Strangers In The Night

Like yay! Took forever to get this out, as I shipped my sample drive on the ship to Montreal. Also my first mix with the MSP5s, I think they worked well to tell me what the bass is like. Will need loads of mixes to learn this monitors though, I think I felt more comfortable with headphones as that's what I've used for years.

My headphone mixes on the studio monitors

I went through some of my soundcloud mixes and after hearing them on the MSP5s, I think on the whole, I liked them, though all of the mixes with a bass instrument in them had the bass frequencies overemphasized.

Comparing what I've mixed with what I used for testing - Miles Davis's "So what" from his album, Kind of Blue - the upright bass in So What's mix was clearly audible on the MSP5s, but much more subtle.

Similarly, I pulled up Zanarkand from the Distant Worlds II CD, and the double bass in there is also audible, but sublime. Whereas my mixes they stood out very clearly, top and center.

So, I guess the VRM Box and AKG240MKIIs did a pretty good job considering.

Another aspect I felt is that my limiting and compression may be overly aggressive for some tracks, as they are a quite a bit loud compared to the commercial albums.

Gotta get my sample drive up!

Studio Monitor Hunt

Auditioned several studio monitors today, at Moog Audio and Archambault. These included the Adam A3x, A5X, F5, Yamaha HS7 and MSP5 Studio, JBL LSR2325P, Focal CMS 40, Neumann KH120 and Eve SC204.

I thought I liked the Adam monitors the best; I felt that the A3x and F5 were too similar to me, and I would have bought the F5 if they were in stock >.>

The bass of the A3x sounded pretty damned good for their size, and I think the F5 has some room controls at the rear, so that sounds like a win for me, especially for the price/performance ratio.

The HS7s were pumping out good strong bass, but the MSP 5s sounded clearer. A5x kicked the arse of every monitor I tried, but it too was out of stock, and frankly, I think I am very glad it was out of stock as these are my first pair of studio monitors and purchasing an set of expensive nearfields may not be the best way to start.

Focal CMS 40 I really wanted to like. There is a massive thread on gearslutz about how awesome they are, and I'd budgeted for them. Sadly, when I heard them, they sounded really odd to my ears. Guess that's how it works with personal choice, you really need to try it to understand it and not rely on the comments online.

JBL LSR2325P I only heard for a short while, seemed to produce a much stronger bass response compared to the MSP5s. The mids sounded less refined than the MSP5s.

Eve CS204 I also tried for a short time, and they sounded pretty cool. The KH120s were also auditioned for a short time - too much out of my budget to really care - but it did sound really balanced and strong.

In the end I decided to go for the MSP5s as they seemed like the best bang for the buck. Well, the Adam F5s would have been an even better bang for the buck, but as I was told stock will only arrive in August.... uh no.

Ode to a whistle

Whew, this piece (my homework from last week) took awhile to sequence and mix due to my schedule at work heating up. Only managed to do bits and pieces over the week and finally got a big chunk of evening free today so decided to finish it.

Learnts lots from this little sequencing piece, for example:

VSL Flute, Solo Violin and Solo Cello
Learnt how to use the performance intervals. Like man, they are soooo awesome. For the flute, I was beginning notes with the portato patch for a stronger attack, then switching over to the performance legato patch for smooth transitions.

On the violin and cello, I attempted to apply the same idea but it felt really static. Experimenting with using the performance portamento patch helped somewhat, but it tended to jump out at me. What I think made it work was to use the portamento patch only for note changes up to a tone in distance; it gave an improved sense of life and yet still be smooth and not too earcatching.

Kontakt
Used my Zoom H1 to record various sounds; breath noises, chair creakings and coughs.
Audacity was then used to clean up any noise (very little, the Zoom H1 is amazing!) and chop up the bits and pieces into usable .wave chunks. Thank you audacity team!
Finally, all these were brought into Kontakt and laid out. If you got a good set of headphones, you may hear these artificial artifacts.

Custom IR
I captured a custom IR for use with this piece. It's not a 4 channel impulse like what's in the vienna suite, but I made it and I like it :P

Mixing
Mixing was as usual. I had major trouble setting up my spatial acoustics. Today, I decided to check my "final mix" with my Shure SE215 IEMs (and Grado SR80s). Not expecting much, but holy dang, everything jumped out at me. Levels, spatial placement; everything was WRONG.

I then re-mixed with the Shures, and was delighted to be able to find out how much I needed to put the levels for my ER and tails so that the instruments sat in a space I wanted, and I could eq off the highs off the strings and their 'verbs waaay easier.

After the remix I felt that everything didn't sound as boomy and cluttered as before. Maybe because I pushed the two stringed instruments waaay back in the mix, but there are still there to provide a textural bed for the flute to float on.

One other thing I've noticed is that the music is originally composed on piano staves (though the melody was composed first on an irish whistle) with no thought for instrumentation. I think I would actually prefer the flute to be playing higher up in its range where it becomes more sweet, and not so warm and mid-rangey. Something to think about, since the violin and cellos are pretty close as well. On the master bus's EQ, it was all mid range frequencies, no super highs and the lows were remarkably clear.

It's time for bed, I'm so tired.

"Contemplation" - Jazz Piano

I'm still working on several ABRSM Jazz Piano Grade 2 pieces, and this beautiful piece, "Contemplation", by McCoy Tyner, really spoke to my heart. What's more, the improvization section is very straightforward (improvise over Am7 and F) - very easy for us newbies, and I can just keep on experimenting. Hence, I thought what better piece to try out my new piano samples on :3

Sadly, my new piano samples don't react the way I expect from my midi data, so until I find out how to correct that, I switched over to my favourite, the SampleTekk PMI Old Lady. Steinways FTW!!!

While the piano sounds as awesome as usual, I came into some very nasty distortion issues when attempting to apply some compression. After much time spent, I finally figured out that there were certain frequencies that I had to cut out, if not there will be distortion after going through any dynamics processor.

It was actually a visual guess - I saw some frequencies poking way above 0db on the EQ's analyzer, and decided to deeply cut those frequencies away and hey, that worked! With that fixed, I applied some mild compression and got my limiter close to about 0.2dBfs.

Using the VSL Hybrid reverb nowadays, and picked the "Brown Hall" for my ER. I'd really wanted to pick an IR from one of the famous halls (so I can brag, hey, this is what it sounds like in the Mozart Saal Konzerthaus :P) but the brown hall just sounded the best to my ears.

Forward!

Sequencing: Flute Quartet in A major

Sequenced a very abridged version of Flute Quartet in A major, K298 by Mozart. I think the mixing isn't too bad, but the flute is quite lifeless when compared against a live flute. Need to work harder!

I think this is mainly because I am following the score too rigidly, and used the performance legato patches all the way as it was mainly slurs and single notes. Listening to a live version on youtube I can probably replace certain portions with portato patches, maybe even trills in places. ALWAYS REMEMBER REFERENCE!

Bought a Reverb

Been looking for an additional reverb (or two) and finally settled on EOS from Audio Damage. This is my first* 3rd party 'verb, and limited tests with Finale and applying it to my piano recording in the previous blog post proves that it is well worth the price.

Several other reverbs were considered, SKNote's Verbtone (could not get it to work), Valhalla Room (not my taste), Reverbs from Airwindows (not my taste either)

Price of course, is a big factor. There is no way I can afford a top of the line reverb like Aether or Lexicon's PCM Native. These verbs above ran the ~50 range, affordable.

Soundwise, EOS seems to give a pretty pleasing result, compared to Logic's platinum verb. Side by side, it's less metallic, but then again, I don't really know my reverb settings that well. I'd bet an experienced logic user can make me eat my words.

Another nice thing about a 3rd party 'verb is that I can use it with Finale when I'm scoring (ha, I said I'm scoring. What a joke :P). Space Designer, whilst kick ass only works within Logic. There is of course the AU Maxtrix reverb - which IMO is pretty darned good, but what can I say I'm a sucker for a pretty interface :)

EOS is an algorithmic reverb, one with a modulating tail. I am not sure if the algorithmic reverbs in Logic include modulation, and I think space designer, as a convolution reverb does not. So, nice thing to have.

The one thing I do miss from Platinum Verb and Space Designer is mix controls for the dry sound and reverb. In EOS, it's a straight up Mix parameter. For the moment it's ok as I do tend to send stuff to a reverb bus, but at times it is convenient to have the wet/dry mix on the reverb itself.

Ok back to work, as you may see I just wrote the melody line for my homework, now to fiddle with the harmony :)

*2nd actually, I bought verbtone months ago but it crashes on my system :-/

Of Monitors and Pianos

Went down to Chappel's of Bond street today to check out Monitor speakers, tested out the HS50Ms and MSP5s. I can't really say which one is better... the HS50s definitely lacked bass, but the rest of it sounded very clear and sharp. The MSP5s on the other hand had a much stronger bass, and a smoother overall sound.

The lady who was demoing them to me also switched on the SW10 subwoofer, dang, that made a BIG difference. Not going to consider that as it's like more than the price of two MSP5s.

So, what next? The HS50Ms are almost a third cheaper than the MSP5s. I guess it's time to save up. I also listened to the MSP7s briefly, but could not hear what's better than the MSP5s.

The thing is, do I actually need a pair of monitor speakers? At the moment, using the VRM box is pretty good on the whole, the main issue I have with headphone mixing is levels. It is really difficult to adjust the relative levels - I rely on a small mono speaker for that at the moment, and would like a proper monitor to at least gauge my levels correctly. Given that apart from speakers, accessories like stands, isolation pads, cabling etc needs to be considered. Expensive hobby, this is.

~ pianos ~

On my way out, I though to try out the Clavinovas. The one I tried was the Yamaha CLPS408PE. And dang, the keybed is sooo good. The sound samples seemed to be very good as well, I thought I was much more expressive on it than my CP33. I think this is because it uses the GH3 keybed, and the RGE sound engine is probably lightyears ahead of my AWM engine. The touch is definitely closer (as I imagine) to my teacher's grand, though probably lighter, and no escapement.

There was also an AvantGrand in the shop but another customer was playing it so next time I visit Chappel's I'll see if I can give it ago.

Equator D5s

Thinking of getting monitors, mainly the Yamaha MSP5 Studio. An alternative is the Equator D5.

Mastering

Booo!
Just finished listening to the podcast at http://simplyrecordingpodcast.com/self-mastering/ about mastering, and learned a lot more about the tools I got in Logic. Tools that I should have used but have no idea about.

Bwa.

For example, the Limiter. Never touched it, and I applied it to The Wind, The Stars. Seems to bring up the softer bits and increased the gain so that it's near 0dB.

More to learn, more to learn.

The End of the world

So this is what I've been working on for the last week or so, sequencing and mixing a backing track for the monthly saxophone ballad thing. I think the VRM box is doing a good job here, my go-to testing speaker setup is the Computer Speakers in the bedroom environment. The very lofi sound brings up issues with levels and tone very quickly. I look forward to learning more about mixing with this vrm box thing, but for now I will probably need to check my mix on other outputs.

Inside Logic, I took the arrangement and split it into multiple tracks, bass harmony, treble harmony and rhythm.

Originally, I'd taken the string sections in GPO4 for either harmony, but they felt somewhat sterile on their own. Instead of relying directly on the sections for direct harmony, I decreased them to provide the meat of the harmony, but relied on individual instruments. Hence, my treble harmonies include:

- Cello Section
- Violin 1, 2

For the bass harmonies, I had
- Bass section
- Bass 1, 2
- A very deep bass played one octave lower via a synth.

Rhythm wise, I had the ride cymbal played and panned hard left, with tambourines on the right.

Haven't used this bad boy in a while, and decided to get 'em used in the mix. I actually haven't done an A/B test with this reflexion filter, definitely something I need to do down the line.

All in all, I've learnt alot from this exercise, and am looking forward to next month!

5 Mins to a Better Mix

http://therecordingrevolution.com/5minutes/