JOEY STURGIS: Fixing Mixes with Arrangement, Humanizing MIDI Drums, Delegating Work

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Bala ga Guitars. Founded in 2014, Bala ga guitar strives. To bring modern aesthetics and options to vintage inspired designs, go to bala ga guitars.com for more info. This episode of the podcast is also brought to you by Fishman inspired performance technology. Fishman is dedicated to helping musicians of all styles achieve the truest sound possible wherever and whenever they plug in. Go to fishman.com for more info. And now your host, Joey

Speaker 2 (00:32):

Sturgis. Hey there guys. Welcome to another lovely episode of Dear Joey. If you guys got any questions for me, you can always ask him by sending me an email to Joey at M Academy and in the subject line include the words. Dear Joey, I'd be happy to answer them on the air. I think this is like the third or fourth episode now, so this is pretty cool. I want to thank you guys all for listening in and submitting your questions. I'd love to try and answer 'em for you and do a good job. So we're going to jump right in here and answer some questions. First question comes from, it looks like user Matt and he is asking on my computer's loading the question.

(01:18):

Dear Joey, I know you have experience with mixing without a subwoofer. I cannot afford a subwoofer at the moment, and it seems that I'm able to get my base to translate. I have dual eight inch JBL monitors and a pair of a THM fifties, but whenever I mix in either, I just can't seem to hear all of the base. Any advice on how to remedy this problem without much money? Thanks. Currently, I'm monitoring in a small, cramped bedroom, so there's very limited space to rearrange the room and move the monitors. Well, one of the first problems you might have is your limited space. I've always worked in spaces where there's quite a big amount of room, just air. Just having air in the room and space between things actually changes the way stuff sounds quite a bit. It's really important to get your listening environment right first because ultimately that's going to be how you perceive everything. It's going to be how you hear everything, the judgements you make, the decisions you take, all those things play into how you hear the music. And if you're not hearing the music the way it actually exists, if something's changing the way it sounds, then you're already at a loss and no amount of speakers or magic tricks could ever fix that other than just changing the location. So I know it's not the best answer, but sometimes the truth hurts.

(02:47):

Next question comes from user day. I think I said that right, and it looks like it's a question about mixing advice for a large project day or Dai or DA or something like that. He says, first of all, I deeply appreciate the online service that you al and Joel provide, and I must thank you for that. Your tips, tricks, and tutorials demystify the topics that a lot of engineers and producers seem to hold rather close to their chest. I've been plugging URM to a ton of my mixing buddies and let's just say a lot of mistakes have been avoided and a lot of time and money has been saved as a result. Well, I have to tell you that we deeply appreciate you doing that. So thank you so much because that's amazing and you guys are just such an amazing community. That's why we're all unstoppable.

(03:41):

So he goes on to say, the reason I'm writing to you is because I am in need of a little bit of soce when it comes to mixing. I'm currently in a band that I have a hand in the engineering and production of, and it's quite an involved project. The music itself is very classically inspired and the core of the band isn't your typical kind of crank it metal Because of that, the orchestrations feature a live 60 piece symphonic orchestra complete with woodwinds, brass, glock, and spiel and all of your other goodies. Not to mention the group actually features two lead vocalists who are quite remarkable. Needless to say, when you throw these distorted seven string guitars, huge double bass, operatic, vocals, organs, orchestra leads and senses into the soup, it becomes quite a bitch to mix because the music is so exciting and demanding, it does speak for itself to a degree.

(04:29):

However, my problem lies in how to approach such a dawning task and how to make the mix sound as world-class, as the music is on its own. And in theory it's easy to just get caught up in simple EQ tricks, compression, panning automations, yada yada, but there needs to get to be a point where those bare fundamentals simply just don't cut it. So with that, I ask you what has been the biggest project in terms of size and magnitude you have worked on? What things have you learned from it and how could you advise somebody to go about mixing a large dense project where musical compromise is not an option? Thanks again, and I apologize for the size of the message you said, the more detailed, the better. So I wish you all the best and hope to hear from you soon should you feel this entry is worth your podcast all and time cheers.

(05:16):

Yes, of course, it's worth our time and thanks for the long message. I think we really appreciate that. It's really awesome that you would do that and put so much time into it. So I'm going to start at a few things because since you didn't send me what the music sounds like, I have to make some assumptions and these assumptions are based on how you're explaining the project to me. So if you're having trouble mixing such a large project like this, the first thing I would say is that maybe the song isn't written properly and I'm going to go out a limb and say that because there are bands that have a hundred musicians that can be recorded with two microphones at the back of the room and you can hear every single thing that's happening, and that's classical music. So you can't tell me that you're struggling with a few guitars, a drum set, a 60 piece orchestra, and a couple of vocalists.

(06:21):

If you're fighting to mix it properly, it is probably too much going on at the same time syndrome, and I know you don't want to hear that, and I know musical elitist don't want hear that they want to. Guitar players want to be able to solo while the violin is soloing, while the vocalist is soloing, while the drummer is soloing, and not everybody can solo at the same time. You guys, there has to be push and pull, give and take in order to make large things like this work. And I mean, it can be as simple as having 20 different instruments play the same note that sometimes can sound large because of all the instruments, but the other problem that can cause is if a piano, for example, is playing the same notes as a guitar in the same octave, it's pretty hard to tell the difference between a piano and a guitar, especially when you're piling it all into a dense mix.

(07:22):

So the answer really is that sometimes it's impossible to fit it all in. I mean, if I make a piano play a denote in one octave and I take that same denote and I play the same denote on the guitar at the same exact time, it's not like you're going to know that there's a guitar and a piano happening at the same time. And if they follow melody lines and harmonies, it just becomes really difficult to tell what's going on. And especially in the case when you have a lot of very similar instruments, a lot of brass instruments are similar to each other, A lot of stringed instruments can be similar as well. So really, I mean, there isn't a magic trick. You mentioned the basics like EQ and compression, but sometimes those just don't work well. Then you need to turn to the composition, and this is part of what a good producer will realize is they can think about the song and the way that it'll be mixed and know that, well, if I do this with the piano and I do this with the arrangement, that might not work in the mix because one thing's going to have to give or take away from the other.

(08:34):

So keep that in mind when you're making your compositions and your arrangements. It's super important to the mix and there's no mixing magic tricks to really make a bad composition or even a layered composition work. I mean, that's just the bottom line. Okay, next question is from Johan and he's going to be asking about some go-to plugins and some libraries. So Johan writes, Hey Joey. One of the things I've always loved about your mixes is their largers and life sound do in part to the extra production elements you add to enhance them. What would you say are your go-to plugins libraries for adding production elements to your mixes, like orchestra, synth sound effects and digital drums? Great question, Johan. Thanks for writing in and thanks for listening. My go-to plugins are things like Glitch. I think Glitch is an amazing plugin, especially for inspiring crazy ideas and sounds that you would never think of otherwise. Another good one is Stylus RMXs, which is really old plugin, but it's still kind of unbeatable. Haven't seen anyone really replace it. Of course, you've got Omnisphere. Omnisphere is great. Nexus is amazing as well.

(09:55):

As far as the libraries go, I like to use sym phobia, damage Evolve, and what else? Those are some of the main ones. Those are the easy ones to get into. For digital drums, I like to use a lot of the native instrument stuff like Battery four, all the stuff that comes with that. A lot of what you're hearing is honestly, I'll just take something basic, like a basic preset and I'll start mapping out some sort of a few hits here, a few hits there, maybe a little pattern, maybe a little beat, but then I'll take and manipulate that and then I'll take the result of that manipulation and manipulate it even more. And really it just kind of builds and feeds off things. And sometimes I might even start with something that when I first start using it, it kind of sounds like it's going to be the backbeat, but then I find another sound that's cooler and I'll put that on top of it and then that kind of changes my mind.

(10:58):

And then I turn the backbeat down and then I add another sound that I like that kind of becomes the new beat on top. And then now this thing that I had before when I started, which was the main beat is now just a background part that's super quiet and then distorted or lofi. So things kind of go in a progression. It's impossible to really tell you how I, it's impossible to unravel something that I've already done, but the process is pretty much the same. It's always just having all the tools that you need at your fingertips, knowing how to use those tools and then putting them to work. And I'm not afraid to open a patch, play with it for a few minutes and then make the part and then do something else to it. I don't really like to sit around and make patches for hours and hours.

(11:46):

I'm looking for really quick creative results and I can worry about how they sound later. I can usually mangle and manipulate them to a point where they get interesting as we go on and on through the project and we add more and more to it. So that's what I say. Next question comes from Brian, and Brian is going to be asking some stuff about mini drums. Brian says, could you please help me better understand how you make mini drums sound more like a real kit and less like a machine gun snare? I work in Cubase and I use a combination of drum forge, superior drummer and trigger to get my full kit sound. Currently, I'm only using the quantized function to add a number of random ticks to the grid for humanization. What I'd like to know more about is where should I be setting my velocities?

(12:39):

How many random ticks off the grid is enough? Are there any other humanizing functions in Cubase that I'm missing out on? Thanks. Well, thanks Brian for the question. Yeah, Cubase is actually one of the best programs to use for humanizing drums. There's so many amazing functions in there, and my memory's going to escape me right now, and I'm going to forget the name of this, but I'm going to try and tell you about it. So there's a way to write scripts in Cubase. I can't remember the name of it. It's not the script. I don't think it's called the script editor. It might be. But it's a way where you can go in there and you can make rules. You can do basic conditional logic. Like if a note is close enough to a quarter note, I want to push that forward by a random amount of milliseconds between zero and 10.

(13:41):

So you do that and then you save that as a preset and then it becomes a button, and then you can select notes and you press that button and then boom, it scatters all the hits, but only the quarter notes, for example. So it keeps your 16th notes in time, but your quarter notes go a little bit off or vice versa. Maybe you can move the 16th notes, but keep your quarter notes locked down. You have to think like a drummer, and it's hard to say that to somebody that doesn't play drums. So if you do play drums, you're already at an advantage, but if you don't, you have to realize that the human body is not a robot and it's impossible to make your limbs hit exactly at the same time, even when it's a kick and a snare and a symbol happening at the same time, if a person does that, they are not hitting all those drums at the same time.

(14:33):

One of them happens first and then maybe the next one, and then the next one. There's a small, tiny nanosecond amount of time between these three hits. And if you start to think about that and you start to think about, oh, the drummer is playing the snare really fast right now, and then he's got to move his whole arm all the way to the right side and hit the China symbol that's going to make his snare hit. The last snare hit a little bit weaker because he's getting ready to go to the China and his brain tells him, Hey, you need to be able to move your arm really quickly over here. So he will in effect, hit the snare lighter without realizing it because his body is trying to prepare him to have the amount of energy and speed he needs to reach that China symbol.

(15:27):

And so if you actually start to do stuff like that, you'll notice that it begins to sound like real drummers because those tendencies carry forward. I mean, all people share a common amount of little flaws, I guess you could say when they play drums. So my advice would be to sit down in a kit and try to do some of the things that you're programming and see how it feels. See where your arms start to get tired or where they hurt or where something is really hard to reach or something takes a, it is really hard to get something to be hit at the right speed or whatever. Once you do that, pay attention to what's happening with your body and program that into the actual hits that you're programming in the midi. Okay, so this next question's going to come from Romaine and he's asking about delegating work advice. Romaine says, you said in a previous podcast episode that you were good at working with other people in delegating work was your hot potato principle. I'm starting to work with other people and definitely want to hand over some work so I can focus on new things, but I'm having troubles delegating because when I do the work, I know how and when it's done, I can control everything and I know what I'm capable of.

(16:52):

Did you ever have the same problem when you started applying your hot potato concept? And if yes, do you have any advice to get over it? Well, I think the thing about delegating is you have to realize that other people that you are handing the work off to are probably going to have to make some of the same mistakes that you did. Even if you are able to sort of explain what those are, you have to realize that you've lived through your work and you've lived through what you are doing. And so when you hand it off to someone else, you can't expect that they've been down that same path. And so you have to have a little bit of sympathy and remorse and just take great care in how you treat it, because with a little bit of patience, you'll learn that people can learn from you a lot quicker than it took you to go down the journey.

(17:56):

But you're going to have to be willing to let that actually happen. That has to actually play out. So when I delegate something, I give it to them and I say, okay, this is what I want you to do, and here's how I want you to do it. And they do it and they make some mistakes. And the first thing I do is when I address them, the first thing I'll do is tell them what they did, right? I'll say, wow, you got it done on time. That's great. And you did do what I asked, but there was a few things that could be better. So always start with the positive and then go to the negative. And this is especially effective when you're collaborating with people, and it's a classic psychology tactic, and it comes with learning how to be a leader, and that's something that you'll have to take on when you start to delegate work.

(18:49):

I mean, you have to learn how to be a good leader, and there's a lot to it, but the first thing I would say is you got to let go and you got to have patience. Those are the first two huge things that will take it very far. And with patients, you'll be able to walk them through what they've done wrong and they'll learn from their mistakes, and that will honestly take you a lot further than just being frustrated and struggling through it all on your own. Well, guys, that's going to cut it for the end of this episode. Thank you guys so much for watching you for listening. Excuse me. Thank you guys so much for listening. Now, if you have a question, make sure you send me an email. I would love to answer it. Send the email to Joey at M Academy with the subject line Dear Joey, and I'll be happy to answer your questions. I didn't get to all of these, so there's a few left in here that I will answer on the next episode, but I appreciate everybody listening and asking questions and just being an awesome community. You guys are truly unstoppable. I'm Joey Sturgis, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 (19:59):

The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by Bala Guitars. Founded in 2014, Bala Guitar strives to bring modern aesthetics and options to vintage inspired designs, go to bala ge guitars.com for more info. This episode of the podcast is also brought to you by Fishman inspired performance technology. Fishman is dedicated to helping musicians of all styles achieve the truest sound possible wherever and whenever they plug in. Go to fishman.com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit nail the mix.com/podcast and subscribe today.