August 28, 2003

Intercontintental Ballistic Mixing

The original plan had been to have final mixes for every song by the end of last week, reserving one day before mastering to fix little things after having mulled it over. That would have involved a solid week of round-the-clock cocooning in our cave/studio, which is how mixing usually is done on projects like this. The danger is that you can lose perspective and make mistakes before you have a chance to realize that they are mistakes, while the advantage is that you can get swept up in the momentum, perform superhuman feats of endurance, and occasionally, in the giddy, sleep-deprived wee hours, accidentally stumble upon a crazy, brilliant idea that never would have occurred to you (or that you wouldn't have dared to try) and which ends up being your favorite thing that "makes the album" for you. Plus, that's just the most efficient way to use time that's charged by the day. In this particular situation, it would have been nice to have everything finished before my trip to England, so that I could take some time off from the record, listen through the pre-mastered mixes and approach the final fix-it day with some distance and the proper perspective.

That's not how it turned out, however. For one reason and another, and a few others as well, the mixing never quite got off the ground at the planned pace. There were various delays, glitches, and what not. Kevin had been working on the basic sound, as I've explained before, in preparation for my coming in and helping to alter, shape and reorient these so that they come out the way they're supposed to. But that never ended up happening. My only real involvement in the in-studio mixing had been to listen to the songs in their current state for a couple of hours, around mid-week. It was disorienting and confusing, and I really didn't know what to make of any of it. But time kept on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. In the end, I left for London carrying not a CD of allegedly finished mixes as planned, but rather a CD of rough, half-finished tracks.

All the sounds are great. (My only worry in that regard is whether there should be more of them.) We did such a complete, coherent job in the tracking, and were, I suppose, so well-prepared and "on the same page" with the sounds, that most of the changes I want are more arranging issues than sonic ones, which is very unusual. None of the mixes are complete, though a few are close. Some are still missing important parts. Some of the parts that are there are wildly out of balance, at least as I envisioned them. Basically, Kevin just threw what we had so far on to a CD. It sounds different every time I listen to it. It is, as am I, a big mess. But I can discern the outlines of the songs as they are truly intended to be, in some cases actually a bit better than they probably had any right to be; if we don't blow it too much, it's going to be great.

Kevin's going to continue working while I'm gone, and I'm supposed to listen to the CD, make notes, and email them to him. Which is exactly what I've been doing, obsessively and voluminously. (I'm sure if I had easy access to a high-speed connection here-- not all that common in Great Britain-- we'd be swapping sound files over the net as well. We did a lot of that sort of thing during the preproduction demo-ing process, particularly among those Sacramento boys.) He'll get a head start working on the songs with the comments in mind, and we'll really get to work on finishing it all up when I get back home. We have till Sept. 16, which is the mastering date, and we'll keep going till time, money or the engineer/studio owner's patience runs out, whichever comes first.

All told, I'd say I've sent around ten full pages of notes and comments so far, with much more to come. Here's an excerpt of one of these emails, just to show you the kind of thing I'm talking about:

I really want to go to town with the faux Beatles-esqueness on the bridge. It should come as more or less a complete surprise, and sound like something from the Abbey Road "pop symphony" with Black Sabbath inexplicably having turned up as the back up band for a 15 second mini-song. Or something like that. The vox should be huge and overwhelming and lush, especially on the line "Peace Forever." The final chord of the bridge (formed by the vocals, the two ebows and all the guitars), i.e., the word "now," should hang over the end of the phrase and decay as the drum fill begins. The two tracks of single-note electric guitar (occasionally referred to as the "George guitar") at the end should basically be the lead instrument, but all should be audible. Basically, it should sound like we've segued into a completely different song; then zoom back to the original after the drum fill.

This long-distance mixing feels weird, and it is quite unique in my recording experience, but in the end this the project will benefit from this change in plan. Having more time to think about things is always a help (unless you drive yourself insane-- which could well happen.)

It's a given that things sound different out of the studio, and that the entire thing will sound different after it has gone through the mastering process. It sounds different depending on where you stand in the room, in fact. Part of the challenge of mixing is to try to allow for this, to correct for such things and come up with a final mix that will sound right in different circumstances. As with all sound recording, everything in this regard is an approximation, a balance, a compromise-- you try to arrive at the most effective balance that covers as many bases as you can think of. There are certain things you have to train yourself to ignore when examining your mix and tweaking the arrangement. For instance, you usually want to mix the drums much louder than you want them to be on the final product, because the compression in the mastering process usually makes them sound quieter. Listening that way can make the whole thing sound off-kilter, which is confusing, but you just have to learn to pretend that the drums are in the right place while you try to tinker with the arrangement and the mix. One of the things we learned immediately from listening to the roughs is that the combination of these sounds, these songs, these arrangements, these effects, and the equipment and format we're using has had the following result: the effects (particularly vocal effects) sound way more pronounced in the studio than out of it. I was alarmed to discover that my CD sounds quite a bit dryer than what we were hearing in the studio, almost like the effects weren't even there. We're going to have to correct for this, pushing the effects higher in the studio so that they will be audible and do what they're supposed to outside. (As I say, this sort of thing is a given, but this time around it was just a little more extreme than predicted.) We would have noticed this under the original plan, but it might not have been quite as dramatic a contrast and we might not have had much time to fool around with it (and to devote enough individual attention to it as it occurs in different form from track to track) on the single final pre-mastering day.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I also think the album, in the end, might turn out to have benefited from the distance as such. It's an unintended variation on what has become a sort of theme of this studio journal: the difficulty of describing sounds with words, and the effect that the myriad, necessarily unsatisfactory attempts to do so anyway can have on the ultimate result. Doing so much writing during this recording has forced me, encouraged me, and enabled me to be far more articulate than I've ever been about the sorts of sounds I want. That changes nothing about the essential situation in re: sounds you hear in your head being untranslatable. But the exercise has promoted more focus, greater clarity, on my part. I feel I understand the songs, the tracks, the recording, the unborn album far better than I would had I ventured into the studio blog-less. And there's certainly a similar phenomenon at play as I write my detailed, song by song, verse by verse essays on what goes where, what should sound like what, and what seems to be missing. If things had gone according to plan and custom, I'd never have had the occasion to write such a thing, never had the occasion to try to think about how to describe these sounds in declarative sentences, and probably would not have understood everything nearly as well or in anything like the same way. I'll say one thing: goofy as it sounds, I'm probably going to try to write little essays on the rough mixes next time, even if I happen to be in the same room as the engineer and even if I no longer have a blog. It's a pain, but it's also a help.

Posted by Dr. Frank at August 28, 2003 07:46 PM | TrackBack
Comments

"sound like something from the Abbey Road 'pop symphony' with Black Sabbath inexplicably having turned up as the back up band for a 15 second mini-song."

Okay, lemme just say that this sounds amazing. This sounds similar to what Superdrag tried to pull off on their song "Shuck & Jive". For most of the song it's a pretty mediocre rocker, but then about 2/3 of the way through the song they suddenly turn into the Beach Boys for a few seconds. It's a pretty neat trick, but ultimately it returns to the song that wasn't that great to begin with. Hearing a similar thing done on one of your songs (which will undoubtedly be really great) should be incredible.

Posted by: greg at August 28, 2003 08:27 PM

can't wait!

Posted by: paige at August 28, 2003 08:33 PM

First off. I feel odd talking directly to you while 200 unique users witness the conversation. The conversation between senator and plebian is weird enough, and the forum even more intimidating. Enough said. You ARE talking to a (don't say the "f" word) fan.

I'd like to address the "declarative sentence" approach. Little essays are a super fantastic idea because studios suck the life out of musicians on a budget. Day one is exciting. There's the "we're gonna do something better than abbey road fellas" feel to it. And halfway through the warm-up you're second guessing all that you've penned in the sheltered shadows of the unfinished basement. “Oh this is how it sounds through two hundred dollar headphones...” eek. And somehow all the basic tracks finally get thrown down and you're at the filler stage where caffeine begins to create subtle guitar lines and keyboard tracks that fill your bare bones verse chorus verses quite nicely. Harmonies, single notes held throughout choruses and your little creation seems to be getting much bigger. "Oh the mix is gonna be killer" you think. And so you're happy again.

“Ok guys - let's get a coffee and attack the board.” You're tired. Attempts at communication all revert back to the "feel" as the crux of band member X's argument. No - it just doesn't feel right! Can we go back and add the quintessential 16th vocal track in two of the three pre-choruses? Does anyone have a moog? No we can't use a moog - that's like throwing a violin quartet on iron man - it just wouldn't feel right...

And so the mix shatters the original plan. The original plan being MIX will bring forth CLARITY. Suddenly forty thousand possibilities surface. One hundred of them will sound good –but you know deep down that the elusive, picture perfect, better than abbey road mix is buried deep down in the recesses of the board. And then you realize you're playing the lottery. All your "brilliant" additional colorful tracks have become nothing but extra lottery tickets. Would you like extra with that sir? Why not - and throw in a few scratch bingo cards for good measure.

The oldest and probably most effective trick in the book is to trust your initial outburst of inspiration that made the random guitar/vocal clipping one of your songs. Try to picture your polaroid of the original soul of the song and then write your five thousand words on it. You, Mr. Songwriter, trusted it enough in the first place. Trusted it so much so that it made it onto the recording. What exactly was it that did it for you? Most probably it sounded like Because or Polythene Pam in your head - but layers and layers and more layers usually just end up alienating the listener. It's cool but has no staying power - like Amnesiac (i guess). Or the Miracle of Shame...

Anyway - I've overstayed my welcome. My little piece of advice - my minute contribution to the new MTX - subtract from the verse and add to the chorus. Or vice versa if the hook lies in the verse. Frame your polaroid - don't hang it too high though (or too low), and don't digitize it, but enlarge it a little, but not too much otherwise it'll blur...

Oh for god's sake just do whatever "feels" right.

Good luck.

Bruce

Posted by: Bruce at August 29, 2003 07:45 AM

Wow, i really wanted that guy Bruce to shut the hell up. I dont know about anyone else.

Posted by: Christian at August 30, 2003 11:30 AM

I skipped the bit in the middle but he made his point well. I don't know about enlarging the polaroid until it blurs but he is essentially a well wisher.

Posted by: Georgina at August 30, 2003 01:45 PM