How to create manually the glitch effect on guitars, vocals etc...

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about a mixing topic which can be applied to any type of wave source and that, if used with parsimony, can become a powerful arrangement tool to make the track more interesting.
The "glitch" effect simulates a digital artifact of any kind (usualy the fast repetition in loop of a small soundbyte), and it's used widely in rock, pop, metal, hip hop and electronic music (for example it can be heard in the song Sex, Death and Money by Alice Cooper) as icing on the top of a cake which must already be good, to make it even better.

In order to make a glitch effect of repetition, which is the most common, you need to start with quantization, so take a small slice of the guitar track (or both if we're applying it to the rhythm ones), set the quantization to 32nds and just repeat the slice for i.e. a couple of measures (16 times, for example) and push play.

The sound will be the typical one of the reading error of a cd player, and this is just the basic version of this effect.
Now we can get creative: try to quantize slices twice as long to 16th of note (instead of 32nd) to see if they sound better, or create a rhytmical pattern, for example a 3 slice repetitions, 1 empty slice, other 3 repetitions and so on, and in this the limit is really just the imagination.

So far we have mentioned only taking one slice and repeating it, but if we have for example a riff of 4 chords, we can also simply REMOVE one or more slices, rhytmically, from the track, to create a "stutter effect", or use repetitively the same single slice per chord, or we can even change the quantization from one measure to another and move from 16ths of note to 32nds, to add even more movement.

Finally, it's time to talk about automations: with these, you can take your glitched section and automate on it one or more effects in order to give it even more character.
You can apply on it obviously any kind of effect, but our suggestion is to try one of these 2 (or both):

- a pitch shift, or tempo shift effect, that makes the pitch go down fast during for example the final part of the glitch.

- a bit crusher that goes from 0 to 100 during the glitch, to make it sound like it's deteriorating during the repetitions.

Let us know if you use other cool glitch effects!

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How to mix a doubled vocal recording

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about a common practice when recording vocals: if we want to put emphasis for example on a chrorus or on a verse part but we don't want to make it stand out too much using some vocal harmony, we can simply record twice the same vocal part (from the same singer) and play the 2 tracks together.

When is this used? It's a technique used to thicken the vocal part, raising it in volume and giving it a "Chorus-like" effect  but more realistic, less cold than a chorus, and it's very popular especially in genres like rap or death metal.

This technique is used also for another purpose: to hide the imprecisions, in facts usually for example when singing a melody, if one of the 2 vocal tracks is slightly out of tune it's likely that the other one is better, and in the mix of the 2, the perception is that the good one prevails.

Talking about tuning, we can use this technique instead of autotuning our vocal track, but if we really need to autotune it, it's better to do it only on the worst of the 2 tracks, because if we would do it on both the result would sound a bit too "robotic" and noticeable.

When mixing these 2 vocals I suggest to route them in a single vocal buss and treat them as they were one single voice, so they should share eq and compression, but the level of the individual tracks may vary according to your taste (just consider that if one of the 2 is too low compared to the other one, though, the comp woud probably not affect it).

At the end of the chain then we can put a Limiter with as ceiling the maximum level reachable from the main vocal track, so that the final result will be a thicker vocal line but the volume will remain consistent, considering that otherwise the volume might double in some parts since the gain would build up in some frequency area.

I hope this was helpful!

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How to remove breath from a vocal track (and what is a Debreath plugin)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are talking about a type of plugin which is very useful when mixing vocals (click here for a dedicated article), and which is closely related to a Deesser: the Debreath.

A Debreath plugin is a plugin that, as the name suggests, analyzes a vocal track, identifies the parts in which the singer is breathing in the air, isolates them and eliminates them through a compressor/gate, similarly to what a Deesser does.

This leads us to a background choice: is it really necessary to use it?
It depends on the singer or on the style. Personally, for certain heavy genres I tend not to eliminate too much the air inspiration, because it can give a sense or realism and preparation to a scream, but for less sonically busy genres this can become bothering, especially if the vocal part is the center of the mix and the breath is very loud.

For these specific cases a debreath is very useful, and the one in the pic, the Waves Debreath, is probably the best plugin for the task, since it finds and isolates the breathing parts, and lets you even hear only those parts, to tweak the treshold to perfection.

Even if this plugin is great, though, it's not the only way to eliminate breath, since you can (by putting a little more work into it) use either a gate or a multiband compressor.
The gate is good when the singer is singing quite loud, because the breathing part will be obviously much lower in volume, so by putting a gate exactly to the breathing level will eliminate only that, but if the singer is not singing loud or the breathing parts are as loud as the singing ones this solution won't cut it.

In this case, when in terms of volume the breath is at the same level of the singing, we cannot operate with a gate so we need to be more surgical.
We can move 2 ways:

- By editing the track, literally cutting away all the parts in which the singer is breathing in.

- By using a Multiband Compressor, trying to isolate as much as we can only the narrow frequency area in which the breathing happens, and by applying on it a healthy amount of gain reduction.
In this case we're not aiming to kill the frequencies but just to lower them a little bit, so they are less noticeable.

And you? Do you remove breathing from your vocal mixes?


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How to mix vocals with stereo slapback delay (with Free Vst plugin download)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about an advanced Delay technique for Vocals (click here for a dedicated article about how to mix vocals) and Lead Guitar (click here for a dedicated article) that will allow us to create some space and focus around our track without the downside of pushing it behind in the mix.

As we know, in facts, effecting a track is a double edge sword: it makes it smoother, gives it a sense of space and coherence with the other instruments, as if they were recorded in the same room at the same time, but on the other hand the more ambience effect we add, the more the track will sound distant, up to the point to end up quite buried in the mix.
It's a matter of finding a good balance, because we need to add thickness and fullness, without sacrificing the position of our vocal track as the focus of our mix, and one of the techniques that we can use is a stereo slapback delay, which is a delay with little or no feedback (the feedback controls the number of repetitions of the delay), meaning that with the slapback delay you use only one repetition (the so called "slap back").

In order to create a slapback delay we need to create an fx track and load on it our favourite stereo delay plugin, then set the feedback control anywhere from 0 to 10% (the important is to have only one repetition per side);
now we need to set a different timing for the left and the right repetition, so that the "slap" arrives from left and right in 2 slightly different moments, for example on the left side after 100ms and on the right one after 150ms.

The timing of the repetitions must be adjusted according to the how fast is the song, 50ms for a very fast one, up to 200ms to a slow one.

In the fx track obviously we can put also other effects, in order to send it to our single vocal (or lead guitar) tracks, each one in the right amount (let's not overdo it, not all the tracks needs to be hyper effected, though).

With a Slapback delay we will add depth, a 3D, "larger than life" effect, without pushing the track too far back in the mix.


There are several free Stereo Delay Vst plugins available, here's our 3 top picks:

- Voxengo Tempo delay: the most complete among the free ones

- Easy-Q Delay: a simple, easy to use Delay

- Entropy: a Delay with an interesting stereo crossover effect


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How to record a song part 5/6: vocals!

Now that the instrumental part of our song is ready it's time to lay down the thing that most of the times is the center of our mix: the vocal section.

Let's assume we already have a good vocal arrangement, a nice chorus and some meaningful lyrics, the singer is ready and knows exactly how to interpret the song (which is already a lot), what we need now is to choose the microphone.

The choice of the microphone depends on many factors, and obviously the first one is the budeget: if we have a good budget and we can afford a place without too much room reverb we can use a condenser microphone, which will capture much more details, otherwise we can use a good dynamic one, which are usually directionals, so they will focus on the sound source.
A dynamic microphone is also more suggested if we are recording extreme genres, in which the singer screams very loud, as they are not afraid of high sound pressure and usually are less sensitive in the low frequencies.

Once we have the microphone we can place it in the mic stand and add an antipop filter that will catch the little "saliva projectiles" and prevent the singer to touch the microphone.
The singer needs to find a distance from the microphone in which he will not accidentally touch the mic stand with the feet and mantain it for the whole recording session in order to give continuity to the takes.

If the room is not treated it could also be a good idea to use a vocal microphone shield, a small styrofoam barrier that blocks the room reverbs to come back to the microphone.

The microphone should be plugged into the soundcard or mixer, but if the audio interface is cheap (and we have a better preamp at hand) it's a good idea to bypass the in built preamp and sing through the better one, plugging it into the return of the interface.
If we have some other external gear such a good Compressor or an Eq that could make our track sound better we could also use them, although it's risky: using those, once the processed signal is in the Daw, there's no turning back. I suggest if we are using some outboard to dial a very soft compression, just to shave off a couple of db of gain to reduce a little bit the dynamic range, and in case of an eq, to use it just as a de-esser.

To know more now Click here for an in depth article about how to record vocals!

Once our vocal track is ready we can consider making some overdubs to thicken it up, or creating some vocal harmony. We can even completely double the whole vocal track, if we feel it needs more weight.

Once our vocal session is perfectly recorded, it's time for some editing and autotuning (only if needed!), and we're ready for the next step!


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/6: PREPARATION!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/6: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3/6: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4/6: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 6/6: KEYBOARDS AND EXTRA ARRANGEMENTS!


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How to mix a song with free plugins part 4/5: Vocals!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Now that with the previous articles of this serie we have built the walls of our mix, it's time to work on the focal point of our mix: the vocals (click here for an article abou the focus of our mix).

Most of the times the vocals are in facts the staple around which the whole song revolves, therefore is important to carve in the eq of the other instruments enough space for it to be heard properly; 

it's not easy to tell exactly where to carve since vocals are very different from singer to singer and from style to style, so the best thing to do is to locate the frequency area where the bulk of the sound is and to cut a couple of db in that area especially in the guitars and bass tracks, in order to prepare the stage for our vocal part (click here for an article that explains how to do it).

The first thing to do is to prepare an FX Track with the right effects (e.g. Delay and Reverb), and insert there an eq that makes them effective only from a certain frequency range up (we don't want to soak completely our vocal track also in the low end area making it sound like in a cavern), the process is described HERE, then we can proceed with the real mixing phase: 

Click here for the complete article about how to mix our vocals. 

Now that we have our vocal tracks mixed, it's worth mentioning the fact that there might be chances that our track is not yet sitting perfectly in the mix, for example there could be some part that is still too loud, or some part that gets covered by the other instruments. 

We might still need some additional step, which can be found here:

Click for an article about how to make vocals sit better in the mix. 

Once we are satisfied with the result we can move to the last step: keyboards and extra arrangements.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 5: KEYBOARDS AND EXTRA ARRANGEMENTS!



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5 tips on how to make vocals sit better in the mix

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This article is intended to be an expansion on our general "how to mix vocals" article, and the purpose is to help, besides the in depth steps of the aforementioned page, the vocals to sit even better in the mix, because vocals, snare and the management of the low end are the tree core components of a mix in which home studios and amateur mix engineers struggles the most.

1) nail the recording: the vocals, as already mentioned in our "how to record vocals" article, needs to be recorded in a room without resonances, otherwise we will find ourselves with a boomy take that will be extremely hard to clean up. If the room is not ideal, consider using a vocal shield behind the microphone: it's better to have an extremely dry take than an oddly resonant one.

2) recording through a hardware compressor: this one is obviously doable only if you do actually have a hardware compressor (it doesn't matter if it's a 1000$ one or a cheap one), or if you are recording through a mixing board with an integrated comp. As we know vocals are one of the most dynamic instruments that can be recorded, and a touch of compression (for example with 2 or 3 db of gain reduction) can help to get "tame" the peaks and the quietest parts in the take at the source. This will simplify a lot our work when mixing.

3) high pass filter: assuming that the take is clean and that we don't have particular eq adjustments to do, the basic step to take is to clean up the low end rumble, which can be caused for example by the breathing, or by an accidental touch of the mic stand, especially when using a condenser microphone. A high pass filter set anywhere from 100 to 300hz down should clean up the vocal track of all the unwanted subsonics that could mess with the compressor.

4) parallel compression: once we have compressed our track normally, we may find ourselves in the common situation in which the vocals are still weak, thin, too dynamic, but that if we compress more, the take becomes dirty and we lose some transient: in this case we can use the New York trick: double the track, crank the compressor in the second track to squeeze it like crazy and put its volume fader to zero, then, while listening to the full mix, slowly and carefully raise the fader of this second track until the vocals are full and round, yet mantaining the transient of the original track unaltered.

5) fx track: instead of loading the effects directly on the vocals track, we can create an effect track, load a delay and a reverb on it, tune them in order to make them with a short and not too invasive tail, and then eq this track in order to make sure the effects will only work from around 1000hz up. This way, when we will send this fx track to the vocal ones, the reverb and the delay will add their magic only to the high end of our vocals, instead of affecting it all, because otherwise they can make the low end of certain types of voice resonate too much and become unpleasant and "dirty".

I hope this was helpful!


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How to use Delay and Reverb fx sends

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This article is a more in depth view of our group and fx channel article: how to actually set up and use a Delay (or any other modulation effect) and a Reverb fx send (or more than one) to give a coherent tone to our whole project.

This is done to achieve two results:

1) not having to open a single effect instance for each track, which can be extremely cpu-demanding

2) to create a tone that will give a consistent tone print through our tracks, as it used to happen in the hardware days, in which obviously the number of hardware processors was limited and the mix engineers had to send it, in different amounts, to various tracks.

We are using the classic Presonus Studio One interface, but the same concept can be applied to any other professional daw.

What do we need to do?
We take our vocal or guitar solo track, for example, and just drag and drop from the effect pool window on the right side of the screen our effect into the "send" area of our track in the mixer (you can show or hide the mixer by pressing F3). Once the effect is there, it will automatically create an fx send track in the mixer with the name of the selected effect (you can also rename it). Then from the send of each track (e.g. Vocals, solo etc) you can decide the amount of effect to be sent to that particular track.

Esample: more Reverb send for the vocal track, less send (but the same reverb, so it sounds like they are in the same room) to the snare drum.


Another interesting thing is that we can also create and save complex chains, like the following effect track that can be sent to many single vocal tracks, instead of loading the effects in the insert of each one:

1) Eq filtering up to 1000hz: this will affect only the effect track, meaning that the following effects will work in our track only from the frequences above 1khz, so the effect will sound less muddy (this process is explained in detail here).

2) Delay with short tail to thicken the vocal and give it some shimmer.

3) Reverb with short tail and low dry/wet ratio: we are using it only to create some tail.

the purpose of this chain is to create a subtle effect send to be used on all our vocal tracks (or guitar solos, for example), we can also click on the arrow on top of this fx track in the mixer and store it to recall it in other projects.

Hope this was helpful!


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Recording two vocal layers for thicken up the song

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

This article is related to our Vocals mixing article and our Vocals recording one. 

We are talking about a technique that is sometimes overlooked but that adds weight to a vocal track in the same way we record different layers of guitar to thicken up the "wall of sound".
We are talking of tracking two exactly identical takes of a same vocal track (sometimes of ALL vocal tracks), to give more weight and thickness to the performance.

This technique requires a singer with a perfect sense of timing, otherwise it will force the mix engineer in a huge editing work, sometimes almost impossible, with the result that he will just mute one of the two tracks.
If the performance is good and well timed the vocals will sound like they are recorded with a chorus effect, but unlike using that effect the sligh imperfections made by a real second take will make the sound much more alive and thick, and less '80s pop.
This technique of doubling the vocal track is also important to cover better some performance imperfections, since the two tracks will give the impression of masking each other's weaknesses.

This technique is used very often in r'n'b music, sometimes also in rap, and it is very effective in general in every "vocal centric" genre.
If vocals are distorted (es. growl, scream, rasp, false chords), the thickness effect is exaggerated, like doubling a very distorted guitar track: the number of voices will seem to be more than two, and it is very often used in choruses.

When doubling vocals we can both record 2 identical takes or get creative using 2 different ones (for example one sang 1 octave lower and one 1 octave higher, or one in deep growl and one in scream, or one sang from one singer and one from another - this last one requires even more skill from the 2 singers to get each take exactly at the same time one another): in this case we can get crazy with creative automations, deciding for example that during the verse we want to add a couple of db to the lower track and put the high pitch one in the background and then during the chorus we can switch them, but the usages of this tools are really infinite, and it will really add a new dimension to our songs.

Once we have started recording more takes, we may even arrive to see the classic way of recording just one vocal as dull or limiting (for certain genres, obviously if our singer is Freddie Mercury it is sufficient his own voice raw and without background music, and the album will be perfect :D ).


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The Focus of our Mix (a 5 points list)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to talk about "the big picture", in facts often sound engineers are detail oriented nerds which focuses their attention on one detail at the time and refine it to perfection, and sometimes they can get to a point in which they lose a holistic view of the mix, for example after hours spent working on a synth sound.
The result is that when the producer hears a mix he focuses on certain things that the final listener won't even notice, and he could lose the general view of how is the song perceived.

This small list is useful to "keep the eyes on the ball", since the listener hears the complete song, not the single parts, so we will try to break down the elements that usually are more noticed in a mix, so that we will know where to put most of our efforts.
Notice that this list applies for rock, metal, punk, funk and most of pop music, but there are other genres completely different in which these rules don't apply, because they would make the song excessively rhythm based (es. jazz), so use it at your own risk.


1) Snare sound: the snare sound is the business card of the song.
It's the first thing that gets to the ear of the listener, because it is made, along with vocals, to resonate exactly in the most audible frequences for the human ear.
The snare sound alone can decide the genre of a song, imagine the typical reggae snare of the Bob Marley albums, the dry and snappy sound of the electronic dance music one, the shotgun sound of 80s rock or the acoustic vibe of '60s and '70s rock snare.
If the snare sound is botched, the WHOLE song will sound amateur, or unpleasant, even if the listener can't recognize why, so make sure to nail it.
Click here for an article about mixing drums.

2) Low end (kick and bass): this is the punch of the song, and one the core elements that makes the difference between a very amateur recording and a professional one, because to be nailed it requires expensive monitors and use of metering tools that usually amateur mix engineers doesn't consider important.
If we get right the balance both in levels and in frequences of the rhythm section, which is the whole drumset (especially the balance between snare and kick) and the bass we have done most of the mix, because the whole song will sound balanced and the listener will focus on the content, the music, which is our main objective.
Bass and kick should go as in sinergy as possible, and this assumes we have good tracks, played in time and well arranged, and the frequences should be complementary each other when mixing, so that the "house" we are building has strong foundations.

3) Vocals: Once we have a solid rhythmic section we must focus on vocals, because (unless we are mixing some swedish nineties death metal song) it will be the thing that will make the listener press play on our track.
If the vocals are bad, either because the singer is bad or because we have recorded or mixed him poorly, the song will be a failure, so we must treat it very carefully, considering that 70% of a vocal track happens during tracking; after that we can embellish it with reverb, delay, autotune, but if a vocal take sucks it cannot un-suck, so grab your best microphone, your best preamp, your best patience and record the track again if it doesn't sound perfect, because even if the song will be perfectly produced, if the vocal sucks, noone will ever want to listen to it.

4) Accompainment (guitars, piano...): now we must take care of everything is around the voice, such as guitars, or synths, or anything else, and we do it after drums and vocals, otherwise we would not be willing to sacrifice frequences or modify the perfect sound we have found to make room to drums and vocals. Keep your eyes on the ball guys!

5) Additional arrangement: This last element (such as adding small details like handclaps on snare here and there, some extra effect to underline a certain word, some lo-fi stop and go, automations etc), should be done once we have our general mix finished, and these details will be the candies we will throw to the listener to rise the attention when we are afraid he would get distracted, or to draw it towards a particular element of the song.
Use them with parsimony though, because otherwise if the song is too full of these tricks the listener will stop paying attention to them!

Click here to see the Part 2 of the focus of our mix!

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HOW TO MIX A LIVE BAND (a guide for dummies) 4/4

Hello and welcome to this last part of our super basic tutorial about how to mix a live band in a small gig!

In the latest part we have seen basically every aspect of a mixer, every aspect but the Aux Sends one, which we are going to analyze today.
The Auxiliary Send (Aux Send) is an additional output of the mixer that lets us do another mix, different by the one that goes into the PA, and that we can use for other purposes, for example to send it to the stage monitors.

The band in the stage plan example on the first part of our article has 3 monitors: one for the drummers and 2 for the other band members, covering the left and the right side of the stage.
in the picture above we have 2 aux sends, but usually 12 channels mixers have 3 of them.
So how do we do our relative mix? If we have the aux pots on each channel at noon, the guys on stage will hear by the monitors basically the same mix that can be heard outside, but usually they will want a different mix, because there are things that they need to hear to play better, and others which are less useful and can be eliminated, plus keep in mind that usually with cheap mixers and monitors it's better to send a maximum of 3 or 4 channels per monitor, to make sure the monitor will reproduce them loud and clear without distorting.


An example of monitor mix, always referring to the band in the first part of this tutorial, could be the following:

Aux 1: Left monitor (as seen from the point of view of the drummer): Vocals, keyboards, snare, kick.

Aux 2: Drummer monitor: Vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass

Aux 3: Right monitor: Vocals, the other guitar (or the keyboard), snare, kick

in order to obtain this we will close all aux knobs on the mixer, then open just the Aux 1 pot on Vocal, Keyboard, Snare and Kick, choosing the level according to the volume they need,
then repeat the same procedure with the Aux 2 Pot and the Aux 3, sending only the requested channels to each monitor.
Usually during the soundcheck the sound engineer asks the band to play a part of a song and adjusts the aux sends accordingly, until everyone can hear everything decently.
Once the stage monitors are set in a stable way, the sound engineer can make the last touches to balance everything, keeping in mind that additional modifications will need to be made when the room will be full of people, because the venue responds differently according to the people inside.

Some last suggestion about how to mix a live band:

- If present, the High Pass Filter button is a good way to clean up the low end from unwanted resonating frequences. It can be used basically on each channel, with the exception of Bass and Kick Drum.

- Try to push each sound with the eq slighly towards its place in the mix, for example you can lower a bit the lows on a guitar track and add some grit on the highs, or carve some mids out of toms, remove some highs on a bass track or boost some mids on vocals, but don't exaggerate, and remember that a sligh cut sounds usually better than a sligh boost.



Additional ways to use an Aux Send:

- It can be used to go to external processors, such as a Compressor, or an Fx unit, and then the signal can be routed to the Aux in (sometimes called Aux Return) to be blended with the original one.

- It can be used also to go to a recording machine, like a computer, if there aren't other dedicated outs in the mixer.



Well, the tutorial is over, I hope it was helpful, leave comments below if you have some other tip to share!


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 OF 4!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2 OF 4!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3 OF 4!



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HOW TO MIX A LIVE BAND (a guide for dummies) 3/4

Hello and welcome to the third part of this week's article!

Last week we have seen how to make the gain staging for microphone inputs, today we will talk about the last 2 channels of  our mixer, that we have reserved for "keyboards - d.i.".

If we have a keyboard, it's much likely that it will have a left and right output, so we must connect them to a d.i. box to balance the signal, and from there go into the channel box, this way we will be able to control both left and right channels on the mixer, but if the keyboard player has more outputs, he will need an additional mixer to connect all of them, make a "keyboard submix", and from the stereo output go to the d.i. box, and from them to the channel box and to our mixer.

Since we have only 2 channels for quite a wide array of things left, we need to be creative: if the band has some pre-recorded base we should treat it the same way we could treat keyboards, or if they use both things, we will have to dedicate a single mono channel to keyboards and the other one to the base. The gain staging procedure it's the same explained in the part 2 of this guide, with the addition that usually d.i. boxes have a db attenuation switch, if the signal it's too loud, and a ground/lift switch, to move if there is some hum.

Notice that often the last channels of a mixer also feature a stereo input, which means 2 jack inputs controlled by the same fader; this way is also possible to connect both left and right keyboard channels to our stereo channel.

Obviously if we don't have d.i. instruments, we can still treat the last 2 channels of our mixer as all the others, to control microphoned instruments.

Group channel tracks and Fx tracks: on some mixer there are faders (in this example we're talking about the 2 blue ones at the bottom right of the mixer) that can control a full group of other tracks, so basically we can apply to a live environment the same rules we have seen for group tracks and fx tracks used on a DAW, when mixing (Click here for a dedicated article).
If the mixer has this feature (like this one on the photo, which has 2 group tracks), each one of the 12 channels will have 3 selections, near each fader: Mix, Group1 and Group2.
If we choose Mix, this channel will be routed straight to the stereo mix, so its final volume will be only decided by the Master Fader.
If we choose a Group instead (for example we can send all vocals on Group1 and all guitars on Group2), we will be able to control all the vocal tracks submix with the "Group1" fader and all guitars submix with the "Group2" fader, and obviously both these groups are controlled by the Master Fader, anyway.
Fx Track: this track it's represented in the mixer on our example by the only white fader.
On this track we can choose an effect or a combination of effects (for example Reverb + Delay), and decide the amount of effect to apply, then on the single channels we can choose the amount of signal from the single tracks that should be fed to the Fx track, and with the Fx track fader we can decide how much effected signal should be send to the Master Fader, or to a Group Track, and to the various Aux Sends.

For example I can choose to set the fx control on the vocal track on 5/10. This means that half of the dry signal of the vocal track will be sent into the fx track, and will be effected; then with the fader control of the fx track, I can decide the level of this effected part of the signal to send to the stereo mix, or to a group, or to an auxiliary send.



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HOW TO MIX A LIVE BAND (a guide for dummies) 2/4

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we proceed with part 2 of our 5 parts article about how to mix a live band.
After we have set up everything on our stage properly, we should have a channel box with 12 numbered xrl jacks, that we should connect to our mixer respecting the numeric order.

Here is my channel list, but you can modify it according to your own taste:

1   kick drum
2   snare drum
3   tom 1
4   tom 2
5   floor tom
6   lead vocals
7   backing vocals
8   guitar 1
9   guitar 1
10 bass guitar 
11 keyboards / d.i. 1
12 keyboards / d.i. 2

If we want to make sure we will find immediately the channel we're looking for we can use also a strip of writable tape to put below all channels, so we can write under each channel what instrument is plugged.
Each channel of the mixer looks the same, and a typical single channel strip it's the one present in the classic Mackie mixers, and it is depicted on the top of this article.
Let's analyze it, starting from top:

- we got the Xlr and normal jack input

- then we have a high pass filter button which takes out everything below 75hz (which is useful, so
we can leave the lowest frequency area only to certain instruments, such as bass and kick drum).

- a Gain knob (that sometimes is called Trim)

- two Aux Controls (which control two stage monitors, and decide how much sound from this channel will be played on monitor 1, which is connected to the Aux 1 out, and to the monitor 2, connected to the Aux 2. On the stage plan of the first part of our article there were 3 monitors, so the mixer must have 3 Auxiliary outs and 3 Auxiliary knobs).

- an Eq section, to control high, mids and lows, which is good to correct some unbalancing in our tone or to make some instrument to pop out more. Often this section is used to tame the lows and make the sound more intelligible.

- an FX knob (that on the photo of the channel strip is absent but that is present on many mixers and that controls how much effect, like delay or reverb, will be sent to the channel)

- a Pan knob, which lets us decide the position of the instrument into the soundstage. Keep in mind that a live environment is different from a studio one, so apply less extreme settings than you would on a record!

- a Mute and a Solo control, to mute the track or to hear it alone.

- the Volume fader, to control the channel's overall volume.

Ok, now we have all jacks plugged in the right channels, and we know all channel controls.
What do we have to do?

We must decide the gain sensibility. With the gain control we decide how high is the level of the incoming signal, then we can apply all the variations we want on each channel (eq, pan etc..) and finally with the volume fader we will increase or decrease the overall channel level to fit that instrument better in the mix.

To set the gain sensibility we must use the Gain Setting Procedure for each channel.
This procedure will make us set the gain knob (the one located on the top of the channel strip) in order to let out mixer "hear" correctly the incoming signal. If we have a PFL BUTTON (pre fader listen) we should turn it on for the gain setting procedure, in order to hear only the gain control, bypassing the volume fader. When you press that button you will see the level of that channel's input on your mixer's meter (which are the green, yellow and red leds located on the right in the mixer).
What we want is to use the gain knob to find a position that lets us avoid the level to hit peak or to be too low: the level of the instrument should be halfway, with occasional peaks in the yellow area. Press only one PFL button at a time, otherwise the meter will show the combination of both channels and you won't know which one is too high or too low.

Once we have done this procedure for all channels, the Gain Setting Procedure is over and we should have each channel's gain set to the optimal level.
Now we can proceed adjusting the Eq, the Pan (and if we can, the Fx, because vocals usually could use some reverb) and the volume of each channel to fit them better in the mix, until we have a stable mix in which each instrument can be heard decently.


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HOW TO MIX A LIVE BAND (a guide for dummies) 1/4

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This is the first part of a tutorial in which we will analyze the bases to mix a live rock/metal band, on a small venue (200-300 peope audience): basically the average small live gig.

The idea of this tutorial came into my mind watching so many gigs in which the bands rented the p.a. system (public address system, which is the system composed by a mixer, microphones, loudspeakers and so on) and tried to set it up without a clue of what they were doing, and not wanting to hire a live sound engineer for the night.
The result is usually a mess: the band doesn't hear itself and plays bad, the audience doesn't understand a thing and eventually everyone gets scorned.

Please note that this is not a super comprehensive guide, and the most expert live engineers will notice something that may diverge from their workflow, but I just wanted to give the bases in the easiest and most understandable way possible, to get a decent sound live.

Ok, let's start with a description of the average cheap p.a. that can be rented and that we will use for our example.

- a cheap 12 channels mixer
- 2 speakers for the audience
- 3 monitors for the stage
- 2 microphones for the vocals
- 5 microphones for the drumset
- 2 microphones for the guitars
- at least a dozen of xrl cables
- a couple of d.i.
- a channel box to gather together all the jacks from the various instruments on the stage to the mixer below.

So in this first part of the guide we will talk about SETTING UP THE STAGE.
Obviously microphoning a live stage is a simplified version of microphoning instruments for the studio (for example a drumset or a guitar amp):
the first thing obviously is to have clear in mind how the disposition of the musicians and the instruments, amps, cabinets, microphones and monitors should be (and the image on the top of this article is a standard stage-plan, with the position of everything on the stage, and for this serie of articles we will use that as "standard disposition").
Of course to set up the stage we will have to position the drumset if possible on the center, moved to the back, the microphones in the part of the stage closest to the audience, and the other amplifiers (and the keyboard) on the sides.
The monitors (in this case 3), should be set in a position in which they can be heard from 2 or 3 musicians, so we can set them like depicted on the stage plan, maybe turned a little towards the singer, if needed. A third monitor should be used only for the drummer, and in our example we have put it on the side of the drumset.

Once we have decided where everything should be, it's time to plug in all the amplifiers, to check out if we have enough electric plugs for everything, and then we can start microphoning everything.
For the drums, we have 5 channels available, and we will use them for:
- kick
- snare
- tom 1
- tom 2
- floor tom
Notice that we are not microphoning the cymbals, because in the small venues they are clearly audible even without microphoning, the bleed on the other drum microphones is sufficient.
Often drum microphones comes in a suitcase with clips to fix them right into the drum shells.

Now we will use 2 microphones for the 2 vocalists, then 2 microphones for the guitar amps.
To find the right position of the microphone towards the speaker, check out our guitar microphoning guide.
For the bass, often we won't have to microphone the amplifier, because many bass amps has a "mixer out" or "d.i." out, which is made to go straight to the mixer, so we will connect it from that out to our channel box.

Finally, the last two channels are reserved to the d.i. boxes, on which we can connect a keyboard (with the left and right outputs), or a computer, or an mp3 player with some pre-recorded base, or some other instrument that we need to amplify, or if we don't need them, we can just leave them alone.

We should write down exactly what xlr jack goes into the channel box (for example channel 1: kick drum, channel 2: snare drum, and so on), so that we will have the perfect control on everything when mixing.


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The Minimal Mixing Approach Part 2/2

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Rhythm Guitars: proceeding with our minimal mixing project, started from the base of the song, the rhythm section, it's time to take a look to the rhythm guitars.
We can record two guitar tracks (microphoning the amplifier or using vst amp simulators for example) and pan them one 80% left and one 80% right, in order to give some "wall of sound" effect; then we can route them into a stereo group track and from there do some equalization in order to clean up the sound a little bit and move it more on its place in the mix.
Obviously eq varies from guitar track to guitar track (see the dedicated articles), but the idea is to use a low pass filter to take out the excessively fizzy frequences (for example the ones above 10/12khz) and a high pass for the subsonics (up to 50 to 100hz). From there we can just use a spectrum analyzer (or just our erars) to see if there are resonances to tame, and finally we can shape the tone to our taste (for example boosting the top end, or scooping out some mids).
If unavoidable, we can use a multiband compressor just to tame the low end (which means compressing only the area from 50 to 250hz), if the palm muting produces too many lows but we can't fix it with the eq.

Lead Guitars: This track usually gets kept in the center, and it should be treated like a vocal track, with effects (such as Delay, for example), and it should be compressed in order to keep it stable with volume. The eq should be more "mid-oriented" (which means that it could benefit from a wide boost around 2khz) in order to make the solo to stand out more from the other guitars.

Vocals: Another track that is usually kept dead center. Vocals need a good compression, for example a 8:1 ratio with a fast attack, but it could be even higher for rock/metal: we need to keep it stable or it will drown among the other instruments. The ideal is to acquire the vocal tracks as natural as possible and as good sounding as possible, since the more we touch the eq (other than filtering out the unnecessary lows, for example below the 50hz), the less it will sound natural. For the effects, check out the next section.

Fx tracks: Now that we have all of our tracks ready, it's time to put some icing on the cake: some effect.
We should create a couple of Fx Tracks: one for Reverb and one for Delay (actually we would need more than one reverb and one delay with different settings in order to be perfect for each instrument, but this is the minimal mixing approach, so we're gonna keep it minimal).
We must take the reverb track, set it quite short since its purpose it's to make it feel like the whole album is recorded in the same room at the same time (not in a cathedral), and high pass everything above 500hz or 1000hz, in order to not engulf the lows with resonances, and send it to the snare, toms and cymbal tracks, adjusting the amount to the point that you have to notice it only when you solo the track.
Now we must create a Delay track, set a very short delay just to thicken the sound and send it to the vocal tracks and the lead guitar tracks (always with moderation).
Now, if we feel that the vocals needs some more thickening or that the sound is still too dry we can send (after the Delay) some Reverb too.

Now that our minimal mix is ready, to we can move to the Minimal Mastering Chain and complete our tutorial on how to create a song with as few moves as possible!


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HOW TO OBTAIN A REVERSE SOUND EFFECT!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we will answer a question made to me by a band I'm recording these days: how to create the "reverse" sound that can be heard on the snare drum at the beginning of the Muse song "Panic Station", and in countless other great songs.
This is an effect which is mainly used on vocals, cymbals and snare drums, and consists in creating a sense of "anticipation", a "crescendo" of tension for the part that is about to start.
The effect we're talking about is also different from a completely inverted section: sometimes for example a guitar solo is taken and completely inverted to give it a "sitar-like" sound, like on the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Give it Away" song, and to have this effect is sufficient to take the track and reverse it.

The effect we're talking about instead consists in taking a wave track (in the image depicted, we have taken some snare hit for example), to copy it on a second track and to reverse this second track (on the Cubase/Nuendo interface the path is Audio -> Process -> Reverse);
now we're gonna move the second track in order to match its peaks with the ones in the straight one, so that the sound builds up, reaches its peak and starts lowering again on its tail.

Now we have to make sure that the reversed track is not as loud as the straight one, in facts there will be a part of the peak that it's going basically to result doubled, and therefore it will largely increase its gain.
It's a good rule to compress and Eq this second track on the same Buss as the straight one, in order to level down the peaks.

Use this effect on your songs with parsimony as an abuse may result annoying, and never stop experimenting! Hope this was helpful!

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HOW TO RECORD VOCALS (a guide for dummies) PART 2/2

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Once we have chosen the right microphone, there are other tools that we will need in order to record a vocal take properly: an Antipop Filter and a Headphones Set. 

The antipop Filter is a plastic ring with two layers of nylon inside, and it's crucial in order to avoid that certain consonants (such as the letter "P") that are catched badly from the microphone, can ruin a whole take due to the excessive air movement and "snap". 

This Filter is mounted on the mic stand and its distance from the microphone varies according to the mic type: it can go from 2-5cm away from a dynamic microphones, to 10cm with a condenser one. 

A good producer of Antipop Filters is, among the others, Samson. 

Headphones also are very important: we will use them to send the base to the singer's ears avoiding it to be recorded from the microphone (although a little amount of bleed is almost unavoidable). 

There are headphones of any price, from the cheapest ones (for example the one produced by Behringer) to the most high end ones, which are good for editing and mixing too (for example the BeyerDynamic ones, which cost 5 to 10 times the Behringer ones). 

My suggestion is, since for tracking isn't necessary an absolute fidelity of the frequency reproduction, to aim for a cheap set, just make sure that the headphones are closed, so that the sound spilling on the outside is as low as possible.

Distance from the microphone: while with dynamic microphones the distance, as in a stage environment, should be as reduced as possible, if we are tracking vocals with a Condenser Microphone we can choose the distance from according to the result we are looking for.

As a general rule, the more the singer is close to the microphone, the more the vocals will result "in your face", and due to the proximity effect lower frequencies will increase, as well as the sounds produced by the mouth, like the sounds produced by lips, tongue and throat. 

The farther the vocalist will sing from the microphone, instead, the less highs and lows will be captured from the capsule, and the more the "room" will be catched (so beware if you don't want to record on purpose the natural Reverb of the room).

Usually with a Condenser microphone the good compromise is to sing 15 to 25cm away from the capsule, this way the track will sound clear and upfront enough, avoiding too much room reverb, but also the proximity sounds will be avoided.

Gain Levels and Tracking Compression: when tracking vocals, a control of the amount of input gain is critical: it helps avoiding distortion due to excessive peaks, and to keep the signal-to-noise ratio optimal.

First off let's say that it's very important to set our project to a 24-bit resolution, then we should keep our signal on a maximum of -12 dBFS (decibels relative to full scale), in order to avoid clipping (which is our n.1 enemy). This level is enough to have a good amount of signal and to stay far enough from clipping levels.

If our singer has a large dynamic swing inside the same song, we can add a little Compression to the incoming signal. 

Beware, because in this case we're not talking about sound sculpting, the use of Compressors in order to modify the tone is a prerogative of the Mixing Phase, in this case we just need to tame the loudest parts in order to not make them clip: if we'd just lower the volume gain of the channel in order to avoid it to clip on its highest peaks, we could lose energy in the quieter parts; some of them could even result so low that part of the sound wouldn't be even catched from the microphone.

Keeping in mind that hardware Compression cannot be modified later in the mixing stage (and it has to be decent, because if it colors your sound in a way that you don't like, it's better to leave more headroom and to not compress while recording), it can be a good idea, to apply 2/3 dB of gain reduction on the peaks of the vocals when tracking, with 10-20ms of attack and a release between 150 and 200ms; this will be enough to reduce the loudest peaks, while mantaining a decent level on the quietest parts.

...And now, time for some track Editing, Autotuning if needed, and we're ready to Mix!

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HOW TO RECORD VOCALS (a guide for dummies) PART 1/2

Hello and welcome to this week's article! In the past we have already covered the topic of Mixing Vocals (Here), but this time we'll take a look at how to record them properly.

First off we'll need to find the right Microphone. There are two roads we can take here (I have purposely omitted the residual types of microphones available because they're quite expensive and not very common, such as the ribbon or the tube ones):

- Condenser Microphones: these are very sensitive microphones, that reproduces a very detailed image of the captured sound in a wide range of frequencies; those microphones needs a 48v phantom power on the preamplifier in order to work, so we must make sure that our audio interface features this option. 

With these microphones a proper room acoustic treatment is important too, since they can easily pick up unwanted room resonances; there are also portable isolation devices that can be mounted on the mic stand itself, and they will absorb the sound of the singer's voice avoiding resonances. 

An example of these isolation devices is the Primacoustic Voxguard.

This type of microphones, that put emphasis on the higher frequencies, are particularly suited for genres such as Pop or R n'B, and some brand with a good quality-to-price ratio are Rode, Audio Technica, SE Electronics. 

Finally, these microphones also need a spider shockmount, which is a mechanical fastener that connects the microphone to the mic stand with elastic bands, leaving it in a "floating" state that protects it from catching vibrations and other sounds we don't need.

- Dynamic Microphones: these ones doesn't need 48v phantom power, and are usually mono directional, with a cardioid pattern: this means that they take the sound of what's in front of them and tend to attenuate or cancel the sound produced behind them (which is particularly useful in a live environment). 

These microphones are less sensitive than the condenser ones, and usually put less emphasis on the higher frequencies, resulting in a more round sound, less bright and crisp, which is more suited for aggressive vocals, like screaming or growling, also because this type of microphones tends to accept higher volumes and air movement better. 

The most famous and common dynamic microphones brands are Shure and Sennheiser.

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