
JOHN DOUGLASS: Mixing Opeth, Common Production Mistakes, Plugins vs. Analog Gear
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On this Mixcritmonday episode, URM founder Eyal Levi is joined by producer/engineer John Douglass to critique user mixes of the Opeth classic “Heir Apparent.” Before diving into the critiques, they get into a killer discussion about the current state of music production. They cover how much easier it is for beginners to get decent sounds now, the incredible evolution of musician skill over the last couple of decades, and how digital tools like plugins and amp sims have finally reached a point where they can go toe-to-toe with high-end analog gear.
In This Episode
The main event features Eyal and John giving detailed, constructive feedback on three different student mixes. They tackle common but crucial issues like un-panned rhythm guitars, out-of-control low end in the kick drum, and over-compression that squashes the life out of beautifully recorded tracks. A major theme is that the source material is so good that it requires a delicate touch, not a heavy-handed template. They point out specific frequency problems, phase issues in the vocals, and highlight how dynamic balances between the song’s heavy and soft sections are key to getting the mix right. It’s a masterclass in objective listening and knowing when not to process.
Products Mentioned
Timestamps
- [0:38] Do beginners realize how spoiled they are with high-quality multitracks?
- [2:36] How production technology has advanced in just the last five years
- [3:44] Why it’s easier than ever to get a “decent” recording
- [5:02] How drummers’ relationship with click tracks has completely changed
- [6:40] The rising technical skill of young musicians
- [9:28] How streaming royalties are raising the quality of music again
- [10:23] We’ve entered the age where plugins have finally caught up to analog gear
- [11:14] The Taylor Larson NTM session: Amp sims vs. real amps
- [12:39] Critiquing the first mix from Chris Uber
- [15:58] The tell-tale signs of a mix done by a guitarist
- [17:30] The importance of A/B referencing against the commercial mix
- [19:24] Diagnosing phase issues between vocal tracks
- [24:47] Critiquing the second mix from Ethan Layman
- [25:04] The huge mistake of not panning the rhythm guitars
- [31:24] How over-compression can make a good performance sound bad
- [32:52] These Opeth tracks are so good you could just do a faders-up mix
- [36:30] Critiquing the third mix from Marcus Stone
- [39:49] When a snare sound is so loud it literally hurts your eyes
- [42:39] Preserving ghost notes when you’re gating a snare
- [44:51] Analyzing the low-end balance between the kick and bass
Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Solid State Logic. SSL is a manufacturer of high-end mixing consoles and recording studio software For over 49 years, SS L'S products have been at the heart of thousands of the most respected timeless recordings, solid state logic. Thank you for listening. And now your host Eyal
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Levi. Alright, welcome to the URM podcast, another episode of Mixed Crip Monday. I'm Eyal Levi with me as co-host John Douglass. Hello, Dr. Douglass.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hi, I'm back again.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thanks. I have a question. Do you think that people who are working on these tracks and are total beginners realize how spoiled they are? And I mean this in the nicest possible way, but holy shit.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I mean I always ask people on the one-on-ones just what's been your experience with this and just to kind of get a feel of what their focus has been on. So I'm going to keep asking that about the, nobody sent me an OPEC mix. This is the first batch of mixes of the OPEC month that I've heard, so we'll see how it goes. I hope people have a kind of respect for that because I dunno for you and me especially, it's like this was a record that really made an impact when it came out and has kind of stuck with us over the years. So it is really almost the pinnacle of nail the mixing to this point in some sense.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Absolutely. And so I'm thinking about, so when people sign up this month, they're getting this OPEC track and then they have the option of getting one of the chuga sessions for a discount. And so it's like imagine if you were just starting out and one of the first things you ever mix was Opeth and then Shuga. It's like imagine if part of me feels like it's morally wrong, but
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Imagine if in 2003 people had this, how that would've changed the history of metal corps through the two thousands if people had already had some of the secrets, if some of the cats were out of the bag, so to speak. I don't know. That just kind of popped into
Speaker 2 (02:33):
My head. I think the world would look completely different for us.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
And I mean the world already does look completely different for audio production now than it did even five years ago. Even five years ago when you were making records together, things were completely different and obviously they're going to be way different five years from now. So if it had started that much early, I can only imagine how radically more I guess advanced it would be at this point. I definitely do think that things are in many ways, a lot more advanced now
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And
Speaker 2 (03:12):
We're
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Definitely, I think the whole thing of everybody knows how to record at a decent level, that kind of mentality is actually becoming a reality and you can see it. I was reflecting on that either today or yesterday. Just that gold, that kind of standard that everybody has been thinking about for a while. It's like what's going to happen when everybody can record? It's like that's sort of becoming a reality. Everybody can record and at pretty damn good quality. So yeah, it's a whole new world.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, it's easier than ever to be passable or mediocre. I don't want to say mediocre in a derogatory way, but obviously we will always be hard to be great, but it's easier than ever to be decent and I think that that does change things for a lot of people. But at the same time, with that many more people trying, there's that many more opportunities for collaboration and it also makes the people who truly rule stand out that much more. Plus I think that it's only going to keep snowballing in quality. It's only up from here. For instance, remember what guitar players used to be like when I am a little older than you, so I might remember this a little more, but guitar players used to fucking suck when I learned how to play guitar. They're way better now. Even guitar players with their shitty modern vibrato and all that are way better than people who played guitar when I was learning or in the early two thousands when I was starting to record the idea of playing to a click track for drummers, it was really foreign to them and they were afraid of it.
(05:02):
It was like you were suggesting something insane to them. And now drummers that don't play to a click, I mean sure it might be an artistic choice not to use it sometimes, but how often do you find drummers, at least in our genres who don't play to a click?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That's almost unheard of. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (05:22):
You get a go Jira record and maybe a record and that's about it,
Speaker 2 (05:30):
But they could play to a click.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Right, exactly. That's the point is that it's the guys who really, their sound depends on their feel in a good way or it doesn't depend on it, but it adds that extra 15 20% of just raw aggression and emotion.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Absolutely. I'm thinking again about the guitar thing. So for a while I thought it was a regression in guitar playing when the technical bar went up because I felt like suddenly everybody could sweep, whereas before only 2% of people could sweep. But some of the things that got left behind were playing Bens in tune and vibrato that wasn't really dy and stuff. Good tasteful vibrato didn't seem to speed along evolution wise, like sweeping or something did or down picking.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
But
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I mean now I think we're at a point where that stuff has caught up and just basic level guitar players are way better. And yeah, same with recording.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I mean you look at a band like Pia and those guys are super young and they are, that whole style of integrating fusion into some of the more metal influences has really caught on with a younger crowd. I went to the Pia and c Cho show in Atlanta and the masquerade was packed. It was ridiculous and that's beautiful. The guy to girl ratio was not that absurd, which blew my mind. It's like nerdy, instrumental wanky music. I mean that in the best possible way. But yeah, it is great to see bands like that kind of branching out and being able to find influences that appeal to a wider audience and really stepping up their game.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, I think that that's a beautiful thing and we're entering a time period where music doesn't seem so dreadful like it did for a little while. There was a little while there where I really was starting to question what the hell was going on that time period when Guitar Pro started to take over and players stopped playing kind of. It's weird because it coincided with this technical expansion, inability. It was a really weird time period where people could play less well but better at the same time. Doesn't make sense. But if you were there, you would know what I meant. What I mean by that they could play faster but they sucked. It hadn't caught up I guess.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah, there's still a lot of not so awesome stuff out there, but I feel like we've kind of crossed a line to where you go on YouTube and find somebody playing a guitar cover or doing whatever their instrumental shred thing, it's probably going to be pretty good if it's got a bunch of views and the stuff that people are watching is actually pretty well put together. And I think that just kind of immediately raises the bar for a lot of young musicians who see that and want to emulate it. It's no longer join a pop punk band and play power chords. It's learn all these shredding scales and really master your instrument.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I love it. And then there's two other things that I've noticed are really helping things. One man, and I swore I would never talk about this on the podcast just because I feel like everyone that tries to sound smart about the music industry talks about this shit, but the fact that streaming royalties are now a thing
Speaker 4 (09:27):
And
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Artists are actually getting paid a lot better just recently makes, is going to raise the quality of music because there's a reward. Again, I think that for a little while, a lot of people who were very talented were jumping ship industry-wide, not just on the musician side, like business people too jumping ship. One of the best managers I had ever encountered like jumped ship and went to MMA for instance like 10 years ago. He didn't see the reward in it anymore. He wanted to get paid for his talents and now that there's revenue being generated again, you're going to see talent coming back that had previously jumped ship that. And also I think that a lot of producers mixers are finally agreeing that plugins and digital technology has come around the corner
Speaker 4 (10:23):
And
Speaker 2 (10:23):
We've entered the age where it doesn't matter what you use. Whereas even five years ago there was a big difference man, and I've been on all these nail the mix sessions now where we are actively trying to find if it really is better to go either which way. And look, the perfect example is the Forrester Seve session where he did the whole carnival mix on the SSL and outboard and then we had time to just start shooting things out. So we shot out all this beautiful gear against the UAD versions and man, sometimes the UAD versions were better, but all in all it was not any different. And so it's a magical time period to where the technology has caught up. I think
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I was going back and watching the Taylor Larson, Jason Richardson nailed the mix and looking at the comparison between the amp sim and the real amps that they painstakingly micd up and mixed and recorded and they're comparable if not identical or slightly even better on the modeling side. So I think that speaks volumes. It's like that guitar tone used to be the thing. It's like don't ever touch a guitar tone with a digital eq, you'll just immediately ruin it.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
That was kind of true.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, it was true to an extent. And now with, I don't even know what they do to improve the technology of these things, but with Oversampling and all the other things that they've started to incorporate, it really does make a difference.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
It's been long enough. That's the thing. Time really does fly by and so I feel like the early two thousands it was just close my eyes and then they're gone and here we are. But it's been a while. Oh yeah, it's been 20 years or something since I first started hearing about these weird things called pods.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
So
Speaker 2 (12:28):
It's about time. This shit sounded good. Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of sounding good, why don't we do some mixed crit Monday?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Alright, so the first one by the way, if you guys did not read the title of this episode, we are going to betting submissions of error apparent by opec by some nail the mixed subscribers. I've picked them randomly out of our mixed crit group, the octagon. These guys don't know that they're going to get crit and best of luck to everyone. So first one is from Chris Uber.
(15:58):
I think Chris probably plays guitar because this sounds super guitar heavy. It sounds like it was mixed by a guitarist. The rhythm guitars are dominating everything. But besides that, I'll just read off my notes and we can talk about it. I think there's too much low end in the kick. It just gets lost. The snare is too sample heavy. It sounds like a sneeze dynamics are not well worked out in the transitions, meaning I don't mean dynamic processing, I mean the relative volumes of the heavy to soft parts, which is a big part of pec sound. You got to get that stuff right. It does get softer when the drums drop out when it's just acoustic and flutes. But when it goes to the softer parts that feature drums, the drums are rocking way too hard. It's like the drums are overdone on the soft parts and not done enough on the heavy parts. You've got some opposite action happening as to what it should be. Also, ghost notes are getting lost, which is just a heresy on a no best track hearing a disconnection between the rhythm guitar and bass and kick drum, especially on the groovy parts and the vocals are just there. So that's what I had to say.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I agree with a lot of that. I was going to say, yeah, the sub of the kick is kind of out of control, especially on the double base parts and there's a lot of double base on this track.
(17:30):
I did notice that he basically matched the level of the commercial mix dead on, so that's not like I can't give you extra points for that. But I mean it shows that you have control over your master chain. It doesn't sound horrible in that respect. I can quickly just compare between yours and the commercial mix, which is what I would do if I was mixing this. So I think that's a good approach to take. And overall, I feel like some of the overall big picture mix, the sound is more or less there and I feel like you kind of took the song and put your own spin on it and I don't totally agree with some of the spin that you put on it. But as far as objective stuff that I was hearing, one thing I was noticing is that vocal effects track, and I think this might be across all three mixes if not the first two that we're going to listen to. There's something going on with the phase between the main vocal track and that panty vocal track or that secondary stereo vocal, stereo vocal track. And I think you can really hear it if you roll off kind of the low end during, let's see, here's a vocal part, especially on the Ss so many years, where is it versus, and here's the original.
(19:24):
It feels like there's something Fay going on in the high end there between those two tracks and I think it's creating a little extra semblance in the vocals. So
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I think you're right. There was something, I didn't even catch what it was that was kind of painful, but there you go.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
And I noticed that when I pulled up the tracks and I'm not sure exactly what Y's intention or how he processed it, but since I'm hearing that phasing mostly in the high end, you might try rolling off some of the highs and see if that makes it blend in better.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, I'd be curious about something you just said a little earlier about the low end being out of control. Do you mind playing us an AB of the low end and the double base parts between the original and Chris's mix?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Sure, yeah,
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Let's do that.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
So let's just roll off down to two 50 or so. I'll put on a 24 DB roll off and if you're watching the video version and looking at the analyzer, you can just see right off the bat that all this stuff below 70 hertz is just a few DB too loud. Compare it to the original. If you roll off even further, you could probably even hear really just the base of the kick. So here's Chris's mix and then the original. Yeah, it's interesting. There's obviously a lot more sub and we can kind of compensate for that by just rolling some of that off. Let's try it like 35 hertz or so.
(21:31):
But you start to hear more of the balance differences within that low end. So it's like on Chris's mix I'm hearing a lot of the bass, bass guitar and just the low end rumble of the kick, whereas I'm not really hearing the punch so much of the kick. And I think in general on this record, I noticed that there's maybe compared to some of the other nailing mixes that we've had recently, the kick doesn't slam quite as much. It's just not that kind of a record, especially on the double kick. It's not going to be that typewriter type of sound and it's more of standing in the room with a drum set and he's playing double bass. You just kind of get a constant wash of that low end. So that's more of a taste decision for this type of mix. But I definitely think if you kind of the
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Decision,
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, just balance the roll off some of the low end of that kick and balance the bass guitar and kick in that sub 200 area a little bit better and you'll be in better shape. The other thing I wanted to mention is just like you said, the guitars are kind of taken over and especially I found around 500 hertz and 1.2. So I think if we go look around that area, so this is around 500 versus the original. There's a few db of a difference there. I think if you suck some of this out you'd be better off.
(23:40):
It gives a little bit more crispy vibe. And then the other place I was looking at is 1.2, it's kind of a nasty something there. So just two, well, three changes. I've got a high passing at 37 hertz, I'm cutting a little bit at 4 75 and cutting a little bit at 1300. So here's before, after. So yeah, I feel like that cleans up some of the mids a little bit. Yin's mentioned that he felt like his original mix had too much mids and this has too much mids compared to that. So yeah, I would think about controlling that 500 area especially.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Absolutely. Alright, let's move on to the next one. This one's from Ethan Layman and let me just say first I thought this was in mono because the rhythms aren't panned, but then I heard the Toms go across and I realized it's not in mono
Speaker 4 (25:04):
But
Speaker 2 (25:04):
The guitars aren't panned and so it's already at a significant disadvantage from the get go.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
When I played the intro I was like, well that's kind of an interesting decision to do it backwards and have the lead guitars panned hard, left hard and have the, or not even, I don't know if they were hard left hard, but the lead guitars are kind of out to the side a little bit and the rhythms were in the middle. I was like that's probably not what you want to do. At least if you're comparing it to the original, it's like I could see maybe for a creative effect if you try to do something like that but not for the whole song.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
No,
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It's crazy. Definitely not. Especially if you just trying to, if you just kind ignore that and try And what I did was I ran a matchy cue on his mix to the original just to kind of get it a little closer to the ballpark and just kind see have a starting point here. So I'm just going to do that real quick.
(29:29):
Okay, so now that we've got, lemme just a that against or volume match first and then we'll a it against the original. So obviously guitars are still in the middle, not much you can do about that, but flipping back and forth now let's go to the vocal part. You can at least, so if I put the original mix in mono, if I put both of the mixes in mono, let's try that now they're kind of comparable. So it's like what I thought was funny is that you can get a long way with frequency balance, but even with that frequency balance adjusted to where the relative highs, lows, mids kind of match the original mix and it makes it a little less disorienting to listen to, but you could still just be like, well even matching the volumes, it's never going to sound as loud as the original because the guitars are panned in the middle. I feel like that's half the punch of the song.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
I mean if you get all the frequency balance and then just don't pan the rhythm guitars, why do all that work? Just, you know what I'm saying seems let's do all that work just to shoot yourself in the foot basically. Alright, here's another thing I noticed. So this song has a ton of extra instrumentation and arrangement stuff and those other instruments just pop right the fuck in. Nothing gradual about them, nothing smooth, it's just like boom, suddenly there's a part. And I'm not saying that everything needs to have this super long fade in or anything, but you can hear where the actual file starts, it's overdone and I think that there's a lot of weird compression on all this then that's why we're hearing it that way. Another thing I noticed is for instance, the piano the louder than the heavy part. So right there is your key indicator that someone has gone nuts with compression limiting the piano should not be louder than the heavy parts. But not only that, it's so compressed and I'm hearing vibrations from the piano. I don't know if it's a real piano or not, but maybe it is. Maybe I'm hearing the piano vibrate and strings inside the piano vibrate and the vibrations are so loud compared to the actual notes that I've feel like I'm hearing wrong notes in there, like minor seconds. And it sounds like he is making pliny piano mistakes and I know there aren't wrong notes in there and there's no mistakes in there. So the level of dynamics processing is actually making it sound like it was played worse than it was, which is quite an accomplishment.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
I think this song, if any song on nail the mix is worthy of doing just a fader up mix and just use your pan and your faders and is minimal kind of high pass, low pass, notch out some stuff that sounds offensive, but that's how I was approaching it. And I got a long way with just a very minimal setup. I didn't import my drum settings, I didn't import any of my usual stuff, just put a little bit of SSL compression on the bus and try and mix into it and see how far you can get. And a being it with the loudness is match. It's pretty amazing. These tracks are really well done. You don't really need to do much of anything. And that was kind of my worry going into this is that people were just going to kind of throw the tracks into their template and roll and roll and it's really not set up for that.
(33:45):
It's like if these were raw, straight off the kit maybe, but they're treated very well and very carefully and they're pretty much mixed ready to where you could just pull this up on an analog console and tweak a few things and do some automation and you'd be there. So yeah, I think you covered most of it. But yeah, there's definitely a big low end buildup. The phasey vocal thing is still there with the last mix. I think the guitar, the high end of the guitars kind of got neutered and it might just be a byproduct of being monitored out, but I felt like again, if there are any guitars that come through, nail the mix that you shouldn't touch, it might be these ones because they're clear as a bell and there's really, you can sweep around these guitar tracks with an EQ and you will not find any white noisy sounding parts of the frequency. So yeah, I mean touch it up and beef it up with some parallel stuff if you want to, but I wouldn't try notching too much out of this guitar signal or anything.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
These tracks are presented on a silver platter basically. I mean, just another example, I can hear weird creeks in the bass guitar, like weird finger creaks that I shouldn't be hearing. I can hear this rumble under the acoustics from just, it sounds like the wood vibrating. I feel like I can hear his fingers moving in the air on the finger picking stuff. It's so compressed that I feel like I'm hearing the air move chill.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
So maybe back off the L one
Speaker 2 (35:32):
A little bit. Yeah, just chill for real. These tracks are engineered and performed so well with so much care that you don't need to do that stuff. Just balance it.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I mean even just look, a lot of this stuff you can determine without even listening to it when you pull this stuff into the session, it's like look at the transient consistency of the kick track. It's like every single hit you could tell it's already gone through some kind of compression or at least it's been pushed through something because every transient is basically even with the next one, which makes it really easier to trigger, but it also tells you that they've already done whatever dynamics processing that they thought was necessary. Similarly. Yeah, I mean look at the EQ curves of some of these things. They're a little more mixed ready than you would probably get if you just stuck a mic on a drum. So just take that into consideration.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
And I understand that they took a very long time on this and were extremely perfectionistic about it and wanted it to sound exactly the way they wanted it to sound during the production process. So there you have it. There you have it. Our final mix, this one's from Marcus Stone.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
God.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Okay, so have you ever been in a room with a drum set and the drummer is hitting the snare and it literally hurts your eyeballs? Yes,
Speaker 3 (40:01):
I definitely
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Had that experience. That's what this sounds like to me. That snare is so loud that it makes my eyes, it makes me squint.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Yeah, I thought it was interesting the whole taking, it's like let's do an pec mix but with a super Taylor Larson snare or something like that. If that was kind of the intention, it's like that's an interesting idea and congrats on making the snare sound super fat, but where's the ambience of the kit? And it doesn't need to be that far out in front of everything else. I mean you throw this in a mono and I bet the kick snare is just going to dominate everything compared to yeah, the transient of the kicking scenario do not need to be that loud. Even if you're Taylor Larson, it's going to be balanced with the rest of the kit.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I was about to say, I think it's a disservice to Taylor. He does have loud drum mixes, but they're never wrong.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
No, and they've got plenty of ambiance too. And that's really missing here is if you just flip back and forth, put it back in stereo, but flipping back and forth, just listen to the ambiance of the drums. I can still hear your high hats fine, but they're way up in the 20 K region now instead of being kind of mid balanced and just roomy. So yeah, I think it's more of a direct mic, heavy mix and I don't particularly like it for this. I think if you took those direct mics as they were processed here and pulled them back in the mix and just balanced them with the rest of the drum kit, I think it would be a big improvement.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
But then you'd have to fix whatever weird compression shit's going on, pumping all over the place. And once again, and I hear this on these three mixes and also a bunch of other ones I listened to, the soft parts sound like the snare and kick show. Basically it's like snare and kick with other ethereal elements and then suddenly kicks back into that heavy parts and the kicks are just gone. Why that's not how it's supposed to be. It's not. So the balances are very wrong. But I can hear ghost notes though. I can hear the ghost notes.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, that's what I was going to say is 10
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Points right there.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Separating kind the process of getting your snare ready from the actual mix of it. It's like you definitely want to make sure that you're preserving those ghost notes if you're going to gate the snare. And I would doubt that Yins did much gating at all on this snare, but if you're going to gate it, you definitely need to make sure that you get all the ghost notes and it sounds like you did. If we go to what's a part like this part, it's like I can hear all the scenario notes and it sounds like it's not getting gated out unlike some of the other mixes that we were listening to. So good job on that. But yeah, after you do that you've got to do some automation and balance it because those ghost notes are
Speaker 2 (43:32):
But that feel is wrong though. It sounds like the incredible Hulk is trying to play this smooth, this smooth, sexy part and it's just, it's not right.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Yeah, it's like get the gate as one thing and then maybe process the scenario differently for that part. Don't scoop it out so much or don't compress it so much or bring out some of the mid-range
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Rings. I'm thinking of Tommy Lee doing the drum solo from Molly Crewe upside down with fireworks going off and shit and him wearing the roller coaster seat doing back flips during this part
Speaker 3 (44:18):
While Mike plays an acoustic guitar.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, it doesn't go together. So, okay. I have a question for you in terms of some frequency analyzer stuff. So I'm hearing the notes that the bass is playing, but I feel like the low end from the bass is kind of missing and it's not providing the glue between the kicks and the guitars, making the kicks sound very disconnected. What are you hearing in the low end between the two mixes and specifically in relation to the bass guitar?
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah, let's check that out. I was feeling like above that I was definitely noticing a buildup in the low mids of the guitars or the 400, 500 area, that kind of stuff. But as far as the actual low end, let's check it out. Yeah, it seems like the low end of the kick is really driving the whole sub here. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can immediately hear the balance difference between, so here's Marcus's mix and here's the original, and you just immediately hear how in the original the kick goes down and the base goes up in volume. So Marcus original.
(45:59):
And the other thing is, again, just looking at that frequency analyzer, you could see that the low end just stays more constant. Whereas you could see Marcus's the sub down right around like 35 hertz and below is just kind of dancing around in time with the kick drum. So that's really a sign that you may want to just high pass some of that and really just work on the balance between the base and the kick drum and how they interact, whether you're side chaining it or just kind of really carefully balancing things or automating it. But yeah, I mean especially for something with this much double kick, I would say you need to be automating a high pass on there for the double kick parts or use something like, I remember Taylor Larson was using some sort of tape saturation to kind of automatically bring down those parts, but whatever you do, you got to take the performance into account and
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Get the job done. Yeah, yeah, exactly. As Andy Snip would say, just get the job done. So cool. I mean that's all that I had to say about these songs. You got anything else?
Speaker 3 (47:12):
The only other thing I was going to say about this one was Warren in the high and let's take a look at that real quick. I think it's the guitars upper in this three K, 3.5 k may want to look at notching that a little bit. But yeah, just flipping back and forth, the guitar sound a little bit crispy up in that three K area. And then the other thing is, I'm hearing, I think I mentioned this before, but every time the high hat gets hit there's a 20 K spike. So watch out for that. That's pretty common depending on Be
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Nice to your dog.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
Yeah, exactly. Watch that bullet for my Valentine Nail the mix or the Ian Nail the mix if you want kind of a masterclass and getting rid of the crap in your symbols, really the goal here is retain all the shimmery magic and get rid of the white noise and it'll make your pets much happier.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Absolutely. And that's after all what we're doing this for.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
That's
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Why we're here. Alright, well thank you for co-hosting.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Thank you for having me. This
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Has been my pleasure. This has been another episode of Mix Crip Monday on the URM Podcast. See you later. See you guys
Speaker 1 (48:47):
To get in touch with podcast podcast.