Original Message                 Date: 03-Oct-00  @  03:06 PM   -   Your approach to isolation...Please.

Defector Z

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Okay - so here's the thing...

I've been doing electronic music for over 2 years now. When I listen to a lot of professional and semi professional mixes, each "instrument" is well isolated. Everything seems to have a spot in the mix. The kik drum never seems to overlap with the bass line, competing synth lines are separate and distinct. I have a lot of trouble doing that. I don't know if my approach is wrong, if I'm simply selecting the wrong patches, or I am just not thinking out the box well enough.

A couple of things I have thought of that seem to have worked a little.

1. Filter the kik drum - remove anything under 80hz, and roll off the top so it doesn't go much higher than say 200. I'm still having trouble with the bass line though, as it often overlaps on the kik. Like the bass is from 60hz to 150. That's only if I'm using a sine. Use something else with a larger spectrum, and it starts overlapping the punch of a snare, or the lows on a thick synth.

2. Patch selection - I often pick a patch because it has a big sound. If I have that sine bass line rumbling, and the patch I select is a big fat synth, it overlaps on the highs of a sine, and though the hats and snares. If I roll off the lows on the synth, I lose the fatness of the synth part.

3. Am I hindering myself at all by recording everything live into the computer? Right now, when i record a track, I play the whole thing live and record it into a stereo track into cubase. So I have to do all the mixing on the desk real time. People have said that this is fine to do it this way - Mike Clarke scolded me for using that as an excuse, and I can see where he's coming from - but I wonder what other opinions are.

Okay that's for starters. What do you all think?

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Message 11/23                 Date: 04-Oct-00  @  06:28 AM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

Defector Z

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Okay - if anyone is interested, I remixed an older tune with the new wisdom and I think that I have made some progress. It'll finish uploading in 30 minutes or so and will be available for you perusal. It's a bit long - sorry folks - but that's what I was able to come up with. There is a section in there that needs to be thinned out, and I think the main lead could use a bit more volume, but on the whole, I think the eq'ing is on target. Any thoughts? I don't have a link on the webpage, so you'll have to go the Downloads directory.
http://www.defectorz.com/Downloads

Again - any help would be great.

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Message 12/23                 Date: 04-Oct-00  @  06:50 AM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

Def Z

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Fuck - name of the track is Danger4. The original is still up there if anyone's interested.

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Message 13/23                 Date: 05-Oct-00  @  05:10 AM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

H

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Instead of selecting patches try
programming your own.Just a suggestion
not a put down.Also don't try to use a
bunch of sounds at once. In my opinion
most demo music sounds too
busy...................

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Message 14/23                 Date: 06-Oct-00  @  02:05 AM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

k

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you says: - As far as mixing the frequencies, I try very hard to get them to interact with eachother, I often choose two lead synths that have many similar characteristics so they CAN interact with eachother - but I often feel that they are competing with eachother - in a not so good way -

thats what i mean... there is an empathic spot where both sounds together create something totally new.. it wont sound the same as when the two are just playing together... it is hard to explain, but i suggest thinking of the whole sound rather than concentrating on mentally isolating two sounds to work with each other... hard to explain. If you concentrate too much on the 'mental' act of metally thinking about stuff like ranges of frewquencies etc that'll; get in the way cos you are making descisions about where to place parameters based on paper theory...
that has nothing to do with a drum & bassline/riff.... that is paper theory... so i'm saying mess radically with drums & bass disregarding any acoustic theory and just listen out for a spot at which it suddenly all grooves.. as i said, that MAY be with the filter & eq on the bassline or kik/snare etc etc TOTALLY different to that which you imagines, and by eq-ing in that radical way it may even make the bassline saound totally different... notes of the riff may dissapear and/or become just a muffled 'whoomp' or whatever or merge with the ki boom etc... the point is, that sweet spot just sings out and if you think about technical spec's you'll not arrive at it ever.. it's like freestyling with a guitar, when you just noodle thoughtlessly and stop playing the things you are practiced at or 'think out' logically and tell your fingers to do conciously... you arrive at new things that sing out... mixing IS artistic in this respect when you let go... so for example.. everyone eq's hats with a nice crisp hi-hat sound.. but what if in the beat you eq the hat totally flat lower-mid?... it will interact sonically with the bassline TOTALLY differently that if it was a traditional thin hat... that is just one drum.

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Message 15/23                 Date: 06-Oct-00  @  03:31 AM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

damballah

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I think a lot of what you say, k, comes into play in considering sounds as part of a mix and not getting hung up in soloing them a lot. I was mixing a show last night and the house tech knew of me so when he knew everything was patched and working, he cleared out and left me alone. Later on, he comes around and says, 'you got this room sounding great, can I look at the board?' looks at it and says 'that's not how I'd do it, but it sounds great.' And I think that comes from doing the tweeking in the mix context and not saying, 'for a kick drum (etc) you do blahblahblah,' set it that way and never touch it again. However, I think during the sound selection phase you can do some stuff to yourself that's pretty damn hard to sort out in the mix phase no matter what kind of trickery you wanna employ. So try to hear how stuff is going to mix while you're selecting/programming the patches.

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Message 16/23                 Date: 06-Oct-00  @  04:48 AM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

Defector Z

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Okay - I see what you're saying. I do find myself getting method with voice selection. I have, however, been messing around alot with eq'ing recently, and found that be an improvement. I do, however, see where damballah is coming from - I have certainly put myself in a situation where no amount of eq can overcome the voice selection. That's where the 45 knobs on my XT come in real handy-like. :-) I did try something new (to me) anyways, which I think is something that I should have been doing all along - I wrote the song, rough mixed it, let it sit for a few days, then came back to it and started from the kik up. I eq'd the kik, mixed the snare in, re-eq'd both, brought the bass in, re-eq'd, and so forth until I got what I thought was a pretty good mix. Didn't sound that way when I MP3'd it and listened at work, but hey - it was a good learning experience.

i have yet to find that sweet spot, though.

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Message 17/23                 Date: 11-Oct-00  @  04:24 AM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

H

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Be a dance producer and live in a redneck town and you'll have all the isolation you need 

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Message 18/23                 Date: 11-Oct-00  @  09:46 PM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

99devils

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One of the ways I deal with the issues of interaction between voices is to try to work on my patches in the context of the mix as quickly as possible. If I want to add a lead, for example, I'll get the basic patch working in isolation, and then let the loop fly on the RM1X and finish creating the sound right there in the context of the mix. Usually I have to go back to the rest of the sounds and deal with them as well.

I definately recommend that you put the new patches into the context of the track as early as possible in the sound creation stage. If you've created the sound to sit in a specific mix, instead of creating tons of patches beforehand and then picking them out later, you'll save yourself some of this trouble because you created the sounds to sit in your specific mix from the get (the MikeC principal - a sound will never sound 100% right in a context other than what it was designed for  

Another thing to consider is FX. Early on, FX can adversely color the sounds you are working in, and fool you into doing things you might not necessarily want to do. That kind of stuff should (usually) be icing on the cake, and come late in the mix.

-Craig

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Message 19/23                 Date: 11-Oct-00  @  09:51 PM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

k

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as an experiment, try mixing without any reverb at all... now THAT is interesting. try it.

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Message 20/23                 Date: 13-Oct-00  @  01:05 AM   -   RE: Your approach to isolation...Please.

Defector Z

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k - actually, I don't use reverb that much. Only after I have most of the writing done, do I add reverb in. My mixes are too muddy to begin with :-)

I understand that context thing, though, and I have been trying to create patches that FIT in the mix, rather than making patches first, and trying to mush them altother.

One thing about the FX thing though. What exactly do you mean? Fx as in reverb or fx as in delay, flange, distortion etc? Cuz if you have a slow decay 1/4 note delay on a synth line and you play an eigth note ever half measure, you are going to get a RADICALLY differnt sound. The point being that sometimes the fx IS the sound - as important to it as the waveform I use. Know what I mean?

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