Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 One of the things that I have read most frequently when it comes to recording and mixing techniques is the use of effects. As a matter of fact I have read it so many times that it has become a limiting ingredient in my mixes. There are thousands of recommendations where engineers recommend you to be careful with effects because of mud. I think this is a really limiting thing that could rob your potential as a good mixer if you don't use this "best practise" creatively and knowledge centered. Art is an abstract thing, it's not black and white. Beautiful things can often include ugly elements as well. Think of the sky with both dark ugly clouds and a beautiful sun shining through. Often this can feel much more powerful and strong with a nice contrast, than only a blue clear sky. Think of nuances and effects the same way. I think stereo reverb is such an effect that can be messed with! Do mess with it! It's a beautiful effect that needs to be emphasized! You might be really surprised what happens with the sound picture when you add a lot of different stereo reverbs on a mix! Just because you add many reverbs it doesn't necessarily mean you should add much wetness to each of them and of course you need to control it with setting appropriate parameters and EQing because of the risk for mudness. I am really going to focus on the reverb effect now for a while, it seems to be a great effect that adds wideness and space for sounds on the mix. Yesterday I compared two mixes I had done, one of the mixes had almost no reverb at all, the other had maybe 3 different stereo reverbs layered, quite wet too! (I stopped there, but it seemed like for each reverb added I was getting a bigger sounding mix, great!) By messing like this I was able to take a huge step forward as a mixing engineer because the result was like night and day! Afterwards I thought for myself, I don't care if I mess with reverbs, I like the way it sounds especially together with compressors! I noticed professionals mess with it too...! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Flaat Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 Of course, there are always exceptions to rules. And of course, there are a lot of music styles where you can mess around with stuff. As mainly a guitarist, I am of the impression that effects destroy the "raw" tone. And to me, there is nothing more beautiful than the raw tone, be it from vocals, guitars, basses or whatever. That is, as long as the "raw" tone is great! I think we often use effects to "fix" things that, for some reason, we are not capable of doing correct in the first place. Be it lack of experience, or lack of money. If we just fix a wee bit, we call it "enhance", because it focuses on the good parts of the original signal. When you mess around with effects, you start making other music styles. People may disagree with me on this, and they might say rock with a lot of effects on is still rock. I, however, say rock with a lot of effects on it is electronica. (or something in that veign. I don't know the different styles.) Just my .02 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the russ Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 ...paging Walters9515 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members geek_usa Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 Originally posted by Flaat People may disagree with me on this, and they might say rock with a lot of effects on is still rock. I, however, say rock with a lot of effects on it is electronica. (or something in that veign. I don't know the different styles.) Just my .02 I usually call it Space Rock or Ambient Rock. Electronica as I understand it is more techno/synth type stuff. But effects are cool. I made the most crazy/amazing solo one day on one of my songs. Most of my songs have wah on the solo. I wanted to make this one stand out by using an octaver. Well I recorded it, and then one day about 2 months later, I decided I wanted to redo it. So I mixed in the octave with the wah. Then the phaser. Then the analog flanger. Then the vibrato, compressor, and finally the fuzz. What we had was something that's undescribeable but beautiful in its own right. It still makes me smile to this day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Flaat Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 Originally posted by geek_usa I usually call it Space Rock or Ambient Rock. Electronica as I understand it is more techno/synth type stuff. But effects are cool. I made the most crazy/amazing solo one day on one of my songs. Most of my songs have wah on the solo. I wanted to make this one stand out by using an octaver. Well I recorded it, and then one day about 2 months later, I decided I wanted to redo it. So I mixed in the octave with the wah. Then the phaser. Then the analog flanger. Then the vibrato, compressor, and finally the fuzz. What we had was something that's undescribeable but beautiful in its own right. It still makes me smile to this day. I understand your issue with my naming, so I can call it a mix of electronica and rock then. My point is just that it's not rock anymore, it's something else. A synth can be anything when you apply effects to it. That solo description sounds very experimental-ish, something I've listened a lot to. I like experimenting with effects and all that if you want to achieve something with it. Like a guitar not sounding like a guitar anymore. That's a positive achievement when it's the purpose. But to just drop in a lot of effects so that you can "fix" things, is likely to cause other artifacts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Will Chen Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 Originally posted by the russ ...paging Walters9515 lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 12, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 Originally posted by Flaat Of course, there are always exceptions to rules. And of course, there are a lot of music styles where you can mess around with stuff.As mainly a guitarist, I am of the impression that effects destroy the "raw" tone. And to me, there is nothing more beautiful than the raw tone, be it from vocals, guitars, basses or whatever. That is, as long as the "raw" tone is great! I'm a guitarist myself and I agree. One of the worst things I know is when you take a good guitar and put a cheap digital effects unit on the chain. A good example is the V-Amp,POD or the GT-series moss effects. I have so far not been able to dial in a beautiful sound out of these units because they add so much digital jitter to the signal that it becomes really noisy! But when I use my 16-bit DSP engine with pre amp it is really sweet sounding! If you mess with effects it's really important that the quality of the effects are good and the raw tone should always be really good! I also think that some effects should be messed with while others should be left pretty untouched! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 12, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 I found an interesting comment by Jon Gass that has produced albums for Babyface, Janet Jackson, Michael Bolton, Destiny's child, Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson among others: "I hardly ever use long halls or long reverbs. I use a lot of gear but usually for tight spaces. Sometimes in the mix it doesn't sound like I'm using anything, but I might use 20 different reverb type boxes, maybe not set on reverbs, just to create more space. I think that helps with the layering and adding textures to things. Though you may not hear it in the mix, you can feel it." I think what he is saying is really an important thing to pay attention to! Space is really important on a mix! 20 different reverb type boxes is really to mess with effects! But it works! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the russ Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 gotta love trolls. would those 20 different reverb boxes give me any more digital tape saturation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members geek_usa Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 Originally posted by the russ gotta love trolls. would those 20 different reverb boxes give me any more digital tape saturation? That was unneccesary, bro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted August 12, 2005 Share Posted August 12, 2005 Contrast is a beautiful (and IMO) & important thing. Some bands want everything going "flat out" all the time, and IMO, that's less effective than if there is some contrast, some point of reference. A "rip your face off" guitar tone hardly seems to have as much impact if it's going full bore all the time while everything else is going full bore all the time, but if you have a few quiet sections and then bring in that raging guitar track, it has a lot more impact. In addition, everything can't be "loud" all the time... again, there's no contrast, no frame of reference, and everything just fights each other and you wind up with mush and mud. For me, "effects" generally fall into two useage categories: 1. Effects as environmental simulation. Reverb and / or predelay and / or early reflections used on a close mic'ed track to "simulate" an acoustical environment would fall into this category. The "environment" you're simulating could be something "realistic" or something completely wacked out that previously existed only in your imagination. Generally I tend to go easy on this sort of thing... a lot of novices tend to go overboard with the amount of reverb they slather all over a track, when they might be better served with less. IMO, it takes less than many newbies might think to properly simulate an acoustical environment. 2. Effects as "effects". Anything (musically appropriate) goes! I LOVE how the Beatles pioneered this sort of thing. A heavy reverb that comes out of nowhere for a few phrases and then goes away. A flanger that is reverse panned from a source and comes in then goes away. For an example of the former, listen to "Lovely Rita" on Sgt Pepper... Paul's voice is in one fairly normal sounding "space", but John's little ad-libbed stuff at the end is all wacked out with tape delay and chamber verb... which works perfectly for the part IMO, partially because John "plays" off of that sound in his cans. Again, IMO, if you leave this kind of processing on ALL THE TIME, it looses its impact and effectiveness. Rita would not have been nearly as effective if they had used that same effect on Paul's voice for the entire song... Taste and moderation... and knowing when and where to use things, and how to contrast things for maximum impact is, IMO, the key. I have no problem with the use of effects on things... only when they're used in a "trendy" (can you say "80's gated reverb on EVERYTHING? How about "Cher" AT vocal effects? ) or inappropriate (from a musical standpoint - and that IS an artistic judgement call...) manner does it start to bug me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 14, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 14, 2005 Contrast is a beautiful (and IMO) & important thing. Yes, I agree. Something that good engineers are good at is creating dynamic contrast by using the right kind of compressors and settings. You don't want a compressed piano together with uncompressed vocals (to mention an extreme example). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted August 14, 2005 Share Posted August 14, 2005 Originally posted by TonyCrazyMan Yes, I agree. Something that good engineers are good at is creating dynamic contrast by using the right kind of compressors and settings. I agree... compression is one of the tools you can use to acheive contrast in textures and relative dynamics. You don't want a compressed piano together with uncompressed vocals (to mention an extreme example). I don't know that I'd go quite that far... IOW, you MIGHT want exactly that for some musical reason... IOW, while I agree with the first part of your post, IMO, the second part is a little too "general" for me. In some cases, that may indeed be true, while in others, it might not be. Depending on the song and what else is going on in the mix, you might indeed want a highly compressed piano for the tone / texture, while the vocal might not need much compression at all because of how it was sung, and the way it sounds or whatever. It all just depends on the context and what you're going for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 14, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 14, 2005 I don't know that I'd go quite that far... IOW, you MIGHT want exactly that for some musical reason... IOW, while I agree with the first part of your post, IMO, the second part is a little too "general" for me. In some cases, that may indeed be true, while in others, it might not be. Depending on the song and what else is going on in the mix, you might indeed want a highly compressed piano for the tone / texture, while the vocal might not need much compression at all because of how it was sung, and the way it sounds or whatever. It all just depends on the context and what you're going for. Well, I agree, if it sounds better then it's all good and in certain type of music it might be worth trying. I guess I was rather general there in my statement, I do think though that I would most of the times choose to compress the vocals as well if the piano is compressed, or I would turn down the piano much and not compress the vocals if it doesn't need to be compressed. Sometimes you overdo things, so there's a point in not being as general as I was... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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