Jenson Manning: Taming low end, fixing pancaked snares, and building a portfolio from scratch

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing and mastering. Go to creative live.com/audio to start learning now. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is also brought to you by Pro Tone Pedals, the secret tone weapon for guitar experts everywhere. Go to proton pedals.com to take your tone to the next level. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 3 (00:00:30):

Alright, what's up guys? Thanks for tuning into the show and thanks to everyone at the forum for all the support. If you have questions or an idea for a topic you'd like us to discuss, visit www.joeysturgis.com/podcast. You can also vote for the current questions and suggestions for next week's episode. I'm Joey Sturgis, and with me as always is Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi. Hello.

(00:00:54):

Hello. Hey,

Speaker 2 (00:00:55):

What's up? Hello.

Speaker 3 (00:00:56):

Or

Speaker 2 (00:00:57):

If you haven't yet, check us out on Twitter and you can get the links on the website. You can also ask us questions there and we'll try to answer them on the show. I'm drinking a fat tire today.

Speaker 3 (00:01:06):

Is that any good?

Speaker 2 (00:01:07):

Yes. It's like the fucking best beer there is.

Speaker 3 (00:01:10):

I've been drinking a lot of that. I don't remember who makes it Octoberfest something or other. Maybe it's Sam Adams or I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:01:17):

Oh God, don't tell me you're drinking the Sam Adams shit.

Speaker 3 (00:01:20):

I'm not a beer connoisseur. I'm more of a food snob than a alcoholic beverage snob. So

Speaker 2 (00:01:25):

Pond water.

Speaker 4 (00:01:26):

Pond

Speaker 3 (00:01:26):

Water.

Speaker 2 (00:01:26):

Dude, I tried that stuff last October and I thought it tasted like shit. That's

Speaker 4 (00:01:31):

How I feel most beer tastes.

Speaker 2 (00:01:33):

You're not a beer guy, aal.

Speaker 4 (00:01:35):

Not at all. I have to be really drunk to enjoy beer. Have you seen me with a beer? I'm usually drunk. That's basically how it goes. I'm not going to just decide to drink beer. It's more just one of those. We got to keep this rolling somehow and if I do another shot, I'm going to puke. So beer it is, let's step off the gas a little, but keep the RPMs up sort of thing. So yeah, I'm not a beer guy. No, it's either wine or liquor for me. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:02:11):

If you learn how to drink, you're from Wisconsin, you'd be able to do that pretty fast. We don't sip beer like the rest of the country. We just go like that and the glass is gone. Then we do it again and all of a sudden four minutes later you've had four or five beers and you don't need a couple of shots. You got to piss a lot more though.

Speaker 4 (00:02:28):

Maybe you guys have discovered that it tastes like shit and it's better to just get it over with.

Speaker 3 (00:02:32):

Get it down. You got it.

Speaker 4 (00:02:34):

That's awesome. Maybe that's it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:02:36):

So besides beer drinking and not beer drinking, what's going on with you guys right now? What are you guys up to?

Speaker 4 (00:02:43):

Well, cold chamber just left my house. They just recorded here for a few weeks, so I've been in the recovering my control room phase, which is always interesting. Recording a band called Goliath while finishing up mixes, while filming playthroughs, while recording podcasts, while hatching plans for universal domination. It's a pretty hectic schedule, but it's cool. I like it. Joel,

Speaker 3 (00:03:13):

We've been busy while Joey, we got that. That's been coming out here and seems to be getting its fair share of hate and praise

Speaker 2 (00:03:23):

As always. Yep. I love it.

Speaker 3 (00:03:24):

I love that band. They're so funny. I feel like you either get it or you don't, and if you don't get it you'd be like, man, these guys suck, but if you get it you'll be like, this is the most amazing band I could listen to Atila all day every day. They're just hilarious. I get it, I love it. It's great.

Speaker 2 (00:03:39):

Yeah, I think a lot of people take themselves too seriously and then try to also take Atilla too seriously and it's one of those things where you have to realize that at the end of the day, a band is just an entertainment thing. You're just entertaining other people. So I mean if you're not entertained by that, then I don't know, you suck.

Speaker 4 (00:04:03):

I think it's pretty entertaining. I am not that familiar with the band, but I feel like it's so well presented and it gets people's attention so expertly and they're doing so well that I don't feel like it's an accident and I don't think that it's a product of people just fucking around at all. It seems to me, and this is coming from someone who's not on the inside, it seems to me like a pretty serious project with people, at least a few people that kind of know what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (00:04:37):

Well, one of the things I always say during the session, and this happens because I've done three records for them, so this happens a lot, is he'll give me one of the lines and it'll just be so funny that when I hit stop I'm just laughing hysterically and then he starts laughing and we're both just like, man, this is so awesome. We get to make money recording basically fart jokes. I dunno. It's pretty awesome scenario. I'm pretty stoked about working with them.

Speaker 4 (00:05:08):

I think it's absolutely great when that can happen and I wonder if the people that are hating are a majority or they're just that vocal minority that's on the internet that makes their presence super known. Their hate is so strong that they need to broadcast it to the world, but Atilla is doing pretty damn well, so there's obviously a lot of people that love it and who get it. I have this theory that lots of music lovers or band lovers or whatever don't actually post about it online.

Speaker 2 (00:05:50):

Oh yeah, that's true. It's mostly hate that you see. That's the motivation to actually write a comment is when you dislike something, but if you really like it, you're just sitting there and listening to it and you like it, you're not going to be like, oh, I'm going to make a comment and tell everyone in the world this is badass. I like this. There's a couple of people that do that, but majority is the haters.

Speaker 4 (00:06:12):

I've read that there's lots of studies about this actually, that the number one motivator to action online is anger. This is a formally studied thing

Speaker 3 (00:06:24):

That does not surprise me in the least.

Speaker 4 (00:06:27):

You can see it experientially every single day going on the internet. People react with anger the strongest and I guess praise in a bracket that's way underneath that and then technical details under that I think. But yeah, the hate strong and I agree. It's like if I really like something, I'm going to listen to it when I'm living life and not online I guess, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (00:07:00):

Well, let's talk a little bit about, that's kind of cool. It brings us to the point where what can a mix do for a song? Can it make or break a song? And I think in a way the mix is just as important as the song itself. It has to help the song, and I've seen some situations online where I thought a song wasn't that great, but the mix saved it and there were people who were really into it and they were making comments about, oh man, this song really slams, but that doesn't necessarily mean the song is great.

Speaker 4 (00:07:34):

Well, I feel like one thing that a mix can do for a song which is important is that if it's not a good song, it can give it its 15 minutes of fame. I don't think a great mix will make a bad song last forever or anything like that. Obviously it's not going to become a classic, but the bells and whistles and I call it the car stereo test element, the car stereo testament's there enough to where people feel like they're watching the THX commercial at the movies or whatever where it's slamming enough, they'll like it for the time being and probably enough to purchase it or support the band in some way, shape or form. So I think a great mix goes a really long way.

Speaker 3 (00:08:22):

Yeah, it's interesting. It kind of goes both ways. I mean a little jaded one way because I'm an audio guy like you guys and as audio guys we will listen to a song that sucks because the mix is amazing. So when I go through my rock mix reel for example in my car, I'm like, man, I like maybe three or four of these songs on here, but the mixes are incredible and every single song and they're all mixed by different guys and different and they all have different qualities that I enjoy, but I usually hate the songs, but I'll just keep listening to it because I'm analyzing the mixes. Now that being said, if the mix absolutely blows on a song, a great song can still shine and be its great song. For example, look at some of the songs that were mega hits from the many, many years ago when recording was starting out and they only had a few tracks and no one really knew what they were doing and there was no mixing. It was just kind of like, all right, we've got three tracks. Let's just hit play and capture the vibe of the song and there's mistakes and imperfections and things like that. And no one really mixed per se so much back then. I mean there was a lot of engineering going on, but those songs, they're classics and you listen to the song and you don't care that the vocal is on a tune or the timing is off.

Speaker 4 (00:09:32):

Let me ask you something about that. That brings up a question, and I've wondered this for a while. Are we accepting of that because it's old and for the time it was cutting edge or are we calling them classics because they're really great songs, meaning if that song Yesterday by the Beatles or something, something that's just been around forever and has made trillions of dollars, if that came out today and didn't sound very good, would it be even given the chance to get off the ground?

Speaker 3 (00:10:06):

Probably not. Definitely not in this market. With the investment the way it is, I mean as you guys know, every label that's out right now, they don't want to take risks, so you got to turn in a finished product if you're pitching pretty much and really, hey, if we're going to invest a couple hundred k into your band, we want to know what it's going to sound like before we know what it's going to sound like.

Speaker 2 (00:10:24):

I think Sonics have always been competitive and probably always will be the character back then. I think even the Beatles were a little bit on the cutting edge of what they were doing with recording, so that probably did play in, they had good songs obviously, but the way that they were doing the production of the songs was also innovative as well.

Speaker 4 (00:10:53):

Absolutely. And for the late sixties or early seventies being that you had nothing to compare it against that was as modern as it got just like 10 years from now, the stuff that we think sounds huge probably won't sound as huge even though I can't imagine what that's like. I know that just six years ago, I remember hearing an unnamed mix from a band that obviously influenced Atila, influenced that whole style and heaviest Balls is so heavy, so huge sounding for back then it was kind of what everybody used as the Gold standard in 2008, 2009 for breakdown stuff and I just heard it again and it sounded kind of weak and at the time I couldn't imagine stuff sounding bigger.

Speaker 2 (00:11:48):

Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. I remember the first time I heard the Offspring song, the first single that was really big and I was into it when I was that age and it comes on the radio still now today and I hear it and I'm like, man, that sounds awful. Like, gosh, I can't believe it's made it this far.

Speaker 3 (00:12:07):

Hey, the Black album still sounds good.

Speaker 2 (00:12:10):

Yeah, and that's another interesting point is stuff, there are certain projects that were done a long time ago that were just so ahead of its time that it still competes with shit today. It's pretty awesome.

Speaker 4 (00:12:22):

You know what I just heard last night for the first time in ages, is that song Party Hard by Andrew Wk?

Speaker 3 (00:12:29):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:12:31):

This is fairly modern actually. I wouldn't be surprised if I heard that coming out today maybe with a couple of tweaks to the song to bring it up to date. But

Speaker 2 (00:12:40):

Yeah, I remember reading some magazine articles about how he was basically layering the guitars tens of times and I was really fascinated about layering when I read that. And I think it just goes to show that if you are kind of a little bit of a mad scientist in terms of production, it always seems to pay off no matter how long it takes. Those songs are like huge hits. They'll be hits forever, they'll be played at birthday parties and weddings and clubs for eternity

Speaker 4 (00:13:13):

And those recordings hold up. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:13:16):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:13:16):

Maybe they don't hold up on a web forum, but like you just said, parties and nightclubs and all that forever, the true test of success I think stands for those songs.

Speaker 2 (00:13:29):

Yeah, it's that thing where you make the right moves at the right time. Absolutely. Well, I think we're going to go ahead and jump into today's episode guys. It's Monday, so here we go.

Speaker 5 (00:13:41):

It's time for Mix Crit Monday.

Speaker 2 (00:14:00):

Joining us today, on Mix Crit Monday is is Jensen Manning. Say hello Jensen.

Speaker 4 (00:14:05):

Hey guys. Hey,

Speaker 2 (00:14:06):

What's up Jensen?

Speaker 4 (00:14:06):

Hey Jensen.

Speaker 2 (00:14:08):

Jensen has mixed a track that we're going to critique and we're going to share it with you right now, so check it out.

Speaker 6 (00:15:56):

We've been for too long and we've been asleep for too long now my brothers and sisters, this is Chance, this is chance to break three.

Speaker 2 (00:18:07):

Now, Jensen, tell us a little bit about yourself, your history, your experience level. Give us some background.

Speaker 7 (00:18:15):

Alright, so I live in a tiny town located in Montana and for my band we always wanted to go record, but we didn't really have the ability to go really travel that far. So what I wanted to do is just start out and help my band out and it really broke out from there and I just started expanding and expanding and over time just kept building stuff up and it's getting to the point now where I want to take it seriously and start getting help from people that know what they're doing so that I can be at a level where I can start making this my business and my career.

Speaker 4 (00:18:47):

Lemme ask you something, are you making any money doing this right now?

Speaker 7 (00:18:51):

No, not currently.

Speaker 4 (00:18:52):

So is this your band that you sent us the mix of what we just heard?

Speaker 7 (00:18:57):

No, it's not. It's a band called South Korean and Vegas, another studio did it in, put it on some, a raw list and I downloaded it.

Speaker 4 (00:19:05):

So you didn't record this?

Speaker 7 (00:19:07):

No, I didn't.

Speaker 4 (00:19:08):

Okay, cool. So you mixed something that somebody else recorded. Correct. Tell us a little bit about this song and how it was recorded. Are these real drums? Are these fake drums? What do you know about the guitars and what can you tell us about this?

Speaker 7 (00:19:23):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:19:23):

Break it down Recording. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (00:19:24):

Okay. So I downloaded everything and everything was foldered together pretty well. It had guitars, clean vocals, syns, track effects, back effects, things like that. It did have bass, midi and midi drums, which I prefer not to do bass mini, but I did it anyways, so the drums are programmed and so I always usually run my drums through Superior Drummer and then I'll bounce 'em all out separately and then trigger and blend from there. And with the bass, pretty much the same thing. I just ran it through Texas Grind all I have currently at the moment. And then guitars were double tracked, but at points they were quad tracked, so there was a whole nother set of guitars to deal with within the mix, but at points it helped, it really added to it and then it had all the backing effects, synths, choirs, things like that.

Speaker 4 (00:20:14):

Did you get, or did you have to come up with your own amp sounds or sim sounds?

Speaker 7 (00:20:21):

There were di so I came up with a guitar sound myself.

Speaker 4 (00:20:24):

Cool. And what's going on mastering wise? Do you have your own fake master? Did somebody else master this? What's the story with that?

Speaker 7 (00:20:33):

No, I actually usually don't let it get this loud.

Speaker 2 (00:20:36):

So you did it yourself?

Speaker 7 (00:20:37):

Yeah, yeah, I did everything myself. I haven't pushed it through an actual master, but it was actually sounding good the way that I had it and I really wanted to get something out there just to get some help on, so that's where I was at in the song.

Speaker 3 (00:20:51):

What's kind of your mastering chain? Just curious because well, before we start into the critique, that's one of the things I'm going to be very curious about because of the downstream effects it had on the mix.

Speaker 7 (00:21:00):

Most of the time I just throw a, the first thing I'll do is I'll do some e queuing, just that light EQ to help in places that the mix may lack and really kind of tighten it up in there. And then I'll throw usually a multi-band compressor on there. Usually just the stock studio one is what I do and there I'll throw the tri comp on there or maybe not, depending on how much I've compressed everything throughout the song.

Speaker 2 (00:21:32):

I've never heard that. What's Trium?

Speaker 7 (00:21:34):

It's a pretty basic multi-band compressor. It's just got a high and low filter on it and then you can change your frequencies through all that and you can compress as much as you want. There's also a saturate option, which I use a little bit of saturation but not a whole lot.

Speaker 2 (00:21:51):

Are you using two multi-band compressors or just one?

Speaker 7 (00:21:54):

I usually don't compress that hard with the other one, but I will use that one, so I guess it would be two, but the Tricom is a lot more basic and not as in depth as the multi-band the first one that I do use.

Speaker 2 (00:22:06):

Gotcha.

Speaker 7 (00:22:07):

Okay.

Speaker 4 (00:22:07):

So Tricom, even though it's called Tri comp, it's only got high and low, so it should be called dual comp. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:22:16):

Okay,

Speaker 4 (00:22:16):

That's interesting. Yeah, I've never heard of that one either. Did you say Studio one as in you use the software studio one?

Speaker 7 (00:22:23):

Yeah, yeah, they actually, they have a really cool project thing where you can bring it into a project and it's just got your stereo track and you can see the levels and it's got a huge stereo meter or spectrum meter on it. It's actually really cool and really nice. What are you using to get your loudness? Usually it's when I mix. I usually let it hit. I would say probably negative six, negative eight, and that's with everything. And then usually I won't do any loudness with eq. Usually I let the multi-band and tri comp kind of bring up the loudness of it.

Speaker 3 (00:22:59):

Okay, so it's like the multi-band using to limit the mix or Fox clip it or something like that? Correct,

Speaker 7 (00:23:05):

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:23:06):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:23:07):

So let's start with how do you feel about your mix and what is it about it that you wish could be better?

Speaker 7 (00:23:14):

The one thing, after listening to it a few times, because you always pick out those things, I know that the kick could probably be a little more prominent, a little bit. I want to say a little bit clique here so you can kind of hear it a little bit more. I felt like the guitar and bass and the low end actually went pretty nice. I did side chain, the kick and the base so that the base would actually fill up that low end versus the kick wishing the snare was a little bit more prominent and was not a big fan of the clean vocals, but 'em how I thought they fit, they probably could be turned up a little bit, but at a basic standpoint, that's about the best that I can think of right now.

Speaker 4 (00:23:56):

That brings up a question I've got, and this is big's critique stuff, so talking about the low end, one of the main things I noticed is that it's a little bit unruly and we can talk about how to get that under control, but first and foremost, what are you listening on? Because

Speaker 2 (00:24:17):

That's everything.

Speaker 4 (00:24:18):

Yeah. If you're listening to something that's got the base boosted, not boosted, the opposite. Actually, if you're listening to something where the base isn't enough or whatever, you might overcompensate, I'd like to know what you're actually listening on.

Speaker 7 (00:24:35):

I'll usually split it up when I'm doing low end. I have equator D fives that I use currently at the moment. Those are what I mostly mix through, but I'll put on my at m fifties and I'll try to listen to the one through that.

Speaker 2 (00:24:52):

Here's a big question.

Speaker 7 (00:24:53):

Yep.

Speaker 2 (00:24:54):

Do you have your speakers decoupled?

Speaker 7 (00:24:57):

Could you, I'm not really sure what you mean by that. I've never heard that term.

Speaker 2 (00:25:00):

Yeah, a lot of people will put the speakers on the desk or on the table and I don't know if you can see the video of what Joel's showing you there, but he's got his speakers decoupled from his desk. You can see that the speakers are on a sound absorbent material and then the sound absorbent material is on the table and it prevents the speakers from resonating frequencies on the desk.

Speaker 7 (00:25:27):

Yep. Yeah, no, I have that. They're under foam at the moment, so

Speaker 2 (00:25:31):

Cool.

Speaker 7 (00:25:32):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:25:32):

For anyone who's listening, that's mix 1 0 1. If you're messing with your listening environment, you need to have your speakers decoupled.

Speaker 4 (00:25:40):

Well and for you guitar players out there, if you are, just need another example of how this works, just think about when you put your head stuck against the wall and the guitar suddenly gets a lot louder and gets amazing low end unplugged. It's the same exact thing. Your desk becomes part of the sound, which is not a good thing unless you decouple it.

Speaker 2 (00:26:06):

Are any of you guys familiar with the speakers? He was talking about the never heard of

Speaker 4 (00:26:11):

Them.

Speaker 2 (00:26:11):

Yeah,

Speaker 7 (00:26:12):

Same here.

Speaker 3 (00:26:13):

Not familiar.

Speaker 2 (00:26:14):

What price range are they in?

Speaker 7 (00:26:15):

I actually, I would say probably 400, 500 bucks. I actually bought 'em used from Cory Broman.

Speaker 4 (00:26:21):

Okay, cool.

Speaker 7 (00:26:22):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:26:22):

So I want to talk about the low end sum and I know that you said that you wanted your kick to be more prominent and I've been doing a lot of Skype critiques and this is actually fairly common, so I feel like we should address this in as much detail as possible, but I personally don't think that getting the kick more prominent is the issue. I think the issue is getting the low end under control and then the kick will be way easier to hear. Everything will be easier to hear. It feels to me like it's swallowing everything. I would be interested to know what's on the actual base chain.

Speaker 7 (00:27:10):

On the base. I actually have two tracks. I have one running through Amplitude through an SVT Pro. Usually with that I like to kind of let that fill up my low end and kind of take away the high end just because I feel like Amplitude and that SVT Pro really helps base and really makes it kind of gives it that boomy sound. And then usually what I'll do is I'll run a sand amp for my highs to the base and kind of blend 'em together and I'll bust 'em and then I'll usually EQ from there.

Speaker 2 (00:27:43):

So you basically have a crossover setup, you've got the same base track twice. The first track is your low end and the second track is your high end, correct?

Speaker 7 (00:27:53):

Yes. And

Speaker 2 (00:27:53):

You've got high and low passes on those or are you just letting the actual chain create the high and low pass effect?

Speaker 7 (00:28:02):

No, I do have the effect on both channels.

Speaker 2 (00:28:06):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:28:06):

I have three main issues, but we'll get to those. But definitely the low end was the first thing I noticed when I hit play and I went, holy crap, it's really out of control and all over the place and on certain notes you can really hear the bass boom and bloom and certain notes, it kind of disappears. The low end was so strong I felt like it was even actually swallowing up the vocals. So I come from a radio rock mixing background and things like that and that's like you get killed if you turn in a mix or the base follows the vocal.

(00:28:38):

So what else do you have on your low end? Because I feel like at least from my point of view when I listen to the mix, the problem is a lot of everything going on below 200, 1 50 or the bottom end of the mix, the very low mids in there on your base, and that's where we're really losing a lot of the definition and clarity of the whole song because one, it's too loud, but in my opinion, but two, like I said, it isn't controlled and it's flopping around, meaning it's not limited or compressed enough, it's not tight enough, there's too much movement and it's creating, it's affecting the whole mix because there's no consistency in the low end.

Speaker 2 (00:29:15):

Yeah, yeah. One of the things that Joel and I often talk about, and it's kind of genre specific, but when it comes to music like this, you don't want the bass to fucking move at all and that you can do that in a lot of different ways all the way down to what takes your choosing to keep. You can be listening for how loud the low end is fluctuating. So even at the bottom of the barrel on the take end of things, you can be making sure that all of the bass parts that are plugged into the song have an even level of bass, but if you're working on a song that you didn't record yourself, then you might have to go in and actually adjust that yourself. And there's a couple different ways to do it. I mean you can automate it or you can use a limiter and I think we often use the limiter to just kind of keep the base glued in place.

Speaker 4 (00:30:11):

I use a limiter a lot as well. I just want to jump in and say that I firmly agree with what you guys are saying about keeping the low end as fixed as possible for this style of music.

Speaker 2 (00:30:27):

And that's an interesting thing to bring up on this specific song because he told us, as you know, the bass is programmed so it stands to reason that all of the notes probably have an even amount of base. It just depends on who created the actual sample library. But lo and behold, here we are in a mix with a sample base that has a lot of fucking movement. So what do you guys say about that?

Speaker 3 (00:30:52):

Get it under control?

Speaker 4 (00:30:55):

Well, I just think it goes to show, and I've seen a lot of people argue against this, what I'm about to say on forums and stuff, but it goes to show that you can never trust what you see written about a base instrument or something like that, some sort of a plugin until you try it out for yourself just because it's supposed to be the solution and people say, split your base into two and use a synth base for the low or whatever. Just because that's said you can't just do it and think that it's going to be fine. You need to treat it as though it's a different scenario every time in my opinion. And it also goes to show that these base products are not everything that they're piped up to be. There's a few of 'em also that I've tried that have really weird intonation problems too.

(00:31:57):

So it's not just that when it was sampled, certain notes were louder than others, you go past the fifth fret at certain velocities and suddenly it's totally out of tune. So I just think moral of the story is just because you throw on a virtual bass instrument, your problem is not solved of bass being inconsistent. And that's the reason I'm saying that also is because the leading thinking is once you replace a bass guitar and you throw in a synth bass, your consistency issues are solved and that's just not the case as we conceive with this mix.

Speaker 3 (00:32:31):

Here's another question based off that. Do you use a bus compressor at all mix into an SSL comp or something like that? No. Okay. That's something that at least in my opinion, and I'm a huge bus compressor dude, I use three on my two bus, which probably sounds crazy in unorthodox to most people, but there's a reason for the madness and having a good bus compressor in my opinion is very important for locking in your low end and your kick and keeping it from flopping out all around the mix and keeping the energy of the base and the kick and the bottom end locked down and controlled because again, it kind of creates a movement in a wave with the whole song and if you dial it in right, it'll help solve some of that problem. So that's kind of another strategy you could try employing other than just limiting and compressing the base, automating all the different notes is making sure that if you've got a two bus compressor on there, you don't have to hit a lot of gain reduction or experiment and use your ear and listen to the base and see if it helps lock in and tighten up the low end a little bit and gel it better.

(00:33:34):

So when you hit play, that energy moves together in unison and is pumping together to create something like an energy or an excitement or whatever mood the song is as opposed to working against it.

Speaker 7 (00:33:46):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:33:47):

The other thing I want to mention, you're using two multi-band compressors. You want to pay attention closely to the attack and release time on that low end because that is going to help you tame it quite a bit fast attack and depending on the speed of the song, you have to adjust that release, but you definitely want the compressor, that band of the compressor to be reacting to the low end quite quickly.

Speaker 4 (00:34:13):

I'd be curious to know actually where the low end release is set on the multi-band.

Speaker 7 (00:34:19):

For my low end, I got an attack of one and a release of 5 91.

Speaker 2 (00:34:25):

Okay. So your release is very, very slow and I would say what's probably happening is that first base note or whatever the low end of the mix comes through and is attacked immediately and then it takes a whole half of a second for the compressor to come back. So that means your base is probably getting pushed down quite a bit. You may be overcompensating for that as well somewhere. What do you think about those values Al?

Speaker 4 (00:34:55):

I didn't say anything. I agree with what you just said wholeheartedly. That's also what I think. And one thing that I guess needs to be noted is that a lot of compressors also have I guess a natural side effect of turning the low end down a little or removing a little bit depending on which one. And I've noticed a lot of people overcompensate when that happens. Jensen, I don't remember if you told us, do you have a sub?

Speaker 7 (00:35:33):

No, I don't. I use my headphones, my M fifties.

Speaker 2 (00:35:37):

Yeah, that's another dangerous thing.

Speaker 7 (00:35:39):

Very

Speaker 2 (00:35:40):

Using headphones to mix with. It's definitely worth saying that you should check your mix on headphones, but you should be making certain decisions based on what you hear in the headphones, but you shouldn't be making, I wouldn't say you should be making base decisions on headphones. If anything, I would probably take the mix out to my car and then make a decision on base based on that before I would do that with headphones.

Speaker 4 (00:36:07):

Well also on consumer rigs, I feel like the car is great and any sort of lower line consumer type product, like a boombox or whatever with the mega base option, anything like that, I'm being serious. I really think that that's great for checking this out because that's, you can know immediately if your stuff is farting, basically farting or destroying speakers or whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:36:44):

You got to love that mega base.

Speaker 4 (00:36:46):

Dude, mega base is great.

Speaker 2 (00:36:48):

A set of speakers that ale and I use to check on are the Bose companion twenties. They're 250 bucks. They're like little PC speakers that you can get at Best Buy. They're really cool because they will show you if you have way too much one 50 hertz or not and if the base is swallowing your vocals. So if you guys are out there listening to this and you're looking for a second set of speakers to listen to and make decisions on, I would recommend those.

Speaker 4 (00:37:19):

I concur. And we're not the only guys who do this professionally who use those as reference. I know that Colin Richardson loves them too, so that's saying a lot. He rules, let's talk about the snare for a second because I feel like we've just talked about base forever now. I definitely feel like the base is affecting everything. It's one of those things that when it's overpowering, literally everything gets swallowed. And so it's sometimes hard to tell in this situation if the problem is something else or the problem is just the base and you get that under control and everything else shines, but I'm going to just go out on a limb and say that I feel like there's no real transient in the snare drum. Anybody agree with me on that?

Speaker 3 (00:38:16):

Yeah, I feel like the whole mix is lacking transient and my personal opinion is it's probably from the mastering chain and how he's using it to jack the volume because I feel like for example, if you clip versus use L two to get your volume, L two completely destroys your snare and all that stuff. And I feel like it makes it, I call it pancaking, it kind of cuts off the transient, whereas you clip, you can bring it up or something you use like FGX or ozone, you can recover a lot of those transients and I feel like maybe some of the two bus has something to do with that. That was a major issue I had when I listened to the mix. I felt like it was missing transient, it wasn't, there wasn't, its clear as would've expected to have heard.

Speaker 2 (00:38:55):

And if you have faster attack times on the high end and the mid range portions of your multi-band compressor, you're probably killing a lot of transients that are actually there. And that is funny because you can, there's a lot of people I think that they'll use a multi-band compressor with short attack ranges and then they'll try to compensate for that with a transient designer and it's kind of ironic because you're doing one thing and then combating it with another. So you could easily solve the problem just by making your attack times just a little bit longer. If you have the SSL channel plugin on there and you have the fast attack setting clicked in, there's nothing wrong with that for sure. I've done it before, but you have to realize that if you do do that, you are basically shaving off a lot of the transient and just getting a ton of body and sustain.

(00:39:50):

And so you do have to counteract that now if you don't use the fast attack option, you're going to get tons of transient popping through there and so then you have to treat that completely differently. Keep in mind, if you're listening here, you need to understand how frequency it works. So high end frequencies need a lot tighter settings on the attack and release because they move a lot quicker. They don't have as much energy as low end does. So having the one millisecond attack on the low end is good because you're going to be hitting it quickly. But if you have 150 millisecond attack, you're getting tons of high frequencies. There's a lot of frequency moving through there before it is even touched.

Speaker 3 (00:40:36):

So I think we're really losing it on something with the way we're getting volume off those multi bands on the mastering chain, that would be the first place I would start looking. And then if you take it off and the snare is really snappy and punchy and then you instantiate those plugins and that ends that, then you could pretty much guess that somewhere in there that's the problem. It might just be the way it clips up or limits the output algorithm of the plugin or something like that. But if that isn't the case, then it's probably downstream. I mean maybe it needs more treble or maybe it needs a transient designer. But then again, like I said, I'm familiar with, and I have the samples that you mentioned like the crif and the CLA and those are all very transient. They have a lot of impact and they're very snappy and have a lot of punch.

Speaker 4 (00:41:20):

Maybe they're not aligned properly.

Speaker 3 (00:41:21):

This could also be true

Speaker 4 (00:41:23):

Snares are typically just not aligned well and right there, no matter what you do, it's not going to pop the way it should. You could EQ it till you're under the table and it's not going to make a difference. The phase is weird. So I know that if the sample wasn't properly aligned to the superior scenario, that could be happening because the superior snares, they're not a hundred percent, not every sample that pops out of that plugin is a hundred percent sample accurate on the grid it's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (00:42:05):

That's part of the human feel that is intentionally put in. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:42:09):

Well totally. This is something that is part of what's actually cool about that software, but knowing that you need to account for it. If you're going to blend samples with it

Speaker 2 (00:42:21):

And it's good to use, maybe you probably use trigger or drum and go or something like that to get the sample to line up, but it's never going to be perfect no matter how crazy they make those algorithms. You always need to, what I recommend is printing it and then zooming in and looking and seeing what is the relationship between the waveforms. Is it always consistent? Is it moving around a lot? Most of the time if you're blending snares, it is moving around a lot and you have to go in and make manual corrections and there's nothing better than editing the actual printed audio that's just going to be set in stone forever.

Speaker 4 (00:43:02):

Absolutely. And also it has to be said that the superior snares are going to come out inconsistently to a degree. I mean if they're playing by themselves, we won't notice, but if you try to blend them with something without aligning, you will notice if your ears trained to hear this stuff. So first of all, you need to align it to the superior scenario just because the superior scenario is not a hundred percent what you think it is timing wise, but then on top of that trigger or drama, GOG don't always spit out samples a hundred percent on the grid either. I've only found one version of trigger that's sample accurate to midi, and that's a whole other ballgame right there. So no matter what, I feel like you need to align this stuff

Speaker 2 (00:44:03):

And know that. Yeah. Second from that is knowing that fast attacks are the first thing to kill the transient. Typically for snares, at least in my mixes, the attack on any kind of compression would either be between as close to zero as possible to 30. So you got to understand what your goals are. If you're going for zero, then you're basically trying to kill the transient and gives the snare a lot more body and sustain. And then you'll put that transient back in with the transient designer later. And if you're going for something like 30 milliseconds, you're going to have your transient built in, but then you're going to be lacking a little bit of body, and so you'll have to make up for that later as well. So just to understand what the goals are. So what else, aside from the low end and the drums do you think needs more attention? I noticed you said something about the vocals

Speaker 3 (00:45:04):

Too quiet, way too quiet. Matter of fact, I felt like when I was listening, the kick, the snare in the bass was just destroying the volume of the vocals. Now I get a lot of, the problem I have with balancing type critiques is it's so preferential and I mean, I'm a guy who mixes 50 plus songs a month and I could give the same balance, let's say to three different bands. And every single one of those bands would come back and be like, oh no, this is way off. This is way off. And no one is going to ever hear balance the same. But as a general rule of thumb, I usually like to go a little bit louder on vocals. And I guess like I said, maybe that's because they do a lot of the rock stuff and those radio guys, if you turn in a mix that the vocals don't completely destroy the band, which is ridiculous, but guess what?

(00:45:45):

You're doing a revision. So generally at a lot of those more radio type genres like pop rock, et cetera, vocals usually come in a little bit louder. And on metal they go down a little bit. But I like to hear the words that the singer is singing or screaming or screamer is screaming, and I felt like the vocals were really getting eaten in this mix. That being said, I thought they were eqd well in terms of the frequency spectrum, and I could hear them in terms of frequency, but what I felt like is that fader just needed to come up to three db. Not quite sure. I'd have to hear it, but definitely for me it wanted to come up.

Speaker 2 (00:46:20):

One important thing to understand about that, and this is very common with a lot of people nowadays, is that the speakers can be set up in a way that the vocals will be loud or quiet than they really are more loud or quiet than they really are ribbon

Speaker 3 (00:46:38):

Effects, correct?

Speaker 2 (00:46:40):

Yeah. So having your speaker set up incorrectly can make it possible for the mono or the center channel to either be louder than it's supposed to be or quieter. And so that can definitely affect how you think the vocals are blended well or balanced. So if you have it to where the center channel is getting lost a little bit, you're going to be overcompensating. And if you have it the other way around, you'll be turning the vocals down because they will feel too loud. And one thing I do always when I'm checking my mixes on different speakers is check on those consumer speakers, those tiny little PC speakers, because they're very unforgiving when it comes to vocal balance. If your vocal is too quiet, they'll be completely swallowed on those speakers.

Speaker 4 (00:47:32):

I can echo Joey's sentiment on that because I've experienced the same thing and I've actually fucked up a few mixes because my listening situation was messed up and I thought the vocals were too loud and I buried them. So speaking from experience that happens,

Speaker 3 (00:47:55):

It's kind of like the department store test. You're at the department store and you can hear the mix over the thing. And I know those are more radio mixes and stuff, and we're kind of particularly talking about a metal mix, but one thing you can always hear in the department store is the vocals. It doesn't matter necessarily what the background guitar lead or whatever is doing, but you can always hear the vocals in every single song and you can sing along to it and you can hear the thing. So that being said, like I said, it's one of those things where generally when I turn in a mix, I personally try to get the vocals a little hotter than I think they should be. And more oftentimes than not, I get asked to turn them up again. That might just be the people that I'm mixing for. Then I get to turn 'em down

Speaker 2 (00:48:34):

And even though I have my speakers set up properly, at least I think so I don't really trust them a hundred percent. So I always do make sure to do due diligence and check on as many sources as possible, check it in the car, check it on the small speakers, check it in mono. And a lot of times I will figure it out before the band does, and I always try to make sure I'm doing that to myself before I send it out. Now, what do you think about your listening environment, Jensen? Do you have your speakers set up to where it seems like the vocals are very loud or buried or any tests that you've done anything like that?

Speaker 7 (00:49:14):

As for the vocals for this in particular, one, just the screams. I seemed on point where I was listening, but the vocals weren't really sitting well with me, so they sounded a little bit lower, but I wasn't a huge fan of 'em, so I left them where they were at

Speaker 2 (00:49:32):

Trying to hide the vocalist

Speaker 7 (00:49:35):

Almost. But as for my listening environment, I just got these speakers about a month ago, so I'm still kind of getting used to 'em. And I'm in a completely treated area. So to my extent so far, I believe that they are set up properly.

Speaker 2 (00:49:50):

That's awesome. Yeah, and I mean, I'm sure you can get online and look up a lot of tests to figure it out. And I mean, I'll be the first to tell you that I am too lazy to even try that shit. So I basically just don't rely a hundred percent on my setup and I do the best I can with what I have, but then I make sure to check it on a lot of sources and you can eliminate a lot of problems. Another thing to mention about singing vocals in particular is that it's very easy to over EQ them and make them get lost in the mix. And what I say to that is just try to step away. If you find yourself doing a ton of subtractive EQ on the vocals and it's starting to get swallowed, step away from the mix for a couple hours or even a day or so and come back and those EQ settings that you went through and see if any of them were too drastic because it's easy to get into that hole where it's never ending eq

Speaker 3 (00:50:52):

Sometimes something that's cool also for getting vocals under control, and you have to be careful when doing this, but you can set up a multi-band. And the theory behind that is sometimes you'll have singers that will have a really large dynamic range or certain notes will really pop out of their voice and other ones. And that kind of helps keep the frequency response of the vocals a little bit more under control. So certain notes aren't really popping out as hard as they normally would be naturally. And it keeps it more of a constant EQ curve for the voice as opposed to in every part of the song, whether they're singing quiet or belting out or they have certain notes that really for whatever reason seem like they're a couple DB louder than the note after that. So sometimes having a multi-band, you don't have to go crazy with it, but just to pin it down a little bit to catch some of them over, that's something I see a lot in the pot mixing world. For example, 20 Maserati is a really big proponent of a C four on his vocals. I've seen him in multiple videos and just talking about it. So that's something you can try too, that kind of helps control vocals in a way without a traditional compressing or limiting approach. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:51:58):

It's like a dynamic eq,

Speaker 3 (00:51:59):

Correct. Yes, totally.

Speaker 4 (00:52:01):

And I feel like I need to interject something before we get too far removed from this topic of listening, but am I the only person here who thinks that magic AB is the coolest plugin to come up in a while?

Speaker 2 (00:52:16):

I mean, I know that you use it, talked about that and I've heard about it, but I haven't had time to check it out. And I think it is worth mentioning because it does make a a lot easier. I still do it the hard way.

Speaker 3 (00:52:28):

Yeah, I need to check it out as well.

Speaker 4 (00:52:31):

I just need to say that based, look, I don't trust my listening environment either. That's the thing. And I've been known to go pretty nuts with getting into that mixed vortex where you got no idea what the fuck is going on. And that plugin has significantly reduced the amount of time I spend in the mix vortex because it's so easy to ab, I mean, you guys are great mixers, so whatever you do is obviously working. But I just need to throw out that Jensen, especially the fact that you're set up is new, the speakers are new, you think they're set up, but you can't really be totally sure you're still learning them. Getting that plugin and using it religiously will help you out tremendously to know what's going on in the mix. Because if you compare your vocal levels to five songs you really, really like with great mixes by dudes who you look up to and your vocals are buried compared to them. Well, there you go. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:53:43):

And that's good point because if you are being on your listening environment, you're going to hear like, oh, the vocals are a lot louder in this mix, but they're not that loud in mine. So that's a really important thing to understand is comparison on your environment. Jensen, do you have any questions for us about your mix?

Speaker 7 (00:54:04):

I guess I kind of maybe have a general question. I'll take this snare for example. This seems to be a big thing. So if you're clipping on your snare and you use your plug in the JST clip, I haven't had the chance to use it yet, but just kind of in those kind of situations where you have things clipping, would you ever, if you didn't want your mix to say hit over six db, would you ever have something like a snare or any instrument for example, ever actually clipping?

Speaker 2 (00:54:31):

The way I use my clip plugin might be different than how other people use it, but I use it to basically get the transient closer to the sustain in terms of dynamic range. I want them to be closer together so that the snare drum isn't a big spike. I want it to be more of a big fat punch in the face. And the interesting thing about how my plugin works is it preserves that sound of the transient with a lot of clippers will shave off a lot of the frequency in the EQ and make it sound like more of a deep punch. But you still get, when you use my plugin, you still get a lot of the smack and the high end frequency content of the snare, but it just puts it a little bit closer to the, it's almost like you can turn up the sustain without losing that smack. And that's why I use it. But there's other people who use clippers for destructive reasons, they want to tame that smack. And I would say that my plugin's probably not good for that.

Speaker 4 (00:55:40):

And also real quick, I just want could one of you guys that are more technical than me, describe for the listeners the difference between clipping a channel and a plugin clipper? I feel like that might not be understood out there.

Speaker 3 (00:55:59):

That's

Speaker 2 (00:55:59):

Joel territory there. Me?

Speaker 3 (00:56:03):

Oh man. You're the computer programmer here, Joey. You should be the,

Speaker 2 (00:56:07):

Well, the question is clipping analog hardware versus clipping in the digital realm.

Speaker 3 (00:56:14):

Gotcha. Okay. So well analog bends, okay. And that's the best way I can explain it, which is a really hard thing to explain because it's so abstract. And if you've never heard it and you've never done it, it's really confusing. For example, Chris Lord Aller just is always like, dude, my sound's all about bending my console. It's all about bending, bending, bending, bending. You're like, what the hell is bending? I used to think. And then the first time I sat down on an SSL and I watched the guy go just crank the meter into the red and then pull back the master fader up and down and all of a sudden I heard the bend curve and he's like, check this out. Listen to the mix, listen to the saturation. So analog gear tends to saturate in certain ways, and sometimes that's favorable or really bad depending on what kind of sound you want. But analog, when you kind of clip analog, it can give you a favorable saturation. And we call that bending, like my SSL mix bus. When you drive that thing into the red, mine's just all red like a Christmas tree when I'm mixing into it. You don't want to clip it where it's distorting, but you want to clip it where it warms up the mix a little bit and kind of glues it and it kind of gives it a nice natural compression. So

Speaker 2 (00:57:17):

Yeah, analog doesn't have a ceiling. I mean I guess there is a ceiling somewhere kind of, but it's not really a hard ceiling. Yeah, it's not strictly defined as zero or anything like that. There's a point of going past zero. For example, if you've got an API preamp, you can just keep going and going and going with the input gain. And then as long as you have enough resistance on the output, you can get it back down to line level to where it's not clipping over zero in the digital realm. And that's the effect of bending as he's saying. So in the software world, we are constrained to zero, and that's just because there's a limited number of bits to describe the sample of audio. So what a clipper is doing there is kind of wave shaping, I guess, determining the math and what frequencies are saved and which ones are discarded. And it gets very complicated in terms of the math, but there's definitely a difference between software clipping and analog clipping. They're not the same thing at all.

Speaker 4 (00:58:34):

No, but I feel like a good use of a plugin clipper like yours can get you closer to that. And funny that you brought up APIs, I use those all the time and in lots of ways I almost feel like those don't even get going until you're clipping them. I get a lot of questions about, do you use your APIs for color? And actually I find that my APIs are great for totally clean, crystal clear signals as well.

Speaker 2 (00:59:06):

Transparent. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:59:07):

You just don't drive them hard because that distortion that doesn't kick in until it does what you just said. It starts bending it, but the analog gear is multifaceted and pretty cool. But yeah, with clippers you can kind of start to go that way.

Speaker 2 (00:59:27):

The other thing with clipping, in terms of actual snare drums, that is also kind of the trick of making the snare pop out in the mix because when you're using a digital clipper, you're increasing the RMS level of the signal. So the snare is going to be way louder than it ever would be otherwise.

Speaker 3 (00:59:48):

The first time I went to a mastering engineer, I brought in my mix and I thought I had it slammed and it was a metal band, and I got the mix back and I'm like, alright, cool. Sounds good. I got in the car, I'm like, what the hell happened to my snare? It literally sounds like a pancake. This is back in 2003 when no one was really clipping. And I was really pissed because I was like, it's allowed, but how come all the snares on the radio punch through and have attack and mine sounds like a pancake. And it turns out he just used a hard limiter and it killed all the transients. Whereas the guys like at Sterling and for example, when they were mastering the big budget stuff, they were clipping their converters and they were getting their masters super loud and maintaining the transient.

(01:00:27):

So that might be something you might want to look into is, I mean, for example, if you want to get into it for free, you can go download the G clip. It's free and it allows you to kind of just get a feel for what a clipper does and you can use that on your mastering. It allows you to get your stuff mastered loud or I should say competitive as opposed to loud and keep the transient impact of your kick and snare. So I would experiment with that on the master bus and to see if that helps you, your mix retain some of the transient detail

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):

And if you get your mix to a point where the snare is pretty loud and in charge and kind of over top of everything, that's really cool when that's a place where a clipper can come in and kind of shave that off and you'll still get the loud snare, but you'll bring it back down to the mix. What else, aside from the snare, is there anything else that you would want to ask us while you have us here?

Speaker 7 (01:01:22):

I guess I have a question for high end. I tend or I kind of start to notice once I get further into the mix, the high end's kind of lacking because the drums, you got all your drums, which are a little bit lower except for your overheads. So how do you guys compensate for that high end? You let your vocals and symbols and guitars take it up, or how do you compensate for your drums being so because you want your drums to be so impactful that you can always lose stuff?

Speaker 4 (01:01:53):

First of all, if you get your low end under control, your high end is going to be a lot easier to deal with specifically related to the mix that you sent us that I think would help you out a lot. It'll be like taking the blanket off or some sort of metaphor along those lines. The clouds will part or whatever. You'll be able to hear what's going on way better and make more appropriate decisions. So I feel like, I mean there's a ton of things you can do for high end, but until you get that low end from swallowing the entire mix, it's almost like the same problem as the snare and the sample being out of phase with each other who do a bunch of stuff. And you might just make it really harsh to overcompensate for the bass killing it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):

I have a specific technique you can try, especially with symbols and guitars. A lot of times I feel like there's, I would call them masking frequencies in every sound, and this is something that as you get more experienced, you'll hear more and more and more little frequency spikes that piss you off. For example, I literally hate more than anything ever 3.4 to 3.6 k, sometimes 3.2. I cut it out of everything. For Joey, I know it's 4K because him and I always discuss,

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):

I hate 4K,

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):

Oh, I hate 3.4. So certain frequencies may be ringing, as I'll say, meaning there's a spike in them and it's hard to look at a frequency analyzer or whatever on a eq, and I know a lot of people like to do that EQ matching and all that stuff. What I'm saying is you need to learn to hear it. Okay. It's really important to learn that what that stuff sounds like. So you can grab an EQ and you can kind of go move around that upper mid range, like 2K to four and a half and look for stuff that's really, really fricking annoying. I'm talking like guitars, symbols, maybe even some vocals, but you really find it in distorted guitars and symbols and notch out some of those frequencies. And you can use a EQ with a really narrow queue with, so you can notch out just that frequency and you can be ruthless with it.

(01:04:04):

So notch frequency, destroying that stuff. Sometimes you pull out a little bit of a ring up at say three eight and then another one at four and a guitar, and all of a sudden you're like, wow, I've got a lot more clarity in my vocal and my symbols and maybe there's a little bit of mud at 2K on a symbol or something. And when you notch out a few of those little things, sometimes a small notch at one or two little spots across an entire mix makes a huge difference in your clarity. I mean, an absolute night and day when you a it, you go, oh my God, I can't believe I just got so much more width dimension clarity and separation in the mix. And all I did is cut two or three stupid little bands at EQ with a 50 Q width cut.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):

Yeah. One thing to kind of expand on what you're saying and to put it into a different perspective, if you can think of your high-end, pretty much everything above like 4K for example, as keys on a keyboard, if all of those keys on the keyboard were playing, they were all pushed down at the same time, you'd have a really loud stupid sound that just takes up a lot of space. So when you're going through and you're cleaning up a lot of those ringing frequencies, you're going to be creating a lot more space and bringing in a lot more clarity. So just think of it as like you're letting go of some of the keys on the keyboard and now there's a lot more. It's not as loud. There's a lot more space that's at least how I think of it. And it is easy to get carried away and remove too many frequencies. So I always try to approach it from the point of view where I'm listening to it and I'm like, what frequencies are immediately sticking out to me that I want gone? That will clear up this mix? And normally for me it's 4K, but that's because we work in a genre of music where everything is saturated to fuck and everything is a wall of sound. So 4K tends to get bunched up and quite overlapped and almost feedback. So removing some of that 4K feedback overall will create a lot of clarity.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):

I've noticed that exactly what you guys are talking about, it varies, but I think 4K is a good average. I've noticed it be anywhere from two-ish to seven just depending on what, just depending on the mix. But

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):

Some symbols, even like the sweet ride, oh man, fucking hate that symbol. It has a ton of eight k. I don't know how or why, but every time that symbol is in a mix and I open up the song and I can hear it, I'm like, God damn, I got to get rid of that stupid sweet ride frequency that's popping through. So some symbols just have that effect and can take up a lot of space. The same thing can be had for guitars because if you think about what a guitar really is, it's just the signal of the pickup being clipped to fucking hell and back. So there's going to be a lot of frequencies that are almost feedback like

Speaker 4 (01:07:18):

There's a really cool piece of software out there that I've talked about before on a Creative Live, but it's made by this company called Harman, H-A-R-M-A-N, and it's called Harman, how to Listen. This is a company that makes high end audio gear, and you can find this How To Listen program on one of their internal blogs. And this is the software that they send out to their sales reps to train them to be able to speak about what's actually going on with different a hundred thousand dollars speaker systems to knowledgeable audio file clients. So what this piece of software does is it loads in different EQ curves randomly or saturation settings or reverb or all kinds of different things to whatever files you choose to load in, but it doesn't tell you what it's doing, and you have to guess what, and it steps up in difficulty levels.

(01:08:28):

That's awesome. Yeah, it'll start with high and low and then it'll be high, low, mid, and whatever. So say that you take the same five songs that you're using in Magic ab and you load them into this harmony how to listen software, and you just do this for half an hour or something a couple of times a week or something going to the gym for your ears. What you'll begin to notice from working on metal is exactly what Joey said is there's frequencies that almost sound like feedback, and you can really tell this when you hear these EQ bands boosted and you start to really spot how much noise is actually in a metal mix. And I think until I really learned to listen for this stuff, I didn't even realize how much of a problem this really was, but it's a really big deal, really, really, really big deal. Once I got that under control, my mixes got better overnight. And so I think that that little piece of training software can help someone get from not hearing those problems to hearing them within a couple weeks, which is pretty cool. It took me a few years. Alright,

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):

Jensen, do you have any other questions for us?

Speaker 7 (01:09:45):

No, I can't really think of any right now at the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):

Cool. I want to thank you for coming on and letting us tear your mix apart. And also, Jensen, you're the post of the week and your post is how do you build a portfolio to get future clients tired of mixing just raws and looking for clients, but need to build a portfolio?

Speaker 4 (01:10:07):

I think in general there's a lot more power in what other people say about you than what you can effectively say about yourself. And so the most important thing in my opinion is no matter how you go about doing this, whether you need to sell yourself in the street corner or what you need to pay people to record with you, it doesn't matter how you go about establishing this. You need to find a way to get people in the door who will be stoked on what you give them, who will be happy to post it for you and tell other people about how much they enjoy it. And once you figure that out, it'll take care of itself. It's almost like a little machine. If you figure out the formula for that for getting people in and you give them good quality stuff that they'll talk about, you only have to feed that machine for a little while before it starts to feed itself. So I would say do whatever you need to do, and that's kind of broad, but still do whatever you need to do to get people to let you mix their stuff even if it's free. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):

Word of mouth is really powerful, and that's how I began basically just recording people for dirt cheap until I built up enough repertoire that people wanted to come back and it really spread like wildfire. And I think just doing two or three bands for free is going to give you access to at least nine, 12, maybe 15 bands because they all have three or four friends that are in three or four different bands.

Speaker 3 (01:12:02):

I try to find bands that are good going to shows. For example, when I got started, I was like, Joey, were all word of mouth. My entire career has been word of mouth. I never really went out and advertised or anything like that in my local market. And I started off playing in a band and just going to shows and like, Hey dude, I record, we should do something, and you play with a cool band. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you play your stuff in the car and hopefully they like it and then they sit down with you and you hang out and you record a song for dirt cheap. And if you kick ass and do a great job, they'll be back and they'll tell their friends. And after a while you find out you're recording the whole scene of kids in the genre you want to do around in your area.

(01:12:41):

And then hopefully with a little bit of luck, some of that stuff starts breaking and other people in other regions start hearing about you and then all of a sudden you're recording bands and people are driving a couple hours a day to come record with you and it just grows from there. So you just got to go out and be a hustler. You can't be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone. You have to go up and be proactive with people and be friendly and sincere and genuine and just be cool and people will gravitate towards that. And some of those clients will turn into long relationships. And if you get a little bit of luck and some of those bands eventually break, they might take you with and then all of a sudden you start getting bigger and better stuff and you meet more people and you can see how it grows exponentially.

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):

Absolutely. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):

Just going out there and hustling,

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):

That's what it's all about. And if you listen to the show, we talk often about how you shouldn't chase clients, but that's when you're on the other end of the spectrum after you've already built some kind of portfolio or repertoire. So when you're starting out, you do want to chase clients, you want to maybe even do some for free, because I always like to say this, you want to do work until you get to the point where somebody is willing to pay for it. So do it for free, do it for dirt cheap until your clients are offering you money, and that's when you know you're ready to pick through the weeds a little bit

Speaker 4 (01:14:05):

And they will offer it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):

Yeah, it'll come once you get to that point. So awesome. Thanks for being on the show, Jensen.

Speaker 7 (01:14:12):

Yeah, thank you guys for having me. This was definitely great and it helped a whole lot.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):

Awesome.

Speaker 7 (01:14:16):

Thanks again, guys.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):

All right, dude, take it easy, man. Thank

Speaker 7 (01:14:18):

You very much. Have a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):

Alright, so we're going to spend a little bit of time on some Q and a now. First question comes from Alex Barnhart and he asks, my biggest issue is getting mixes to translate. Well, a lot of time I think I have a sweet mix and then realize the mix sounds totally different on every different set of speakers. I try

Speaker 4 (01:14:39):

Magic.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):

Yeah, Alex, get magic ab and spend a lot of time listening to other stuff, not just your song.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):

Get a couple of different sets of speakers too. That helps in being able to reference back and forth in real time and actually hear what your stuff sounds like coming out of different speakers

Speaker 4 (01:14:56):

And actually be mixing onto these other speakers. I think that that's important too, like switching to your boombox for instance, and mix for a while through that is don't just mix on one set and then go listen. I mean some guys might do that, but I've just noticed that it always helps to be constantly jumping around between different systems that Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):

And I think it's hard for some people to have that set up. One thing you can do if you're looking to figure that out is get something like a central station or on the higher end of stuff, you can get one of those dangerous, what's it? Dangerous music? Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:15:38):

Yeah, I've got both. They're both great.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):

Check those out. I use a central station and one thing that's interesting is if you are hooking up studio grade stuff to consumer grade stuff, you might have to have a step down box, which will convert the signal down from what it is. If you have a Sweetwater rep, just tell him what you're trying to do and he'll help you. Sweetwater's awesome for that.

Speaker 4 (01:16:02):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):

Alright, next question comes from Jesse Wall. He asks, how do you deal with a mix that you've been listening to for a while that starts becoming a big fatigue and flat to your ears, but still maintain the initial vibe and excitement? Sorry for the run on sentence. Yeah, thanks Jesse.

Speaker 4 (01:16:19):

Stop mixing. That's my answer.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):

Period.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):

Yeah, come back.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):

Yep, come back to it on a different day. And another thing that I like to mention on that subject is I look up to Chris Lord algae, and one thing he says is if a song takes him longer than two hours, he feels like he's blown it. And I know you got to get to a certain level to where you can actually follow through with that type of perspective. But it is true that there is a vibe between you and the song and that initial vibe will go away. So it's best to kind of capitalize on it early on while you can.

Speaker 4 (01:16:59):

There is a prerequisite for that though that I think Baird's mentioning because it's super important. You can mix a song in two hours, but the prep has to be completely done and right on. It's got to be ready for mix. It can't be one of these situations that a lot of these amateur mixers get in where they still need to do some editing and some mixing, and maybe the midi needs to be moved around a little or who knows what the particular problem is. But song needs to be ready to mix straight up.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):

It's a vibe killer. You get a good assistant, that really helps. Then you just open, you hit play and you start turning knobs and getting good sounds. It's the most important thing. And

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):

If you don't have an assistant, you should do the prep on a different day, then you do the mix totally. Or ask for files to be prepped a certain way before they come in, but that happens. That's never realistic, so just forget I said that. Alright, that's going to wrap it up for us and for this episode. I want to have a special thanks to Jensen Manning for coming on and letting us talk about his mix and giving him some pointers. We also want to thank Alex Barnhart and Jesse Wall for asking questions. If you guys have questions you would like us to answer, just go to www.joeysturgis.com/podcast and send us something. Check out our website, subscribe, and next week we're going to have a special guest on the air. We're not going to tell you who it is right now because we don't know that's going to do it for this episode. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Thank you. Thanks. And fuck off.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):

The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with glasses on songwriting, engineering, mixing and mastering. Go to creative live.com/audio to start learning now. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is also brought to you by Proton Pedals, the secret tone weapon for guitar experts everywhere. Go to proton pedals.com to take your tone to the next level. To ask us questions, suggest topics and interact. Visit urm academy com and subscribe today.