February 23rd, 2011 – Lately, I’ve been working on mixing a small musical that will debut this Friday. It’s definitely a step outside of my comfort zone as mixing live is very different from mixing in a studio, and mixing a musical is very different from mixing a band. Here’s a compilation of some of the things I’ve learned and things that are different from studio work.

For one, there’s a lot of waiting around, but when the show is live, it’s very stressful. In fact, I don’t sit down for the entire performance, constantly monitoring levels and riding the faders. I am communicating constantly with the stage manager, a partner that cues music, and another that cues multimedia portions. Great communication between all of us makes the job flow a lot smoother.

One of the things that makes mixing theatre particularly difficult is different actors coming on and off scene at different times in each act which requires muting and un-muting their wireless microphones on the fly. This requires learning the scripts very well to know who needs what at any given time. Additionally, the actors have very different levels when singing versus speaking. This can be partially combated by subtle compression, but to remain dynamically interesting I prefer to manually adjust levels as the situation requires.

Occasionally all twelve of the main actors sing together. We have the use of stage monitors but not in-ear monitors. This means that for the actors to hear enough of themselves to work out their sometimes complex harmonies, the monitor mix must be loud enough for them to hear, but quiet enough to not feedback into their sensitive wireless microphones. Because they’re dancing and moving around quite a bit, there is no ideal position for the monitors. I must EQ out the natural feedback tones of the space to reduce the occurrences of feedback, but I cannot eliminate it.

This musical moves pretty quickly between acts and scenes with no intermission. This means that I have very little time to set up audio for the next scene. Luckily, the venue I’m mixing in has a digital mixer which allows me to save mix settings. I’ve found that saving presets for each significantly different scene helps a great deal. I can set up default mutes for actors that aren’t onstage at the beginning of a scene, and I can also set mutes and un-mutes for the monitors for when the actors are just speaking and not singing. The downside of this is that if I want to adjust say the pre-amp setting of an actor’s microphone, I must do it across all preset scenes which can’t exactly be done on the fly. If I need to adjust more than one actor’s settings, that multiplies the work. Take the amount of changes you need to do across the board, and multiply it by the number of presets. You can see how one small change could be a big problem.

For this particular musical which lasts just an hour and a half, I have 19 different scene presets. Even with the presets, I have a copy of the script beside me that I’ve written all over that includes my own scripted movements. For example, when one actor goes into a whisper, I have a note to myself to raise the gain on his channel and bring it back down again after that short section. As well as I think I know to make certain changes, I write everything down because when it’s showtime, I can get caught up in the moment and forget. I never want my mistakes to kill the actors’ flow.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is to let things out of my control go. In a studio setting, you can control almost everything in the environment down to the performances that are recorded for posterity. In live situations, anything can and does happen. Sometimes an actor will position their microphone in a position that pops when they move in a certain situation. There’s nothing you can do during the performance except compress their channel so that pops don’t feedback into their microphones and maybe ride the mutes along with their dialogue.

Coming from a studio background, the “in the moment”-ness of live sound mixing is a refreshing change. It’s definitely been an eye-opening experience. I was a bit apprehensive when I first took on the project, but I’m glad I had a chance to be a part of it. And then there are great moments when I can forget about what needs to be done, and just lose myself in mixing the music; it’s fantastic.

If you’ve mixed live sound, do you have any tips to share?

January 23, 2011 – A new year, a brand new product review! Audio-Technica was kind enough to send me a set of their DJ headphones, the ATH-PRO700. I’ve been itching to try out a good set of headphones since the ones I’ve used to mix and listen with for the past 10 years, have begun disintegrating.

Because I check my mixes with a couple sets of in ear monitors, one of them being the Ultimate Ears Triple-Fi I reviewed last month, I haven’t been in a rush to replace my old headphones. When the ATH-PRO700′s arrived, however, I was eager to see if they would be a good replacement.

It helps to know that the ATH-PRO700 has been categorized by Audio-Technica as for DJ’s. As I’m sure you know, DJ’s are pretty rough with their headphones and need something that can withstand the punishment of gigging professionals. When I picked up the ATH-PRO700′s I was surprised by their weight. I normally look for the lightest set for comfort but I was surprised at how beefy these headphones are.

The headband is especially thick and feels like it could take a bullet. The closed ear capsules both fold and rotate completely which means that the headphones are easy to store (they come with a vinyl bag for storage) and are more likely to rotate than snap when put in an awkward situation; definitely a plus. I’ve heard that some have had issues with the swivel portion of the headphone cracking, but since I haven’t had the headphones for that long I can’t comment on that; they seem pretty well-built to me so far. The ear cups isolate the sound well, but a bit more foam would be nice as. For me at least, they pressed on my ear a bit.

The audio wire only comes off of one side which makes it more convenient to wear, especially when monitoring each ear separately. It’s a decently thick gauge, with an eighth inch stereo plug (a screw-on quarter inch adapter is included). The cord is sufficiently long for personal listening, but you might want an extension if you’re the dance-while-dj’ing type.

Ok, so how does this set of cans sound? Super bass flavour! These things have a tonne of bass, and pretty decent treble as well, although I found the mid-range lacked a bit of clarity. The ATH-PRO700 also get plenty loud, and with the good isolation from the cup design (although it could be improved even more with increasing the padding size as I stated before), these things are great for a noisy club environment.

The soundstage was distinct, though not as wide as I would have liked in some situations. Would I use these to mix on? Probably not, as the frequency range is boosted for a DJ’s ears. I would definitely use them to reference on when creating dance or hip hop music. These two genres are what the ATH-PRO700 are clearly designed for and while classical music might not sound great through these, dance and hip hop do.

The bottom line is that DJ aren’t necessarily worried about the same things as an audio engineer or audiophile; they want a loud, and great sounding set of headphones and the ATH-PRO700 delivers on those counts. DJ’s also want something that is rugged, and the ATH-PRO700 seem to be pretty well built. As some others have had issues with the headphones breaking, I will update this review if anything happens to my set, but so far they’re working out great. With a very affordable street price of around $115, I’d definitely check them out if you’re in the market for a set of headphones for dance and hip hop.

Audio-Technica ATH-PRO700

January 17th, 2011 – I hope you guys have gotten a great start to the year. Mine has been quite busy and I have big plans for the site. For one, I’m working on a visual overhaul, but as regular readers may have noticed, I’ve stopped posting as many articles on new gear coming out.

I will still continue to post about new gear if I find it exciting, but I’d like to focus this site on more DIY engineering, producing, and songwriting articles, as well as product reviews. I feel like I can provide more value that way. You may have noticed that the site has already started moving in that direction.

Our joint collaboration project has been coming along quite well with many readers from around the world collaborating, with many more to come. If you haven’t already, check out the progress so far at the link above.

For those of you who are participating in the project, I really appreciate your hard work. I’m hoping to run more collaboration projects with different criteria and hopefully you’ll meet people you like working with and you can splinter off into your own collaboration projects. Would anyone be interested in a forum associated with this site that would allow you to collaborate with other readers, and perhaps ask for creative advice? Let me know in the comments.

I’d also appreciate it if you could tell me what direction would you like the site to take? Are there certain posts you like more, are there posts you would like less of? I can’t promise I’ll be able to incorporate all suggestions, but I’ll do my best.

I received a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-PRO700′s and I’ve been itching to write a review, so look for that to come out in the next couple days!

December 29th, 2010 – Hey everyone, hope your holidays are going well. With all the hubbub these past few weeks, I haven’t had much time to write music. The other day however, I got to record a bit with some friends which was a refreshing change from my normal work week. Yesterday, I sat down to polish a couple of my own songs, and it got me thinking about the phrase “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!” (I often get cerebral with songwriting when I’m not in a particularly inspired mood).

I’m sure that if you’ve ever read tips on songwriting, they often suggest getting to the meat-and-potatoes of the song as soon as possible. Usually this means getting to the song’s title lyrics, or it could mean the chorus. Whether it’s a memorable lyric or musical phrase or sound, the idea is to grab the listener as soon as you can or risk losing their interest.

Of course, this advice really only applies for those who are trying to write hit songs. If you want to write songs for other people, the easier it is to sell it, the better. If you are writing songs to express yourself (the best situation to be in IMO), then ignore all of this and write from the heart.

Gary Ewer has posted a blog article (linked below) that examines the top 10 songs in the Billboard Hot 100. He breaks down when both the title of the song first appears in the lyrics, and when the chorus first appears. His examination seems to show that having your song title and/or chorus occur early does help a song’s initial popularity.

Is “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus” Fact or Myth?

December 13, 2010 – I recently received a set of Ultimate Ears TripleFi 10 IEM’s (in ear monitors) and I’ve had a few days to put them through their paces. The TripleFi 10s, as the name suggests, contain 3 drivers, each corresponding to the low, medium, and high frequency ranges.

Many earphones claim to go down to super low frequencies, lower than the normal range of human hearing in fact; in the TripleFi 10s Ultimate Ears says the can get down to 10 hz. While I have no way of objectively measuring if they can back this up, I can say that the amount of bass energy they were able to provide was surprising.

Over the years, I’ve owned dozens of earphones and headphones. I even had several iterations of the Panasonic portable CD players and tape decks (remember those?!) that had a motor in the proprietary headphones to shake them off your head. Honestly though, it was all for show because the bass distorted pretty easily.

I could almost feel the bass in my chest with these IEMs. Will they replace a nice set of speakers? Of course not, but when they are well sealed in the ear cavity, they provide a nice rich bass that’s quite warm. To ensure that you do get the best fit, Ultimate Ears provides 3 sizes of rubber tips, and a couple sets of expanding foam ones. While I use similar rubber ones in my Shure IEMs, the Ultimate Ears foam set is so comfortable, it has me thinking of installing a set on the Shures.

Aesthetically, the TripleFi 10s are beautifully designed. In practice though, I find the earphones a bit awkward. I realize that they must be big enough to support the 3 drivers and the proper porting, but they are about an inch long and don’t sit flush against your outer ear; in fact, they stick out a bit. I’m not sure why they did this as the competing Shure SE530 sits more flush inside the ear and looks better on your head.

But looks aren’t why you’re paying $400 (MSRP but retails for much less), for a set of IEMs; you buy them for the sound. In that department, the TripleFi 10s excel. These IEMs are the best sounding earphones I’ve ever used. At $400 they are a good buy, but if you find them for less, they are a MUST buy.

As I touched on before, the bass is rich and warm, but at the same time not overpowering. There is great detail in the mids and highs, without being overly boosted. The best part of the aural experience is that everything sounds cohesive. When I say this, I mean that everything sounds like it’s playing together in one room rather than all in separate booths and then stuck together.

I used an Apple Lossless file and compared the output to a set of Shures (to be fair, they are less than half the price, and not a class competitor) to see the difference. Formerly the Shures sounded damn good for their price, however when compared to the TripleFis, I found that the frequency range was sharply boosted and cut in certain ranges. This made the instruments seem more isolated from each other.

In contrast, the TripleFi 10s had a very smooth frequency range but still retained great detail across the range. This is not to say that they have have a flat frequency response, but they sounded very pleasant. If I were to fault them aurally, I would say that they show off a bit too much in the low to mid range. In some lusher mixes I found it a little overwhelming.

One thing I might mention is that if you aren’t used to IEM’s, you may find the vocals too far forward. While the vocals sound great on speakers with the appropriate space away from you, IEMs sometimes bring the vocalist into your head spacially. This is not a mark against the TripleFis as all IEMs and earphones suffer from this, but it’s something to keep in mind if you are considering taking the plunge.

While a nice headphone amp would definitely help, I feel that the TripleFi 10s can be used on a daily basis without. They’re quite comfortable (if a bit awkward when putting them in), well constructed, sound great and are well-priced at most retail outlets. If you are in the market for a set of nice earphones, I strongly suggest you check them out. Also, if you work in a noisy office like me, they block out a lot of ambient noise without even being plugged in. You also get the benefit of people not bothering you as much because they think you’re listening to music.

December 9, 2010 – Ok, we are a go! Participation for this project is closed, and I’ve sent out invitations to the Dropbox account to everyone who showed interest. If you missed out on this project, we’ll get you on the next one. Hopefully this will all work out awesome, and will be the start of a cool collaborative community.

First off, I want to really thank you guys for your enthusiasm. I started this site a couple years ago, wanting to get a musical dialogue going. I wasn’t really sure how I was going to do that but I hope this project will be where it all ramps up.

Alright, enough with the sappy stuff, and down to the meat and potatoes of how I think this will go down. I’ve uploaded the starting loop into the Dropbox folder. It is a glockenspiel melody I recorded last week. In the course of this project, you are allowed to do whatever you want to it. I’ve CC-licensed it under Non-Commercial so if you want to use it for something else as long as you don’t sell it, I’m cool with that. I’d appreciate the attribution though.

Since I’ve never done anything like this before, the way this works may change as we see how everyone reacts. To make this truly collaborative, everyone will have a specific task in relation to this song. Whether that is laying down a drum or bass line, or mixing the track, tasks will be delegated by me. If you want to fill a specific roll, please let me know in the comments and I’ll try my best to accomodate. Please keep in mind that I still may not be able to give you the task you want. The list of tasks will change as the song begins to take shape. I will attempt to manage the project and keep everything in check, but I want you guys to feel free to cut loose.

Off the table currently are drums and mixing. The former claimed by Travis and the latter by Jon. Of course, the starting loop is also taken…after all I already recorded and uploaded it. For those who will be writing and recording melodies or filling in, you are able to do whatever you want as long as you respect the work of those who came before. In other words, feel free to create, but don’t bury others’ work.

As suggested by Jon over at AudioGeekZine, we will be working in Reaper. Reaper is a cross platform DAW that is available with full functionality even in the trial version. You can find it at www.Reaper.fm. If you need to pull the project into your own DAW to leverage your tools, go ahead, but be sure to export what you’ve done and re-import it into Reaper for the next person who works on the song.

If you are not part of the mixing team, please do not mix the track for the next person and especially do not “print” the mix so that it cannot be undone. As well, please keep the effects to a minimum unless it is a part of the sound you’re adding. Not everyone will have the same effects which will undo your work. If you must use an effect for a certain sound, please keep the original version without effects (muted of course) and “print” a version with the effect recorded on it.

As everything progresses, I will post updates on how the song sounds at every stage, probably using Soundcloud. This allows everyone to see what everyone else is doing, and also serves as a chronological timeline, which I think will be pretty cool in the end.

I’m very interested to see how this all turns out. When I produce music, I usually do everything from the songwriting all the way to the final mix. It never gets done the same way, or in the same order. With all the different ways we all create music, it will be interesting to see how our talents and weaknesses will fit together.

Ok, so the loop is out there. The first person to work on the track will be Travis Whitmore. I realize that the loops is simple and short, but I’m hoping his drums will bring a feel that the rest of the song can be built on. I expect the drum work will be short, and will only be played over the initial loop. After that, the song can be built, and we’ll bring Travis back near the end of the writing to flesh out the drums with all the other instruments.

So far the following people other than myself are in this project:

Darren Levy
Travis Whitmore
Jon Tidey
Jamal from True Brew Records
Dan Foley
Mr. Fresh
Bryan from the ImaginationConsultant
TC Helentjaris
Moveair
Andreas
CD
Paul Schaeffer
Doug

For all those listed, please confirm your interest in the comments, and if I missed any of you in the Dropbox invitation, please let me know. Also, let me know what your preference is to work on.

I would like this track to be accessible to people who aren’t music nerds like us, so while it doesn’t have to be commercial, it would cool if it wasn’t too out there in the end. I’m also going to provide a theme that we should think about as we get to our tasks. The theme will be music you would enjoy listening to while driving. Could be a plane, train, or automobile; whatever works for you.

Ok, the track is now in Travis’ hands. Who wants to work on melodies next? Let me know in the comments. Goooooooo team!

Collaboration Project Loop for KeyOfGrey.com by keyofgrey

Update Jan. 17, 2011 – Here is what the project sounds like as of 1/10/2011. Sounds great so far guys! Jan 10 Rough Mix of Collab Project by keyofgrey

November 18th, 2010 – So several of you have expressed interest in the collaboration project, and those that I have contact info for through your comments have been added to the shared DropBox folder. If anyone else wants to be part of the project, please comment on this post and enter your contact info in the form (email addresses won’t be shown publicly). Also, please tell everyone about this project as the more people we have, the better it’ll be.

After reading the comments on the last post about the project, I realized that I may not have been clear about what I had in mind. Originally I had thought that we would all submit samples into a shared directory and then everyone would create their own song from the same sample pool. At the end, we would share what we had all created.

I discussed this a bit with Travis from SilverLakeStudio, and Jon over at AudioGeekZine (who just had a beautiful baby girl so head over to his site and send him well-wishes) and they thought that instead we might create one song together with tasks separated to each interested person. I think that this is what many of you had thought I meant, and this is certainly more in keeping with the collaborative spirit. However, I’m not sure how this will work logistically as certain tasks are linear and cannot be done in tandem with others. For example, someone responsible for mixing cannot begin work before the song has been produced.

We would also need to make sure that everyone had their tasks done on time, and that no one bailed on the project. Because of this difficulty, I hadn’t considered this type of project. I’m thinking that perhaps we can start with the “common sample pool” project, see how that goes, and then try out the real collaborative project. What do you guys think? I could really use the feedback to decide where to go with this! Oh, and before I forget, I really appreciate the interest everyone has shown. Let’s get this thing going!

November 13, 2010 – We’ve all been there fleshing out a track and thinking “Oh this is the chorus”; Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. It happens in every genre, but especially to independent producers who do everything themselves. After all, if we want another chorus, we just need to clone another one and maybe add some new stuff on top right? Wrong.

Have you ever finished your production and it sounded a little flat. With stellar mixing and careful production, why doesn’t it sound as good as the latest record by so-and-so? The reason is groove. Of course, feeling a groove in traditional instrument music is important because otherwise it ends up sounding like cheap karaoke.

If you listened to the latest Taylor Swift track and it was a copy-paste affair, the production would be so generic that you would naturally tune the song out completely. However, she uses real session musicians who play the song through, even if a part repeats, allowing the nuances of their playing to keep the track interesting.

That’s all very well and good for big budget productions that can afford seasoned Nashville players, but what about the rest of us toiling away in our basements? It’s especially hard when we’re dealing with loops or with sequenced instruments.

Emulating the groove of a live performance is the best way to add interest to your productions. There are two main ways to do this in your home studio, play the instruments all the way through live (not an option for many) or to sequence the instruments and add groove templates.

Growing up, I was very fortunate in that my parents wanted me to be a musician. Over the years I’ve learned how to play enough instruments to be able to record a full session by myself. For those of us who are already instrumentalists, the process of adding groove is pretty easy: just play things all the way through instead of copy and pasting. You should also keep your quantization to a minimum.

This even works for hip hop tracks which may be built strictly with loops, and electronic music. Using a drum machine or a MIDI controller to trigger samples live adds the producer’s own groove. A lot of the most successful hip hop producers use a drum machine to play the samples in live, essentially making the loops an instrument. It doesn’t sound boring because the loops are triggered by a person and not by a square on a grid. For producers like Ninth Wonder, this is the bread and butter behind their soulful beats.

For electronic music, artists like Justice and Daft Punk play their electronic performances live and record them. Some parts may be sequenced, but mostly they are recording a band full of electronic instruments. In Justice’s case, they used Apple’s Garageband which comes free with the computer. I can guarantee you that the ability to add groove after the fact is severely limited.

So what about those who can’t play the parts in live? You can always add the groove of someone else. In most DAW software, there is an option to add a groove template which basically overlays MIDI timing from another person. You can buy the grooves of someone else, or you can sometimes extract it yourself. Then as a quantization option, you can apply that MIDI groove. Ever wanted to get the drum feel of John Bonham? Extract his groove from an old Zepplin track and apply it to your own sequenced drums.

Just the little bits of off-timing will add a whole new dimension to your productions. Your audience might not be able to put their finger on it, but they’ll know there’s a difference between one with live groove and one without.

November 11, 2010 – When I first started working with Logic, I immediately maxed out its processing power on my laptop within the first 5 minutes. In the time since then, I’ve done full 36 track mixes with effects, and mixed my own complete productions; all of this involved eking out as much processing and hard drive performance as I could from my laptop.

One of the problems with Apple is that upgrading your machine (in terms of processors) just doesn’t happen. As such, most users who spent all their money on their current computer often don’t have the money to upgrade as often as a PC user might(although I’m sure the rich fashionable set do). I’m sure Apple’s Logic team (consisting of legacy Emagic employees) quickly understood the limitations of Apple’s closed hardware model where a user might not be able to upgrade their hardware, and started to program clever little ways for a user to get the performance they need.

One thing they added was the ability to “freeze” tracks. Freezing a track basically tells the DAW to bounce down an a new audio track that’s a recording of the original with all the effects. At this point, the DAW will disable the original track and all the effects, and play the recording which has the effects “printed” on it. All you play is an audio file, thereby saving processing power, and the process is completely reversible.

The other awesome feature that they added was smart disabling of effects. As anyone who has used Space Designer can tell you, Logic effects are processor hungry. Smart bypassing means that when a track isn’t using an effect, Logic will automatically disable it upon playback; this saves your processing power for when you really need it.

Of course, this relies on Logic to make the decision for you. Because I don’t like to leave anything to chance, I automate the bypassing manually. If you press “A” on the arrange page, you will be able to draw in automation curves. I actually prefer drawing in automation to twiddling fake knobs (that’s what she said), so I will do volume automation almost exclusively here.

When you click down the dropdown for the track you want to automate, you will be given a menu that has a few standard options like Volume, however you will want to navigate further to “Main”. In this section, you will see a number of inserts corresponding to the effects you have inserted on the track. Select the insert number of the effect you want to automate the bypass for (the numbers represent effects top to bottom on your track). A coloured line will appear over the track in the Arrange window. Draw in your bypass automation which will be either on or off.

A quick note, smart disabling may give you a false sense of the max processor load since it will disable the effects in parts where you don’t need it, but if you have a chorus that has a lot of effects, bringing them all in at once may cause a core audio overload. You might not have expected this since the verse didn’t experience the same problem when the effects were smart disabled.

Hope this helps!

November 3rd, 2010 – I’m sure you’ve all heard that Protools, along with going native, now has an SE version that ships with either a USB microphone, an interface similar to the Mbox mini, or a MIDI keyboard. You may also have heard that you don’t have to go to your local Guitar Center to buy one either; you can get them at Best Buy.

Power users may scoff at the baby Protools (after all it has a maximum of 16 tracks) however I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it. At prices starting at $99 for the Avid Vocal Studio, $119 for the Avid Recording Studio, and $129 for the KeyStudio, the value is strong.

For the consumer that’s going to be picking up one of these bundles, 16 tracks will probably be more than adequate. Of course, maybe my perspective is a little skewed; when I first started recording, it was on four track tape reels (cassette and ADAT were way out of my budget). I quickly learned how to bounce down tracks to be able to record more.

Even when I tried the first versions of Cakewalk (one of the first consumer DAWs), I was limited in tracks because the computers weren’t fast enough back then. To me, 16 tracks would have been a huge luxury. But even today, I think that it would be adequate. Most of the people who are going to be buying the pack, are likely going to be recording themselves and won’t need tonnes of tracks.

I think Avid is being pretty smart with these low-cost offerings. They are including everything a person needs to get started at a super low pricepoint. When the user is ready to move on, there are plenty of higher priced offerings. I’m sure this is a direct effort against Apple’s DAW strategy: bundle Garageband for free, get users hooked and interested in Logic Express which is also very inexpensive, and then finally up to Logic Studio. Avid is one-upping this strategy by bundling hardware; what used to be a detriment in their professional offerings is now an asset in their lower ones.

When I worked in someone else’s studio, I used a combination of Protools and Logic. Logic to write songs, Protools to record vocals, and back into Logic for mixing. Even with all the improvements Logic has made with their audio editing workflow, I still find Protools faster, and more intuitive.

I am not currently running Protools (although I could get the M-Audio editions since I have FW410), so these low cost versions are enticing. As I would be using it to cut vocals only (16 tracks should be adequate for recording quick and dirty demos), the Vocal Studio is the most interesting to me. A hundred bucks for an M-Audio (on a side note, I’m sad that M-Audio as a separate brand from Avid no longer exists) USB microphone and Protools editing workflow? That seems like a very compact mobile recording solution.

I’m actually curious to hear what the bundled gear sounds like. Obviously the microphone isn’t going to compete with any Neumann, but will the interface included with the Avid Recording Studio hold up to my old FW410, or even an Mbox Mini? Have any of you had a chance to try them out?

Avid Vocal Studio