Sundown

Hi Ken, It happens when this short melody part hits C6, which is around 1 KHz in fundamental. At that same moment, some EP chords are playing behind it, along with a percolating acoustic guitar arpeggio. My hypothesis is that the frequencies are stacking up and creating a resonance. What I can do to test the hypothesis is solo the parts, run it through my finalizing chain and then see if the individual parts distort. I’m already using a lot of dynamic EQ, ducking, etc., to give the individual parts room to breathe, but something about the 1 KHz region makes my phone speaker buzz and resonate (or it could be a multiple of the fundamental, eg. 2K, 4K, etc). I could also create some basic sine waves and see what frequency is causing the phone to resonate. Todd

I’m going to give it one more try … I’m going to play the part one octave lower with a different sound. The simple fact is, professional tracks don’t fuzz-out an iPhone speaker like mine does. Which tells me there is a buildup of frequencies in the 1-2K range that need to be tamed. Todd

Hey all, First off, let me say that I’m not a professional and I don’t earn any money from my music. It’s simply a hobby but one that I want to do as best I can. But keeping that context in mind can be helpful for keeping perfectionism in check. So I’ve been working on a dynamic instrumental track for a while (mostly synth/sampler-based) and there’s just one part that is still problematic. It’s six bars in the track that have a relatively high melody part played with a heavily-EQ’d EP sound in the octave of C5 to C6. C6 is roughly 1K at the fundamental and C5 is about 500 Hz. Most playback systems sound pretty good (again, keeping in mind I’m an amateur), but when I play it back on an iPhone speaker those notes resonate and create a fuzz. When I listen to professional reference tracks at the same volume that doesn’t happen. I’ve already dipped the heck out of the problematic frequencies (including dynamic EQ) and I’ve cut the part so heavily that I had to employ noise elimination in Wavelab to raise the level without hiss. But it still creates a fuzz with that specific playback method. It sounds fine in the car, on my monitors, on my iPad speakers, with a good set of headphones, with ear buds, etc. I’m going to try replaying the part an octave lower and I’ll use some ducking and panning to try and avoid a conflict with the lower register, but my question remains: How much care/concern do you give to a lousy playback medium? Music doesn’t generally sound good from iPhone 13 speakers. I’ve listened to and tweaked this track so much, I’m ready to move on to other material. But I don’t want to let something go that I can possibly fix. Thanks in advance. Todd

It would be the Oberheim OBX8, or the “lowly” Sequential Rev2, which I think is a phenomenal package for the money (and has 16 voices).

Hey all, We’re all on a journey, and mine right now is mixing and mastering (and more specifically EQ proficency). I’ve been working on a track for a while, and having hit a few roadblocks, I pulled up my Wavelab Spectrometer to look at some of my reference tracks. Despite what my ears were telling me, I was surprised to see a very even, very present frequency balance in the 10-16K range (or higher) with some of my reference tracks. Very clearly the tracks I had chosen were dipping unpleasant frequencies on key parts (and perhaps dipping with a wide Q), but they were remarkably even in overall response up to 15K or more. I pulled up my song and I saw that I had no frequency energy in the 10-15K range. I employed low-pass filtering too much and I sucked all the air out of my mix. I made changes tonight, and while I’m not quite there, I have a new appreciation for the 12-15K region of frequencies. The biggest surprise came from Enya’s “On Your Shore”, which I posted about recently here. If you look at the opening synth pad on a high-quality spectrometer, you’ll see an introductory part that doesn’t eclipse 3500 to 4000 Hz, with the rare exception of a narrow but very visible blip at 15K. That 15K wasn’t put there by accident. I applied my learnings to my latest mix, and while I still have some things to fix, I have a new appreciation for the 12-15K region of frequencies. With the right application, Boy, those frequencies can really open up a part. Todd

I think I’ve got the bottom end right now … It’s not perfect, but it’s leaps and bounds better. I’ll post the finished track soon. The fix was to use a very simple General MIDI patch from my XV-3080, recorded mono, and played with light velocity. It was actually a Slap Bass patch but as long as I kept the velocity low it sounded like a fingered bass without the slap twang. Then I cut away what I didn’t want with EQ and ran it through a Distressor plugin (UAD) and just mashed the hell out of it (6:1 or Opto 10:1). I compressed it not to raise the level, but to anchor it and keep it steady as can be. I don’t have a kick drum in this section, so I couldn’t use a drum transient to emphasize the bass at low playback levels, so I just added a bit of boost in the 1.5K range to raise the string resonance a bit. With all of these pieces combined, it sounds pretty good across multiple environments. Thanks again. Todd

It’s the wrong business model for a company like Apple. It’s extremely capital and resource-intensive, it’s low margin, it’s slow and expensive to scale, it’s logistically challenging, and there are countless legal/regulatory hurdles to manage. There’s a a reason there have been so few new entrants into the market, and the few that try don’t often survive for long. Apple has a lot of cash and tremendous borrowing power (and an obvious software advantage), but I don’t see them investing in factories and thousands of skilled people to earn less than 10% margin (and 10% is the best you can hope for). Todd

Boy, that’s a great article. Thanks for sharing. Todd

Hi Craig, I’m in between. I typically mix with a bus compressor set to a very light setting (2:1 with maybe a dB or two on peaks), because it fundamentally shapes the tone of the song. If I use an SSL recreation or a Vari Mu, the choices I make with channel EQ and levels will change depending on which bus compressor is present. Most often I use the SSL G (UAD or Waves) and I use it primarily to glue a mix together. The only time I’ll use a bus EQ is for momentary checking (and it’s always the Manley Massive Passive from UAD). I won’t render with it, but it gives me an approximation of what the mix will sound like later. It really glues a mix together, but i prefer to make overall EQ adjustments during mastering. My general adage is, if I have to use an EQ on the master bus to fix a mix, there’s probably something wrong at the channel level I need to address. Occasionally I will check the mix with a limiter as well, as it sometimes influences my level setting. But it’s a momentary check, never rendered. Todd

I feel like I need to suck some low end out of the Electric Piano chord part as well. There might be some build-up that isn’t helping. Todd

Great observation, Josh. And particularly relevant/important as Tina’s track has a rhythmic drone on G#. I agree with you that I probably need to change the sound. When I find that I’m EQ’ing the hell out of something, generally the arrangement is wrong or the sound is wrong. I’ve struggled to find something simple and thin enough. The D-20 sound is literally one partial/oscillator. When I listen to Tina’s track, I hear a real electric bass, almost certainly played with fingers (as opposed to a pick). Her track has an advantage with a kick drum, in that it helps define the notes. With Fletcher-Munson, bass really disappears on my track on small devices or at low volume and there’s no drum to keep it present. But I’ll keep trying. Thanks for the input. Todd

Hey all, I’m trying to finish an instrumental track and the synthetic/sampled bass is still just too thick. I’ve used everything from sampled HALion basses to my Roland D-20, which has some simple but effective bass sounds I’ve created over the years (and it’ s one of the reasons I keep that instrument). My current approach is a layer of the two with some drastic LPF/HPF to eliminate clash. The closest sonic match I’m shooting for bass-wise is Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It”. Her track has a kick drum and mine doesn’t, but her song has this very steady, non-intrusive bass. Her song is in G# minor and I’m in C minor so my fundamentals are a bit different, but there are shared notes as my bass line has C, Bb, Ab, and F in it. I’ve looked at Tina’s track in Pro Q3 to see what’s peaking and what’s absent, and it seems like 100 Hz is strong, 60 Hz has some presence, and 80 Hz is low/non-existent. I’ve tried cutting in the mud range (250 to 800) but I’m still missing the target. I don’t believe this is a problem of not hearing the bass accurately. My room is purpose-built and treated and I can hear the problem. I’m just not sure how to fix it and I’ve tried a lot of parametric and dynamic EQ and even a bit of very modest transparent compression (Waves C1). I’ve included Tina’s track below along with an MP3 snippet of mine. Any suggestions on how I can tighten up this bottom end? Is it a level problem, or an EQ problem? Thanks in advance. Todd JB Bass.mp3

Talk about songwriting pressure … I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but that whole thing came together *quickly*.

We watched it a few days ago and loved it. My wife isn’t a musician, so it appeals to everyone. She loved it too. I hadn’t seen your post and I posted something in Craig’s forum. It’s definitely worth watching. Todd

I bought one new in the early 2000’s and it’s still a part of my studio rig. I don’t think there is an instrumental or track I’ve written that doesn’t have at least one patch on it. I find it quite easy to edit and navigate and often I can get what I’m looking for by just turning off a partial or two, or changing the cutoff and envelope values. It also has a pretty deep modulation matrix that is easy to use. I typically use the XV for analog synth pads, synth comp sounds, and a few synthetic EPs. I will say that you have to watch out for pitch instability (some of those presets have a lot of “Analog Feel” on them), and I always turn off the onboard effects when I record the audio. I also find that I have to use a lot of EQ and dynamic EQ to tame resonances. Tape in the 90’s helped smear some of that off, but with digital, those nasty resonances get captured and require some surgery. Todd

Hey all, If you have Netflix, I highly recommend watching “The Greatest Night in Pop” which is a documentary about the making of “We are the World”. It appeals to non-musicians as well (my wife loved it). Todd

I won’t kid you, for having a 12-year-old PC, it’s a sweet setup … I can run a lot of CPU-hungry plugins without consequence. And with ASIO-Guard and the native conversions, even an old Core i7 does very well. I plan to get a new PC in 2025 (Audio PC Labs Rok Box MCx), but this small investment has allowed me to use some CPU-intensive reverbs for very little cash. Todd

Pretty maids, all in a row … I installed it today along with my Duo, and all ten chips are singing now. I had ten instances of the Lexicon 480L going without issue. Not that I would run ten instances, but that’s as hungry a plugin as they come and this will give me tremendous flexibility. I could see running four or five instances of the AMS RMX, as that unit does some amazing things. UA also includes this awesome, bound, printed catalog of all their hardware and software. They know how to cater to GAS. Todd

I said to myself, if one went on sale, I’d add it to my PC (I presently have a Duo). Well, select sites are selling them for $699 and I took the leap. I install it tomorrow. I’m going to keep my Duo to have ten active chips. Good times … Todd

Hi Guys - I’m still struggling to find the person who has the reels. Once I can locate them (the odds are diminishing), then I’ll be in a position to do something. Todd

Hey all, I’ve sidechained compressors before to create some space around dialog or vocals, but I’m liking Dynamic EQ better for this purpose. I recently set-up a “valley” or band-stop filter and made both shelves dynamic, and it creates a lovely space in the guitar part around the dialog. I also manually pull down the fader a bit to create some more space. I couldn’t do a screen grab of the ducking in action, so I just grabbed a static screenshot and drew-in a dotted line to show the effect it has when the side-chain is active. The frequency spread might seem a bit broad for ducking the human voice (and I used a whopping -9 dB of range), but in action it works great. Since it’s side-chained and fluctuates based on input signal, it never really hits -9 dB. I can’t take credit for any of this technique … I learned it from Craig’s latest book on EQ. Todd P.S. The screen grab was taken when I had it set to -6 dB. I got better results with -9 dB with this particular piece.

Yep - I don’t recall exactly when that happened, but it was before I bought it in November/December. The Vari-Mu is still DSP-based, but Massive Passive is now native. I bought the AMS RMX16 reverb in December, and holy cow, that’s another one I’m eagerly awaiting a native version of. On my UAD-2 Duo, I can get maybe 2 or 3 instances but that’s it. It’s not as hungry as the 480 XL, but it’s hungry. The RMX16 isn’t a do-all reverb, but the sounds it does do are amazing. The Hall, Non-Lin, Ambience, and Reverse programs are wonderful. And the Chorus and Delay programs are quite good too. I’m working on a track right now and I could happily use four instances for variety, along with using a short/modest hall for the mix reverb. I bought it on a whim for $49 and it’s been a stunner. Todd

There’s a lot of good stuff in there … The huge Jupiter brass at the beginning, the synth bass, and the “frog” sound from an old Casio. There are quite a few YouTube videos about how those sounds were made (from the people who made them). Todd

I always like the Jupiter / OB-X combo on Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back”. It’s believed that Prince played the parts, but there is some debate about that. It’s another Van Halen track, but the hard-sync’d Oberheim mono/unison part on “Why Can’t This Be Love?” is amazing. On the softer side, I’ve always loved the heavily-filtered Prophet 5 on Genesis’ “Man on the Corner”. Coupled with the 808 and the other parts, it’s a remarkable track.

I think software is getting better overall in this arena. With the latest version of Cubase you can store presets for inserts, etc. and you can certainly create a starting project that has all of your channel setups in place. I hate having to disable/enable plugin delay compensation (so I don’t like to add a bunch of processors by default), but you can always save your template with the processors turned off and they are just a click away. Todd