Green Day's "September" Isolated Guitars

I'm a big fan of Green Day and especially of Billy Joe Armstrong. He's become such a great singer over the years and I'm always impressed whenever I see him perform.

Today's isolated track is from Green Day's American Idiot album released in 2005 called "Wake Me Up When September Ends." What we'll be listening to is the acoustic and electric isolated guitar tracks. A couple of things to listen for:

1) The acoustic guitar track is a little shaky time-wise, especially on the single note turn-arounds. Did it matter in the song? Not a bit. Would a producer be tempted to make the track perfect? Absolutely. Congratulate Rob Cavallo for resisting the temptation.

2) The acoustic track is pretty noisy, which I suspect is self-noise from a condenser microphone or perhaps a tube preamp. Doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things though.

3) The electric guitar track is doubled with the identical sound and panned left and right. Once again, it works great for this song. Many producers would change the sound or the ambience of the double to make it sound different, but not here, which proves the perfect fit.

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Foo Fighters "Everlong" Isolated Drums And Vocals

This week we're going to listen to some modern tracks. Not that there's anything wrong with the golden oldies from the 60's, 70's and 80's, but it's nice to contrast those tracks against the modern production techniques of today.

Everlong is a single off the 2nd Foo Fighters album released in 1997. The isolated drum and vocal track illustrate a number of points:

1) Dave Grohl is really a great drummer. So is Taylor Hawkins, the Foo's drummer on everything after this record, but Dave shows you just what he's made of, since this is no easy pattern to play as steadily as he did (especially the kick drum part). I suspect there was at least some cut and pasting done here, since you can hear what seems to be a section dropped in between :27 and :34 and edits at 1:21 and again at 2:39.

2) The vocals are a great example of modern vocal production. They're almost perfect except for the female background being slightly out of time on the first chorus (not that you'd ever hear it when all the instruments are added). In fact, the lead vocal is about as perfect as you can get. There's not an out-of-tune note or a mis-phrase anywhere to be found.

3) The vocal sound is also an excellent example of modern production techniques, with the vocal not relying solely on reverb to give it some space. You hear a fair amount of a modulation (sounds like a Harmonizer detuned slightly up and down - always a great effect but not that new) as well as a subtle delay.

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Finally, A Reverb Plug-In I Can Love

I'm not ashamed to say that I've always had trouble with reverb. It just seemed so hard to make it sound good. I could make it mesh perfectly with a vocal or instrument when soloed only to find that it stuck out from the track like a sore thumb with all the instruments in the mix. I would find that the correct wet and dry balance was always elusive, with the verb either disappearing or washing everything out (I've since learned a lot of tricks to make things work better, which I've shared in previous posts).

Of course, there were those times when the verb sound came easy if I worked in a studio that had an EMT 250, a wonderfully tuned EMT 140 plate, or even a great chamber (like at Capitol or the old A&M), but if you weren't working in the A-list places, you could probably forget about having access to any of these. When the Lexicon 224 and the later 480 came along, I was afraid to tell anyone that I had one personal setting that I thought sounded good and worked for me, and I would never deviate from it because I found the unit too complex to set up. Only years later did I find out that I wasn't alone, and most engineers felt the same way.

When the DAW came along, reverbs got a little easier to make sound good, especially with convolution-based reverbs like Altiverb, but I still had to fiddle more than I wanted to make everything sit in the mix just right. That's why I'm so blown away with the new Lexicon PCM Native Reverb plug-in. No matter what you do and how you do it, it always sounds great.

The PCM Native Reverb is actually a bundle of different reverb plug-ins - vintage plate, plate, hall, concert hall, random hall, room and chamber. It works on the Mac 10.4.2 or later, Windows XP, Vista or 7, and any version of Pro Tools after 7.3. It also works as a VST, Audio Units or RTAS plug-in, so it's compatible with just about any DAW on any platform.

It takes up about 500 meg of disc space and isn't very processor intensive at all like you'd expect. I haven't tried more than 3 plug-ins at a one time yet, but the processor load hardly budged under those conditions.

I won't get into a long review here except to say that I can't make it sound bad, regardless of the type of verb plug-in or it's setting. I especially love the chamber, which just sounds so thick and gorgeous, yet lays in the track perfectly. I compared the Lexicon to 4 of my other plug-in reverbs, all of which I think sound pretty good and I was pretty happy with, but they just don't sound as good. I'll continue to use them, but the Lexicon is now my go-to verb.

Michael Carnes and Casey Young should really be commended for their work on the PCM Native Reverb, especially the user interface. Unlike Lexicon hardware of the past, the PCM Native plug-ins are logical and easy to use, and have a built-in help screen that tells you what each control does if you need it. The fact is, it's harder to make it not sound good than the other way around.

So kudos, Lexicon. I don't think I'll be having any of my former reverb problems ever again.

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6 Questions For JamHub VP Sales And Guitarist Dave McCarthy

Dave McCarthy is one of the most well-liked people in the pro audio business, having met just about everyone during stints in executive positions at lexicon, Line 6, Peavy and now with JamHub. Dave is the perfect guy to sell a new product like JamHub (the silent rehearsal studio - see my JamHub article for a description, or the JamHub website) because he's more of an evangelist than a sales exec. It's difficult not to get caught up in his excitement, and his product explanations are so clear on its benefits that you've got to have one now!

What most people don't know is that Dave is a hell of a guitar player, having toured with a variety of bands including everyone's 60's favorite Mitch Ryder. Here are Dave's answers to this week's "6 Questions."

1) How did you break into the business?
I played and toured with bands in the Midwest and Canada. In the early 80’s I landed in LA and had to go to work selling gear in music stores. At the end of my retail career, I began jumping store to store and taking my rather large clientele with me. Joe Goodman decided to end the chaos (to Los Angeles retailers) and make it his mission to get me a rep gig ( and get me out of retail) so he had me work on pro accounts while he shopped my resume. He helped me get my first rep gig with a manufacturer, which was with Lexicon.

2) What makes you unique?
I think I’m unique because I still believe that we’re in the joy business. It’s not about the products, it’s about the joy they create. It causes me to approach my job with wonder and excitement.

3) Who was your biggest influence?
When I was working in music stores, I met Dan Armstrong and we became close friends. I wasn’t really smart enough to hang with him, so he spent most of the time teaching me what he knew. So much of this business is undocumented and the only way some of that knowledge continues is from one person to another. Knowledge is the greatest gift.

4) What's the best thing about your job?
Every once in a while I get to see someone have a perfect moment. When something I show someone opens the doors to expression for them and you see the lights go on, that is the best part of what I do.

5) When and where were you the happiest?
In the late 80’s traveling the world evangelizing for Lexicon and meeting the kind of folks that cared about fantastic audio.

6) What's the best piece of advice you ever received?
You have 2 ears and 1 mouth. Listen twice as much as you talk. If you listen twice as much as you talk you’ll know what to say.

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EQing To Overcome Proximity Effect

A few weeks ago I posted an article about one of the mixing engineer's unsung tools, the high-pass filter. The HPF works like magic to clean up mixes either live or in the studio by rolling off the low frequencies that many times don't add anything to the sound. Here's another EQ tip that will also clean things up substantially.

Most engineers these days (especially beginners) tend to put a cardioid mic as close as possible to the instrument or amplifier they're trying to record. You see this especially on guitar and bass amps where the mic is smashed into the grill cloth. What happens when you do that is you cause the mic's low frequency response to increase due to the proximity effect. The proximity effect only occurs with cardioid or hyper-cardioid microphones, and is a condition where the low frequencies are accentuated (made louder) the closer the mic gets to the source.

The frequency where the proximity effect is centered is different for every mic, but most of low frequencies from the effect can be cleaned up with our friend the high-pass filter. But while that might take care of the low frequencies pretty well, you still have the 200 to 600Hz region (which is also boosted) to deal with, and the 400 to 600Hz part is a range that most of us don't find too pleasing to the ear.

What's more, the more mics that are mashed up against the source, the more those frequencies build up. So if during a tracking session you're using 15 directional mics, boy, is there a lot of build-up in that area.

The way to clean up your tracks (after first using the HPF) is to listen to the song with all the tracks in the mix, and before you EQ anywhere else, attenuate in the 200 to 600Hz area (or even a bit lower, depending upon the mic and the where you set the cutoff frequency of the HPF). What you'll find is that suddenly everything will begin to get clearer without having to add any mid or high frequency EQ (which is the first inclination of most engineers).

Of course, the way around the proximity effect in the first place is to mic all your instruments just the way the old timers in the 60's and 70's did - from a distance. It doesn't have to be much, just a foot or 18 inches will do, but you'll find that the instruments will begin to blend a lot better and you won't need nearly as much EQ in the mix.

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The Making Of "God Only Knows"

In staying with the Beach Boy theme for this week, here are two videos regarding the making of their hit "God Only Knows." Once again, this is a terrific piece of musical history that can teach us a lot about how great records were made back in the days of limited technological resources.

The first video is the vocal track without the music. Listen to:

1) How spot on the doubled lead vocals are. Remember, this was in the days before cut and paste.

2) The background harmony vocals are just gorgeous, especially the round-robin at the end at about 2:00.

3) The reverb sound is awesome. It's the famous Capitol Records chamber and it's so clean and smooth. Luckily, it's still in use today and still in great demand.

The second video is "the making of" for the song similar to the one posted yesterday. It doesn't feature a complete take, which is why I put the vocal one first.

4) Once again Brian is in full command. He knows what he wants and he knows how to get it from a great group of musicians (the famous "Wrecking Crew"). There's a great film about the Wrecking Crew. You can find out more on the film's official website.

5) And once again, all the musicians are playing at once in a relatively small room. Gold Star was another studio noted for it's superlative reverb chamber, which many think was more responsible for Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" than he was. Unfortunately it closed in 1984. The studio is now the site of a mini-mall at the corner of Santa Monica and Vine Street in Hollywood.

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The Making Of "Wouldn't It Be Nice"

This is a fascinating piece of history that I recently found about the making of the 1966 Beach Boy's hit "Wouldn't It Be Nice." It's illustrates a number of things:

1) How much in control Brian Wilson is of the entire production. He was the writer, arranger and producer of the song so he knows exactly what he wants and he's very direct in getting it from his players, who were the cream of the crop of Hollywood studio musicians.

2) The song was done on a 4 track tape recorder at the now defunct Gold Star studios in Hollywood. That means that the entire band had to play at once in the relatively small studio area. Gold Star was originally a small demo studio that came to prominence thanks to Phil Spector and his many hits. It's still the same today - when a studio is hot, everyone wants to use it (same with the musicians).

3) Like many other Brian Wilson productions, there are 3 basses on the song. The genius is that they all rarely play at the same time, with the Fender bass played in the verses and the upright during the B sections and bridge. The 6 string bass is actually a baritone guitar that used to double some of the lines.

4) Hang in there until 6:10 when we get to hear the famous Beach Boy vocal harmony overdubs as they were being recorded at Capitol Records studios. These guys were so good!!

5) Notice the small tuning inconsistencies in the guitars and horns. This doesn't seem to bother Brian at all but it would never fly today, nor would some of the small timing errors.

6) Also notice the loud click every time that Brian hits the talkback switch. This was a problem on a lot of early consoles that used to annoy the heck out of anyone out in the studio or wearing phones. It was cause by chattering analog relay switches that weren't tamed until a digital alternative came on the market in the 80's.

Considering that this was just some audio out-takes, the video that goes along with it is extremely well done and keeps your interest through the entire piece. It's an awesome piece of musical history that really shows how a hit was made way back when.

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How Cymbals Are Made

If you're a drummer, you're going to love this video. But even if you're not, you'll find it fascinating. It's about the making of cymbals, looking specifically at how Zildjian does it.

Engineers, producers and many drummers don't pay near enough attention to the cymbals and what makes them sound good. If they've been gigging a lot, most drummers learn that heavy cymbals last a lot longer and project better on stage. That being said, they usually don't sound as good for recording, where thinner cymbals can sound a lot more musical (that's a general statement, I know, but usually true).

Another problem that frequently drives engineers crazy is when a drummer mis-matches the weights on his cymbal array, which usually means that the cymbals are unbalanced volume-wise. In this case, the engineer will have to break out a few extra mics to record the quiet ones separately and balance them later.

This video doesn't cover any of those finer points, but you will see how they're made from scratch. Enjoy.

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6 Questions For Composer, Guitarist, Engineer Rich Tozzoli

Rich Tozzoli is one of the many "hybrid" musicians who does a lot of different jobs in the music and audio business (I'm one too) . He's a great guitar player and composer whose music can be heard on television shows on Fox, the History Channel, Discovery and more. He's also a great engineer who was one of the first to get into surround sound (check out his book "Pro Tools Surround Mixing". And you probably know him from the articles he writes in Pro Sound News and Premier Guitar magazines.

You can find out more about Rich and his credits on his website and learn more about his new CD "Rhythm Up." Rich and I are also working on a book together tentatively entitled "The Guitar Recording Handbook," which you'll be hearing a lot more about very soon. I'm very pleased that he consented to this week's "6 Questions."


1) How did you break into the business?
Well, break in is the not the right word. Its actually slowly, gradually, and painfully (sometimes) finding your way into better and better gigs. I was lucky enough to hook up with Al DiMeola when I was getting started, and that led to many doors opening. However, you still have to be good, actually, really good, at your job to keep those doors open once you've gotten in there....As for TV music, I'm also lucky that literally my first big break was doing music for Nickelodeon. The late great Tom Pomposello 'discovered' me and helped guide me as to what and more importantly, what not to do. Also, there are no insignificant small things in our business - the smallest connection can literally lead to years of work.

2) What makes you unique?
I have an unusual background for someone in this end of the biz. I went to URI (University Of Rhode Island) for marketing and management, and took no music courses. Then, when I got out of college, I worked in commercial lending for two years at a huge bank. It SUCKED!!!!! Hated every day - no kidding. They use to reprimand me in my reviews for walking around too much (no joke). But it was when you still had to 'stay in your job'. After that ended, I rebelled against the lemmings and have not worn a tie since 95' (no kidding either). Anyway, I also am lucky to grasp things quickly, and Im an avid studier, researcher and listener. Sometimes, I dont even know how I just composed a piece of music, literally mintues after ive done it. Might be someone else inside me.

3) Who was you biggest influence?
Thats a hard one to answer. I think there are too many. I'm an observer. I sit quietly and take in what I just see happen in front of me. That gets stored in my memory banks for later use. So I'm influenced, literally, by everyone I come across. I never stop learning and trying to get better. Everyone can teach you something.

4) What's the best thing about your job?
Wow, there are so many. Having worked on the 'other side' in the corporate world, I appreciate my freedom. I'm ferociously independant, and I always like to do what I want when I want. haaa! But I don't have an alarm clock in my bedroom, and I wake when my body tells me to. Usually, the only time I ever have to get up early is to catch flights. Thats worth a million dollars! I get to play guitar, create music, travel, work with amazing artists and be free. Thats the best thing for sure.

5) When and where were you the happiest?
That's another tough one! I'm always happiest either at the beach or in the mountains. I walk along the Hudson River alot too, in a little town called Piermont, NY. I can detach there, and the water neutralizes me and gets me ready for whatever is coming next. That makes me incredibly happy.

Our business is loud and busy, and I'm sick of being attatched to iPhones, computers and hard drives. I love to get away and 'go analog'. My favorite thing to do professionally is to compose - even more than mixing or engineering. Composing for a show that I know will be on TV makes me the happiest - because I know royalties are coming! Also, with a lot of the TV music I do, I write whatever I want - so I can rock as heavy as Slayer with my Les Paul in one cue and pick like Hank on my Guild in another. Playing guitar makes me happy.

6) What's the best advice you've ever received?
Dont get married. I've stuck to it too!
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"Under Pressure" - Lessons From The Isolated Vocals

Today we'll take a listen to the isolated vocal tracks from the Queen and David Bowie song, "Under Pressure." There are a number of interesting points to listen for:

1) I don't know how many vocal tracks we're actually listening to (I suspect at least 4), but notice how many other instruments are shared on those tracks - claps, finger snaps, piano and horn.

A bit of history - in the days of multitrack magnetic tape machines, we'd run out of tracks pretty quickly since there were a limited number available (this song was probably done on a 16 track recorder), so the only way to add more instruments was to find a blank space on one of the tracks and record it there. That took a lot of skill to make sure you recorded the part without erasing a bit of the one previously recorded, and it also made for very interesting mixing, since they became complex very quickly when you had 3 or 4 instruments or vocals occupying the same track.

2) Freddie Mercury's vocal mic is a bit distorted at the beginning of the song, which makes me think that this was a one take affair since it cleans up as the song goes along. It might even be that both singers sang into the same mic, since Bowie sounds great but the mic sound isn't very flattering to Freddie. Ken Scott, who produced 4 Bowie albums, once told me that all of David's vocals that he worked on were always done on the first take. If this vocal track was a first take recording, the vocal performance for both singers is great.

3) Check out how the reverb is muted at 2:05, then reappears with a lot more intensity at 2:20. Also, the claps and finger snaps have some reverb at the beginning of the song but not the ending.

Have a listen.

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Lessons From the "Under Pressure" Isolated Drums

Here's another isolated track from a hit song from the past that we can learn something from. This time it's "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie, a big hit in 1981.

Once again, we're contrasting hits from different generations because what might've worked then, might not work today. Here are some things to listen for:

1) Roger Taylor's drum track is pretty solid, but there are some slight hesitations at about 1:00 during the double time feel, and again at 3:15. Would that fly today? It depends how enlightened the producer is, but probably not. I suspect that he'd probably break out Beat Detective to straighten it out.

2) The snare and toms have a LOT of reverb. It certainly works in the context of the song, but if you listen to the drums by themselves, you think right away that there's way too much. That's why the solo button on the console or DAW can do you a lot more harm than good sometimes. You can't really tell what's best for the song unless you can hear everything in context.

3) It's also interesting how they contrast the huge bombastic reverb with none at all like at 1:12. I suspect this was just a way to get rid of the long reverb tail across a rather naked part of the song in the days before console automation, but that's just speculation.

Have a listen.



Tomorrow we'll listen to the isolated vocals.

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My ASCAP Expo T-RackS Workshop Presentation

I was honored to be asked by IK Multimedia to give a short workshop on their T-RackS 3 mastering software on Friday at the ASCAP Expo in Hollywood. The room (thank you West LA Music) was full and the crowd was great with a lot of really good questions afterwards.

There were a lot of requests for my ASCAP workshop Keynote presentation, so I've put it online. As with most Keynote presentations, it's a lot better if you hear the talk that goes with it, but hopefully you'll get the idea.

That being said, everything in that presentation and a lot, lot more will be in a new book I just finished called, "Mixing and Mastering with T-RackS 3," which will be out towards the end of the year. If you own T-RackS or are thinking of buying it, it will give you a lot of tips and tricks for getting the best out it when mixing and/or mastering. It's a very powerful piece of software and one that I use often.

I also did an interview and book signing for my Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook. Click on the link for a short video excerpt of my ASCAP interview.

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