KURT BALLOU: Iconic HM-2 Tones, Aggressive Drum Sounds, His Hybrid Mixing Workflow

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Line six. Line six is a musical instruments manufacturing company that specializes in Guitar, amp, and affects modeling and makes guitars, amps, effects, pedals and multi effects. We introduced the world's first digital modeling amp and we're behind the groundbreaking pod multi effect, which revolutionized the industry with an easy way to record guitar with great tone. Line six will always take dramatic leaps so you can reach new heights with your music. And now your host, Kurt

Speaker 2 (00:33):

Ballou. Welcome to the URM podcast. I'm your guest host Kurt Ballou. And on this episode, we are doing Dear Kurt, where you guys wrote in and asked me questions and I'm going to do my best to answer them. If you enjoy this episode and want to submit future questions for part two of Dear Kurt, send an email to AAL at M Academy with the subject line. Dear Kurt, you should also check out my earlier appearance on the URM Podcast. It's episode 18, so make sure when you email, it's al EYAL at urm Academy. I've been really busy lately. I just got off tour with my band Converge. We were on tour with neurosis in Aman Raw in the eastern US and Canada, and it was absolutely amazing. Neurosis are an incredible band and one of the most inspirational bands I've ever listened to and ever had the pleasure of sharing the stage with.

(01:26):

And Aman Raw are old friends of mine as well, and also an incredible band from Belgium. So if you get a chance to check them out, you absolutely should. They have a new record coming out soon, and if you're not familiar with neurosis, you need to be, the tour was incredible packed houses every night and everyone really got along well and had fun. I thought we actually played pretty well. I haven't really been feeling great about how I've personally been playing for a while, but I'm feeling feeling good. I'm feeling back on my stride. We converged. My band has been recording new material lately, so I've been playing guitar a lot and getting the chops back to where they need to be. I've also been busy building pedals. I was actually building stuff backstage on this tour and selling stuff at the merch table, which was awesome so that I had something to do during my downtime on tour, which you guys are all I'm sure, really busy people with recording and some people are in bands or have day jobs and you get a lot of stuff to juggle and people like us are accustomed to always moving.

(02:26):

And when you're on tour, sometimes you're just kind of sitting around waiting for your turn to do whatever you need to do. And I find that painfully boring and there's only so much internet out there, so I'd rather spend my time building something, doing something productive. So doing that in this past tour was really awesome. So I came home from that tour and jumped right back into some studio work. There's a record I've been working on for a while. I actually just finished it five minutes ago, a band called The Armed from Detroit, who are good friends of mine, and I've worked with them a bunch in the past, and they sort of started out somewhat techie, mathy, metallic hardcore, but they've really evolved into something entirely their own and it's been pretty awesome to be along for the ride. And this new album is just light years ahead of anything they've done before, really anything that I've heard.

(03:18):

It's really interesting thing to mix because it's just nothing boilerplate about it. It's totally outside my comfort zone. It's almost entirely, I actually, I track the drums here at God City, my studio, but everything else, they track themselves and it's more of a sound collage than a traditional kind of recording. There's basically nothing in these mixes that follow any kind of normal musical conventions that I've followed in the past. I mean, usually there's things that are objectively like a good bass sound, a good guitar sound, so forth and so on. None of those things are true in this case. It's all entirely subjective stuff, all about the feeling and not about the actual sound quality, which is unusual, but also really liberating for me. It's super fun to work on stuff where there's really no rules, but it's also super challenging to try to get somebody's artistic vision across when it's entirely subjective stuff.

(04:21):

You know that they want something to sound totally fucked up and mangled, but their version of fucked up and mangled is maybe not the same as your version of fucked Up and Mangled. And to try to find out what they want. There's a lot lost in translation. There's a very, very strong reason for recording yourself when you make subjective music like that. But I come from a similar background to them, so I sort of get what they're doing, but it's been an interesting ride. And then now, so that project is wrapped. I've got an EP from Gate Creeper to mix before I head on tour again later in the week, I'll be going to Europe to play a few festivals and some headlining shows along with our friends in Gore, guts, havoc and revocation. So that should be awesome too. And then back here and back to work, making records for the rest of the year and a few more tours, a few more festivals as well.

(05:15):

So it's a really busy time for me right now, but it's better to be busy than bored. So anyway, we take a swig of water here and we'll get onto the questions. Water is delicious. All right, so first question comes from Michael Cooper. Michael asks, Hey Kurt, thanks for being on the podcast. I'm wondering what your opinion is on giving a band creative input. What circumstances would cause you to interject creatively, and what topics do you find yourself most often giving input on songwriting, gear choices, et cetera? Thank you. Thanks for the question, Michael. I kind of scale my creative input on a lot of things based on how much my input is desired and how much does the band really desired, not how much do they say they desire, because a lot of bands say like, oh dude, we totally want your input. And then when it comes down to it, when you're like, well, maybe you should rethink that, that thing you belabored for months in the recording and then practice space, then they start to go like, oh, maybe we actually don't want your opinion even though we like records you've done in the past.

(06:23):

So it comes down to does the band really want my opinion or do they just say they want my opinion? And then also, how much time are they spending at my studio? Is there adequate time to really give my opinion or am I recording a band for a few days and then just documenting what they're doing or are they here for a month and really trying to shape an album, or is it somewhere in between that? So I'll scale how much input I put in based on that. And also in terms of pre-production with demos and stuff like that. The longer projects, I'll get more involved in the shorter projects, I'll be less involved, but ultimately I believe that the band gets the final say in all of that. Some people will consider a band's audience their client or a band's a record label their client. For me, it's really the band more than anything else. I don't really give a shit that much if the record label thinks it's marketable or if it's what the band's audience wants to hear or anything like that. I'm really just trying to make this a pleasant recording experience that the band can create a record that they're really proud of. If they're proud of it and happy and enjoyed their time here, then I'm happy. And that matters to me more than something being commercially viable or pleasing to the record label or anything like that.

(07:47):

I think the thing that I'm always giving input on is the sounds and the sounds obviously start with the sounds coming from the room. So drums, drum, head selection, symbol selection. A lot of drummers, musicians in general tend to pick gear that sounds good live, and a lot of cases sounding good means sounding loud, live or gear that's really durable. So when I see a drummer come in with super thick symbols and really super durable, like a query and drum heads, and I know they probably picked that stuff more because it wore well and they didn't have to replace it all the time and not because it was what actually sounded good. A lot of times the stuff that breaks more readily is the stuff that sounds better. So we may make some changes to their gear. I always try to listen to what they sound like on their own gear first, if they have their gear with them, if they flew out to record and they're borrowing stuff, then I try to give them some time on my gear to turn knobs and play around with different things and try to see what they gravitate towards and make some suggestions of my own.

(08:51):

If we're really buttoning heads over a sound, I think that they have the wrong sound. It's a guitar. I might just set up two amps and record them simultaneously. One being a kind of sound that I think would work well. And the other is they're sound. In a lot of cases, bands will prove me wrong and I love it when that happens, when I learned about sound.

(09:13):

So I try to be open-minded and just sort of listen to what's going on in the room and how it works together before I butt my nose in. But I always end up doing that and it's usually fairly welcome, especially in the guitar overdub phase when we're doing all the ear candy stuff. People love it when I just kind of pull out tons of pedals and we start messing around making noises. That's always really fun for me. And I do that quite a bit. I probably do that a lot more than I say like, Hey, you know what? This chorus should go twice as long or something like that, because more often than not, the bands that I'm recording have song structures that are like A, B, C, G, B, CF, EDB, B, something stupid like that. So when a singer has written lyrics around some sort of nonsensical song structure, it's really hard to tweak the song arrangements without completely destroying their lyrical flow. So more often than not, I'm not able to do that kind of stuff, or at least not as much as I would like.

(10:14):

All right, so I think that gets that one. The next question comes from Raleigh Oli. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Dear Kurt, can you talk about the guitar and bass rigs including Mike's and Priest if possible, on black breaths, slaves beyond death? I've never heard an H. Hm, two tone. So searing and huge, but not annoying or tinny. Any details will be much appreciated. Oh, and Raleigh also asks, did you ever know that you're my hero? Oh, thank you, Raleigh. That's very nice of you. I did not know that I was your hero, but it's good to know now. So that record, I don't know, it was like four years ago, three, four years ago, so I don't really remember all of the details. I do remember that they flew out for that one, and we borrowed A-A-P-V-V-T-M 60 from somebody locally.

(11:11):

They use VT M1 20 at home, and I think we also paired that with an EG V four, and they probably went into my emperor six by twelves, but I don't really remember which cabs we used. And I think we may have used my Sparrow sun combo a little bit in the mix, but I believe most of it was the VTM with just a regular HM two. We lined up a bunch of different two clones, and I think the van, they'd always played with the original HM twos with batteries, not power supplies, and in the loop of a boss gate pedal because the boss gate pedals, they seem to think that they affect the sound. I've never really noticed that, but definitely does sound different with batteries versus a power supply.

(12:09):

But the gate on those boss gates are pretty cool because they have a loop. So the gating action is keyed off the guitar signal rather than the distorted signal, whereas there's basically a detector path and then like an audio path. So the detector path is whatever's coming into the input in their case, just a guitar. And then the audio path is whatever's in the loop. So the HM two is being gated, but the gating action is being triggered off the raw guitar signal, so it's much more accurate than if you put a gate after distortion pedal with all of the noise from all the gain. The signal to noise ratio is way smaller in that case than the sort of dynamic range of just a raw guitar. So that worked out really well. But yeah, they like the original HM two. There's just something about where the mid range on those things sits that works better for them than any of the clones that we tried.

(13:08):

And I had maybe at the time, probably three or four different clones and I've amassed more since then, and then also gotten rid of some since then as well. But that's what worked best for them. With the HM two sound, it really all comes down to gain staging. I think it was the color sounds cranked on both the high color sounds actually a high and a mid. They're ganged together and the frequencies are fairly close together, but it is actually a high and a mid that you're boosting at the same time when you boost the high color sound. And then volume is probably cranked and distortion was probably down pretty low. Really, it's just like an EQ and a boost more than it is a distortion. And that went into VTM, I think I want to say the low mid dip switch was engaged, but I'm not positive about that. And EQs are probably set around six. I can't remember where the gain and master were set, but that's really the key is getting that gain and master in the right spot. If you're a little too high, the low mid fills in too much and you'll lose that HM two character because the HM two character has a lot to do with there being a suck in the low mid, somewhere around, I think it's like two 70 hertz or something like that.

(14:29):

And if you crank up the preamp gain on the amp too much, it'll sort of fill in and smear that dramatic EQ that the HM two provides. But then if you don't have the gain up enough, it sounds really kind of phony and like a canned sound. So it is really a matter of getting those two gain controls, both the preamp and the master at right at the sweet spot. The master probably has more to do with the speaker cabinet and the interactivity of how much are those speakers compressing versus having headroom. But yeah, the preamp, you really hear a big difference in the eq, so we mess with that for a while and got a cool sound. They also can play their asses off.

(15:18):

I think it was just Les Paul custom with pfs too, but the pickups are huge. Going into an HM two, my preference is actually like EMGs going to an HM two because that pedal is so kind smear that if you put a lot of bottom end to it, it's not very clear. So I like having something like pickups with a little bit less bottom end like an EMG or even just like an EQ pedal or something or a tube screamer in front of the M two to scar the bottom a little bit to tighten things up. I don't believe we did any of that. In terms of mics, I really couldn't tell you probably like a 1 21 off to the side of the cone and then either a high PR 30 or a 57 or something like that near the edge of the dust cap and then blended together on the way in, no DI's or anything like that.

(16:16):

I really feel like guitar players interact with the sound that they hear coming out of the speakers when they're tracking. So for me, it always makes sense to record the guitar player playing through the actual sound that's going to be on the album so that they're totally interactive with that real sound. Otherwise, you're kind of flying blind. So I think probably, oh, and then I bet the dynamic was going into a Chandler Ltd, one mic preamp and the ribbon was probably going into Thermi culture, early bird mic preamp, but I can't be entirely certain about that stuff. But really the sound from that thing, it's getting the amp right, getting the amp sounding correct in the room more so than it is the micing or even the mixing. All right, so I think that answers that one. The next question comes from Eric Bird Noli. Hey Kurt, this question is inspired by your offer to record anti-Trump songs for free from a few months back.

(17:20):

Do you feel that modern bands with political messages need to be more direct with their lyrics and message than many are? Or is it beneficial for a band to keep their political beliefs vague to avoid alienating the portion of the country that disagrees with them? Thanks. I think whatever political message a band attaches to themselves is entirely up to them in whatever they're comfortable with. If you have a message and you are knowledgeable about the facts to back up the message and the entirety of your band is on board and willing to defend that message and you have a microphone, you can use it and you have a voice, you have an audience, and you should use that voice to get out to your audience. Even if it's just a matter of even if you're preaching the converted and you just want to inspire yourself to be better and to be more active, then that's awesome. You should do that. I would never encourage a band to portray themselves politically in any way that they're not, especially not for any kind of commercial reasons.

(18:25):

If you don't have the stomach for it or if your band is not unified in their political ideas or you just don't feel like it's appropriate for the aesthetic of your band, then you don't need to do it. If you do, then you can. So I don't know, my band is not particularly outwardly political, but we are all very left wing political people, and personally, I wanted to do what I could to play a role to give other bands a voice, and I have some resources in that. I have a recording studio and I had a bit of free time with it, a rare free time, and I was pretty upset with what was going on with this administration at that point in time and obviously still am. And I wanted to give people who might not otherwise have an opportunity to come record with me, an opportunity to record with me for free and get their message out there as best they could.

(19:25):

So I was happy to help out. The next question comes from, oh my God, how do I say this name? Kos slu. Is that cut off? I dunno. It just says SPL, I don't know. Well, whatever your name is, I'm sorry. Thank you for writing. He says, or he or she says, dear Kurt, as an engineer and guitar player, how do you change hats while recording your own parts? Any advice? Editing is a major part to making things sound tighter and therefore bigger. Since you're minimizing phase issues between sources, what is the point of too much for you? So I guess those are two questions. As an engineering guitar player, how do I change hats when recording my own parts? That of course is really difficult and the more I've done it, the easier it's become, and I also have to rely on my band mates a lot, so when they're recording, I'm sort of wearing my producer hat and when I'm recording, they get to produce me to a certain extent.

(20:24):

But it is a lot of listening, it's a lot of keeping your ego in check and just a lot of self-doubt, a lot of self-loathing, and sometimes you just got to stay the course and trust that you're correct. Other times you have to be psycho and just do things over and over and over and over again, and then eventually give up when you realize you can't do it as well as you hoped you could, but it's always emotional and it's very rarely good, but that's the time where you call upon your peers, other recording engineers and your band mates and whatnot to be the voice of reason. The next question, being editing is a major part to making things sound tighter and therefore bigger. Since you're minimizing phase issues between sources, what is the point of too much for you? Okay, I think what this person is asking is about editing individual microphones on a drum set, for example.

(21:25):

Obviously there's no phasing between microphones when there's only one microphone capturing a single. Obviously there can be acoustic phasing, like if you have a microphone near a floor, the reflection off the floor may be subtly delayed in time versus the source arriving at the microphone. But let's not worry about that. For the sake of this conversation, we're just talking about the phasing that happens between microphones and yes, if you're not hitting the floor, Tom, you might want to turn the floor Tom mic off so that you're not capturing the snare drum and the symbols through the floor tone microphone. This is a trick I use a lot and I feel like it's very beneficial, at least in aggressive, loud kind of music where you're looking for a really direct, punchy in the face kind of sound. If you're looking for a more smeared, vibey sound, some of that sympathetic resonance that happens in say the flora Tom when you hit the bass drum or in the rack to when you hit the snare drum or whatever, you may want a lot of that stuff in your mix.

(22:33):

For me, I generally do not, and I try to to use as few microphones as I can in order to capture a full sound. I'd love it if I could do the Glenn Johns method or something for the type of bands that I record, but unfortunately most drummers are not that well balanced in the room, especially with the amount of compression required to keep drums sitting nicely in a mix with a huge wall of compressed distorted guitars. Unfortunately, it's just not really feasible for me to get an appropriate drum sound with only a few microphones. I end up using maybe 12 to 16 mics on a drum set and that's what works for me. But yeah, I definitely edit stuff quite a bit to tighten things up. Alright, our next question comes from Orian Lund. Hello Kurt. I've been waiting for another podcast with you for ages.

(23:36):

Love the other one really started to get into your production after Carlo talk, which are from my neighborhood. They went to your studio to record me such a fantastic setting album, but onto my questions. Alright, well I actually recorded fellow talk twice. I recorded their debut fellow talk as well. Anyway, first question he asks is, sorry if it's a she. I actually don't know the genders of some of these names. It's always a sausage party and recording, so I'm assuming it's male, but apologies if you are not. What is your approach to getting these really aggressive drum room sounds? I think it's really unique and I can immediately hear if something's being recorded at your place from the drum sound. Well, my live room is not huge. It's about 10 feet by 30 feet or three meters by 10 meters, and it's pretty treated. I've got some Owens Corning 7 0 3 on the ceiling that's suspended from the ceiling as a cloud, so it's picking up both on both sides of the suspended cloud.

(24:42):

And then I also have some of that on two of the four walls and well, there's actually more than four walls because it's sort of an odd shaped room and there's also a diffuser on two of the walls, so the sound is not particularly reflective in there and what reflections there are. There's not much of, there's a little bit of parallel ceiling to floor, but for the most part there's no parallel surfaces in there and that's just sort of an accident. My studio had a well-designed control room, and then the live room is just the leftover space, but it's an asymmetrical space that is fairly diffuse and dry sounding. So the room tone around the kit is actually really controlled. However, I have a small iso booth and a bathroom that are adjacent to the live room, both of which are, they're both fairly small, but they're both very reflective.

(25:39):

They have hard floors, hard walls, and no acoustic treatment other than whatever crap happens to be gathered in those rooms. So they're pretty reflective and from inside these rooms there's no direct line of sight to the drum set. So what I tend to do is open up the doors to the bathroom and to that iso booth place on the directional microphones inside each of those rooms and then record drum sounds in there. What that gives me is a pretty bombastic drum room sound that doesn't have direct line of sight to the kit. So because it doesn't have direct line of sight to the kit, it's pure reflections. Those microphones are picking up, which has the added benefit of not having a direct correlation to the close mic sound. It's like a reverb, it almost, it has a bit of built-in pre delay, usually about 20 milliseconds, but also the transient response is kind of smeared. So it's not like this attacky thing that I have to, it's not like a delay on a close mic where there's an attack that could sound like a comb filtering or something with the close mic. It's all diffused sound, so it just kind of fills in the ambiance of the drum set without interfering with the attack of the drum set. So it ends up working out pretty nicely.

(27:07):

And if you've watched my Creative live class, if you purchased that, then you probably got the room impulses that I included with that class, the convolution reverb based on those sounds. And that stuff's also contained within the drum library that I have available through room sound. Yeah, so that's what I do with the room sounds and yeah, then definitely because Conor talks got a lot of mid tempo stuff, it's it's heard pretty prominently on that record. Faster stuff that I do, I'm not able to use as much of that rim sound just because it gets too sme.

(27:45):

Alright, next question is about the HM two guitar sound. I think I answered that one earlier and that was there two questions. Okay, next question is from Adam Trane. Hey Kurt. I read somewhere Wikipedia, so definitely reliable. Yuck, yuck, yuck that when you did from Parts Unknown by Every Time I die, you tracked most of the vocals in one day because Keith had laryngitis. First off, is that true and if so, fucking how? I actually don't remember to be honest with you. It was a few years ago. I've made a lot of records since then and I mean, Keith is a total machine. He has an incredible voice and an incredible work ethic, and he's just driven unlike a lot of, well, more so than a lot of people that I've recorded. I mean everybody I record has driven, but the guy really has a lot of drive behind him, super enthusiastic person and really cares a lot about what he does. And I seem to remember we were recording in the fall, the weather wasn't great, nobody was feeling great.

(29:02):

I mean it was the early late winter or something, I actually don't even remember, but I remember the Keith is great and he busted his ass to do a killer job on that record and he definitely delivered. Alright, and our last questioner is AJ Vianna and AJ says, what's on your list of gear you can't live without? Actually AJ has a lot of questions. So here's the first one. What's on your list of gear you can't live without? Let's see. When it comes to recording gear, I want to say it's my control room. So I have a, and whenever people ask me about what gear they should get when they're putting together a studio, I tell 'em they really should not skimp on their monitors and monitoring environment because if you can't hear what's going on properly, then you'll never make good decisions. So for me, I'm using Adam S3 A monitors in my control room, which is somewhat treated, but it is acoustically designed. It's a reflection free zone style control room. There's a lot of 30 degree angles in this room. I think it has, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 walls.

(30:22):

It's not like an actual octagon, but it is all a bunch of 30 degree angles. You obviously don't need to work in a room of this shape and I mix a lot of stuff in my home studio too, which is rectangular and I'm able to get good results there too. But when I'm in the control room at God City, I really know what stuff sounds like and I'm even at the point now where I'm not even hardly referencing anything at all. I just know what stuff sounds like in here and there's a symbiotic relationship to a monitoring environment that you're super familiar with and can trust that is more valuable than any piece of outboard gear. Beyond that, some gear that I own that I really love, mainly massive passives, there's just so much you can do with them, especially with the bandwidth control on the shelving filters, you see that kind of stuff in plugins all the time now, but you didn't really see that much with the analog gear and it's hugely powerful being able to create a subtle, if you're boosting a low frequency, to be able to create a little bit of a dip right before that frequency you boost can create a huge sense of size that you would need two bands of a conventional equalizer to get, or the converse is true if you're say cutting lows with a shelf, but have that bandwidth control all the way to the right.

(31:47):

Then you're boosting sort of resonant frequency right before the roll off point, which is really nice for maintaining a sense of size of things that need some rumble or some explosives removed from 'em. So I love those EQs, I use them all the time for finishing mixes. I've got a tube tech SMC two B multi-band compressor. That's awesome. It really takes things from sounding like a rough mix to sounding like an album without a whole lot of work. It's easy to abuse of course, as all multi-band processing is, but it's super powerful when used sparingly. Also, I have a ton of day gear. I think for whatever reason day stuff is not revered the way that a lot of other boutique or even vintage stuff is revered, but it's not that expensive for what it is and absolutely fantastic. I track guitars and drums with the day King Mike pre and EQs all the time, and I track with EQ on the way in and I generally try to make decisions as I'm recording stuff because I feel like any decision you make during tracking affects every other decision that happens after it.

(32:58):

And when you leave all your decisions towards the end, it can be really hard to make any decisions at that point. So I don't try to paint myself into a corner, but I definitely try to give myself a nudge in the right direction as I'm doing it. And the day EQs are awesome for doing that. I can trust that things are going to sound great with them and as long as I don't totally abuse the gain control, I have a lot of gear here that I love and use regularly, but those are a few of the pieces that I think I couldn't live without. Beyond that, having a nice collection of instruments is really important too. Symbols, guitars, pedals, cabinets, amps, just stuff to swap out when bands come in with gear that's not really working, which is pretty regularly, having some alternate instruments that they can try is hugely, hugely beneficial.

(33:55):

Alright, so onto your next question, aj. When working with bands like Russian circles, how involved, if at all, do you get with the overall tone and feel of the record? Well, generally speaking, when recording a band, especially a band like Russian circles, that sounds awesome. Just playing together in a room. I try to stay out of the way as best I can. Of course it's happening in my room and it's filtering through my ears and I'm using my gear, so obviously my sonic imprint is going to be on it whether I like it or not.

(34:29):

And a band is really awesome on their own. I try to stay out of the way as much as I can and let them do what they do and then just try to chime in when things are slowing down or when someone needs a little push or when the inspiration's not there or a new inspiration is needed, I'll chime in and grab a pedal or swap out a symbol or us in circles. We did some wacky tape speed tricks or some songs and I think pretty much my entire control room floor was covered in pedals during guitar tracking. So yeah, we definitely had a lot of fun on that record and if you listen to that record versus some of their other records, it doesn't sound the same. So I mean obviously every time they make a record they've evolved as a band and it's not going to be the same record even if they did everything the same, but I think you really can hear my influence on that record versus the previous ones.

(35:27):

I'm really happy with it. Carl Safa also did an awesome job mastering it. He's really good at keeping things sort of warm and open and kind of dark sounding. My only complaint about that record though is Dave was really insistent on, he recorded with his Vista Light Kit 26 inch bass drum, I think 14 and 18 inch Toms might have been a 13, I think it was 14 inch Tom, which are cool and they look awesome, and he used Remo controlled sounds on the drums, which look awesome on Vista Lights, but I just don't love the way they sounded. They were like the, maybe it was a 26 inch kick and it's like 14 inches. I think it's 14 inches deep. It might be 16, but I think it was 14 inches deep. The fundamental pitch is low, but there's just not a lot of base frequency coming off of it. It's kind of sloppy and you can really hear it in that first song.

(36:29):

The Tom Sound kind of plasticy really fought with that. They're kind of cliquey and plasticy and that's just between the Vista Lights and the controlled sounds. There's sort of no way around it. They're super loud, but they're not deep the way that I would want them. So that's an example of something where I argued in favor of something with a band and lost and allowed myself to lose, but I think if I get the opportunity to record them again, I'll probably put my foot down about that a little bit more. Next question from AJ is how much are you doing or how much mixing are you doing in the box versus out of the box? Well, I still don't think I have any releases with full in the box mixes. I've maybe mixed like a segue here or there for an album in the box, but for real song kind of album, album mixing, there's always the analog gear involved.

(37:37):

For me, and it might just be because of my age and the fact that I'm kind of from the last generation of people who grew up recording on tape machines and with mixing consoles and all that. That's how I'm comfortable and that's how I think about music and I've invested a lot of money in my studio to have a lot of analog gear and so that's sort of what I'm comfortable with. If I was starting over, if you gave me all the money for all the gear that I have right now and told me to start over, I might take a different path and I believe it's possible to make great sounding records in the box, but for me, I like having a console, but I don't use the console exclusively. For example, I'm looking at my console right now, this armed record that I just finished.

(38:24):

There's probably anywhere from 50 to 80 tracks per song and I'm using 16 channels on my console. So I have channels one and two, our stereo close drum mic subgroup, and so that's maybe two to four kick channels or maybe say two to six kick channels, three to six snare channels, a few Tom channels and a center of kit mic, just like an omni kind of near the drummer's bass drumming knee that's all feeding into that bus. So obviously the individual tracks of each of those microphones inside Pro Tools has some processing of its own and then all the different kick mics gets summed to a master kick kick bus inside the box, which has some processing of its own. And then so the same for all that stuff, there's a master snare bus, this is a Master Tom bus, and then that master kick snare and Tom Bus are feeding into a master close mic bus and that master close mic bus is going out out of Burl mothership converters into Tone Luxe TXC compressors on about 50% wet.

(39:51):

And those things are awesome. It's really under hyped compressor, but those things, it's like the next evolution beyond an API 2,500, same designer things can turn a snare them into a cowbell or a woodblock or something that's crazy how much attack you can add with those things. They're great compressors. So I have those on the close mic bus. Then there is the next two channels, channels three and four is a stereo ambient mic bus. So all of the symbol mics, overhead spot symbol mics, different layers of room mics, special effects of drums, drum reverb or drum specific reverb. That stuff's all going out the ambient bust, they're also going through some txc on about 50%, but they're just kind barely kissing the signal there. There's no master drum bust that combines those two. So the close mics are not affecting the compression on the ambient mics.

(40:54):

Then there's also a stereo channel for drum machine stuff, so auxiliary percussions, electronic percussion, 9 0 9, stuff like that that's in this mix is going out. Those things, there's not a whole lot of that. I have a channel, a mono channel that's a sub harmonic synthesizer. So a lot of the bass drum, a little bit of the bass guitar and a bunch of the keyboard based stuff is all feeding into the sub harmonic synthesizer, which is just an ox. So they also, they obviously have their dry channels as well, but they're being summed together, compressed sub harmonic, synthesized, then compressed again, and then that feeds mono channel on the console. Then there's a mono bass channel. There's very few stereo bass effects on this record, and if there are, they're either feeding into the guitar bus or there's a master effects bus, so mono bass, but there's a bunch of mics on base, a little bit of di here and there, a couple amp sims here and there, but mostly just a bunch of different mics on Kenny's base rig that's being summed in the box and comes out into the console.

(42:06):

It's going through a massive passive and a retro 1 76 compressor. Then we've got a master guitar bus. There's a ton of guitar tracks that are being summed down to stereo. There's bus processing, different stuff for different songs. Sometimes there's actually distortion added on top of the guitars because they wanted really nasty keyboard sounding guitars. There's a lot of octa effects done during the tracking stage. There's distortion and compression and EQ added in the box and then out of the box there's a massive passive and day king compressors. The day king compressors are super smooth, really good at adding weight and presence to the guitar without brightening them despite, I believe they are fe compressors, but they're not brightening fe compressors. The way 1176 is actually not entirely sure about that though. They might be diode bridge. It's like the original Deon compressor. So whatever that happens to be, it's real smooth sounding.

(43:13):

And then massive passive adding presence and some low mid weight and kind of rolling off, rolling off some rumble with the built-in filters. And then also cutting a bit of a 3.9 k just with just passively cutting a bit of 3.9 k to get rid of some harshness. I don't like to low pass guitars very much. I'd rather use some sort of bell at the harsh frequencies. A lot of times I find if I'm recording a bandwidth like dual rectifier or something or 51 50 something that's really sizzly, I'll end up just notching like 11 K or so out of the signal in the box. I didn't have to do that in this case, but it looks like, looks like I am low passing at like 18 K, but I'm also boosting a bunch of different highs. And then there's that cut at 3.9 to get rid of some harshness. So the guitars are still nice and open but don't have excessive high-end. Then again, my master keyboard bus, I think I'm just doing a little bit of console EQ on that, but there's a ton of internal processing. I think I'm using the massive passive plugin on that, which is pretty good. It's not entirely as good as the hardware, but it's definitely good.

(44:37):

Then vocal bus, a bunch of internal stuff, a bunch of gain kind of stuff happening inside the box and various plugins and slap backs and stuff. And then that's going through. The only thing analog, aside from a little bit of console EQ on the vocal bus is requisite pal plus mark threes, which are like a mastering grade optical compressor. Just imagine a really super nice L two. And then finally there is an effects master. So pretty much anything that's left like reverbs delays, all that kind of stuff is coming out the console as well. So I have master control of that within groups. There are some things, there's some vocal only reverbs that are in the vocal group and there's, there might be guitar only delays that are in guitar group or drum only delays or reverbs that are in the ambient drum group. But then generally if I'm just going for a realistic room sound from a reverb, I'll send a little bit of reverb from the master bus of each of these instruments into a room sounding reverb, and then there might be some special effects reverbs and all that stuff's getting summed out.

(45:51):

Channels 15 and 16. And then from there I'm going out the stereo insert of the console, which is nice. This console has a switchable stereo insert that's going into an Vinson blend for wet dry control. Oh wait, oh, sorry. Actually no, it's going first. It's going into a dangerous backy queue and I'm just doing a little bit of high passing at like 70 kilohertz just to help out the converters. Obviously it's pretty well beyond what you can hear, but it does help the converters sound a little more natural if you get rid of all the ultrasonics low passing around 24 hertz and then just took a little bit of shelving boosts on both the highs and the lows. I do that first so that the entire signal is hearing that EQ and getting the benefits of the high pass and low pass filtering. And then from there it goes into an Vinson blend, which is a wet dry effects loop processor, so the remainder of my stereo bus can be controlled wet dry with that control and with the remainder of the bus is just two boxes.

(47:02):

There's first the tube tech SMC two B, which is a stereo multi-band compressor. I think it's just tube makeup. I'm actually not sure what type of compression action it uses. I think it's tube makeup. Again, I don't think it's a very, I, it's just Tube Tech, so they stick some tubes in it, so it's all tubey, but I don't know, things fucking sounds good, so I gently kind of kiss the three bands with that. Spend some time kind of dialing in the speed, especially of the release of the low band to make sure it's appropriate for the song and making sure that the crossover points are appropriate for the song that's followed up by fairly fast acting, but gentle IC audio obsidian, which is an SSL style compressor, and I think I'm generally hitting that between zero and four DB of gain reduction, at least on the VU meter.

(48:01):

And obviously it's hitting a little bit more than that in reality because the meter just can't track it that fast. And then those two boxes go back into that evenson blend effects return, and I have that on about 70% wet, so some of the natural attack gets through uncompressed. And then so the master engineer has a little more room to work with and I don't print stuff super. Oh, and then that whole thing, sometimes I print stuff to tape. I do have an A TR 1 0 2, but in this case I'm using the U-A-D-A-T-R 1 0 2 plugin at, I think it's quarter inch 15 ips, might be 30 ips, I think it's 15 ips that has a nice kind of scoop this to it that I find pretty flattering, especially for mixes that should be blown out. I can get it kind of crunchy with that. And this is a fairly blown out sounding record and aggressive, so I like the way that sounds for aggressive music. If it was something malware, I might use a different tape speed setting or not at all, but I keep my mix level fairly reasonable. So the mastery engineer still has plenty of headroom. I know it's not necessarily the prevailing wisdom in the URM camp, but I'm of the mindset that mastering should always be done by a dedicated mastering engineer in a mastering studio.

(49:34):

If there are any problems with your listening environment, with your speakers or with your own personal bias in a mix, then you're not going to hear that if you're mastering your own material. And that's why you send it to a mastering engineer as mastering engineers. Obviously they have their own bias and they have their own rooms, but it's different than your rooms. So hopefully anything that is wonky with your mixes, they'll catch incorrect. Now, granted, it can be hard to find a great mastering engineer that you trust that does a good job, and I think a lot of people end up mastering their own stuff just because they're frustrated with the mastering experiences they've had in the past. So don't give up, spend some time working with different mastering engineers and hopefully if you have not found someone that you're comfortable with, you end up finding someone that works within your budget and delivers records back to you that are better than you could do yourself.

(50:36):

Obviously, as mixed engineer with all this gear, I have some of the skill sets and a lot of the gear necessary to master records if I chose to. But with the great mastering engineers that I use, people like Alan Douches, Brad Boatwright, Carl Saf, npi, Magnus Lindberg, John Golden, I've never been able to beat any of their masters, and I try as an exercise to myself, I try to beat their masters, especially if it comes back and it doesn't sound right to me, I'll try to beat their masters and I'm never able to. So there actually is a merit in someone who is a full-time master engineer. It's kind of like saying to a guitar player like, oh, you play guitar, so you can play bass. Yes, you can play bass. If you play guitar, you can play bass. If you play bass, you can play guitar.

(51:31):

If you play drum set, you can play bongos. But that does not mean that you're the best person for the job. It really is a dedicated, dedicated craft. Alright, so that was a long answer. Two more questions from aj. What are some of your favorite mixes that you didn't do? I think I'm just going to pass on that one just because at this point in my life I'm recording so much music that I'm not consuming a lot of music, so I'm not really listening to a lot of other people's stuff these days. Alright, one last question from a Viviana on the album from Parts Unknown By Every Time I Die, how did you obtain such a sludgy overall tone, but still have it be tight, clear, and hard hitting? How much of that was from the band versus work on your end? Well, I think it was entirely from the band. I mean, they're great players, they're super driven. They've been at it for a long time. They know sound, they know it sounds good, they know it sounds bad, they have strong sense of will and they play shit hard.

(52:36):

So it's as simple as that. It was really up to me to stay out of the way. And it sounds sludgy, but it's not like it has an overabundance of bottom end. It's just maybe like we might've chose some really dirty distortion pedals for things or chose to use a lot of room mics or something. I think both me and every time I die are super influenced in all the Midwestern noise rock stuff from the nineties. Like you mean kittens, Jesus lizard, dazzling kilman, the cows house, easy action, laughing, hyenas, shellac. I mean, there's tons of stuff like that where it's just like, and basically the stuff that Albania would record hard hitting. Oh, Unsane, perfect example. Listen to Unsane, go see Unsane play, and then think about how that would inform your musical decisions. Just tons of mid range, loud tube amps cranked, greasy tones, vibe, way more important than clarity, but there still is clarity just because stuff's not super layered, like an unseen record.

(53:58):

Listen to Unseen Vis Queen, for example. That's a great sounding record. And a lot of the verses are just one guitar track. There's a guitar track and it's panned to one side and then there's the room mic for that guitar track that's panned to the other side, and then maybe a second guitar kicks in for the chorus. But there's some, when you don't like Overlayer stuff, then there's still a lot of space in your mix to have cool character in the tones that you have. And I dunno, that's more important to me than having something that sounds objectively good or is loud or whatever. If it has a cool vibe than it's going to draw me into the record and just feel a lot more compelling. So I think we have reached the end of this edition of Dear Kurt again, if you want me to do a part two, you're going to have to write into al at URM Academy. So e yal at URM Academy. And that's all for now. So I hope you hear from you guys soon. The Unstoppable

Speaker 1 (55:01):

Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Line six. Line six is a musical instruments manufacturing company that specializes in guitar, amp and effects modeling and makes guitars, amps, effects, pedals and multi effects. We introduce the world's first digital modeling amp and we're behind the groundbreaking pod multi effect, which revolutionized the industry with an easy way to record guitar with great tone. Line six will always take dramatic leaps so you can reach new heights with your music. Go to www.linesix.com to find out more about line six. To get in touch with the URM podcast, visit urm.com/podcast and subscribe today.