much left with two people playing rhythm guitar, a bass player, and a drummer.

Also, the vocals were buried to the point that sometimes I questioned whether or not anyone was actually singing (You might also wonder that from the decidedly un-engaging stage presence of the seminal shoe-gazers who seemed to exchange staring at the floor for hiding behind the microphone). In the world of live sound it’s almost cheating to hide the vocals that way—it is very easy to make a band loud if you don’t have to worry about feedback (or even hearing the vocals for that matter).

But to a certain extent that’s what Loveless sounds like.  It is a lush and thick wash of guitars with soaring synth lines against buried vocals and drums.  All this contributes to a very unique sonic texture that has extremely high average loudness, but subconsciously forces the listener to turn up the volume.

Prince famously said that the most important part of a mix is the “boom and the slap” (meaning the kick and snare).  Well, in Loveless, the drums are mixed so far back into the track that at normal listening levels they are barely noticeable.  In order to get the drums to a listenable level, the listener is forced to crank up the whole track.  By the time you get the drums to where you want to hear them, the unwavering assault of distorted electric guitars is screamingly loud.

Since I cut my teeth in the music world as a drummer, the drums are what I notice.  But many people site the same experience by trying to bring the vocals to a listenable level as well.  They pose the same problem, although to me the problem of audibility in the vocals is not remedied by additional volume since they are so legato, washed in reverb, and poorly enunciated.  But then again, lyrical content and vocal execution weren’t the primary objectives.  The point was to be loud.

For the most part, the synth hooks and even the snare drum cut by frequency content rather than relative volume in the mix.  They occupy higher registers sailing over the bed of guitars.

From a mastering standpoint, the drums and vocals have to be mixed this way so that they become part of the texture. If the transient content of the drums were any louder, the track would pump wildly as the compressor keyed on each drum hit.  Similarly, the vocals couldn’t stand out like most lead vocals do or else the mastering compressor would key on it instead as well.  The overall sound is accomplished by creating a bed that has very little fluctuation in average loudness despite any changes that might occur.

Of course I’m sure that none of this was explicitly sought after.  Like most indie bands, MBV probably tucked the vocals in because they didn’t like the sound of their own voice.  But nevertheless, the end is achieved masterfully, regardless of the means or the motivation.

I love the way Loveless sounds, but I will be the first to say that that record sounds terrible if it isn’t cranked way up.  The mix really only sounds reasonable if the volume is up, but that’s all right for pretty much anybody who wants to listen to that record anyway.

My girlfriend and I met at a Swell Season concert.  Many of you might know them as “that band in the movie Once” that won an Academy Award for Best Original Song from a Motion Picture, but they are in fact a real couple with a real band making real music.

Our anniversary came up on Tuesday (she’s put up with me for a whole year now) and we were taking a trip down memory lane.  Being sentimental types, we kept trying to find ways to incorporate the Swell Season into the evening but couldn’t quite come up with anything exciting beyond listening to the record (which we didn’t end up doing anyway).

The band is great live.  Glen Hansard is a bit chatty on stage, but it is an engrossing couple hours of storytelling (and they’ll start touring in November so get tickets if you can).  But the film is fantastic if you’ve never seen it.  It probably has the best making-a-record sequence committed to film.

The only thing that bugged me about that act in the movie was after they finished recording, the engineer turns to the group and says “Well, let’s give it the car listen” and they proceed into a very scenic montage of the group piling into a car and driving around Dublin listening to the record.

The idea is that no matter what, a professional CD should sound good in the car.  It doesn’t matter who mixed it or produced it or what kind of car you drive, you should NEVER put a commercial album into your car stereo and say this doesn’t sound right.

In practice this is totally false.  In fact there are a number of CDs that sound absolutely horrendous in the car—The Who’s 2006 release Endless Wire comes to mind (which is a shame because Pete Townsend takes the time to outline every piece of vintage gear that they recorded and mixed with in the liner notes; proving once again it’s not what you have, it’s how you use it).  But still, the car listen is a pretty decent barometer in most cases.

Personally, I hate the car listen.  In the eyes of many pros, the car listen demonstrates that you aren’t familiar enough with your room and your gear to know when you are making the right decisions.  For most situations, you should be terrified if you are in the studio with a house engineer who says “Well, let’s give it a listen out in the car.”  That’s a bit like an architectural engineer saying “Well, I’m pretty sure the building is level, but we may want to give it another look around noontime when the light is better.”

Admittedly there are times when it might be necessary to use the car listen.  When you first come to a new studio, you might take a book of CDs into the new listening environment and play them in the control room to get used to the character of the space and the gear.  Then you might take your first mix out from the control room to the car, which is a portable, familiar listening space that has reasonable frequency range (as opposed to headphones), and test the mix out in order to make sure you properly assessed the room and made the right adjustments.

So what makes the car listen so appealing?  Well there are a number of factors that are present in automobile listening situations that you can’t test in the somewhat academic environment of a professional (or semi-professional) recording studio.

For one thing, everyone is familiar with what their car sounds like, so clients like to hear things in the car because they don’t have to actually go home to hear their music on a familiar loudspeaker system.  They can just walk out to the parking lot.  Of course if you go into the engineer’s car (like they did in Once) that is only for the benefit of the engineer.

Another benefit is that you get to hear what the record sounds like in noisy environments.  Studios are meant to be clinical, noiseless environments where you can hear minute details and imperfections.  They are ideal listening situations, but the real world is rarely ideal.  Most of the time consumers are going to listen over the hum of an engine going 60 miles per hour with the AC blaring and wind gusting against the windshield.

In those instances, you will lose most of your top end since environmental noise buries those frequencies very easily.  Also, bass reproduction suffers in the car because much of the energy goes out away from the car as well as inside it.  The thin material of the car doesn’t retain and resonate low frequencies the way it does mids and highs.

You can listen to the record in a real world situation and say “Well, Kanye usually gives me a bit more low end than this on the highway” and adjust accordingly.

Bear in mind that I’m saying a professional engineer who works at a particular studio consistently should never suggest a car listen, if you are patronizing a studio though, by all means take the record out to the car and give it a listen.  The engineer might even be grateful that you broached the subject so he doesn’t appear unprofessional. 

At the studio, you have to trust that the engineer is making the right decisions with your art, but it is never a mistake to check his work.

A friend of mine is an exceptionally talented bass player.  He’s played all over the world with musicians from Michael Brecker to Andy Timmons and he’s also an excellent storyteller.  One day we were hanging out and he started reminiscing about this gig he played during apartheid in South Africa.  He began by saying that he had this six-month contract to play as the house band at a nightclub.

Everybody listening had to stop him before he made it through his first sentence:  A six-month contract to play at a venue?

We were stunned.

“Was that just the way they did it in Africa back then?”

“No, that’s the way everybody used to do it back then.”

Thirty years ago, young local groups were actually contracted to play at a venue for numerous dates at a time.  Allegedly, you could actually make a decent living doing it too.  You’d play a bunch of small gigs and build a local reputation for yourself or open for a bunch of bands as they passed through town and get some exposure to managers and label reps on the way.  

My wheels were spinning from his comment and I missed the rest of the anecdote (fortunately, like all great musicians, he’s prone to repeating his best stories so I got many other opportunities).  This just seemed so crazy in comparison to what is going on in the live music world today.   Another friend of mine, a very talented sax player, just got back from a gig up in New York and told me that insanely talented, well-connected musicians are playing at venues in New York for a free meal…

Look at the picture above from the Cavern Club: “THE BEATLES PLAYED HERE 292 TIMES”… 

The musical landscape has changed dramatically over the past thirty years.  Once upon a time, musicians were able to be musicians and support themselves with their music through a fertile, logical local system.  Now the clubs are gone, the gigs pay so little that they aren’t even worth the gas, radio doesn’t care about the local scene any more, and (as previously discussed) it’s pretty hard to make it big unless you are already big in the first place.

During an interesting segment on NPR’s All Songs Considered, Carrie Brownstein and a panel of music bloggers discussed whether or not labels were useful in discovering new music.  In a brief aside, Carrie mentioned that the label Kill Rock Stars almost passed on her band, electroclash darlings Sleater-Kinney, because they thought it was “just a side project”.

Now in Brownstein’s case, the group was a side project to her other band Excuse 17, but there is a prevailing philosophy among the decision-makers at labels that there should be some considerable measure of success derived specifically from the band in question in order for it to merit consideration.

That’s pretty difficult to do in today’s musical climate.  I’ve always encouraged people to not define themselves by their day job—do enough to pay the bills and support your passions.  The music business is now saying that that’s not enough.  You have to be professional before going pro.

The problem is that we no longer have a system where amateur musicians can cultivate and support themselves in the process of turning professional.  The issue is partly one of supply and demand.  Back in the 60s, venues wanted bands and there simply weren’t that many out there.  It was more difficult to even get an instrument, let alone be good enough at it to play for two hours.

All their success aside, Ringo Star and Mick Fleetwood would each tell you that they are not the most talented drummers (Mac Fleetwood doesn’t even know what 4/4 time is and he labored to explain that fact in Ken Robinson’s The Element).  The fact is that they were the guys in their local area with a drum kit.  Drums at the time were exceptionally expensive and too large for most in urban England to store.  If you had the instrument, you were in a band.  If you were in a band of any caliber, you were likely to land a gig playing at some venue with some regularity.

Every band needs somewhere to play.  Unfortunately, these days venues are so financially strapped that they’d often rather put the iPod on shuffle than hire four teenagers and a sound guy.  Consequently, the venues with live music are overrun with demos of musicians willing to play for peanuts.

In a world where it is virtually impossible to support yourself as an amateur musician, labels are left looking to people who are already famous to fill out their rosters: solo artists from previous hit-making bands like Gavin and Gwen, celebutantes, and contestants from reality TV.

Some amateur bands are lucky enough to catch a label’s attention and they land one of the precious few spots on a national tour playing a hundred dates with one band.  Obviously these gigs are rare, but they also reduce exposure to only the fans of a certain band.

It has been said that all business is local.  In the Digital Age, there is such a focus put on national and global considerations that the local concerns fall by the wayside.  But ultimately, a return to a fertile local music environment is what will repair the music business.  Labels have an interest in seeing musicians cultivated in their home environments, winning over a local demographic, and climbing a logical ladder toward regional and national success.

This was the model that worked thirty years ago and I believe it can still work with some adjustments for the digital age.  In many ways and to their detriment, record labels are stuck in the old ways of conducting business.  In this instance, I fear that they have overlooked a useful lesson from the past.  Emphasizing a fertile local music scene and a logical progression from there toward a national spotlight is what encourages a diverse and creative musical landscape.  There is no one better suited to make this happen than the labels themselves.

It was 2003 when I first discovered Lazy Mane & Kosherbeets through the grapevine as they began to generate a buzz in the North Atlanta area. I got Kosherbeets’s number from a mutual friend, picked his brain about music, recording, etc., and the rest is history. I cut my teeth mixing his solo release, Dude, College, and now his joint effort with long time collaborator Lazy Mane: Supreme I.N.K.

They’ve since shared the stage with a number of hip hop notables including Atlanta mainstays the Ying Yang Twins and quintiple-platinum act Nappy Roots (of “Awnaw” fame). Tonight, Friday, Sept. 18th, 2009, you can catch the duo at Lenny’s in Atlanta performing with Dungeon Family* artists Killer Mike (featured on a number of OutKast songs), Cool Breeze, and Rico Wade of Organized Noize.

I don’t know exactly where to pin down their sound-a little Bone Thugs here, some early OutKast there, and a combination of all those jazz records, photographs, and history books they’ve got lying around the studio. The result is a classic sound that spits in the face of trends and resonates on both an intellectual and primal level.

Supreme I.N.K is their best to date, particularly The Springtime, which is a sample-based, major key uptempo song with “instant classic” written all over it, and The Galaxi, a trippy, dark, futuristic beat with lyrics and live sax to match. 

In honor of the album’s release, I’ve thrown together a sampler with some of my favorite cuts from the album:

Stream the Fix Your Mix Supreme I.N.K Sampler (NSFW)

Mixing In An Unfamiliar Environment

Mixing in an artist’s studio is kind of like becoming fluent in Pig Latin. You’ve already got all the skills you need, it just takes a little bit longer to get your ideas out at first. To get familiar with their speakers (Event 8s) and room, I referenced their influences for similar instrumentation/arrangements but used more recent mainstream songs to get the low end sounding current. We also checked mixes in a number of consumer environments including a few vehicles with decked-out audio systems and took notes for revisions.

Supreme I.N.K. is the only full album that I’ve mixed entirely independent of my own gear and rig.** It was done entirely in the box (plug ins only, no outboard gear) using primarily the Waves Diamond and SSL plugin bundles in Pro Tools.

Fixing Their Mix

I consider all of my projects to be collaborative efforts, but especially in this case–they did the rough mixes and final tweaks, I sculpted the sound into a more professional and cohesive arrangement. So this was one of those cases where I literally “fixed [their] mix” rather than playing the traditional mix engineer role.

I read that one of my favorite engineers, Rich Costey, did this on Foo Fighters’ latest, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. The tracking engineer did the initial mix work if I’m not mistaken and RC was brought in to finish it off.

They’ve intentionally eschewed iTunes and Amazon in favor of a more grassroots approach by giving away the album for free online and selling physical copies at shows. So check them out at Lenny’s if you can, and grab the album. It’s free!

Download the album for free @ SupremeINK.net

*I owe Will (Kosherbeets) a special debt of gratitude for introducing me to my favorite rap album of all time, Dungeon Family’s Even In Darkness. Dungeon Family is a more or less defunct (hibernating?) collective which includes OutKast, Goodie Mob, Cee-Lo, et al.

**For my clients reading, note that I don’t generally do attended sessions–the time we save from this is one of the ways we can provide an incredible value at a rate that’s affordable for independent artists–but I made an exception for these guys because of our long time relationship and hey, it gave me a good excuse to go back to Atlanta for a few weeks.