An Interview With Bassy Bob Brockman

“Bassy” Bob Brockman has a wide range of awards and credits, including more than 30 Grammy nominations with two wins, and an Oscar nomination. His many credits include Mary J. Blige, Toni Braxton, Brian McKnight, Faith Hill, Korn, Christina Aguilera, P Diddy, Santana, and Sting among many others. In this excerpt from The Mixing Engineer's Handbook 3rd edition, Bob discusses what he uses for plugins and his use of the mix buss compressor.

"Can you hear the final product in your head when you begin to mix?

Yeah, probably. I think that I probably make some subconscious and non-verbal judgements when I first hear a song. I make a judgement on style and then go through a couple hours familiarizing myself with all the parts, then I try to see what’s really crucial and what could be wallpaper. I then find whether there’s something that’s really important that I should make the listener aware of. 

The first 20 years of my career I had a producer standing right next to me, telling me what parts were important. It’s less so now because I see so fewer people. I get sent digital files and I sort of end up making those mix/production decisions on my own and end up delivering a more or less finished mix to the producer or the band, then I’ll get notes on what to tweak.

Are you mixing on a console or in the box?

I can mix in the box if I have to but it’s certainly not my preferred way of mixing. What I’m into is a sort of hybrid mixing. I have a Neve 8816 [analog console] with 16 channels coming out of an Avid 192 D/A with an Alan Smart C2 compressor across the mix buss. 16 channels of analog makes a big difference to me in terms of power and depth of field. I still do mix quite a few things in the box though, especially when I’m out traveling.

How much of the DAW do you use?

I’m very deep into the whole digital mixing process and do all of my work in Pro Tools. The plugins have stepped up a lot in the last few years, with the distortion and saturation plugs having improved immeasurably. They’re now more transparent and not adding a lot of phase shift or distortion when you insert them. That was my problem with plugs before and why I would tend not to use them on phase dependent things like drums and guitars. At a certain point, maybe the seventh or eighth hour the mix, the whole thing would start to sound crunchy to me, so I would go in and bypass the plugs and realize that I was using them as crutch to make things speak. Once you get things dialed in, by the end of the mix you don’t need them as much, so there’s a lot more sonic purity.

I often encourage young mixers to bypass their plugs and listen to what they have, especially in a program like Logic where when you open up a session it’s already got three or four things inserted across every channel as a default. 

Do you have certain effects that you always set up before you begin a mix?

I typically transfer all of my effects from one song to the next. I’ll usually use an [Soundtoys] Echo Boy or a [Massey] TD5 for delay. The [Waves] H-Delay and the [PSP] lexicon PCM42 are really nice as well. I usually have four or five delays which vary from very tight to slap delays to timed things. I tweak the timing so its either pushing or dragging a bit behind the beat. I usually have four or five reverbs all plugged in as well. I don’t have any analog effects processing. It’s all done in the box.

I do have a pair of Neve 1073’s that I might insert across the stereo buss, but for the most part I’ll just leave the equalization to the mastering guy. I try to get the EQ and the sound from what I’m doing to the individual tracks in the mix. I’ve never been much of a user of equalization over the years. I’ve worked with a lot of master buss equalizers like the Massenburg stuff, but there are so many equalization things that happen to the sound just by making adjustments on the Alan Smart [SSL-clone compressor]. It’s such an amazing compressor with the way it grabs the low end and accentuates certain parts of the mid-range or upper mid-range depending upon how fast or slow and the ratio. 

I usually spend the last two hours of my mix not doing much mixing but listening and then making little adjustments to the master buss compressor and hearing what the impact is to all the parts. I definitely don’t have a stock compression setting. I’m always moving the setting around on everything that I do. Each song has to have it’s own contour I guess.

How hard are you hitting it?

That depends on the music. If I’m doing a dance record I’m probably hitting it pretty hard. If I’m doing an aggressive rock record then I’m sinking into it about 3 or 4 dB. If I’m doing something much more open or acoustic I’m barely hitting it. Most of the effect is how it’s putting the low frequency information in check, which it does without the meter moving at all. Even when you’re hitting it very lightly it still has a dramatic effect on the music."

You can read additional excerpts from The Mixing Engineer's Handbook and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

Properly Setting The Mix Buss Compressor

Hardly a mix goes by these days without the mixer placing a compressor across the mix buss, even if he's not sure exactly why he's doing it. Here's an excerpt from Mixing And Mastering With T-RackS; The Official Guide that explains both why a buss compressor is used, and how to properly set one up.
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Along with compressing the individual track of a song, many engineers place a stereo compressor across the mix buss to affect the entire mix as well. Originally this came about when artists began asking why their mixes sounded different in the studio from what they heard on the radio or when their record came from the pressing plant (it was still vinyl in those days). Indeed both the radio and record did sound different because an additional round (or two) of compression was added in both mastering and broadcast. In order to simulate what this would sound like, mixing engineers began to add a touch of compression across the mix buss. The problem was, everybody liked the sound so much that now the majority of records have at least a bit (a few dB’s) of compression added to the stereo mix despite the fact that it will probably be re-compressed again at mastering and yet again if played on the radio or television.

Why Use Buss Compression?

Generally you’ll find that most renowned mixers use the buss compressor to add a sort of “glue” to the track so the instruments fit together better, but that also means that they’ll actually use very little compression. In fact, sometimes only a dB or two of gain reduction at the most is added for the final mix. That being said, many mixers will also offer their clients (artists, band members, producers and label execs) a more compressed version to simulate what it will sound like after it’s mastered. This “client mix” is achieved by using a signal path across the mix buss that’s similar to what a mastering engineer would use, that is, a compressor that’s fed into limiter at the end of the chain to raise the level to a point similar to a mastered release (see Figure 5.1).

Because the clients get used to hearing the “client mix,” it’s so easy to let buss compression get out of hand. One of the problems with compressing too much is that it leaves the mastering engineer a lot less room to work, and in the case of a track that’s “hyper-compressed”, virtually eliminates the ability for the mastering engineer to be of much help at all (see chapter 10).

Setting The Compressor

In most modern music, compressors are used to make the sound “punchy” and in your face. The trick to getting the punch out of a compressor is to let the attacks through and play with the release to elongate the sound. Fast attack times are going to reduce the punchiness of a signal, while slow release times are going to make the compressor pump out of time with the music. 

Since the timing of the attack and release is so important, here are a few steps to help set it up. Assuming you have some kind of constant meter in the song, you can use the snare drum to set up the attack and release parameters. This method will work the same for individual instruments as well.

1) Start with the slowest attack and fastest release settings on the compressor.

2) Turn the attack faster until the instrument (snare) begins to dull. Stop at that point.

3) Adjust the release time so that after the snare hit, the volume is back to 90-100% normal by the next snare beat.  

4) Add the rest of the mix back in and listen. Make any slight adjustments to the attack and release times as needed.

The Idea Is To Make The Compressor “Breath” In Time With The Song.

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