Kick Drum Experiment

One place in my mix where I’ve been experimenting the past few weeks is the kick.  Ever since I bought an Audix D6 last summer, it has been my staple and the results have generally been much improved from the Beta91/Beta52 combo that I inherited when I started this gig.  However, I know that many friends who use the D6 nearly always use it in conjunction with a Beta91.  For me, great results with this partnership have been illusive.

A few weeks ago I was reading some forums and had the revelation that the reason I might not have been blown away by the B91/D6 combo was that I was using the D6 for the bulk of my tone and supplementing with the B91.  On a whim, I decided to swap those two and use the B91 full range down into the subs and then use the D6 for extra “body” in the kick tone.  Along with time aligning the mics by 30-some samples on average and a bit of compression from Channel G, the results were awesome.

Fast forward to earlier this week and I was reading another forum and came upon a few posters singing the praises of a Yamaha Subkick with the Beta91.  This caught my interest because we own a Subkick that someone purchased years ago.  However, each time we’ve tried it we’ve been less than impressed and the thing has literally been gathering dust in the basement.  This forum post caused me to revisit the Subkick, this time using it much like I do the D6.

If you’ve never checked out the Subkick, here’s the scoop.  Yamaha took a 6.5″ speaker, mounted it in a 10″ drum shell and reverse-wired it to an XLR jack to convert the speaker diaphragm into a microphone diaphragm. This huge diaphragm allows the SubKick to pick up the low end that a normal microphone can’t. And as a dynamic microphone it can handle extremely high SPLs.  Mounting the SubKick speaker into a drum shell focuses the sound to direct the signal into the diaphragm. It also protects the SubKick transducer from mechanical noise and damage.

For the first time, I experienced this weekend an application where the Subkick is awesome.  The Beta91 communicates a very “present” kick sound.  The beater is nice and present and the overall tone is “current” to me…exactly what you’d expect to hear from a much larger rig than mine.  The problem is that it feels like its missing some of the 60-300 hz “body” that makes the kick good and round to balance the click.  Enter the Subkick.  The Subkick captured a lot of fundamental in the 60Hz range, had a significant dip at 300Hz, a smaller peak in the 600Hz range, and dropped off steeply after that.  Frequency response is spec’ed to 2kHz, and there’s some information captured as high as 3.5kHz, but not much.  It seems the perfect compliment to the Beta91.

There are a number of things to like about the Subkick, most of all its sound. It definitely gives you the thump you’d usually have to dig for with EQ when using a traditional setup. I’ve found I really like it as the source feeding kick to the subs because the low end is so focused and feels like it extends lower than the 91.  Also, the rock-solid snare stand and tom mount used for “mic” placement are ingenius. In every application, it was a quick and easy setup without drift or drop. It stays where it’s put.

I A/B’d the Subkick with my usual D6 outside the kick setup, and it blew it away. Because of the nature of the beast, it completely ignores any cymbal or drum spill over 500 Hz, making for a nice, clean track at the bottom of your mix. A nice trick is to use the naturally clean Subkick signal to feed the key on a gate used for the internal kick mic, resulting in an easily accomplished clean kick signal.

Here’s a few samples of what I’m hearing.  See what you think and it might be worth checking out.

This first sample is a Beta91 and Subkick.  The clip starts out with both blended then isolates each one.  I think it will be pretty obvious which tone is the Subkick.  Warning that you probably won’t hear the Subkick on regular laptop speakers like the ones on my Macbook Pro.  Good IEMs or headphones are recommended.

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The second clip is the entire kit and alternating back and forth between the Beta91/Subkick combo and the Beta91/D6 combo.  I can see times when each of these tones would be a great fit artistically.  I think my conclusion is that I may end up putting all three mics up most weeks and then I have great flexibility for what I go with depending on the tune.

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Organic music and mixes?

The food you eat is mostly factory farmed – grown in chemicals manufactured in a chemical works. But is your music ‘factory farmed’ too, and does it sound like it?

I’m processing through the implications of this thought as it applies to our church.  In this age of digital consoles, large mic inventories, protools, vintage “plug-ins”, and virtual soundcheck, the raw number of tools available to “do” audio is mind-bending.  But how do you make sure that you don’t process and process to the point where the music itself looses something that makes it real and emotional?

This was brought to mind recently when I was watching a interview on TV with one of the producers of the new film from the James Bond series, Casino Royale.

One of the points the producer was very keen to make was that the stunts, which of course are expected in a James Bond movie, were ‘organic’ compared to most current films. ‘Organic’ was exactly the word he used, and he meant that the stunts were done for real rather than being achieved by digital fakery, and that the only manipulation done was to remove the wires that support and protect the stunt artists.

In film, it is certainly true that since the impossible can now be achieved quite easily, that even the most spectacular scenes lose their value because the audience knows that they have been created by digital artists rather than having been performed for real.  We’ve all experienced this.

And the same applies to music performance. Music is a form of emotional communication, and when an instrument is played by a skilled performer, it can conduct that emotion from composer, through performer to listener. But when machines are allowed to have too much influence, then that emotional connection is broken. Yes, the notes, rhythms and timbres remain, but the subtleties that make music truly involving are lost.

Non-organic food is grown using chemicals made in factories (and farmed animals eat food grown from chemicals). Organic food is grown in, er, poop (odd that the promoters of organic farming usually fail to make that clear).  Non-organic music does often start with good DNA (to continue the analogy), but then it goes through the machine process and is liberally treated with pesticides (quantization) before being packaged and sold to the public.

Organic music may have a few rough edges (like spotty organic apples), but the flavor and nutritional value is retained, and is simply more satisfying to consume. And in organic farming, there is no rule that says machines can’t be used, so machines can be used in music too. Just as long as they long as they add goodness to the music, not take it away.

I don’t know how to apply this to what I do, but I realize how important it is.

Guitar mics revisited

A few weeks ago I asked for input on guitar mics and got lots of awesome feedback. Here’s where I’ve landed for this season of mixing…

• Can’t go wrong with a SM57 or MD421. Nothing changing there.
• I LOVE a Sennheiser 409 but they aren’t made any more and are REALLY hard to find. The Sennheiser 609 is aweful compared to it. On its own, without ever hearing the 409, I thought the 609 was decent but now I’m quite jaded towards it. The good news is that the 906 is readily available ($189) and sounds REALLY close to the 409. Even better, the 906 has three different tone settings onboard that adjust the response. Depending on the rig, I’ve found really workable tone with all three settings. This mic is pretty killer!
• Our old school original vintage CAD E100 is still pretty awesome on Marshall and VOX rigs. If you can find one of the original series of this mic, I think you’ll be surprised by it. (The updated version you can buy new today is dook! Stay away, stay away!)
• Shure KSM32 seems to work a lot better on electric rigs than the KSM44. I’m not sure exactly why – haven’t looked at the frequency response differences between the two. If you play with positioning, I’ve gotten some really nice Marshall & Fender tones with the 32.
• Heil PR30s give me mixed results. I know there are some pretty die-hard Heil fans out there but I’ve only been really impressed with them on toms. Your mileage may vary.
• Looking forward to auditioning an AKG 414 and Royer R121-Live in the next few weeks. Selling stuff has gone really well so now we get to audition and potentially purchase some really cool mics.

The Sennheiser 906 is the clear surprise/die-hard recommendation out of this guitar mic exploration. If you haven’t tried one in your rigs, I would strongly suggest checking it out. I like it so much I’m going to buy 4 more for our other campuses.

If you’ve made it this far in the post, here’s some samples of a recorded guitar amp through a 409, 609, and 906 with the tone settings.

409

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609 Silver Front

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609 Black Back

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906 Flat

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906 Boost Engaged

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TL Space & Echoboy

Two plug-ins that are rocking my world these days.

Trillium Labs’ TL Space is the first TDM convolution reverb for Venue!  This innovative convolution TDM reverb plug-in reproduces natural rooms and classic reverbs from the largest concert hall to the densest plate reverb.  TL Space delivers the pristine sound of natural reverb spaces with the familiar controls used in high end hardware reverb units. By combining the sampled acoustics of real reverb spaces with advanced DSP algorithms, TL Space offers stunning realism with full control of reverb parameters in mono, stereo and surround formats.

TL Space includes a comprehensive library of high quality sampled reverb spaces and effects ideal for music and post applications. In addition, TL Space can easily import existing impulse responses in common convolution formats.

This delay came highly recommended from a few friends.  Really good stuff here!

Find an echo tone that fits your mix by choosing one of the 30 built-in echo styles modeled after a personal collection of vintage echos. One of the favorites is the warm sound of “Studio Tape”, modeled after a ATR-102 half-inch two-track machine. You’ll also get instant access to a whole range of classics, including EchoPlex, Space Echo, Memory Man, DM-2, and the TelRay oilcan delay. EchoBoy’s chorus even emulates the CE-2 chorus, considered a holy-grail of guitar chorus pedals. And yes, turn it up! EchoBoy is designed to be abused, just like real analog gear

No math needed to figure out delay times! Just dial in a musical note value and lock it to your song’s tempo with the flip of a switch. Fine-tune the echo rhythm with the Groove, Accent, and Feel controls.

Even though EchoBoy is easy to use, it’s also incredibly versatile. Switch to Dual Echo or Ping-Pong modes for powerful stereo echo effects. Or use Rhythm mode’s remarkably easy-to-use 16-tap rhythmic delay. Under the Style Tweak button you’ll find a 3-band parametric EQ with separate control over echo decay and tone. Choose the amount and type of analog saturation, dial in the amount of tape wobble, and even reverb-style diffusion control. There’s nothing anywhere that gives you this sort of control.

What is Greatness?

This one has been in the queue for weeks now. I found a really well done article by the ubiquitous Fletcher on ProSoundWeb a few weeks ago that should be required reading by the upcoming engineers that are a part of our team at Kensington. I’m going to reprint it below…you can find it for yourself here. While his perspective directly references recorded music, the same applies to the art we create as live audio engineers.

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When I was coming up as an engineer one of my mentors said something that I carry to every session: “There are two parallel universes in recorded music – greatness and perfection. At times they can touch, but they never intersect. And if you have to pick one, pick greatness”.

This was an absolutely life changing moment, and these are words I’ve tried to live by ever since.

There are times when a wrong note is very much the right note. There are times when a small timing error makes a song come to life. There are cases when an instrument or vocal being slightly out of tune makes the whole presentation seem so real, and well… great!

And then there are other times when these flaws are indeed flaws (in fact, it’s the majority of times), but still, there are those “magic moments” that pop up from time to time that are “wrong” but in the grand scheme of things they’re unrepeatable and exceptionally right.

I was hanging at a local brew pub with my girlfriend a few weeks ago and this topic came up. She loves music, but blissfully knows nothing about the process employed for the creation of recorded music product.

In an attempt to illustrate my point I referenced a project with which I’m involved that had one of these magic moments occur. To the protest of the guitar player who came in a half step off but recovered in an amazing manner, his “clam” is not only still on the recording, but prominently featured in the final mix.

My girlfriend never knew it’s a clam, and frankly, if you weren’t in the room when it was being recorded, you’d never know it’s a clam either. But to the guitar player, it was a clam, and that clam needed to be fixed.

Her point: how could it be wrong when it sounds so right? My point to the guitar player: it wasn’t wrong because it absolutely drove home the point and intention of the song.

Technically it was a clam because the guitar player had never intended to play the note, and he broke my cookies about wanting to fix it for a couple of days until the tracking session concluded.

It wasn’t until then, when the sound was broken down, that I won the battle. The clam stayed. It made the song, and most importantly, the artist (who is not the guitar player) loved it as much as I did.

Another example: a couple of years ago, I was working on a project in Nashville with a friend, and after the session one night he broke out two copies of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”.

One copy was the 5.1 mix, the other the original Alan Parsons “quad” mix, and my friend both on his hard disk recorder and could toggle between the two presentations with the press of a single button.

This was an amazingly eye-opening experience. Pretty much everyone has heard this album at some point, and there are countless discussions on the internet ‘engineering forums’ about the sounds on that album.

The audio presentation is often touted as being pretty close to the pinnacle of audio/sonic production. As my friend and I listened to the two mixes, the difference between the 5.1 remix and the original “quad” mix was absolutely amazing. The 5.1 sounded wonderful. All of the sounds gelled and flowed into the other, and the audio was beyond superb. I could easily see myself slipping into the old leather Lazy-Boy to be enveloped by the aural perfection that is the 5.1 presentation of “Dark Side”.

Not so fast!

The quad mix of this album has none of the politeness and aural soothing elements of the 5.1 presentation. In fact, it’s very possibly one of the most pissed off albums I’ve ever heard (including NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” or the Sex Pistols “Never Mind the Bollocks”). It’s raw, it’s edgy, it’s gripping, it’s poignant, it’s frustrated, and it’s, in a word… GREAT!

The Alan Parsons quad mix is angry, the 5.1 mix isn’t. The 5.1 mix is about as perfect a mix as can be achieved, while the quad mix is just sheer raw emotion.

Now, without the point of reference of the original quad mix from the original production team, the 5.1 presentation is still a whole lot of fun. But when referenced to the original presentation from the original production team, we find a place where “perfection” definitely did not triumph over greatness.

And maybe that’s what’s missing from a lot of today’s music… a little slice of greatness and emotion.