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These days, more and more producers, songwriters and bands are working their way through the production process outside of the traditional studio, often making all of their sonic decisions in less than ideal listening spaces. As a mixer, I am expected to have a critical listening space that minimizes the affect of the room’s acoustics on whatever I am listening to. Tons of attention is paid to the mixer’s acoustic surroundings. Expensive products are sold, pricey consultants are consulted, speakers are moved four inches, only to be measured and moved again another two. Not only is an acoustically accurate monitoring set-up critical to my ability to get a mix completed efficiently and accurately, it allows me to focus on being creative instead of second guessing my every move. But when components of the production have been recorded or conceived in a less than ideal acoustic space, making final decisions regarding balance and tone can create a variety of challenges during the mixing and mastering stage.
Many of the clients that I mix for employ me to clean up a variety of frequency issues picked up during the recording and production process. This is quite normal and a big part of the “value add” in having your work professionally mixed. But because they are often working on laptops in bedrooms, hotels, coffee shops and anywhere other than a traditional studio, this lack of an acoustically neutral listening space can heavily influence the sample and tone selection process and in turn, challenge me to make difficult decisions regarding key sonic components in the mix.
For example, think about a producer selecting what they assume to be is the perfect kick drum sample for a song. As we all know, the kick drum sets the tonal mood of the entire rhythm section, and in most genres, heavily influences the message of the song and the groove. Is it deep? punchy? scooped? mid-forward? or ridin’ dirty? All these little characteristics will go on to define the listening experience and ultimately, how the listener reacts to the song. But how can that perfect kick drum sample, painstakingly selected by the producer, end up being a frequency nightmare come mix down? Because the room in which the producer chose that sample was in effect, EQing the sound of the sample coming from the speakers, the tonal reality of that kick sound in a more critical listening environment may be radically different.
Those of us familiar with basic acoustic principles know that a room’s dimensions and speaker placement will heavily influence the perception of low frequencies, due to modal resonance, resulting in peaks and valleys sometimes as big as 20dB and as narrow as only a few hertz. For example, a sharp peak of 14dB at 55hz, may cause you to favor one drum sample that interacts in a positive way with your room’s modal response over another sample that reacts differently. Come mixdown, this sample that sounded great with one room’s weird modal response may not offer the ideal tonal balance to support the song. At this point, the mixer is faced with the following difficult questions: 1) Is this really the sample and tone that the producer intended or were they hearing something different in their room? 2) If the latter, do I alter (or even replace) the sound with a sound better suited to the mix and spirit of the song and by doing so, do I risk making a subjective decision that will upset the producer? 3) Regardless of 1 or 2, will the producer ultimately end up reviewing the mix back in his/her acoustically challenged room, potentially creating a viscous cycle of revisions?
There is no doubt that some of the “magic” or “gloss” is going to come from the subjective hand (ear) of the mix engineer and the producer/artist will expect that. Don’t confuse this discussion with a mix engineer looking to get out of the hard labor of a great mix. On the contrary, I concern myself with these issues because I want to connect with and realize the artist’s vision as closely as I possibly can, while hopefully adding my own unique touch that makes it even better than anyone could have originally imagined. But to do this, I need to know when something is a problem that needs fixing or a subjective difference in opinion. In other words, either your room caused you to make some questionable decisions regarding sounds or mic placement and you need my help fixing them, or you really want your kick drum to sound that way and will be pissed if I try to change it. Either way, I want to know and you should want me to know.
So what can we do? Obviously, many of these issues are resolved by having attended mix sessions, where the client gets to listen and make comments in the same space as the mixer. But with budgets being stretched and time in short supply, many professionals are now working over the internet, almost exclusively even, making attended session difficult if not impossible. Almost 90% of my mixing work is now done unattended, so for me to ensure clients are happy I need to make sure that in addition to a dialog regarding the esthetic direction of the mix, we also discuss the source material itself. Was it recorded in a professional studio or recorded in a bedroom? Who engineered the recording sessions and what is their experience level? Is the producer a seasoned arranger who is likely to be intimately familiar with their sound palette and how it translates, or are we dealing with a less experienced song writer with a brand new sample library?
In addition to having a solid ongoing dialog with the producer and artist, as the mixer I should be able to extrapolate a lot of what I need to do without constantly needing my hand held, just by getting a broader sense about who I am working for and where the material is coming from. But this doesn’t have to be a one way street. Here are some tips that I like to consider when I switch hats and become the producer.
As you’ve probably realized by now, this isn’t a scientific discussion of room acoustics or a primer on acoustic treatment, but rather a discussion of consequences that are the result of being unaware of such topics. Whether you are mixing, recording, producing or doing it all yourself, it just makes sense to understand how the space around you is altering your sonic perception and ultimately, how your work will translate from each stage of the recording process and on to the end listener. Laptop producers and bedroom studios are here to stay, and I couldn’t be more excited at the possibilities. But do yourself a favor a spend a little time studying acoustics and the science behind sound waves. It doesn’t take a PHD to grasp the basic problems and work towards basic solutions, and in many cases, just knowing that the problem exists gets you half way there.
Here are some resources regarding basic acoustic principles and treatment solutions that I have found useful:
Be sure to check out my course Foundations of Audio: EQ and Filters at lynda.com for more information on sound waves, EQ and how room acoustics can alter our decision process.
This entry was written by , posted on January 18, 2012 at 10:58 am, filed under Articles, featured, News and tagged acoustics, mixing, music production, producing, recording, samples. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
As a professional mix engineer I spend a lot of time mixing other people’s songs. These songs are like their children, so it is of the utmost importance that I respect their vision as an artist and song writer, because at the end of the day, I am providing a service to my clients and I want to keep them happy and returning customers of my business. But just as mixing a song is an art form in and of itself, allowing your song to be mixed is an art form too. You see, the reason why most artists, producers, managers and record labels seek the help of professional mixing and mastering engineers is that we can bring a fresh set of ears and skills to the table. We strive to truly listen to the song as a “first time listener” and hopefully serve up a mix that hits the real first time listener (the potential fan) like a million bucks, leaving them begging for more. Let’s face it, if the listener doesn’t get even a tiny hint of what your trying to sell on that first listen, subsequent listens don’t matter, because there won’t be any.
But let’s back up a little to this “artist’s child” parallel. If a song is like the artist’s child, I’m sure you’ve experienced many examples where, despite their best intentions, parents just aren’t living in reality when it comes to their kids. In most cases, when it comes time to finally mix the song, the artist or producer have familiarized themselves with the elements of the song at such an intimate level that the objectivity of a first time listener has completely disappeared. While many seasoned professionals recognize this plight and call upon mix and mastering engineers specifically because of it, I find that some of my less experienced clients become the first listener’s, and ultimately there own, worst enemy during mixing. By focussing on the micro elements, or “shiny objects” that they have personally attached themselves to, it often causes them to lose site of the big picture. This lack of objectivity can ultimately lead to mixing decisions that ostracize every listener but themselves.
Some call this phenomena (disease?) “demo-itis,” referring to the irrational clingy-ness an artist has to the demo mix, which generally has the last element recorded turned up the most (be it that fifteenth synth line, an over zealous layering of background vocals, a lead “run,” etc). Because this was the last idea to get added, it has the tendency to stick in the artist’s mind as the “best” idea, even if only subconsciously. But many times, this “best” idea ends up being the worst idea, the one that train wrecks the song into a crowded mess of arrangement vanity, destroying the core message and confusing the first time listener.
For example, say you’re at a party and you are stuck between the middle of two different conversations taking place. Each conversation is taking place at the same relative volume level but you find it hard to pay attention to both conversations simultaneously, so you use the magical powers of the human auditory system to tune into one of the conversations and tune out the other. While it is pretty cool that we can “hone in” or focus on elements that we desire, you can’t help but wonder if that other conversation was more interesting or more important, and in some cases your ear drifts back and forth between the two, just in case something interesting is happening. Of course, if you could record both conversations and play them each back 200 times, you could probably listen to both simultaneously and know exactly what was going on at any given time. Furthermore, if you were the architect of each of those conversations, you could probably recite them verbatim without hearing them back.
Now think about how this example relates to the first time listener of a song. Because the listener is presented with a variety of elements to focus on, if the presentation of the elements doesn’t guide them towards the most interesting or important components and hold their attention there, they may be left at best, a bit uninspired or at worst, confused and turned off to the whole thing. In other words, they might think, “geez, the conversations at this party are boring, I’m leaving,” when they really just weren’t tuned into the right conversation. It is the job of the mixer to work with the producer and song writer to find and best present the song’s most interesting “conversation,” so that the first time listener has no trouble grasping the core concept. If we can sell that core idea in the first listen and hold their attention, the listener is sure to come back time and again to enjoy the various other conversations and components the song has to offer.
Now at this point, you might be thinking that I don’t value or appreciate the vision of the song writer or producer, and that their thoughts regarding the presentation of the song should be sacred and always “right,” regardless of what the first time listener thinks. Hey, it is “their art” isn’t it? Who is this big shot, “first time listener” to say that the song or mix isn’t good? Don’t get me wrong, there are times, places and genres of music where respecting the ultimate vision of the artist, regardless of whether or not it polarizes a listener is respectable, and I absolutely love making those kind of records, I really do. But 95% of my clients come to me as a mixer with the primary goal of making the song a commercially viable piece of art, with specific statements like, “make this thing a hit” or “make it knock and ready for the club.”
While I will admit that there are historical examples of records that, despite their best efforts to ostracize the average listener, have still been wildly successful commercially. I guarantee you that those are the exception, rather than the rule. To that you say, “Brian, it’s not all about making money, we have to respect the art.” And what I am saying is, you’re right, it’s not all about money, the art is important too. But when the client who is fighting me on a wild background vocal that just needs to get muted is the same client who is demanding that I give their mix the best chance at commercial success, I am stuck between a rock and hard place. It’s like the parent who swears that “they want their child to be happy ” but insists that they attend an ivy league school, when in reality they would be happier and better suited to a trade school.
I want to clarify that mixing for the first time listener doesn’t necessarily mean dumbing the song down to a single layer or the lowest common denominator. I love songs that can be peeled back like the layers of an onion, finding buried treasure with each additional listen (Beatles anyone?). I also love songs that take several listenings to appreciate. Some of my favorite records took upwards of ten listens to even “sort of like.” All I am suggesting is to keep your priorities in check and the big picture in mind. Just like there is nothing wrong with art for art’s sake, or records that take 20 listens to “get,” there is also nothing wrong with staging a song for commercial success, or writing/producing/mixing to please a non music-junky audience with a shorter attention span. At the end of the day, I am all about serving the goals of my clients, even if that client needs a little help staying out of their own way.
But what if you’re an artist or producer mixing and finishing your own work, without the help of a third party mixer? The same ideologies apply, it will just be a little harder to find that objective headspace of a first time listener. When I mix music that I have also written and recorded, I find that taking a clean break from the material gives me the best chance at bringing an objective ear to the project. Because it is vital to my trade as a mixer, I have spent the better part of a decade learning how to listen for the first time, every time, even after dozens of playbacks. Let’s face it, practicing big picture objectivity is not only helpful during mixing, but in all parts of the production process. To accomplish this, I like to think of my ears like a camera lens that can go from super wide angle, big picture listening, to telephoto 100x zoomed-in precision on tiny little elements. When working on your own material start to finish, be prepared to seek objective feedback from non-biased third parties (e.g. not your best friend or your mom) and take the feedback you receive to heart, without getting defensive or making excuses. Think about your goals, both creatively as well as commercially and question how the two may compliment or conflict each other, and don’t be afraid to reference other artist’s work as a guide in either direction.
Ultimately, you may be the type of person who enjoys playing the long game, investing in the music you listen to and create over many subsequent listens. Or maybe you love the instant gratification of the latest pop hit, that rush you get from hearing a sugary hook that sounds like it was purpose built to infect your ears instantly. If you’re like me, you love and seek both levels of appreciation in a song, as well as everything in between. Either way, the best approach to preserving artistic vision, while simultaneously maintaining that “first time listener” objectivity, is found in a mutual respect and balance between the intentions of the artist, the commercial goals they wish to achieve, and the goal of the mixer to best serve the song. This is why I say there is just as much art to having your music mixed as there is in actually mixing it. “Help me help you.” I promise not to inject my own personal agenda and serve the best interests of the song and your greater goals as an artist, if you promise to stay out of your own way and allow others to help you out.
This entry was written by , posted on January 13, 2012 at 2:43 pm, filed under Articles, featured, News and tagged mixing, producing, recording, song writing. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Using pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, fifty cent pieces, and one dollar coins, there are 293 ways to make change for a dollar. But what does that have to do with mixing records? A lot actually.
To preface this little op-ed/rant, I have been watching a lot of Pensado’s Place recently. If you aren’t familiar with this excellent show, it’s an online, weekly talk show hosted by mixing legend Dave Pensado. On the show, Dave interviews and does Q&A with the who’s who of the music production world, and the insights that the guests offer are often priceless pieces of wisdom, ripe for any skill level to consume.
Watching these interviews with all these amazing mixers, engineers, producers and song writers has further solidified something I have thought a lot about, even struggled with, over my years as an educator and artist. Some may be familiar with the term, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat,” but since I love my 2 cats far too much, I like to think of it as, “how many ways can you make change for a dollar?” The best thing about watching the show in binge increments is that you quickly notice that each heavy-hitter interviewed on Pensado’s Place has a unique approach to making a record, and at times, these techniques, insights, and ideologies are at direct odds with the person who was on the show just one week prior. The point that this continues to reiterate (to me at least) is that making great records/mixes/art isn’t about one specific technique, or a special piece of gear, or whether you are mixing inside or outside the box, it is about having a unique vision in your head and using the tools and techniques you are familiar with to achieve that vision. Just like there is more than one way to make change for a dollar, there is certainly more than one way to achieve an artistic goal and create a great piece of art.
Just in case you don’t believe me, let’s look at an example. In the Bruce Swedien interview, Bruce is adamant about not using compression in most recording and mixing scenarios, going as far as saying “compression is for kids” and stating that it destroys your transients and transients are what make a record special. Now there is solid wisdom in that statement, no doubt, a compressor when used improperly will destroy your transients and the music within, I can personally attest to that. But if we just stopped there, one might think, “alright, Bruce Swedien, mixer for Michael Jackson’s Thriller and a ton of other multiplatinum records, is telling me that I am whack for using a compressor, I better just STFU and trust this dude.” But in the Jack Joseph Puig and Michael Brauer interviews, those two guys, with equally impressive credits and (IMHO) just as much sonic swagger and credibility as Swedien, can’t stop talking about how much compression they use, anywhere and everywhere they seem to have a compressor doing something.
Now I certainly wouldn’t say that Jack or Michael’s records are “for kids,” both have done stuff that blows me away sonically, while at the same time is commercially accessible and sells records. So clearly what this tells me is that Swedien, Brauer and Puig all use and conceptualize compression radically differently in their workflows, but each is successful both artistically and commercially while simultaneously leaving a distinct “sonic footprint” on anything they do. I would also argue that if put in the same room, each would be able to digest and understand the other’s wisdom and put that in the context with their own ideas and techniques. In other words, even though Bruce makes change for a dollar differently than Jack or Michael, I doubt anyone would argue that, at the end of the day, they weren’t each making that dollar (both philosophically and literally speaking!). Furthermore, one man’s dollar could be another man’s pound, or yen. On a given day, I might like a Brauer mix better than a Swedien mix, tomorrow I might like both equally, and that is just my personal opinion, not a fact. Ultimately, everything is relative and entirely subjective, so you must take any wisdom or insight you glean from the world at large and filter it through your own unique esthetic lens before applying it.
As a teacher and mentor, I have found that these kind of discrepancies from such authoritative figures can really screw up a budding engineer or producer who is still trying to figure everything out. Someone who is still trying to wrap their head around their tools, how to use them and what their unique sound is can be heavily influenced by the commanding authority of a seasoned veteran, blindly following another’s statements to the extent that they don’t consider all their options and their own unique take on them. Because most of the questions from the audience in Pensado’s Place are centered around things like, “WHAT specific compressor do you use for this, and WHAT plug-in is BEST for that” I fear that people, even given the ability to compare and contrast the unique views of each of these amazing interviewees, don’t get that it is the WHY combined with the WHAT that is interesting. In other words, I don’t so much care about WHAT change you used to made that dollar, but WHY did you use 4 quarters, instead of 3 quarters, 2 dimes and a nickel? WHY does Brauer use compressors the way he does? Not the specific model numbers. And WHY doesn’t Swedien like to use them? and how are those unique personalities reflected on the work that they do. That is what is interesting.
To be fair, I have to give props to Dave for pointing out exactly what I am talking about on almost every show. To quote Dave, “I can teach you how to get a great vocal sound, but I can’t teach you what a great vocal sound is.” He always suggests that you take the ideas you learn and make them your own, and encourages the audience to pursue their own unique sound and vision. But as the questions pour in at the end of each segment, I can’t help but wonder how many of the viewers are actually taking this wisdom to heart. To me this would be like sitting with some famous dead author, say Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, and asking them “What specific words and grammar rules did you use to write this great book” and they sort of look at you all cockeyed and say, “are you serious?” That parallel might be a tad bit exaggerated, but you get the point.
Now I am not saying that the tips, tricks and techniques aren’t cool or useful. I absolutely love them and my mixes are certainly better for them, but I know how to responsibly digest them into my own unique workflow. I know that if I don’t remember why I sat down to mix in the first place and I just blindly put some random technique into place because Michael Brauer said it worked for him, then I am not really doing my job as an artist and I am missing the whole point of the creative process, and no doubt, my final product will reveal that. It’s true that the HOW or WHAT gives us insight into an artist’s technique, but it’s the WHY that gives us insight into an artist’s unique vision or “soul” and how they hear things. Regardless of how many tricks you pick up, or how many pieces of gear fill your rack, if you can’t piece the HOW and the WHY together in your own head when it comes time to write a song, mix a song, or create any piece of art, you won’t be able to reach the kind of head space that these industry icons are achieving when they create.
I understand the urge to seek easy answers and magic bullets, I really do. Unfortunately, you can’t buy inspiration, and there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to learn it even after years of practice. So when this “on-demand” world of instant gratification tells us, “sorry, it’s gonna take a lot of time to understand these concepts and develop your own opinion, and I’m afraid you can’t skip that part or BUY something that allows you to bypass that,” I understand that it’s not what most people want to hear and there is a whole industry out there preying on those who seek that magic-bullet, ready to sell you the next great thing. Learning to listen is hard, learning to have a opinion about sound is even harder, and learning how to take that opinion and turn it into a record is a struggle that even the best will continue to face until the day they retire, no matter how good they get.
Why do you think all these famous engineers aren’t worried about telling you how they did something? Why aren’t they worried you will learn all their tricks and take all their work tomorrow? Because they know that you can never be them. But guess what? They can never be you, and that is what makes the world and art so great. We are all unique and hear things differently. We all have different opinions about what sounds good and what doesn’t, don’t fight that, embrace it. Learn what you like, learn what other people like and if you don’t like it, ask yourself why. Form an opinion, and from that opinion forge a vision. Use that vision like a GPS to find your destination. Sometimes you will get lost in the fog and find yourself dissatisfied with your work, believe me, even the greats face this challenge daily, but never stop growing and refining the things that make you unique.
In closing, be sure to constantly ask yourself WHY when learning about the HOW or WHAT. It might be hard at first, but the sooner you can make change for that dollar, pound, yen, or *insert your own currency here* all by yourself, the sooner you’ll be able to buy something really special with it.
As an aside, I discussed some of these ideas in my interview with Lynda.com check it out if you’re bored sometime.
This entry was written by , posted on January 11, 2012 at 3:17 pm, filed under Articles, featured and tagged mixing, philosophy, producing, rants, song writing. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
So I’m lurking around on one of the more notorious audio message boards (you know the one, rhymes with “deer butts”) and I am checking out some of the buzz over an unreleased plug-in currently in development (I wont mention the plug-ins name because I have no gripe with the developers and actually think it could be an interesting piece of software). Anyway, the usual listening tests, commentary and e-peen measuring ensued, the trolls came out with their classic “null tests,” everything played out as expected, business as usual.
The bulk of the responses to this new plug-in were surprisingly positive, like I said, I think it could be a cool addition to a mixers toolkit but I won’t know for sure until I actually try it. But what amazed me the most was the number of posts from people fretting over the pending release date and how they would have to hold off on all their mixing projects until it came out, and we’re talking weeks not days. Site unseen, holding back mixes for something that isn’t even available to demo because of two audio samples created by the company that is selling the product sound, “pretty good.” Are you serious? I can’t believe how people continue to not get it, believing that their mixes suck solely because of their lack of some “magic bullet,” that once obtained, will allow them to transcend space-time and instantly become a better mixer; a mixer with taste, vision and a command of esthetics. By the way these posts we’re laid out you’d think Pfizer was in clinical trials with a pill for creative inspiration, “Creativia® - the viagra for your other brain.”
I could understand the first few times an amazing new plug-in or technology was announced that people might adopt this mentality, but common, the industry has been getting over on audio engineers for years with this kind of marketing bravado. It is almost like the latest plug-in is advertised and hyped like it was the latest weight loss scheme, and people are so afraid of accepting reality. Writing, recording, producing, mixing and mastering great music takes a lot of trips to the old wood shed. Practice, patience, and time to develop sensible tastes and understand the big picture. If a musician told you, “I have the most incredible song in my head, but I’m waiting for my new guitar to ship before I work it out,” you would probably laugh at them. Better yet, if an unhealthy, overweight friend told you, “I’m waiting for this new diet book to be released next month before I start trying to lose weight,” you would probably just shake your head in disbelief. Waiting to work on a mix for a plug-in you haven’t even demoed, let alone learned and integrated into your workflow is just a shame. Placing these kinds of artificial limitations on yourself will only perpetuate the idea that there is a magic bullet out there and you will end up just waiting some more when the next plug-in in announced.
Reading these posts reminded me of a story my favorite mastering engineer told me the last time I was in a session with him. He told me that he gets a call at least once a week from some amateur fader jockey claiming that the only reason they need to hire him is because they don’t have the quarter million dollars worth of gear that he has. These callers place so little value in the human element a mastering engineer adds to the point of being verbally confrontational. This made me so sad, but I totally believed him. It is not hard to believe, especially here in the silicon valley, that there are purely logic-centered people who feel that music engineering, especially mixing and mastering, is a completely objective set of skills and can be understood like any other software program or hardware schematic. This group insists that simply by having access to the tool and the operating manual will allow them to get the results they desire in a very short amount of time. It’s the “hell, if I can program this software, using it to make better music should be a piece of cake” mentality of many of these aggressively logical, tech savvy folks that tends to perpetuate this type of behavior (hint: they are generally the same types that spend more time posting on forums than actually working on music).
The reason I wanted to share these insights is not to belittle or berate this kind of mindset, but hopefully shed some light on the mistakes that I made so many times earlier in my career. You see, I was that dude who would hang on every software release, and pine for the latest audio hardware, pre-amp, or mic. I figured, shit, after programming my own modem drivers for linux, how hard can this mixing stuff be? Maybe it is a necessary part of growing into your own skin as an engineer, but a part of me wants to think that if someone politely tapped me on the shoulder and said, “hey kid, you wanna know the big secret? It’s practice, time and patience, and even then you wont know everything.” There is no doubt that great gear, both hardware and software, is a necessary part of any professionals toolkit, but at the end of the day they are just tools. Tools that provide incremental improvements to your workflow as you acquire the knowledge and experience to implement them into your work. Becoming a better mixer, producer, songwriter, or musician is an incremental and iterative process rather than a sudden paradigm shift in understanding, courtesy of some magic bullet plug-in, tip or tool. The sooner you understand this the sooner you can get on with your life and start worrying about the real magic element in art, the human element.
So my humble suggestion is, don’t wait for that plug-in, microphone, pre-amp, guitar, or *insert piece of audio gear here* to work on your art. Do yourself the favor of giving your skills and ears the benefit of the doubt. Take control of you own destiny and own up to the results, good or bad. Remember, the path to excellence in any artistic endeavor is never ending and uniquely different for everyone, don’t let a corporate road map of product releases sully the journey .
This entry was written by , posted on April 20, 2010 at 3:26 pm, filed under Articles, featured, News and tagged mixing, plug-ins, rant. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I swear, If I hear another R&B “Hit” with out of time vocals I am gonna go crazy. Look, autotune is fine, even appropriate in some instances. People dig it and I understand why; it’s fun, it’s a gimmick and people are suckers for gimmicks. My beef isn’t with autotune itself, it is the ~20 millisecond delay it creates when you insert it on a track. When this delay isn’t compensated for, you will hear an audible lag in the vocal track that tends to make the lyrics drag ever so slightly (not in a good way) and this definitely needs to be addressed. One would think that people making music getting played on the radio/TV would notice this delay and attempt to correct it, but somehow I continue to hear charted R&B and Hip-Hop singles with a noticeable and uncorrected “autotune” latency. Again, I’m not talking about a relaxed, “behind-the-beat” groove on the vocals, I am talking about a straight up, plug-in induced, 20-25ms lag on the entire track that is super obvious and distracting.
Why does this lag even happen in the first place? Allow me to explain. To get your busted vocal sounding like a drunk robot, autotune needs a little time to think things over and make a plan. This is where the latency, or lag comes in. Because autotune “looks ahead,” it has to delay the track a fraction of a second to do its job. Now Autotune 5 could track in real time with a lower latency than Autotune 6 (Evo) can, which has an updated pitch tracking engine, but you still wanted to correct this latency using either manual shifting or PDC (plug-in delay compensation). It is worth noting that all Antares processors with the EVO engine incur this delay and need to be compensated for.
But what if I want to sound like a robot, but correct for this latency? I’m glad you asked. Basically all you need to do is enable automatic delay compensation in your DAW (DAWs other than Pro Tools usually have this enabled by default so you don’t need to worry about it). If you are using Pro Tools LE/Mpowered (which lacks PDC), simply shift the audio on vocal track BACKWARDS in time by the amount of the delay (1380 samples to be exact). This article here explains the process in detail along with some other options. Be sure to track (record) with Autotune 5 if you want to hear the tuning while recording in real time, even if you are going to switch to Evo after the fact, the lower latency will help the performer reconcile what’s coming back through the headphones a little better. When you purchase Autotune EVO, a free license for Autotune 5 is included for this very reason, just install Autotune 5 and your ilok will take care of the rest.
This entry was written by , posted on October 28, 2009 at 12:02 pm, filed under Articles, featured, News. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Once hailed as game changing and certainly one of Pro Tools’ most buzz worthy features, has beat detective officially reached legacy status?
Yes and no. While elastic audio and tick based time references for audio tracks have made life easier for many editors, in some instances literally cutting the time it takes to complete a task by ten fold or more, I firmly believe beat detective still has a place and time (no pun intended) in a Pro Tools, at least for now.
BD or Elastic Audio?
Essentially, all beat detective really does is “detect beats” or transients of audio material (usually drums, percussion or monophonic bass/guitar). Once these “triggers” have been detected, the user has some options. Traditionally, slicing or separating a larger region’s transients into individual smaller regions and then subsequently “conforming” or quantizing these slices to the grid was beat detective most commonly used workflow.
This usually works OK, but can manifest problems worse than the bad timing was in the first place. Because beat detective physically cuts and moves regions (thus maintaining absolute phase accuracy in multi-track scenarios like drums) the gaps resulting after a conform are a neccissary evil of the process. While these gaps can be filled and cross-faded inside beat detective, many times the process of trimming the conformed regions reveals the decay of the previous note (this is especially the true when notes are extremely rushed or ahead of the beat, or when you are trying to add swing to an originally straight feeling performance). Often what engineers are forced to do is manually address these problem spots one at a time, usually pasting an alternate hit over the un-trimmable section (either from another part of the session or from samples taken from the kit during recording). This can take several hours, depending on how out of time the performance is and how often manual intervention is required. I personally have had sessions where completely rebuilding a section of drums manually with samples from other parts of the session was a faster option than trying to use beat detective. At which point I usually say to myself, “It would have been cheaper to rebook the studio, hire a better drummer and re-record the drums.”
Much of what was once done in beat detective has been replaced by the elastic audio feature set. Because elastic audio “warps” or stretches notes into time, no gaps are created when quantizing or conforming audio to a different feel, and since the “rhythmic” elastic audio plug-in is essentially just adding or subtracting space in between hits, you generally don’t have to worry about the “zipper” artifacts that plague granular re-synthesis based warping.
Some engineers argue that unlike beat detective, elastic audio can’t maintain perfect phase coherency across multiple tracks because the algorithm processes each track uniquely. While this is true, you can get around this somewhat by grouping the tracks before elastic analysis and processing, this method will try to maintain phase coherency as much as possible as audio is stretched. I generally find this group method yields usable results almost every time, and while I do hear very subtle differences in the phase alignment of the kit, they are so subtle that the cost of doing a 4 to 8 hour beat detective session wouldn’t warrant the improvement (nor be affordable or in the best interest of the client).
Like beat detective, I find that working with small sections (4-8 bars) at a time yields the most accurate results when conforming with elastic audio. This allows me to focus and address any errors manually as I work through the song. I generally do not try to conform fills and opt to manipulate them by hand, as the timing during these sections is often dramatically different than a grid quantize would suggest. For bass, I generally avoid automated conforming altogether and adjust each note by hand with warp markers.
Groove Extraction
All that said, I still haven’t fully addressed the question, “is beat detective dead?” For quantizing drums and other percussion, pretty much. At least for my workflow it is. Simply put, time is money and elastic audio saves me lots of time and sounds really good if you know how to use it. But I still use beat detective almost daily for it’s lesser known feature, “groove template extraction.” Groove template extraction uses the same process of detecting beat triggers but instead of separating/conforming those triggers it records them to a groove template. A groove template is essentially a list of tick offsets from the grid, with a goal being to extract the groove of one things and apply it to another. For example, if the “and of four” is slightly behind the beat, a groove template would record the exact number of ticks that note was from the grid point (…|4|480). Subsequently, when I quantized something with that groove template, the off-beat of 4 would be pushed back a bit. If I had to imagine a groove template as a text file, the following 1 bar template would describe a swung 8th note feel:
Grid: 1|1|000 Offset: +0 ticks
Grid: 1|1|480 Offset: +100 ticks
Grid: 1|2|000 Offset: +0 ticks
Grid: 1|2|480 Offset: +100 ticks
Grid: 1|3|000 Offset: +0 ticks
Grid: 1|3|480 Offset: +100 ticks
Grid: 1|4|000 Offset: +0 ticks
Grid: 1|4|480 Offset: +100 ticks
When beat detective is in groove extraction mode, it measures the difference from the triggers it detects to the tick grid and records them either to the groove clipboard or a new groove template. At that point, I personally would use elastic audio to quantize another region with the newly created groove template.
In this workflow, there is a sort of symbiotic relationship between beat detective and elastic audio, at least until Avid integrates groove template extraction into the elastic analysis engine (I believe sonar has a feature like this in its elastic implementation). I imagine an elastic audio system that would allow me to let’s say, click on a menu and see a list of every other elastized track and choose “quantize to follow track XYZ.” At which point the warp markers of one track would reconform to match the analysis (or warp markers) of another track in the session.
Bar Beat Marker Generation
One additional usage of beat detective is it’s bar|beat marker generation mode, which is specifically designed to conform a session’s grid to a freely recorded piece of audio. It is sort of like reverse groove template extraction, where audio that may not conform to any one tempo is assigned a grid based on the transients absolute sample position. Think of a performance and it’s transients representing specific beats of the music (1,2,3,4 etc). Now imagine the grid is flexible and all you have to do is place a push pin at each transient marking what bar|beat it represents. In this scenario, Pro Tools switches the tempo ruler to bar|beat marker mode and every pair of bar|beat markers may represent a change in tempo. Remember, you are not conforming or quantizing the audio, it is the grid itself that is moving. A freely recorded piece of music that may sound consistent will still have small tempo changes, maybe a fraction of a BPM per measure.
Most would ask, “why on earth would I want to conform the pro tools grid to my audio, and not conform my audio to the grid?” Say you have a session that was not recorded to a click, but you like the feel and want to add additional MIDI and/or do some editing. Your options are either to work completely in slip mode (without the ability to quantize additional MIDI performances), or to develop a bar|beat grid based on your freely recorded audio. The people who track notes for guitar hero and rock band have to do this kind of stuff all the time, as most of those classic songs from the 70s and 80s were not recorded to a click and creating an accurate control track requires MIDI with many tempo changes over the course of the tune.
Identify Beat
An alternative to Beat Detective’s bar|beat marker generation is Event>Identify beat, which uses the same concept of sample based bar|beat markers to develop a grid around a freely recorded session. The only difference here is that you will use tools like tab to transient to place the cursor and identify beat to manually insert a bar|beat marker into the session. I actually prefer this method over beat detective as it gives me a lot more control and I can generally get a song mapped (placing one marker per measure) in under 10 minutes.
In Closing
While the sonic purist may still consider using beat detective for mult-track drum timing, and certainly every unique situation calls for a slightly different approach, over the past 2 years elastic audio has definately taken a big bite out of my beat detective work flow. I will of course continue using beat detective for groove template extraction until a faster solution is implemented, and I will probably always use indentify beat when mapping out free performances, but for the most part I am glad to leave those aweful gaps and tediously long editing session behind.
This entry was written by , posted on October 14, 2009 at 3:32 pm, filed under Articles, featured and tagged beat detective, editing, elastic audio, pro tools. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
