creating feel in the mix

[SLY_Z_28]

is this something that just happens or do the producers make it happen with effects, panning, or effects? Im looking to livin up my mix consisting of a Pod Xt Live guitar sound, and electric drums. it sounds digitil, yes, but thats all i have for now. So how do i sproose it up a little bit?!

[Dave Martin]

Ummm, you kinda need to create the feel when you track - you know, live musicians playing together....

[Synonym Music]

 

Ummm, you kinda need to create the feel when you track - you know, live musicians playing together....

 

 

+1 This is the cold hard truth. You can do very little to make a mix more lively than its recorded parts put together. If it was "there" during tracking then it will usually return when mixing. Over-isolation can often lead to lifeless tracks, but the biggest culprit is a bad arrangement. It's that rotting foundation that has to be repaired, otherwise the whole house falls apart.

[SLY_Z_28]

ok, we record one at a time, so there would be no feel working together if thats what you mean. Any other suggestions?

[SLY_Z_28]

 

+1 This is the cold hard truth. You can do very little to make a mix more lively than its recorded parts put together. If it was "there" during tracking then it will usually return when mixing. Over-isolation can often lead to lifeless tracks, but the biggest culprit is a bad arrangement. It's that rotting foundation that has to be repaired, otherwise the whole house falls apart.

 

 

what kinda arrangement would you suggest?

[Flaat]

ok, we record one at a time, so there would be no feel working together if thats what you mean. Any other suggestions?

 

That everybody closes their eyes while pretending the others are there with them.

The drums lead the tempo, but not perfectly.

 

Truth to be told, you loose a lot of dynamics when playing one at a time. As an example, the guitarist really nails it on a part - lots of energy. This makes the drummer happy, and he follows up with a lot of energy on the drums. This makes the singer give more when singing. See the pattern?

 

Develop your fantasies. That's my best advice. And I'm serious. Learn to close your eyes and really, really believe the others are there playing with you. If the drums are programmed, reprogram the drums after recording the other instruments. Then learn to recreate that feel you had the first time recording, and redo that part with the same feel.

 

 

Really hard, and really time consuming. But worth it if you can make it.

[UstadKhanAli]

Better musicians also create bbetter feel.

 

And yes, if recording one at a time, try and have everyone pretend like they are all in the room together.

 

The musicians create the feel. The musicians react to the atmosphere and vibe in the room, with each other, with the song. You record it.

[Synonym Music]

what kinda arrangement would you suggest?

 

Whatever you want; there are no rules in music, only suggestions. I know one problem I always hear is too much of a particular instrument:

 

-Too much guitar in rock

-Too many lyrics and too much singing in RnB (yes modern RnB, the travesty that's become )

-Too many repetitions in electronica (or really, too many goddamn cliches that never go away... Like chopping!)

 

{censored} the instruments. I don't wanna hear just the instruments. I want to hear how they work together to paint a picture. That's what makes a good orchestration so beautiful; the violins are doing this, the brass is doing that, and there's the cellos backing them up. Maybe they're all disagreeing and sound disharmonious, and maybe they're all in perfect agreement through unison.

 

But... Very rarely in orchestral music do you ever hear a solo with everything else muted. Even when you do, it's to exaggerate loneliness. So if one instrument is lonely when it plays solo, certainly the others help it keep its voice? I've always thought so.

 

*sigh*

 

Well I'm done sounding like a crackpot for the day.

 

You'll know a good arrangement when you hear it. There are dynamics, the songwriting is focused to begin with, and every instrument gets a piece of the pie. If it keeps meandering and sounds poorly improvised then it's back to the drawing board. If it only needs better sounds, then you're 2/3 of the way there.

[alphajerk]

yes, i try to at least... i find that its almost like a conductor for an orchestra when mixing. kinda realizing how the sounds come across, where they are, what are they doing, what sounds cool... etc. mainly through fader rides, panning, effects, sfx [sometimes], and other cool ear candy that is felt rather than heard [unless headphones are worn.... then it is a little more apparent]

 

{censored} like that.

[blackscot]

Great topic! This is a huge issue for me, as a amateur, one-man, home-recording musician.

 

My projects involve backing a lead guitar with mostly synth support instruments. Everything has to be recorded separately, but my mixes so far suffer greatly from flatness.

 

I like the idea alluded to above of re-recording some parts once the mix is supposedly done. The new "performance" on that insturment can then replace the original, possibly with greater real-time feel.

 

I'm going to try this on some of my "finished" projects (are they ever really done?), and see if it helps any.

[alphajerk]

maybe you arent putting enough into automation resulting in the flatness? if you get good levels for everything and leave it pretty static, then it will sound flat. but if you take the time to accentuate parts and conversely deaccenuate parts you create depth to the song.

[UstadKhanAli]

A mix, whether you're doing this hands-on with a mixing board or with DAW automation, should be a flowing, breathing thing, all with the sole result, ultimately, of enhancing the emotional and artistic statement of the song. Whether this means riding faders, effects coming in and out or morphing/shifting, panning and pan changes, EQ and EQ changes, delays, or what, that's up to the song. But what you should ideally have is a song that has a great feel and performance and arrangement, with the mix enhancing the emotion of that (rather than trying to fix it or impose its will unnaturally) into a thing of beauty.

[alphajerk]

if its a live tracking, basically you embellish the natural dynamics that exist... if its all done by programming, then its even more important to embellish things.

[SLY_Z_28]

this is done by a computer program, adobe audition 2.0 to solve many of ur answers.

[blue2blue]

I do most of my recording using synths and drum machines (virtual these days).

 

It's definitely a challenge getting a lively, flowing fell when you're working a track at a time and using robots for drums and even bass or keyboards.

 

 

As others have noted, you can use automation and MIDI editing to enhance the feel and bring variety to what might end up as robotic sounding sequenced parts.

 

It's often helpful to keep things varied -- you can subtly humanize rhythms, enhance momentum and a sense of movement by shaping and the dynamics, and vary the arrangement in ways subtle and large. You can change balances between instruments from one section to another, drop instruments out, and, as suggested above, replace stiff early or guide tracks with tracks that have better feel. And that helps nail subsequent tracks. I often go through at least one or two versions of key tracks... frequently having a whole basic mix made out of scratch tracks. Then I go back and try to induce a little more of the right fit and feel. And it's not at all uncommon for some important tracks to go through three "generations" or more. (Now, I don't mean takes... I mean I'll track bass, drums, guitar and vocals, and then replace the guitar and bass and then maybe tinker the drum part, cleaning up or changing the emphasis of fills, and then do back up vocals and then redo the lead vocal and maybe change bass to simplify or change the feel, and then redo the vocal again...

 

Of course, that can be a real trap. One thing that doesn't typically work out for me is doing take after take of th e same track. I'm one of those people who gets worse the more he does something in a given setting.

 

I usually hit my stride by the third take. So I try to stop myself if I think I'm going to start compulsively retakng. (And I can lose perspective at that point. I came up on tape and there's still a false sense of "economy" in my head that is too fast to delete possibly usable tracks... It's a behavior I used to see when I was engineering... compulsive retaking. I've seen a lot of people throw out their best take because they thought they could do better but never did... It's better now in the digital production era because you can save a jillion takes if you want and sort them out later -- but I think a lot of times people never go back and sort them out... which, after all, takes time and can be frustrating, particularly if the talent is painifully aware of the diminishing patience of the engineer or his bandmates... Of course, that was back when people had to go to studios to record... but you can fall into some equally pernicious traps these days, too.

[alphajerk]

another thing you can do if your midi parts are laid down first is do a tap tempo track by hand [feel] and have the midi follow that. then track live stuff to that. it wont sound so robotic because it varies through out.

[D Charles]

Even with a static drum part, you can up the tempo a couple of BPM on the chorus then back on the verse for a bit of feel change.

 

I started with Reels and only four tracks so I had to get a drummer or later program the drum machine first, put it and rhythm instrument down, put down bass, mix them to track four, put a scratch vocal down, backups, mix the backups together on track 1 while recording the lead vocal and mixing it with em, then adding the left and right channels for stereo (guitars and or keys). If the song needed sax or something you had to kinda do math.

 

I still record a lot like that except for the pre mixing which I don't have to do anymore. Now it's loop a drum beat for 100 measures or so, put down the rhythm instrument (guitar or piano) to the repeating drum bit, add bass, get out my pad thing and play a real drum part to the bass and rhythm, then add whatever the song needs from there.

[SLY_Z_28]

all great ideas guys, thanks! keep them comming

[Synonym Music]

Notice that these are recording techniques used to create feel in the mix. I really don't think FX help much to create feel; they deal mainly in depth, dimension, perception, and ambiance. If drums sound digital it may be the medium they were recorded on, the way they were miked, the quality and selection of the samples involved if there's MIDI, or the timing of the samples.

 

I would second lessening quantization when possible. Record the patterns by hand, keep the better takes, and replace when necessary. You play that other instrument by hand, right?

[Paully]

Flatness has been pretty well addressed, but consider listener fatique as a primary cause. Whether ensemble, solo or midi tracking, way too many times the arrangement gets cluttered with competing tracks and note overload. Try reducing the track data and you might hear less flatness. Less is (usually) better.

 

Best, Paul

[alphajerk]

FX can be used to create excitement in a mix. the phasing snare roll for example leading into an explosive guitar solo. or the delayed snare in dub with ring modulator on it. then varying fx creates excitement from more verb in the verse to less in the chorus to even less during the solo creates a sense of movement fowards and back.

[Synonym Music]

 

FX can be used to create excitement in a mix. the phasing snare roll for example leading into an explosive guitar solo. or the delayed snare in dub with ring modulator on it. then varying fx creates excitement from more verb in the verse to less in the chorus to even less during the solo creates a sense of movement fowards and back.

 

 

But this will not make up for having no feel in the recording. It is as you said:

 

 

if its a live tracking, basically you embellish the natural dynamics that exist...

 

[mmmiddle]

My feeling is, like others said, that it comes down to the arrangement, and ultimately down to the rhythmic differences between each part. It's extremely hard to make a song listenable given the same drum beat and bass line repeating throughout the song. I bring it up because when programming drums and MIDI it's a really common rut to fall into. You know, the whole program different parts and then re-use them over and over. I think it's the number one thing I'm working on for myself to avoid.

 

Although some bands, like Weezer, seem to be able to miraculously pull off the boring rhythm section thing consistently.

 

If, however, the question is about the creating feel in the mix...then maybe your options are limited to usage of FX like reverb, decay, and compression used with an eye towards altering the attack and decay of your notes, as well as not being afraid to drop out parts that aren't contributing. I like what was said above about less is more.

 

Scott

[Cirrus]

 

My feeling is, like others said, that it comes down to the arrangement, and ultimately down to the rhythmic differences between each part. It's extremely hard to make a song listenable given the same drum beat and bass line repeating throughout the song. I bring it up because when programming drums and MIDI it's a really common rut to fall into. You know, the whole program different parts and then re-use them over and over. I think it's the number one thing I'm working on for myself to avoid. Although some bands, like Weezer, seem to be able to miraculously pull off the boring rhythm section thing consistently. If, however, the question is about the creating feel in the mix...then maybe your options are limited to usage of FX like reverb, decay, and compression used with an eye towards altering the attack and decay of your notes, as well as not being afraid to drop out parts that aren't contributing. I like what was said above about less is more. Scott

 

 

Thats a pretty interesting point. I think it's ok for a song to have a boring rhythm section, but something has to be special. If it's not a cool groove it needs to have a pretty decent and interesting melody, or texture, or something. The trap people seem to fall into is looking to bands like weezer and using that to justify a boring (or some would say solid lol) rythm section and forget that they need a pretty special melody or attitude to make it a good song.

[Cheese Grits]

I still record a lot like that except for the pre mixing which I don't have to do anymore. Now it's loop a drum beat for 100 measures or so, put down the rhythm instrument (guitar or piano) to the repeating drum bit, add bass, get out my pad thing and play a real drum part to the bass and rhythm, then add whatever the song needs from there.

 

I'm really looking forward to trying this out. Thanks for the idea!