Just Did a New Song Using a Different Mixing Technique (Now with Binaural Atmos version)

[Anderton]

I'm going to write about "inside-out" mixing in my July 19 "Friday Tip fo the Week" post for the PreSonus blog. I think it may have contributed to this song being done in under 3 weeks, including the video. I think that's the fastest I've ever done a song.

 

 

[ElmerJFudd]

Drums are nice and punchy.   

[Anderton]

27 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Drums are nice and punchy.

 

There's no dynamics processing on the electronic drums in the verses, and only about 2.5 dB of limiting on the acoustic drums in the chorus. There's no compression on any of the tracks. The only other dynamics processing is about 4.5 dB of limiting on the vocals.

[David Emm]

You come by your how-to books honestly, because your mixes have a finesse that makes even your simpler songs immersive. It brings to mind the breadth of Andreas Vollenweider's mixes, with everything in the right places. Mine can get like a freeway pileup in the fog. 🙄 

[ElmerJFudd]

17 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

There's no dynamics processing on the electronic drums in the verses, and only about 2.5 dB of limiting on the acoustic drums in the chorus. There's no compression on any of the tracks. The only other dynamics processing is about 4.5 dB of limiting on the vocals.

Are the acoustic drums a library we’re familiar with? 

[Anderton]

On 7/8/2024 at 5:43 PM, ElmerJFudd said:

Are the acoustic drums a library we’re familiar with? 

 

Maybe...at the risk of TMI, it's the Discrete Drums 2 library by Chris McHugh, with additional percussion loops by Eric Darken. It came out in 2007. Sonoma Wireworks bought out the Discrete Drums libraries and included the sounds in their Drumcore virtual drummer software, but they apparently went out of business. You can still find some of the original CD-ROM sets on Reverb. 

 

The library itself is multitracked drums intended to load as Pro Tools sessions, but the raw files were suitable for other DAWs. There were also stereo mixes of drum loops, and I was hired to acidize them for stretching. That led to my doing an industrial/EDM remix version of the drum loops called "Turbulent Filth Monsters." I got the rights back for it, and M-Audio sold it (quite successfully) until they stopped selling loop libraries. I met Chris McHugh at NAMM once and although I expected him to break my legs for what I did to his loops, he actually thought it was cool.  

 

I use the Discrete Drums loops on probably 80% of the music on my YouTube channel. Individual hits are also included, which makes it easy to throw in accents and offbeats or even create new loops from scratch with the same sound. There are two keys to making the drums sound good. One is shuffling beats around by cut/copy/paste, so the loops fit better with arrangements. For example, cymbals are almost always overdubs instead of from the loops. 

 

Also, the Discrete Drum loops benefit greatly from EQ. However, the curves are different for the different "construction kits." Here's the curve I used for "Inside the Eye of the Hurricane." The graph is +/-6 dB.

 

 

 

Rick DiFonzo was co-founder of Discrete Drums. He's played with Roger Waters, Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle, and others, as well as written music for "Friends" and "Saturday Night Live." Discrete Drums also did libraries by Greg Morrow and Tony Morra. I always felt the DD drum libraries were far superior to everything else, but they didn't sell that well. Rick told me "I don't think we knew how to do drum libraries that well." I always felt the problem was that people didn't know how to use them.

 

 

[Nowarezman]

Really nice tune, Craig.  I like the tight construction - it drives nicely, has a few unexpected shifts in rhythm and texture, but no hint of disjointedness - good transitions between sections. 

 

Most of all, the way you've treated the vocals is a real treat - there's a lot going on with the vocals, lots of contrast in the vocal treatments between sections, but it still flows and as they say, serves the song.

 

Your singing sounds unforced yet still expressive - some nice vocal inflections in there, too. 

 

nat

 

 

 

[Anderton]

Thank you so much for your kind comments about the vocals! What you're hearing may be due to being mostly first and second takes. There's also no compression, just about 4.5 dB of limiting or so to shave off the peaks. So there's not much between my voice and your ears, which might account for the expressiveness you hear. The sound isn't much different compared to what you would hear if you were in the room while I was singing. 

 

I might also add that the Universal Audio DLX mic seems to really get along well with my voice. It's the best addition to my studio in years. I never thought I'd get excited about a mic, but it's in a class by itself.

 

Finally, I also posted a binaural Atmos mix for headphones or earbuds. I think the contrast between the stereo and Atmos versions are more striking than the previous two songs I uploaded with both stereo and Atmos versions. I feel like I'm getting a handle on some of the neat expressive things you can do with Atmos. For example, with the analog synth filter cutoff sweep, as the frequency goes higher, the sound becomes moves further away in the stereo field, and spreads out more. It's subtle, but wow, what a difference compared to just altering the filter cutoff.

 

It's a shame there's so much hate about Atmos because people mistakenly believe you need a big-bucks system with lots of speakers. I still have a stereo setup, but that's all you need for binaural mixes that sound fuller and more satisfying (at least to me) than conventional stereo.