There was a big response from the song analysis of Gotye "Somebody That I Used To Know" last week, so I thought this might be a good followup. It's the "making" of his album Making Mirrors. This guy is a real talent, as you'll see.
Bernie Grundman is one of the legends of mastering and he was kind enough to participate in an interview for The Audio Mastering Handbook. Here's an inside look at Grundman Mastering conducted by his son, Paul. Before you watch, be assured that their gear is not used for terrorist activities (you'll understand when you watch the movie).
Having trouble figuring how to use your effects during mixing? Here are a set of rules that can help you choose the best effects for each track more efficiently, courtesy of The Mixing Engineer's Handbook.
Rule 1 - As A General Rule Of Thumb, Try To Picture The Performer In An Acoustic Space And Then Realistically Recreate That Space Around Them.
This method usually saves some time over simply experimenting with different effects presets until something excites you (although that method can work too). Also, the created acoustic space needn’t be a natural one. In fact, as long as it fits the music, the more creative the better.
Rule 2 - Smaller Reverbs Or Short Delays Make Things Sound Bigger.
Reverbs with decays under a second (and usually much shorter than that) and delays under 100 milliseconds (again usually a lot shorter than that) tend to make the track sound bigger rather than push it back in the mix, especially if the reverb or delay is stereo.
Rule 3 - Long Delays, Reverb Predelays, Or Reverb Decay Push A Sound Farther Away If The Level Of The Effect Is Loud Enough.
As stated before, delays and predelays (see below) longer than 100 ms (although 250 is where it really kicks in) are distinctly heard and begin to push the sound away from the listener. The trick between something sounding big or just distant is the level of the effect. When the decay or delay is short and the level loud, the track sounds big. When the decay or delay is long and loud, the track just sounds far away.
Rule 4 - If Delays Are Timed To The Tempo Of The Track, They Add Depth Without Being Noticeable.
Most engineers set the delay time to the tempo of the track (see below on how to do this). This makes the delay pulse with the music and adds a reverb type of environment to the sound. It also makes the delay seem to disappear as a discrete repeat but still adds a smoothing quality to the element.
If you want to easily find the right delay time to the track and you have an iPhone, grab my "Delay Genie" app from the iTunes App Store. It's free and will making timing your effects to the track incredibly easy.
Rule 5 - If Delays Are Not Timed To The Tempo Of The Track, They Stick Out.
Sometimes you want to distinctly hear a delay and the best way to do that is to make sure that the delay is NOT exactly timed to the track. Start by first putting the delay in time with the track, then slowly alter the timing until the desired effect is achieved.
Rule 6 - Reverbs Sound Smoother When Timed To The Tempo Of The Track.
Reverbs are timed to the track by triggering them off of a snare hit and adjusting the decay parameter so that the decay just dies by the next snare hit. The idea is to make the decay “breathe” with the track. The best way to achieve this is to make everything as big as possible at the shortest setting first, then gradually get longer until it’s in time with the track.
Of course, the biggest part of adding effects to a mix is experience, but following these rules will provide a perfect place to start.
Here's a great video where Queen guitarist Brian May takes us through the making of the bands seminal "Bohemian Rhapsody." It's really interesting to hear it all built up, especially the basic track with only Freddie Mercury's piano, John Deacon's bass and Roger Taylor's drums, which wasn't to a click but sounds incredibly in time. They're completely locked in together.
One of the interesting bits that came from this video is the way engineer/producer Roy Thomas Baker recorded the bass, using 3 tracks; direct from the bass, direct from the amp, and the miked amp, then playing with the phase switches on the desk to get the right sound.
Then listen to how they stacked the vocals, with Freddie, Brian and Roger singing each line then tripling it. Finally, listen to the overdubbed percussion that everyone seems to miss when listening to the song, then how they miked the drum kit.
Here's a great piece of pop and audio history. It's take #38 of the backing track of the Righteous Brother's hit "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." It's the most played song of the 20th century, according to BMI, and had a lot of interesting quarks. The label (which you'll see in the video) set the length at 3:05, but it was really 3:45 (which was way too long to get radio airplay back in 1964) in an effort to fool the disc jockeys. Producer and cowriter Phil Spector also added a couple of false endings for the same reason.
The audio on this video shows the brilliance of Spector and his "wall of sound," which you don't hear on the final recording because the song is muddied up by tape transfers and extra reverb. This is a very clean version that allows you to really hear all the instruments. Here are a couple of things to listen for:
1) Take notice that there's a tuning note that the piano plays just before the song begins. Remember that it starts with the vocal (which would be overdubbed later), and singer Bill Medley needed a pitch center.
2) There are a lot horns parts that aren't apparent in the final version, like the horn line in the B section, the chorus and later in the bridge.
3) Take notice of the instrumental figure that's being played in the chorus. I never really heard it before listening to this take.
4) In the bridge, listen for the 12 string guitar doubling the piano and bass, then the entrance of the bongos, and the gradual entry of the other instruments building to a crescendo before the first outchorus.
Today is the fifth annual Record Store Day when music lover everywhere head for their local record store to buy some vinyl and help surport a dwindling, but absolutely necessary part of the industry.
A number of artists are celebrating the day by releasing special vinyl records, including Katy Perry (with 12" pink vinyl), David Bowie (with a picture disc of "Starman"), Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips, Paul McCartney, and even some never before heard songs by James Brown.
Most record stores are small independent "mom and pop" stores these days and they really do need our help to survive. Head out to a store today. Look through the albums and CDs, and maybe even buy something.
Support your local record store. You'll be glad you did.
Everyone loves that new car smell, and we've all seen those air fresheners that clone the aroma. Now an art group out of Australia has created the scent of the the packaging of a brand new AppleMacBook Pro being opened for the first time.
Melbourne based Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn approached the fragrance company Air Aroma to recreate the smell, which they were able to do by combining the scents of glue, plastic, rubber and paper (not exactly your most aromatic of smells). It turns out that Air Aroma can make you a custom scent, and they've done so for Langham and Hilton Hotels, Dunhill and Toyota so far.
The scent is intended to only be used during an art exhibition in Melbourne, but it does bring up a number of fascinating possibilities. How about that new guitar smell when you open up a case for the first time? The woody smell of that new drum kit? The smell of the box when you open up a new hard drive? The "new studio" smell after construction?
Would you pay to have that smell around all the time? Would it be good for selling used gear? Is this a new possible revenue stream for Fender, Gibson, et al?
There aren't that many songs that can be classified as a true #1 hit around the world, but Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" (featuring Kimbra) is one of them and it's the song analysis for this week. The song is the second single from his third studio album called Making Mirrors, and was a recent #1 on Billboard's Hot 100, a rarity for an Australian artist. Like with all song analysis, we'll look at the song form, the arrangement, the sound and the production.
The Song
"Somebody That I Used To Know" has an interesting song form in that it doesn't really have a bridge, yet contains another section that almost acts like one. The form looks like this:
Intro, Verse, Interlude, Verse, Chorus, Interlude, Verse, B Section, Chorus, Outro
What happens is that the first two verses are 16 bars each, but the third verse that Kimbra sings is 8 bars with another 8 bars that you can classify as either a B section or a bridge. Regardless of how you look at it, changing the 2nd half of the 3rd verse is very effective and definitely heightens the interest and raises the energy, which is what a bridge does.
The Arrangement
On the surface this seems like a simple arrangement but it's really quite deep and sophisticated. There's a lot going on, but without an instrument really playing a big wide chord.
* The Foundation: bass and drum (mostly tom) loops
* The Rhythm: acoustic guitar
* The Pad: the background vocals during the chorus
* The Lead: lead vocals, synth lines in the intro and chorus
* The Fills: guitars in the verses, background vocals in the chorus and outro
As with almost all hit songs, listen to how the arrangement develops. It starts off sparse, gets a little bigger in the intro, then backs off again during the verse, then gets large during the chorus, then back down again into the interlude and so forth. That's the essence of a good arrangement in a pop song.
The Sound
The sound of "Somebody That I Used To Know" is fairly sophisticated, with lots of effects layers. First you have the acoustic guitar that's completely dry, while every other instrument has some degree of ambience. Most of the synth lead lines have a long verb that sounds really good as it blends into the track well.
During the second verse there's a guitar that enters playing fills on the left side that has a nice repeating delay. That also brings up the issue of panning, which is used pretty as you have fill and rhythm guitars and mono loops entering on both right and left, which keeps the mix interesting.
The vocals are also layered with the both Goyte and Kimbra's lead getting a long verb, but most of the back ground vocals being pretty dry. You can really hear the sound of the reverb itself at after the hard ending. Take notice that the chorus lead vocals are doubled, helping to give the song a thicker more dynamic sound at that point.
There's a spot in the song where the background vocals distort a little (at around 3:10), but otherwise it sounds pretty clean.
The Production
I love the production on "Somebody That I Used To Know." Gotye (Wally De Backer to his friends) has a distinctive way of putting the song together that's sparse in the fact that virtually nothing is playing big chords, yet it sounds big and dynamic. The loops really work without sticking out as "loops," and the background vocals on the outchorus are excellent as they weave back and forth; sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes just Gotye, sometimes just Kimbra, sometimes both. Most excellent.
Jacob D recently sent in the following question: "Bobby - I've been trying to get a good guitar sound recording but it always sounds so small. I've tried every pedal you can think of, but none of them get me the sound that I hear on big time recordings. What should I do?"
Okay, Jacob, here's something that I learned the hard way and I've outlined in several books like The Recording Engineer's Handbook andThe Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook. Put the pedals on the side and plug your guitar directly into your amp, then crank that sucker. To get a great guitar sound you have to not only move some air, but also turn your amp up enough so that both the input and output stages of the circuitry begin to distort a bit, if you're playing through a tube amp.
This even applies to the inexpensive small modeling amps that have flooded the market. Even though the sound of a solid state (a non-tube amp, without getting too technical) amp is pretty clean before you dial in the overdrive, the sound can benefit a lot from a little of the speaker being overdriven as well.
That said, there are a few things to keep in mind:
1) Smaller wattage amps work a lot better in the studio, which is why you see a lot of 5 to 20 watt amps now available. A 100 watt Marshall (or hundred watt anything, for that matter), for instance, is altogether too loud for 95% of the studio situations, and you'll get a sound that's just as big from one that 10 watts without everyone having to wear earplugs.
2) With either a tube or solid state amp, make it sound as good as you can with it relatively clean sound before you add any distortion, either from an amp model or a pedal. You'll find that you won't need nearly as much of the crunch and the sound will sit better in the track.
3) Always be judicious with distortion and effects when recording. Usually what sounds good to you in the room is too much for the song, causing the guitar sound to become more of a blur than a distinct element in the mix. It's okay if you record with too little, since you can always add it later, but you can't take it away once it's recorded that way.
4) Don't smash the mic up against the speaker grill. Move it back a foot or so (which is the old school way of doing it) and you'll find that you'll pick up more of the character of the speaker because it has a chance to develop, as well as a bit of the room.
5) Move the mic a bit. Move it across the best sounding speaker in your cabinet to find the best combination of fullness and definition. Closer to the voice coil and you'll get more high end, and more to the outside edge of the cone will give you more body. Usually about halfway provides the best combination, but don't be afraid to experiment. Try this first before you reach for the EQ. You'll be surprised how well it works!
So keep your sound big and muscular instead of tiny and small. Crank the amp up, move some air, and play a bit cleaner than you think you need to. You'll be surprised at how good it will sound.
Everyone knows Ray Kurzweil as one of the world's most respected futurists, but he also played a huge part in the music business as well. 30 years ago Ray (with the help of Stevie Wonder, Bob Moog and Alan R. Pearlman from ARP) came up with a then groundbreaking instrument in the K250, one of the very first electronic keyboards to have a weighted keyboard with action similar to a real piano, as well as a sound that was closer to one than ever before.
The K250 was indeed groundbreaking. Not only was it the first easily portable instrument that employed computer architecture to achieved its sounds, but it was also one of the first with a SCSI interface enabling the user to add external hard drives to store the sounds (a very big deal at the time). It also had one of the first samplers, available as an option, that had a sample rate that went up to 50kHz.
As we jump forward 30 years, Kurzweil Music Systems is still one of the leaders in high quality electronic keyboards while so many other computer based music systems (like Synclavier and Fairlight) have fallen by the wayside.
Here's a great video on how Ray went from creating systems for the blind to the MI business. Note some of the vintage segments of some really old audio gear.
Christine Lavin recently sent in the following question: "Where do headphones fit in the mix for you, or do you listen just to the speakers? I've been in studios where they have 3 sets of speakers -- small medium and large -- and the producer or mixer (if it's someone else) listen on all three. But I'm a headphone person. Wonder what your opinion of that is?"
I'm a firm believer that you can get great mixes out of virtually any set of speakers in just about any room, and that includes headphones as well. The trick is that you have to have enough listening time to get a reference point as to what sounds good or bad when you play your mix back elsewhere. That's why mixers began to take their own speakers wherever they went (or asked for NS-10s) in the first place. It was something that they were familiar with, and since they were nearfields, the room didn't come too much into play during the mix so they could be surer of the result.
Mixing on headphones does have 4 significant downsides though:
1) You can't wear them for as long as you need to (8, 10, 12 hours) before your head and ears get tired from the extra weight.
2) You have a tendency to turn them up, which can lead to some quick ear fatigue, again limiting your ability to mix for long periods.
3) Because most of the more expensive professional headphones really sound great, you get a false sense of what the mix is like (especially on the low end), and it causes you not to work as hard getting the frequency balance of the mix right.
4) The vast majority of the audience won't listen on phones after the mix is completed. Since a mixer is always aiming for a mix that sounds great on most speakers that the material is played on, you want to stay in that realm if possible, and even listen on some crappy speakers if possible as a check. Headphones just sound too good for that.
That said, headphones do have their place. They're great for editing in that you can hear clicks, pops and inconsistencies that you may otherwise miss while listening on speakers, and they're a great check for panning and checking reverb tails when mixing, but I wouldn't personally use them for an entire mix.
But if you're mixing in your bedroom and don't want to wake the the kids, significant other or neighbors, then by all means, go for it. Just make sure that you listen to some other material that sounds great on speakers first so you have a reference point of what sounds good and what doesn't.
Here's a bonus question also from Christine: "Do you think it's optimum to mix in a different studio from where you record, and/or bring in someone with fresh ears who hasn't been there for the recording of all the tracks?"
The only time I think that it's worth going to a different studio to mix is if you think that your mix is going to sound a whole lot better as a result, like in the case of mixing through a console rather than in the box. Otherwise, I'd stay in the same studio that you tracked, if for no other reason than not having to worry about software and plugin compatibilities that always seem to crop up when you go to a different system.
As for getting a different mixer, if you're stuck on the sound of the project for some reason, then it's great to have a fresh set of ears (as in someone else's) for the mix. Also, if you can hire someone who's a great mixer who you think can beat anything that you might come up with, then it may definitely worth it ("may" is the operative word here - you might not get what you expect). Otherwise, I think you're a lot better off using the same team that tracked the song(s) from the beginning for the sake of vision and continuity.
Here's a song analysis of one of the few songs that really changed the sound of music for a while. It's "In The Air Tonight" by Phil Collins from his 1981 album Face Value, which was the first single of his solo career. The song is interesting in so many ways, not the least is the fact that 99% of the lyrics were spontaneous and improvised. As with all song analysis, we'll look at the song form, the arrangement, the sound and the production.
The Song
"In The Air Tonight" doesn't have a traditional song form by any means, but the form is understandable after you realize that it was more or less improvised. The form looks like this:
The intro is interesting in that it's 20 bars long, with the first set up part at 12 bars, then 8 bars of the keyboard pad. Then it begins with a chorus instead of a verse. There's no bridge and the outchorus repeats against a very long fade.
The Arrangement
As unusual as the song form is, so is the arrangement. Many of the instruments used don't play the role that you're use to them playing, like the guitar, which is used mainly for sound effect fills. Here's what the arrangement elements look like:
* The Foundation: Drum machine throughout, drums (with no cymbals) on the last chorus.
* The Pad: Synthesizer
* The Rhythm: Pedal bass synth drone until the last chorus, when it changes to a reggae bass line that's doubled with a synth string line (very unusual), as well as a high synth pedal sound during the first and second chorus.
* The Lead: The lead vocal
* The Fills: Guitar effects, vocoder vocal at the beginning of the 2nd verse.
The Sound
"In The Air Tonight" was extremely influential for the sound of the ambience on the drums that was the result of the Listen Mic circuit on the SSL 4000 console, which is a sort of reverse talkback so the people in the control room can hear the musicians in the studio. The Listen Mic circuit has some heavy compression built into it so the level between musicians close or far away from the mic can be heard evenly, and this is what gave the drums the distinctive sound after the console was modified so you could record it. Producer/engineer Hugh Padgham later recreated the sound with heavily compressed and gated room mics, and that sound was eventually incorporated into most digital reverbs in what we know today as "Gated Reverb." This was the sound that engineers tried to emulate for a decade or so thereafter, as the gated reverb drum sound became very popular.
The song was built around a then new Roland CR-78 drum machine pattern (called "Disco 2"), which is bone dry and in your face, which represented the base layer of the ambience layers.
The synth pad, which is the most prominent instrument throughout the song, has a short delay (less than 100 milliseconds) that's panned to the right to give it a stereo soundfield, while the dry synth sound is panned to the left.
The lead vocal has a very distinctive sound also thanks to a short (less than 100 ms) delay and a touch of small room reverb. It's possible that it's the same delay that's on the synth pad. In the second chorus, a second longer 1/4 note delay is introduced at the end of each phrase. It also features an interesting use of a vocoder on the vocals during the second verse.
The Production
So many of the sounds are distinctive in this song, but the production really makes it a hit. While one might think that the synth carries the song on a passing listen, it's really the repeating synth bass drone and the high synth drone in the chorus that add motion. These two are down in the mix so it's easy not to be aware of them.
The other thing to notice is the fact of how the song develops, as most hits normally do. The second chorus introduces a harmony vocal with a long delay at the end of the phrases, the second verse introduces the vocal vocoder, and the last chorus and outro introduces the drums and bass line, which is doubled with a synth string sound. Collins then ad libs the lead vocal over the fade of the song. There's constantly something new happening throughout, even though it may be subtle, to keep your attention.
One last thing - although the sound of the real drums on this record would change drum sounds for a long while afterwards, the most interesting thing about them to me is that there are no cymbals ever played.
