THE 5 WORST MIXING AND MASTERING MISTAKES TO AVOID! (Part 1/2)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're talking about the 5 worst mistakes that we can make when mixing and mastering! If you find you're stumbling upon one of these, make sure to fix the problem before moving on with your project!

5) Arranging: This is a fundamental problem, that maybe can be properly solved only with some experience. The song may be too crowded at some points, for example we may find on the same guitar+bass+drums riff 3 vocals that sings different lines, a line of piano, a whole orchestra section, a dubstep-like synth and a sampler that shoots drum n'bass loops to give "that modern vibe".
Cut that stuff away.
Jack White of White Stripes (among the other projects) once said that there shouldn't be more that 3 things playing at the same time on a song in order to make it really enjoyable;
I think that there is a way in between: the arranger, that often is the songwriter himself, should be wise enough to know where the listener's attention is going to go, and to drive him the way he intends his song to be enjoyed.
For example if there are too many different lines playing different things at the same time, the focus of the listener may wander to the useless details and miss the important thing we wanted to say.
Take a listen to the radio hits of today and you will discover a return to the essential, for example the Miley Cyrus hit Wreckin'Ball, where for most of the song there are only low lines of synth and some piano.
The more the sound stage is crowded, the more the single instruments will sound thin and tend to hide each other, so we must become wise when arranging in taking away the unnecessary and give weight to the important elements of the mix, making it crowded only when essential, not all the time.
Another mistake when arranging that can really turn any song into crap is drum programming.
If you can't record a true drummer or just prefer to use sampled drums there are no problems, just make it write to a real drummer if you have no idea of how to play drums, since one of the worst things that can happen, especially to a rock or metal song, is to have a "virtual drummer" that does unnatural things, things that a real drummer wouldn't do. If you're in doubt, always choose the most simple, normal, boring drum fill, otherwise the song will result automatically in a ridicolous mess.


4) Panning: Moving on in our gallery of horrors let's talk about panning, which is the disposition of the instruments on the stereo field and that we have already covered in a dedicated article, but that may cause problems if taken too lightly.
The idea is to stack as fewer elements as possible in the same exact place, to avoid overcrowding a particular area. This happens especially at the center: it's the place where lead vocals, snare, kick and bass guitar usually lays, (and often piano and lead guitars too), so it's suggested to move the other instruments around a little bit, for example even just off centering a lead synth of just 5% left or right will leave the middle area of the mix much clearer.
Everything should have its place as if we're hearing the band from the front of the stage or like we're hearing it from the drummer's perspective, just avoid overcrowding the center of the soundscape and the extremes: instruments placed 100% left or right tend sometimens to disappear or sound a bit too far with some device, for example some car stereo, so it's a good rule to use 95% left or right as a maximum panning distance.


3) Boosting: passing to the lower step of the podium we meet this tricky topic, boosting.
Using an equalizer to boost some frequency of an instrument it's not a mistake by itself, since eq is a tone shaping tool by definition, the mistake arrives when boosting before the compression on the single channel (since the compression will lower the boost, the rule of thumb is to use subtractive eq, then compress, then use the additive eq).
Besides that, if we need to add like 10db on the top end of our snare or guitar, maybe we should consider it recording it again changing something, like the microphones used or their position, since twisting an original sound in such an extreme way usually results in having unpleasant, digital sounds, that will kill the performance itself.


CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/2



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INTERVIEW: CRISTIANO TRIONFERA OF FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE TALKS ABOUT GUITARS, LIVE RIG AND EVERYTHING ELSE

Fleshgod Apocalypse is one of the most creative, technical and all around quality bands in today's extreme metal, and without any doubt they are the most unique looking ones too.

I reached my friend Cristiano Trionfera (actually I'm friend with all of them from before the band started) to ask him some juicy guitar question, here are his answers:

GuitarNerdingBlog: Hi Cristiano! Introduce yourself to our readers, tell us your story!

CristianoTrionfera: Hi there! It's Cristiano, lead guitarist of the band Fleshgod Apocalypse. I started playing guitar at the age of 11, 21 years ago, and since then it has been probably the most important aspect of my personal and professional life. It took a long time to find the right conditions to develop professionally the musical career, also because I'm italian and my country is not exactly what you would describe as an easy environment.

GNB: Tell us about your career. We know you've worked in many projects in the last few years, and the two most important ones are obviously Fleshgod Apocalypse and Promaetheus Unbound.
Which are the moments that you consider your career highlights? Which are the artists that influenced you the most? Is there still some collaboration that you'd wish to do?

CT: I've been playing with bands for many years, but I could never really say things were concretely taking their way into the pro world before Fleshgod. Promaetheus Unbound has been my childwood (musically) and my school, other than what I consider a great experience made with some of the best friends I have had and have. I can probably consider as career highlights the first moment I started writing music with an actual lineup that could play more complex stuff, with Promaetheus back in the days. That moment when you realize you feel the urge to push yourself and the others further and beyond your ability and knowledge; then the moment when we started Fleshgod and we had a meeting where we decided what we wanted to do and how we wanted to make it; the day we changed lineup with Fleshgod, taking Tommaso at the vocals and putting Francesco Paoli at the drums; then there are moments that I remember, like signing a record deal, playing Manhattan for the first time, going to places I would have always wanted to go, but as a musician: America, Japan, China, South Africa, Australia and so on.
The influences have been many and from a lot of different aspects, I can randomly point at some like Rammstein, Morbid Angel, Dimmu Borgir, Behemoth, At The Gates, Megadeth, the Beatles, Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, Rossini, Verdi and Vivaldi, Michael Jackson and John Williams.

GNB: You're a very talented guitar player; tell us about your love for this instrument, how did you learn to play it and your favourite models!

CT: I've always been fascinated by music since when I can recall. My father is a musician too, so I had the chance to have instruments around the house since when I was a baby. I started studying classic guitar at the middle school for 3 years. During that period I discovered the love for the electric guitar, rock and punk music. Once started the highschool I left the classic studies and started focusing on my own music. It all took a little while, also having guitar classes for 3 years, studying different styles and taking me where I am now pretty much.
My favourites models are my Overload Guitars custom Raijin signature, Les Paul custom wine red, PRS santana III.

GNB: What do you think about the state of the music business? What are your thoughts about today's underground and mainstream music scene?

CT: Everybody knows the music industry is living a big crisis. Every day we face difficulties that most of the times depend on the lack of financial support for the whole system. The problem is that 20 years ago, the people that worked into this business could count on sales that disappeared today and most of them have no idea how to deal with it. The thing to do now is to adapt and be smart to be able to survive. Unfortunately it is true that most of the business going on in this industry is not about the music, but it's normal if you consider the fact that the fans and the audience in general treat the product as something free and of public domain, which I'm not necessarily against as a concept, but as a musician I suffer this situation greatly as well. The thing is: I don't complain for this, but try to find my way of making a decent living out of it anyways using all the possibilities.
People sometimes complain about the live shows, the merchandise, the fund-raising campains (wich I totally disagree with), but they just don't take in consideration that things have changed and sometimes the passion for the music is unfortunately not enought to bring it on. This applies to both the underground and the mainstream scenes, obvioisly with due proportions and with the basic thought that all this being said, without the music (the quality one) not even a point of this discussion would happen, so even if it's tough today, we still need to refer back to the music as the main thing here.

                             

       

GNB: What do you think about the digital music distribution? And what about the file sharing? How do you think the music business will evolve in the future?

CT: As I just said, things have changed and it's not that easy to say if for the best or for the worst. The digital distribution is probably the only way the industry has to fight the file sharing and the download, but of course you're still offering people to buy your product while they can have it for free, to a certain extend it will never really work. I think that the internet has been the biggest revolution in the modern world. I'm not one of those who say that downloading the music is a bad thing by itself, but I do believe it should be right to buy not only the music, but what an artist has to offer. It's like recycling: you know you should do it and if everybody would do it, the world would surely be better. Well if even half of the people that download music would support the artists, then art would be much safer. Don't come to me complaining cause I'm offering you to buy my t-shirt or hat or wine or sunglasses, as you won't buy my music. That being said, I think that a lot of artists you can find around nowadays wouldn't be there without internet and file sharing, so it is definitely also a good thing and I would be an hipocrite if I said just the opposite.

GNB:  Let's talk about live music! Which have been the best gigs you have ever played? Do you consider yourself more a live musician or a studio one?

CT: It's really difficult to say what's the best gig I've ever played. There are some shows we have played that have been so much fun for us and the crowd and I think those ones can be considered the best ones, since having fun and enjoying your time is in my opinion the point of it. Playing places like Costa Rica, Mexico, Japan or Australia with a lot of people coming for you and having a blast are for sure to put into that category. Montreal is another example of a place where you can have a great time. The super big festivals are great too: Wacken is probably the best example; although I remember as the most emotional ones the first time we played Manhattan at the Gramercy Theater in 2010, the Fillmour in San Francisco and the first time in West Hollywood at The Wiskey a GoGo because of the vibe of the places and the importance historically. Playing on the same stages where the bands you grew up with and who made the history of music is definitely someting.
I think I consider myself more a live musician nowadays and that's probably because the live part is so important in the actual scenario.

GNB:  Tell us some funny story: which one has been your best/funniest experience as a musician? And your worst one?

CT: One of the experiences I remember has been most fun is when we found ourselves, the whole band, in a cage into a safari in South Africa with baby tigers and we have been able to play with them and pet them. Another good one is when we had to play for the first time in front of important people which could help us in our carreer, the stage was weird and we were nervous, so obviously as soon as we walked on stage in the most epic way possible, Tommaso fell cause of a hole on the stage. Fortunately he wasn't hurt. The worst one, on the other hand, is probably something that happened to us some years ago in Russia, when the bad organization of the tour put us in a situation where we've been practically arrested because they thought we wanted to import our equipment in their country, so after crazy situations (believe me, pretty crazy) we had basically to get out of the country as fast as possible and find safety back in the EU.

GNB: Since many readers or our blog are interested mainly in the tecnical side of the guitar world, can you tell us your studio and live equipment? Can you tell us about the recordings of your latest album?

CT: We recently changed our live equipment in order to be able to carry it with us all the time and have our same sound everywhere. We used to use peavey 5150's on Vintage Cabs (V30s) and I used to boost and wet the solo sound with a Boss ME70 in the head fx loop. Now I use a POD HD pro and that's it.
In the studio we obviously use simulations for the preproductions and usually Peavey 5150 on V30 cones Cabs on the actual albums. Except for Oracles, which was Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, all our records have been recorded using Peavey 5150, always boosted with a Tubescreamer.

GNB: Is there any advice that you'd like to tell to our fellow guitar players?

CT: Well nowadays you have so many choices, it's difficult to find your own sound. I very much believe it's not about the guitarist anymore, at least not only, but mostly about the music and ensemble, so choose keeping in mind that you have to sound not only good, but right on what you are doing.

GNB: What does the lyrics of your songs talk about? Do you think that on a song it's most important the lyrical side or the musical one?

CT: We put out concept albums and every time we pick up a story, we try to read the reality we live in and analyse the fears and troubles of men throughout the developement of the concept itself.
In the genre we play, the extreme metal in general, most of the times it's the musical part more important than the lyrical part, but the fact that a song or an album, if not a band, can be recognizable from what they talk about is very important and the more you get in touch with a larger fan base, the more you realize people understand the message you wanted to send with your music and lurics together. I think the two parts are equally important.

GNB: The interview is over! Tell us about your latest album, projects and tours! Thank you very much and we hope to see you soon live!

CT; We're still working on the promotion of our latest record Labyrinth and we'll soon start to work on new material. We'll be touring still untill pretty much the end of the year. We have an italian run finally in October and we can't wait to perform our show in our home country, then we'll head up to europe with Insomnium.
Thank you very much for the interview. It's been a pleasure. See you very soon!
Cheers

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MIXING WITH HEADPHONES vs MIXING WITH MONITORS

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article! This time I wanted to share my thoughts about the output devices that we use when recording, mixing and mastering.

Ideally we should use the right tool for the job: isolating headphones when the drummer records the acoustic drums, so that there is no metronome spill on the drum microphones, a good set of monitors when mixing to assure a neutral response, and in the mastering phase a long testing and debugging session with the car stereo, ipod headphones, laptop speakers, and any other device we think that our audience will use.

Since this is a blog about home recording, we assume that not everyone has a full featured studio, so usually bedroom producers choose one device and stick with that: a decent pair of headphones if he/she lives in a flat and cannot produce excessive noise, or a decent pair of monitors if noise it's not a problem.
First off let's define what DECENT means: it means that both headphones and monitors should be meant to be used for mixing, so they should tend to have a "realistic response", which means that the sound should tend to be not too different when translated to a car stereo or into a pair of cheap headphones.
The more this sound gets translated without being totally modified in terms of equalization etc, the more our device is liable, and the more it will cost.

If we want to start mixing or mastering we should choose a device that assures at least a minimum of realism, otherwise our work will be totally useless, we will be like a blind man that tries to paint a picture.
About mixing headphones, I'd suggest only devices from a certain quality level up, for example Akg, Sennheiser or Beyerdynamic (being these last ones probably the best, and most expensive, for mixing purposes).
Speaking of studio monitors, instead, my advice is to avoid the 200€ / $ per pair, since probably the cheapest ones that has some utility in a mixing environment are probably the Yamaha, in their 350/400€ / $ per pair range; going up with the price the quality gets even better, and a very good quality - to price ratio is represented by Genelec, and Adam brand.
Avoid the cheap ones and the small speaker ones (anything smaller than 5"), since if you mix with them, the song that will sound well with them will sound awful and unbalanced with any other device, and you will have wasted your time.

PROS and CONS of using headphones:

+ you will not bother the ones around you
+ you will have a clearer idea of the stereo field disposition of the instruments
+ you will notice more details when tracking or editing
+ on an average, they are cheaper than a pair of monitors

- they don't represent well the low range, and sometimes they just hide it
- they don't represent well the frequency masking
- working with them is more ear-fatiguing
- in the mastering phase they are really close to being useless

PROS and CONS of using monitors:

+ the sound will be usually more realistic and the spectrum will be represented better
+ it's clearer to find the single frequences where to intervene surgically
+ it's clearer to point out phase cancelling and frequency masking
+ they are good also for mastering, to check out the overall loudness

- they are usually more expensive
- to be used at their best they need a certain placement in the room
- they can bother those around you :)
- the room may need some acoustic treatment


Click here for an article with the differences between open back and closed back headphones!!


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HOW TUBES AFFECT SOUND.

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're starting from where we left in our How To Choose Guitar Amp Tubes article, and will take a look to how tubes affects the sound of our instruments.
Tubes have been used for audio equipment in the last century almost anywhere, first by necessity, then to give the sound an extra coloring, and still today there are some tube equipment made to be as clean as possible and some other one in which tubes plays a strong role in modifying the output.


Why does people often prefer a tube driven amplifier or other piece of gear instead of a non-tube one?
Because tubes usually adds something to the tone that still today hasn't been recreated otherwise with the same identical results: a bit of compression, a bit of saturation, and a harmonic enhancement that makes the final sound a bit smoother and more ear-pleasant.

When mixing, the main uses for tube gear are:

- to smooth over harsh signals, such as vocals, guitars, cymbals and other instruments that stands out too much (in this case producers tends to use tube compressors and preamps).

- to add some harmonic enhancement to an instrument that sounds a bit too dull, without the need to over-equalizing, which will unavoidably modify the nature of our sound, for example a snare drum, or a kick, or toms, or even a bass guitar (the tools for this job are the tube saturation-harmonic enhancers and tube equalizers).

A last advice is about how to use tube gear.
Tubes needs some time to warm up, usually for 15 minutes, and in this time they can have irregular output peaks, before they get stable to the right level of warmth.
You will surely notice (and this is particularly clear when using a tube guitar amplifier) how different the sound is with the tubes fully warmed up, compared to how thin it sounded immediately after the switch on.
So our last advice is to warm the tubes up before starting playing/recording/mixing, and when you don't need them, turn the device off, since they tend to wear down with the use!|

The video on the top of this page is from my band, I have used a tube preamplifier in order to smooth out a bit of the harshness of the vocals and the cymbals.


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HOW TO USE MULTIBAND COMPRESSION WHEN MASTERING! (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This time we're going to expand our article about Mixing with Multiband Compression talking about the main purpose of this tool: Mastering.
When the track is ready for the mastering phase, we all know that it should pass though the last processing steps before reaching a volume comparable to the commercial tracks, adding if needed the last "icings on the cake", but it is actually very important to take care of the balancing and the other aesthetic aspects of the song in the mixing phase, resolving the issues before arriving to this last step:
the track should already sound at its best, leaving to the mastering phase only the final push.

Looking things under this point of view it appears crucial to work in the most transparent and essential way, because the risk of compromising the complex castle of cards that is a perfectly balanced mix is very high, and this is the reason why some mastering engineer prefers putting in the mastering chain a Multiband Compressor instead of a Broadband One: to assign a particular setting to each part of the spectrum, instead of using one processor that affects with the same intensity the whole mix.

Let's make an example of how to use a multiband compressor on our master track, and for this example we're going to use the Waves Linear Phase MB, as in the picture above, but basically the same mechanics applies to any other multiband comp.

Let's open the Waves Linear Mb and play the whole song, adjusting the input looking at the top right corner meter in the UI, so that it doesn't clip (we can also click on the "Trim" button to lower the gain right below the clip level).
When the whole song will be played, we'll check out the number on the right of the "Solo" and "Bypass" buttons on each band. These numbers are the peaks on each band, so we will need to dial these same numbers in the "threshold" section of that same band (for example -10, -5,5, -12 and so on).
Once we have done this task, we will notice that the sound should be more "stable", since only the infrequent highest peaks that reach that level will be tamed, and only in their most relevant frequency area. This operation will give us some extra headroom to raise the overall level, and ultimately, will let us obtain a more powerful and transparent master, if we don't love the slighly more invasive feel of a broadband compressor.

Now it's time for the final adjustments: we can add or lower some db of gain on the single bands if we need (this will combine the compressor function of this tool with the tasks of an equalizer), and we can fiddle around with the Attack and Release functions, remembering that usually you have set them properly if you see the compressor kicking in and out in time with the song.
It is also possible to turn on or off the "Makeup" function, which raises the gain according to the gain reduction produced, and to set the "Adaptive" level, which helps avoiding one frequency area to mask another one through the song.


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RECORDING IN MULTITRACK, CHANNEL ROUTING ETC (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about Multitrack, recording, and this article links to our Drum Recording article, which I invite you to check out because it's quite complete.

The topic of the day is "how do we get the sound of multiple microphones into our Digital audio workstation, in an ordinate way?".
First off we're going to need a multichannel audio interface or a mixer that brings the individual tracks into separeted tracks to the Daw; usually audio interfaces features 2 to 8 ins, but they can be expanded via ADAT devices, for example we could use a Behringer Ada 8000, which is a  8 channel interface that does not connect directly into the computer via usb, but it's used to expand the inputs of another interface, so that for example we could obtain the 8 channels of our interface + the 8 of the adat, for a total of 16 preamplified mic inputs.

Now it's important to mark all jacks with a number, in order to find them more easily once we are creating our project: Jack 1 into channel 1, Jack 2 into channel 2 and so on, and if we have configurated the interface drivers properly, we should find the right channel already routed to the corresponding track of the Daw.

Once everything is set it's important to rename each track in the Daw project to make order: every channel must have the name of the instrument that is tracking (eg. Snare, Kick, Tom...) then we can proceed to the project preparation phase. 

One last thought: avoid to have the jacks tangled together as in the picture above, the studio must be as clean and ordered as possible to be efficient, and if we have the mixing room separated from the tracking room (something that not happens often when home recording, but that usually small studios have), all jacks should be brought from one room to the other though a channel box, which is a box with a serie of microphone inputs that takes them and unites them all into one single cord that ends with all separated connectors (for example, 24 inputs and 24 outputs), and it is used to tidy up and help bringing the jacks from one room to another, instead of sending for example 24 separated cannon - cannon jacks.

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REVIEW: DRAGOON GUITAR CAB 2X12 with CELESTION V30 SPEAKERS

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about another Italian excellence, exported worldwide: the Dragoon guitar Cabinets.
Those guitar cabinets are made by a manufacturer located in Florence, Italy, and have the particularity of being the lightest in the market: 41lbs (approx. 18 kg), it's the lowest weight available for a 2x12 cabinet.
The cabinet features 2 removable back panels, to make it closed back, half open back and open back, and has both mono and stereo inputs, 4, 8 and 16 ohm.

The Cabinet comes with a wide range of speakers to choose from:

250c8g - celestion alnico gold
260c8v - celestion vintage 30
230c8h - celestion g12h
225c8m - celestion g12m greenback
260c8cl - celestion classic lead 80
260c8cv - celestion century vintage
2100c8k - celestion g12k-100
230c8h - celestion g12h heritage
265c865 - celestion g12-65 heritage

Dragoon cabinets are available in 1x12 and 2x12 version, for guitar and bass, and are designed by a famous Florence luthier, called Giniski, which is also an amp tech, and his cabinets are endorsed by many musicians worldwide, for example Giacomo Castellano (session man for Vasco Rossi, among the others) and Nicola Oliva (session man for Laura Pausini).


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