Five EQ mistakes and how to avoid them

EQ is one of the most important tools available to audio engineers. Used correctly, instruments sound great and seem to fit together effortlessly. Used incorrectly, the mix resembles a battlefield with every instrument trying to destroy the others while fighting to be heard. One of the difficulties of EQ is that it is relative – the right settings depend entirely on the raw sound and the mix; there are no specific settings that will work every time. The key to using EQ effectively is to learn how to listen to the raw sound and identify what tonal changes will emphasise its best qualities and make it work in the mix.

1. More of everything, everywhere. There is tendency among inexperienced audio engineers to apply drastic EQ adjustments – particularly large boosts. Generally, the patter is like this: “I love this sound, but it needs more bass – let’s boost the lows. That’s great, but now it’s not bright enough, let’s boost the highs. Sounds great, but it’s a little hollow, let’s boost the mids.” And so it goes. Obviously this does a lot of damage to the tone of the sound and it also wastes a lot of time too. Solution: Try to listen to the sound and decide what do you want to do to it before you apply any EQ. If adjusting the EQ in one tonal area is starting to reveal (or cause!) problems in other areas, think carefully before you start chasing your tail – sometimes you just need less EQ (and sometimes in a different place to what you initially thought). Always bypass your EQ from time to time and make sure you’re actually improving the sound.
2. Too much bass. This is often a symptom of problems with your monitoring environment – usually either your speakers or your room. Or maybe there’s not much wrong with your monitoring – you just happen to like the sound of too much bass. How you approach this situation depends on how much extra bass you tend to add. If it’s gentle, and it helps you vibe with the music while you work, then you could consider changing nothing. Solution 1: Just make sure it’s adjusted when your mixes are premastered or mastered… On the other hand, your mixdowns might have a wildly uneven bass response. You’ll know this is you if the low end of your mixes sound strange and different when played on different systems. Solution 2: Bring some commercial reference tracks into your studio and spend some time comparing them with your mixes. If your monitoring environment is doing strange things, get more accurate speakers, invest in some bass traps. If you’re mixing in a small room, look towards moving to a bigger room. If these solutions aren’t practical, invest in a good set of headphones to use in conjunction with your regular speakers.
3. Not compensating for your monitoring environment. This is a more general case of the previous point. Be aware that you’ll have a natural tendency to mix with an overall tonal shape that’s influenced by your monitoring environment. For example, if your monitoring is weak on bass, you’ll tend to mix bass-heavy. If your monitoring is strong in the mids, you’ll tend to mix with the mids pulled back. If your monitoring has strong highs, you’ll tend to mix dark. Solution: Be aware of this and make a deliberate effort to compensate for your natural tendency. Use more than one set of speakers or headphones for comparison. Listen to a lot of commercial music in your genre to learn how it sounds in your studio. Bonus Solution: If mixing with a slight tonal shift helps you feel the vibe (or in my case, I sometimes mix slightly dark because it helps me focus better and work longer) then keep doing it. Just make sure you remember to compensate in pre-mastering or mastering.
4. Using specific frequencies or settings just because someone told you to. Do I really nee to explain this one? Those frequency charts are just guides. That helpful advice is just one person’s opinion, based on a monitoring environment you don’t even know. Those EQ presets are just an example of what it can do. No-one else knows your mix like you do. No-one else knows the artist and the creative direction like you do. Solution: Use your ears. ‘Nuff said.
5. EQ even when you don’t need it. This is an issue that’s not often spoken about. In all the flurry of trying to work out how to use EQ, it’s easy to forget to yourself if you need to use EQ at all. Sometimes a part will sit perfectly in the mix without any tonal adjustment at all. Solution: Interrupt your “grab an EQ and start twiddling” workflow. Pause before you do it and ask yourself – ‘Do I really need EQ here? What does this track really need?’.

Keep these tips in mind (or better yet – print them out and stick them to your studio wall!) and start to think about EQ more critically. EQ’s a great tool for an audio engineer; don’t be afraid to use it! Sometimes a track really does need some major surgery. Just be aware that it takes discipline and restraint to use it where you need it, as much as you need – no more, no less.

-Kim.

How to convince yourself to invest in acoustic treatment

You need to acoustically treat your room.

You know it. You’ve read the articles, you’ve had people tell you. You already know that it’s holding you back.

The problem is that you haven’t done it yet. Despite you knowing how important it is, it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe you’re not sure how to do it, maybe that money has mysteriously disappeared into more plugins or instruments or other hardware.  Maybe it’s just not sexy.

If you’re not quite sure how to do it, relax. It’s not that hard. For a basic studio, you should start with some wall panels and some bass traps. The wall panels absorb and disperse the first reflections from your speakers. Imagine mirrors on your walls – anywhere you would see the reflection of your speakers when you sit at your mixing position is where you should put a wall panel. The bass traps hide in the corners and edges of the room. That’s it. That approach will get you decent results for the first round of treatment, and will most likely be a noticeable improvement on your current environment (you can get more sophisticated if you want, but wait until you’re designing your next studio for that).

If the money keeps mysteriously disappearing into more plugins or other gear, take a good hard long look at your setup. Chances are, you’ve already got plenty of gear. Chances are, you’ve got enough gear to last you the next few albums, at least. Don’t kid yourself. How many more analogue-modelling synths do you need? How many more kick drum samples do you need?

Chances are, you need a new chair more than you need more music gear.

Despite what anyone else will tell you, acoustic treatment is sexy. It adds more sex appeal to your studio than any plugin or computer upgrade. Acoustic treatment impresses people who don’t even know what it is, or why it’s important (you’ll recognise them as the ones who call it ’sound proofing’). Acoustic treatment is how people instantly know you’re serious about your studio – especially if it’s a modern computer-based studio which isn’t necessarily brimming with hardware.

It’s also how you know you’re serious about your studio. Acoustically treating your room will motivate you and make you work more than you expect. It will make you excited to listen to music, it will make you excited to work on your own music. It will actually make you more productive.

And besides, there’s nothing quite like telling people you spent $600 on foam!

-Kim.

Eight ways to write effective backing vocals

Backing vocals are easily overlooked in the production process. After all, the lead vocal was hard enough to record and mix, why would you want to record a bunch of more vocal parts? Backing vocals are not always the best choice for a song or a production, but often they can add substance and reinforcement to the song’s message. They can also make a production sound more polished and professional (a single vocals line on its own can sometimes sound lonely or underproduced).

When you want to use backing vocals, there are actually more options than simply telling the singer to perform the lead melody with different notes…

In sync

This is the simplest way to write backing vocals. When the backing vocals are in sync with the lead vocal, the timing is the same and the effect is of harmony reinforcement. Use a backing vocal separated by a third or a sixth to bring out a colourful harmony (the bridge is often a good place for this). Use backing vocals separated by a fourth or fifth to add grounding and stability (the chorus is often a good place for this).

Out of sync

This is a bit more involved, and how you go about it depends very much on the nature of the song. When backing vocals are out of sync with the lead vocal, they ‘break out’ and are heard as a separate part with its own phrasing. There are many ways of approaching backing vocals like this. One of my favourites is to identify some key words in the lead vocal and stretch them out over several beats – either before or after the word appears in the lead vocal.

Non-word vocalisation

Another approach is to use non-word vocalisation (such as ‘ah’ or ‘ooh’) as part of the instrumentation. This can be very effective in bridging the textural/tonal divide between the lead vocal and the backing tracks (ever had a song sound like karaoke? This is the fix!). Long sustained notes can function like a pad – especially with several harmony parts layered. It’s like a  vocal pad or choir pad found on many workstation keyboards and synthesisers, but made from the voice of your singer! Short staccato notes can be effective in reinforcing a rhythmic aspect of the song. Be careful though – less experienced singers can have real difficulty with hitting the right intonation at the very start of each note.

Parallel motion

When writing a backing vocal to sit behind a lead vocal, the obvious way to contour the phrase is to follow the melody. When the lead vocal rises, the backing vocal rises. When the lead vocal falls, the backing vocal falls. This can be useful for reinforcing the shape of the melody, and is often useful in the chorus of a song.

Unlinked motion

Unlinked motion is a bit more interesting – this is where the backing vocal breaks away from the main melody and presents its own melody. This can be as simple as a slight modification of the main melody to add interest and melodic variety, or it can be as complex as a completely new melody (even with different lyrics and rhythms!).

Opposite Motion

An interesting hybrid of parallel motion and unlinked motion is opposite motion. This is where a backing vocal ‘mirrors’ the lead vocal. When the lead vocal rises, the backing vocal falls. When the lead vocal falls, the backing vocal rises. The effect can be ear-catching, but is difficult to pull off for long passages. It’s not always easy to find suitable notes for the harmony that retain the mirrored shape of the melody and also hit notes that support the overall harmonic structure of the music. Additionally, this approach can sometimes be constrained by the range of your singer. Despite these difficulties, opposite motion can be effective in small sections – even single motifs.

Intermittent emphasis

Backing vocals don’t have to be sounding for the same length time as the main vocal. In some situations, it’s appropriate for the backing vocals to come in occasionally for certain words or phrases. This allows you to emphasise some parts of the main vocal over others. This approach is particularly effective for long verses or complex choruses, where it’s easy for the listener to get lost. The backing vocals add some delineation and ‘punctuation’ to help make the song easier for the listener to understand. Of course, it’s also useful for reinforcing particular words or phrases in the song that have emotional significance.

Call and response

This is a really good way of adding interest and energy to a vocal part with a lot of gaps in between phrases. The simplest way to do this is to have the backing vocals fill the gap with an echo of the main vocal part. Bonus points for using a different melody and different (but relevant) words. Using different words can also give you an opportunity to expand on the lyrical themes and add meaning. Don’t fill in all the gaps, but do it in a way that supports the overall contour of the song (such as adding them to the second and last choruses).

Just two more quick ideas:

1. Don’t forget to combine these different approaches. These are all techniques available to you. You should choose when it is appropriate to use them. Some songs won’t require any backing vocals. Some songs are best served by only using one of the techniques above. Some songs will require a combination of these techniques in order to bring the best out of them. Always remember to support the lyrical content and the contour of the song.
2. These tips don’t only work for voices – they also work for instrumental parts too! Even if you’re composing music without words, you can probably find use for these techniques. For example, you might emphasise a techno lead synth with a second harmony part underneath it for the most intense section of the song. Or you might have a guitar solo being echoed and harmonised by a supporting keyboard part.

With these techniques in mind, try out some new ideas on your next song and see how they go. Some ideas might work, others might not. Either way – you’ll learn something new!

-Kim.

How to use tone and depth to separate sounds

A common problem with poor mixes is a lack of clarity between sounds. It’s as if all the sounds in the mix are stepping on each other’s toes trying to get to the front. As a result, the mix is messy and confusing.

This is often because the mix engineer could not decide which elements of the mix were more important than others, or which elements of each track were important to the mix.

Tone

I’ve written before about filling frequencies. Obviously that is a highly artificial way of separating instruments. Avoiding that technique, however, does not forbid you from deciding which parts of each sound are more important for the mix. Some sounds mainly contribute to the low end of the frequency spectrum. Some mainly contribute to the midrange, and others mainly contribute to the top end.

Listening to a sound in isolation (solo’d) can create an expectation that it should cover the entire frequency spectrum. This is fine if that is the only sound in the mix (or it’s a very sparse acoustic mix), but in a denser mix it results in unnecessary crowding.

Instead, focus on bringing out the aspects of each sound that are most useful for the mix. If it’s a growly bass, make sure you can hear the growl in the mix. If it’s a bright synth lead or guitar, you probably don’t need much low-mid energy. If it’s small percussion, make sure it pokes through the top of the mix. The best (and most natural) way to focus the tone of each instrument is to use EQ to reduce the energy in the areas that are not so important. Sounds may become thin and/or caricatured, but often this is necessary to assemble a mix in which each sound plays its part.

Depth

Even after focussing on tone, you may find yourself with several instruments that occupy a similar tonal region. Classic examples are kick and bass, guitars and vocals, drums and percussion. In these cases where it is not appropriate to separate the sounds by tone, you must separate them another way. Depth (distance from the ‘front’) is an excellent way of doing this (it’s a shame that many poor mixes have no sense of depth at all). Skilful and artful use of depth can make many midrange instruments work together beautifully.

Using depth well, however, requires the mix engineer (and often the producer) to make decisions about which instruments will be featured (placed in the foreground) and which will be relegated to the background. This is often difficult because the mix engineer and producer, having uninhibited access to the most intimate folds of a mix, can hear the beauty in every sound. It is certainly a tough decision to be able to polish a beautiful sound only to bury it deep within the mix where almost no-one will notice it.

Perhaps an admirable trait of a great artist is the courage to throw away good ideas.

-Kim.

Suicide Songs (plus bonus album) now free

Just a quick note to say that last year’s album Suicide Songs is now available for free. I’ve also released a bonus album of new songs and additional versions.

A whole album as a bonus?

Suicide Songs was a project that took over three years – including writing, recording and post-production. I wrote 25 songs, recorded 15 of those, and chose ten of those to be ‘remade’. These remakes were not mere remixes – they were complete re-imaginings of the original songs – often with very different tempo, instrumentation and vibe. Of the 25 recorded songs (15 originals + 10 remakes), 12 were chosen to form the final album. The remaining 13 lived in hiding for the last 12 months. Only now do they see the light of day.

Suicide Songs has been available for purchase since February 2009. Since then, I’ve moved on – choosing to work on new projects rather than promote it. As a result, sales have been low. This is a new year, and one of my tasks for the start of this year has been to ‘retire’ Suicide Songs – to finally put it to rest (so to speak). This project is the past, and it is dead to me. Rather than take it offline, I’m putting it up on my website for free.

Grab it here:

http://kimlajoie.com/Site/Suicide%20Songs.html

-Kim.

Five compression mistakes and how to avoid them.

Compressors are complex tools and, like most other audio engineering tools, there are more ways to set them up ‘wrong’ than there are to set them up ‘right’. If you’re careful though, you won’t fall into these common traps:

1. Too much gain reduction. You know you’ve done this when you’ve got tons on gain reduction and you’re thinking to yourself: “It sounds great but I can’t get rid of this massive click at the start of every transient.” The click is from the attack time. Not only does it sound silly, but it will rob you of your headroom. Clicks like that are similar to deep bass – they’re not very audible, but they can easily take up a lot of level. Solution: Either use less gain reduction (you probably don’t need that much!) or use a limiter instead of a compressor. Another approach is to use a limiter after the compressor. Heavy-sounding compression is often the result of fast attack and release times rather than a deep threshold.
2. Using compression to fix non-dynamic properties of sound. You know you’re doing this when the sound you’re compressing has no dynamics to begin with (such as a synth bass/pad/lead). When you compare the sound with and without compression, the dynamics don’t change, but the tone or harmonic content changes. In this case, the compressor is not the best tool for the job. Solution: Listen to the dry sound and consider whether you actually need a saturator or EQ. Next time, get out of the habit of inserting a compressor on every sound without first deciding if compression is what you really need.
3. Using mix bus compression as an alternative to mastering.  You know you’re doing this when you’re rendering your mixdown to a file that will be burned straight to CD or encoded to MP3, and all you think you need to do is ‘make it louder’. Mix bus compression has its uses, but it’s not the right tool for achieving raw loudness. Solution: If you’re in a rush and you don’t care about quality, then use a digital limiter set to kill and call it a day. If you care about quality, either take the time to do it properly, or find someone to do it for you.
4. Using mix bus compression as an alternative to working hard in mixing. Don’t be lazy! You know you’re doing this when you’re trying to use your mix bus compressor to change the sound of an individual element in your mix. Don’t use mix bus compression to address a kick or snare that is too loud – it will have unintended effects on other mix elements too. Solution: Don’t be lazy. Go back to those individual tracks that need fixing.
5. Using side-chain compression to get two clashing parts to work together. This is using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. As above – don’t be lazy!  Side-chain compression can be useful as an effect, but it’s certainly not necessary for simple mixing tasks like getting vocals and guitars to work together. Solution: Use tone and depth to separate sounds. More on how to do this later.

If you can steer clear of these common mistakes, you’ll be well on your way to effective compressing!

-Kim.

Sweetening your mix bus, and why you shouldn’t wait for mastering to do it

There’s a case to be made for ’sweetening’ your mix bus.  Many mixes can benefit from some subtle processing to bring out the best qualities of the tone of the mix and to use dynamics to give the mix a more compact, controlled sound.

To bring out the best qualities of the tone of the mix, an EQ is the most appropriate tool. For this task, however, don’t reach for your highly-flexible ten band fully parametric equaliser. Instead, go for something with character and vibe – not just in sound, but in workflow. The idea here is to use something with fewer controls, but where each control does something interesting. The recent Pultec-modelled EQ plugins are a good choice. The reason for this is that this tonal adjustment isn’t a corrective task where surgical precision is requied. It’s artistic, impressionistic. You’re trying to be creative, to add colour, to make it interesting.

To use dynamics to give the mix a more compact, controlled sound, compression is the most appropriate tools. Unlike individual track compression, the best results here are achieved by being subtle. You don’t want to completely change the dynamic behaviour of the mix. Instead, focus on less than 3dB gain reduction, and configure the compressor to simply ride the gain. Use high ratios when you want a pronounced effect, particularly on mixes with very little dynamics (such as rock music or dance music that is almost always at the same level). Use very low ratios for more dynamic music (coupled with a lower threshold to catch the lower-level audio). Faster attack and release times will produce a more pronounced effect, whereas slower times will be more more gentle and transparent.

The real tip here, however, is to do all this at the mix stage – not mastering. The mix is where you’re focussing on creative sound adjustments, on making the song sound special. Mix bus processing clearly fits here. Mastering, by contrast, should be as transparent as possible – focussing on preserving the creative decisions that were made during mixing and translating that sound to the target playback format.

The best time during mixing to apply this sweetening is at the very last stage – after reverb and panning, just before rendering or recording the stereo mixdown. This is when you’ll have the best perspective to apply processing to the overall sound. Otherwise you may end up chasing your tail in circles as further track-level changes necessitate mix bus changes.

-Kim.

How do individual tracks sound on their own before they’re mixed?

When mixing, there are two different approaches to take when processing individual tracks (channels, instruments, sounds, etc) -

1. Try to make the track sound as ‘good’ as possible on its own, and then fit it into the mix; and
2. Pay no attention to the integrity of the track’s individual sound and ruthlessly filter and EQ it so that only the most useful parts of the sound contribute to the mix.

Both approaches are valid. Which approach you take will depend on the type of mix you’re working on and your own personal style.

Approaching each track individually can be a useful approach if you’re aiming for a natural-sounding mix. This way, each instrument can be closer to its original (or expected) sound. The character of the sound it more complete and more nuanced. This approach would be achieved by using gentle shelving EQ instead of filters, wide and shallow parametric EQ, and a tendency to cut rather than boost. The downside to this approach is that it can make a mix sound very cluttered and crowded – especially if there are a lot of instrument or the instruments are badly-played.

Alternatively, you might approach each track as a collection of sonic characteristics to pick and choose from. This will lead to aggressive filtering and more surgical/targeted EQ, with a tendency to boost as well as cut. This way the mix can be very clean and controlled, and can be particularly useful in modern ‘highly-produced’ music such as electronic music. The downside is that the mix can become too produced, with each instrument sounding quite unlike its natural self. It can also result in mixes that sound thin, empty and gutless.

Personally, I take both approaches. Generally I try to keep foreground instruments as natural as possible. As I work my way further back to the background instruments, I get more and more surgical and ruthless. The more ‘produced’ a mix is, the more I’ll tend toward aggressive filtering to cut out the unwanted characteristics of each sound and keep the desired parts. The more natural a mix is, the more I’ll tend toward gentle shelving EQ to softly de-emphasise the unwanted parts of the sound and emphasise the desired characteristics.

-Kim.

ProRec Article – Reverb Types Explained

Consider this an extension to this article – I’ve just had another article published on ProRec explaining the different kinds of reverbs commonly used in recordings. There’s good coverage of pretty much all common reverb types and good explanations, but the real jewels (in my view, at least) are the comprehensive audio examples with detailed explanations of what to listen for in each type of reverb.

Check it out here:

http://prorec.com/Articles/tabid/109/EntryId/345/Reverb-Types-Explained.aspx

-Kim.

How to reduce computer noise in the studio

Get an acoustically-designed computer

An easy way to do this is to use a Mac. The latest Macs are already whisper-quiet. And you can also run Windows on them if you prefer to use Windows-only software.

If you don’t want to use a Mac, another option is to use a purpose-built PC. There are companies that build these, but they tend to be quite expensive (and cost is usually one of the biggest reasons not to use a Mac).

If you’d rather build your computer yourself to keep costs down (or to get more value for your money), keep in mind that parts specifically designed for quiet operation can get quite expensive anyway. You’ll be able to build a quiet computer, but it won’t be for rock-bottom prices.

The bottom line is: expect to pay more for a quiet computer.

Isolate the computer

The next thing to do is to isolate the computer. How you do this will depend greatly on the physical layout of your studio. The best solution is to have the computer in a separate “machine room” (studios that record on tape often have the tape machine itself in a separate machine room). If you do this, make sure you get the highest-quality shielded extension cables you can find. Depending on your audio interface, you might be able to get by with only three cables:

• Firewire – dedicated to the audio interface
• USB – for mouse, keyboard, MIDI, storage devices, etc
• DVI – for your screen.

Failing that, try to place the computer in a separate enclosure. Here the trick is to balance quietness against airflow. Too little airflow may result in the computer malfunctioning from overheating – especially on hot summer days. Not a good look with clients! For home studios, you might try using a cupboard or cabinet. For professional studios, custom-made enclosures are ideal – especially if they include acoustic dampening, easy access to CD drives, managed airflow directed away from listening/recording areas, etc.

Obviously, the more you can start with a quiet computer, the less you need to physically isolate it. Likewise, the more isolation you can provide for the computer, the less you need it to be quiet.

Avoid recording it…

…by following these tips:

http://kimlajoie.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/tips-for-quiet-recordings/

-Kim.