AE-240 Mastering Notes
by e of c
updated 16oct'08OVERALL
I applied the mid-side technique to all of these tracks and was not afraid to be heavy handed - I didn't go for pretty, I went for fast. I also only listened on headphones. Mostly, I was trying to help or hide things. If y'all want to continue refining these mixes, I'm happy to guide you. Comparing what you did to what I did - aided by the notes - maybe you can grade me on whether I achieved the goal or not! I know that Mother and Child and Help a Brother are a bit dark - that was partly my fault. See notes below.ZACH: Upside Down
I'd like to hear a bit more lead vocal and a more defined kick - you might get the latter by playing with it's relationship to the crotch and making sure it's not losing impact due to phase relationships with other tracks. The easiest way to avoid phase issues is to high-pass the snare and two OH tracks @100Hz.Because the vocal was struggling to be heard, you might tray a 6dB/oct shelf between 500Hz and 700Hz at -3dB to -6dB. In mastering, I accomplished this by high-passed the difference track and compressing the sum.
JORDAN: Mother and Child
To start, MUTE ALL TRACKS not used during the intro. Tape noise is cool, but not when you wanna compress things a little. To make a little more room for the bass notes, The kick needs to be less woofy. It could be as simple as high-passing the OH and snare @ 100Hz with 6dB/oct filter, and/or a shelf roll-off below 100Hz on the kick. You might try aligning the kick with the crotch to get more "point."Again the guitars could use a high pass or low shelf roll-off around 250Hz, the organ could go higher - about 750Hz - all to make room for the voice. Lower the BKG voxes the first time they come in - they should shadow the lead vox - and if possible, borrow the bkg voxes from the second or third verse to reinforce. You want to scrutinize the treble relationships - I think the lead vox and snare are brighter than other stuff in the track.
I applied mid-side mastering to focus on the SUM to improve the kick and bass relationship, compressing and limiting below 160 Hz. I compressed everything above 160Hz and applied some peak limiting as well. On the difference track, I high-passed at 800 Hz and dipped around 3khz to maximize the stereo effect without it getting in the way of the lead vocal. Noise reduction was applied to the intro.
KEITH: Arrow
When I applied mid-side to this track, I discovered it had been a data compressed file before it went to CD...Apply a little more dynamics, through automation, to the wha-slide guitar. It could be a little softer in the beginning and "hide" in the verses, not disappear, but enough to make room for the vocal. You might want to tighten the vocals a bit by aligning the ones that are more obviously out of sync. Go easy on the bass bone in the intro.
As with the other tracks, a gentle bass roll-off on all non-bass instruments. I applied a gentle compression and peak limiting on the mid track and high pass on the side track. You might submix the drums and percussion and just peak limit them. A little more kick would be nice, and just a hair less percussion.
ROSS HARVEY: Who's Gonna Help A Brother
Brotha-week-10 Brotha-15oct08 Brother 22October Brother 4 November
Here's are three interesting set of mxies, from left to right: week-10 and the follow up mixes from 15 october and 22 october. While there aree no notes for the 22oct and 4 Nov mixes, suffice to say that great progress has been made. Ross and I have spent a few late nights playing (and having fun at) producer and engineer.On the week-10 mix, Ross nailed the relationship between the drums and the bass, nicely captured the room, which he exaggerated a bit in the intro. On top of this foundation, what the rest of the track needs is "symmetry housekeeping," an attempt to keep the vocals, in particular, more balanced from left to right all the way through the song.
After importing the week-1- mix, I found a good example of a dynamics processor optimized to be a compressor - it has a slow-ish attack time that missed the downbeat. Once the processing is in full swing, the release time is long enough to keep it in check. Thes resulting spike gets in the way of normalization. The two fixes is to have " look-a-head" turned on, to have a GENTLE peak limiter on both sides of the compressor as well as on the offending track (possibly snare). Using mid-side mastering, I limited and high-passed the Side or difference track of the week-10 mix so I could raise it's overall level. I also low passed it a bit so that I didn't notice - on headphones - that the lead vocal was panned to one side, the sibilance throwing the treble balance out of whack.
Ross and I worked together on 15 October. We accomplished most of the punch list, what I like about this mix is the overall balance. I had Ross apply a 4-band compressor-limiter to the mix buss, which helped us corral the track, analyze the spectral content and gently lift the prescence and air regions without making them harsh. Eventually I realized the captured external analog processing tracks were behind the original tracks, comb filtering some top end, so these regions needed less help. We shaved bottom off the kick and processed submix tracks. The kick still needs to be louder in this mix, and this is either a simple level issue or a more closer examination of the drum mic timing / phase.
DAN:
