MAGIC EQ FREQUENCIES

Before I’m even going to reveal my magic EQ frequencies, I want to take this opportunity to give every one a little advice; I’d rather advice every one to cut before boost. EQ in general works better “subtractive” than “additive”. (low) Shelving before compression will help your compressor to act smoother, and cutting before boosting will help you to create a better overview of your mix. Keep this in mind or it will haunt you for the rest of your entire career and probably also your life.

I strongly advice you to sweep around the following frequencies and play around with the amount of subtractive and additive dB’s. Keep in mind that you can apply more dB/ octave subtractive than additive (!!!). These issues have been addressed in an earlier post which you can find here.

For some of the subtractive work I make use of side-chaining in the form of dynamic-eq. The reason for this is that it sounds more transparent rather than static.

THE MAGIC CHART

40 CYCLES
Reduce to increase overtones and recognition and tighter sound of kick drum. Shelf equalization.

64 CYCLES
Increase to add more fullness to kick drum (fundamental, 1st harmonic). Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.

72 CYCLES
Increase to add fullness to bass. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.

100 CYCLES
Increase for fullness to floor toms. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Increase for warmer sound of piano and horns. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0 for piano, and 1.3 for horns.
Increase for warmer sound of strings. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Reduce to decrease boominess of vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.

120 CYCLES
Reduce to increase clarity on all instruments except, kick, bass, toms and other low-end related instruments. Shelf equalization.

128 CYCLES
Increase for harder sound, clarity and punch to kick drum (2nd harmonic, 1st overtone). Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.

200 CYCLES
Increase to add fullness to snare, guitars, and vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3 for snare and guitars, and 1.0 for vocals.
Reduce to decrease gong sound of cymbals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.

240 CYCLES
Reduce to decrease muddiness of vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of 1.0.
Reduce to decrease sustaining sound of bass. Peak equalization with a Q of 2.0.

300 CYCLES
Reduce to decrease muddiness of mid-range instruments. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Reduce on kick drum for clarity of mid-range instruments such as vocals and pads. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.

500 CYCLES
Reduce to decrease cardboard sound. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Reduce to decrease ambience on cymbals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.

600 CYCLES
Reduce on kick drum for clarity of lead vocals body. Peak equalization of 1.0.
Increase to add guts/ body to lead vocal. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Trick: reduce on all backing track instruments to achieve clarity, and put lead vocal solid on top of the backing track (instruments).

740 CYCLES
Reduce on snare to increase clarity of over-heads, hi-hats and cymbals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.

900 CYCLES
Increase for clarity and punch of bass. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Reduce to remove cheap sound of guitars. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.

1,000 CYCLES
Increase for body of keyboards/ synthesizers. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.

1,500 CYCLES
Increase for clarity and pluck of bass. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.

2,500 CYCLES
Increase for attack of snare. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Increase for more attack of electric and acoustic guitar. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.

3,000 CYCLES
Increase for more clarity and harshness of lead vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Increase for more attack on low piano parts. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Reduce to increase breathy, soft -sound on background vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Reduce to increase overtones of bass, and clarity of other instruments. Shelf equalization.
Trick: reduce on all backing track instruments to achieve clarity, and put lead vocal solid on top of the backing track (instruments).

4,000 CYCLES
Increase for attack of kick drum. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Reduce to decrease harshness of electric guitars (rock guitars). Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.

5,000 CYCLES
Increase for presence of vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Increase for attack of toms. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Increase for attack of piano and (acoustic) guitars. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Reduce to make instruments appear more distant. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Reduce to remove cheap digital sound of reverbs and other digital effects. Shelf equalization.

7,000 CYCLES
Increase to add sharpness/ bite on synthesizers. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Increase to add sharpness to piano. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Increase to add sharpness to guitars. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Increase for dull singer. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.
Reduce for less “S” sound on vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 2.0.

10,000 CYCLES
Increase for air on vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.
Increase on overall stereo mix (2TR) to add air and brighten up the final mix. Shelf equalization.

14,000 CYCLES
Increase to make sampled synthesizers sound more analogue. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0
Increase for air on cymbals, strings, and flutes. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.3.

16,000 CYCLES
Increase for air on vocals. Peak equalization with a Q of about 1.0.

Note: Please keep in mind that the following are approximate values and are song dependent and root key related (!!!).

I hope this chart will help you to create better and cleaner sounding records. And as for any thing you can always reach me on royalcollegeofsurgeonsinc @ gmail . com.

Signing off from Studio A at Glenwood Place Studios in Burbank, CA.

The Music Surgeon

Phase Scrambling

Intro
The following blog is a bit more advanced than the blogs I have posted in the past. In this blog I will explain how calculation of phase angle (phase difference) from time delay (time of arrival ITD) and frequency. And how this technique will help you mix-in your vocals better and smoother. The technique which uses this is called “Phase Scrambling” and is a pretty unknown technique in the world of recording and mixing music. However it is daily life procedure in radio and tv broadcasting.
I had promised to write an entire blog dedicated to phase to a few readers of my blog by the request of Michael Zick. The reason why I haven’t been able to finish is the fact that phase is a very broad phenomena and on top of that it is very difficult and advanced to explain this in the 101 form. It includes matching levels, pseudo-stereo and the correct selection of a keyboard/ synth left or right side to use in the mix, haas effect, phase-cancellation, absolute polarity, and so on. Unfortunately I’m not able to publish a post about this phenomena, BUT it is a subject that will DEFINITELY be dealt with in my book “Painting the Picture of Music”.

Because I felt the need to publish some thing related to phase, I thought it was best to publish a technique, which is so rare and unheard of by the entire community of mixing and recording engineers, to broaden, you my readers’, horizon!Keep in mind that even this blog requires some knowledge of physics and math!

Connection Between Phase, Phase Angle, Frequency, and Time of Arrival
Coming back to the subject of this blog: “Phase Scrambling”. First I want to explain a little about the word phase in general. Phase has a clear definition for pure traveling sine waves (ever tried to time-shift a duplicate channel?), but not for music signals. As mentioned in an earlier blog; all equalizers shift phase, unless it uses some “special” tricks. Phases are ALWAYS phase differences (you still following me?). Polarity reversal (pol-rev) is not a phase shift and therefore not recognized on the time axis (t).

If there is a phase shift or a phase delay of the phase angle in degrees it has to be specified between which pure signals (sine waves) it appears. For example: A phase shift can be between the stereo signals; left and right, between input and output signals (e.g. EQ), between the voltage and current, or even between sound pressure (p) and velocity (v) of the air particles.

By now I could have posted up the entire formula to calculate this. For those interested, please hit me up with an email on royalcollegeofsurgeonsinc @ gmail . com

So what has time delay to do with phase angle you might wonder?

Phase Angle
Lord Rayleigh came up with a theory back in 1907, known as the duplex theory. This theory contributes to understanding the procedure of natural hearing with humans. It is the very simple realization that the interaural time of arrival differences (ITD) are important at frequencies below 800 Hz as phase differences with the direction localization as ear signals, while at frequencies above 1,600 Hz only the interaural level differences (IDL) are effective. Between the ears the maximum delay amounts to 0.63 ms. The phase difference for individual frequencies can be calculated. This is one of the most important reasons why I set my stereo imager at around 1,088 Hz (which means every thing below this frequency remains untouched spatially, and every thing above will get expanded).

You can shift single pure frequencies (sine waves), but this is impossible for music programs (!!!).

Phase Shift

Conditions for distortion-free transmission taken from the book “Microphone Book – chapter 7” by manufacturer Schoeps.

While the demand for constant frequency (amplitude is clear, the linear phase needs rather explanation.There are engineers that expect the ideal phase as constant as the amplitude repsonse. However this is NOT TRUE! Initially, the phase begins at 0 degrees because the lowest frequencies end at 0 Hz (at DC). Note: There’s no phase angle between DC voltages, and as you know DC delivers the cleanest signal possible.

In the course of giving a frequency a phase angle is without meaning, if the phase angle is only twice (2x) as large in the case of double frequency, and three times (3x) as large in triplicates, and so on.

To make this more understandable I will take the example of a digital delay in the following.
Let’s take a signal and delay it by 1 ms, and recombine them at output into onesingle signal. The levels of both, the original and the delayed signals going in the mixer are equal, and the signal is set at, say 1 kHz (sine wave).

A sine wave of 1,500 Hz frequency (period T = 0.667 ms) and it’s delay duplicate at 1 ms. The mixed signal will result in a signal with no amplitude, or complete cancellation of the signal (!!!).

The phase shift for any frequency with a delay of 1 ms. The diagonal line represents the increasing phase shift as a function of frequency. Note: Think of 540 degrees as being, effectively, the same as 180 degrees.

Another phenomena using phase shift is “comb filtering”.

Time, Phase, Frequency, and Delay
Polarity and phase are often mistakenly seem as the same thing. They are not.

As a rule: polarity reversal (console phase switch) is NO phase shift of 180 degrees (time delay).
Polarity reversal (PolRev) is a term which is often confused with that of phase (phi) but there’s no phase shift or time delay involved. Polarity reversal happens whenever we change the “sign” of the amplitude values of the signal. In the analogue world this can be done with an inverting amp, transformer, or the classic method; by switching the connections between hot and cold on one end of a balanced line cable. In the digital world this is done by changing all pulses to minuses and the other way round in a audio signal (data) stream.
Therefore the typical phase (phi) button is ONLY a polarity changer (!!!).

Conclusion
By knowing all the above, let’s imagine a simple tool that can “eliminate” these problems by selective frequency and sweeps. Your audio signal will become more solid, and you will be able to tread it better and smoother. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Waves has a plugin that is capable of doing this. Many of you have seen the plugin already countless times, and most likely have used it a zillion times before; the Waves PS22 Spread (TDM only). The PS22 Spread has a built in phase scrambler, but hardly any one knows about this.

Recently I have been working with this plugin as a phase scrambler and it shows impeccable results. My vocal is more solid, stays in the center image (most records the lead vocal moves a bit around) and my limiter hasn’t have to work as hard as it used to. By placing the PS22 Spread first in chain and the L2 second. If you do this the other way round (limiter first, phase scrambler second; you’ll get the opposite effect).

How Does a Phase Scrambler Operate?

Phase scrambler calculates the phase angles of an audio signal to reduce peak levels and accomplish a better (more solid and sustaining) RMS.

My Settings

Plugin: Waves PS22 Spread (TDM only)

Preset: Heldens Phase Scrambler

Width: 1
Rotation: 0
Spread: 0
LFspread: x1
Sweeps: between 2 to 22 to determine how much phase scrambling you want. My default is set to 8.
FCenter & FDensity: Can be set to adjust the frequency range to which the most scambling is applied.

Tip: The greatest degree of scrambling occuring in frequency ranges where the display graph say: Spread= 1.2 (most wiggles per octave)

Applications: Vocals or even entire mixdowns (before limiting! After limiting will have the opposite effect) to reduce peak levels.

Analyzing tip: To see how phase is being scrambled by looking at frequency, is to rest Spread to 2.1 (Set back to 0 for actual processing!)

—

If you guys wanna have the actual math (formula’s) behind this please shoot me an email at royalcollegeofsurgeonsinc @ gmail . com and I will be more then happy to send you all formula’s.

Signing off,

Yours Truly!

M/S Compression over L/R Compression

Intro
As many of you already know there’s already a blog about M/S techniques during mixdown. Today I want to talk about M/S Compression which will be an extremely valuable tool once you master it. Mastering engineers make use of this but during the mixdown phase this can be an essential tool as well.

Pro’s over Stereo (L/R) Compression
We are all familiar with what M/S does and where it stands for (Mid/ Side). M/S compression will give you another angle to how you will tread your stereo buss (mix buss). The M channel is the whole sum of the song, and the S channel represents the difference between left and right.

So M/S compression lets you compress and control the center, and sides of your stereo mix separately. This, all the sudden, allows you to bring up your vocals without affecting your instruments, bringing them back. Taming kick and snare on your overheads, or even emphasizing wide early reflections in the stereo field.

Scenario
A lot of times you’ve finished a mix, however sometimes the vocal gets slightly buried when the backing track (instruments) get loud. If you go on and try to compress the overall mix, or by the use of narrow band compression of the vocal’s frequency range, you will notice that the compression will ruin the great sounding backing track (instruments). M/S compression will come in handy during this stage. M/S compression can help to isolate the center image (M channel). How? By only compressing the M channel, bring up the center when the signals get loud, or another option is to compress the M channel and expand the S channel. This way you help to control the vocalist and open up the specific band. By compressing the S channel only, anything panned center is unaffected and the compression only affects signals panned left and/ or right that are out of phase. Loud signals in these modes will cause a momentary reduction in level of the S channel and therefore resulting in a narrowing of image width. Another option is multi band M/S compression but I’m not going to touch that option today as it offers more possibilities. If you do work in analogue I strongly recommend to use a stereo compressor (which side-chains are linked, the reason for this is that you don’t want any phase-shifts happening or an imaging change. In L/R compression it’s not guaranteed absolutely zero, as analogue compressors will not 100% handle both channels absolutely equally and therefore some degree of image shift and phase shift might occur. However in M/S compression, any disparity between the channels will not result in any degree of image shift, but in a variation of the width of the stereo image which is less obtrusive than the degree of phase and image shift occurring in L/R compression. I personally would say it works way better than L/R compression and you will find that out for yourself once you’ve played around with it a few times.

How to achieve M/S Compression
Pass the M signal through one channel of a compressor and the S signal through another. Plugin wise you have to this in two stages.

Email me with all your remaining questions or your findings:
royalcollegeofsurgeonsinc @ gmail . com

Signing off,

Yours Truly!

Update: Long time…

Just a quick note to let you guys know I haven’t forgotten about you! I’ve been so busy and hectic ever since I got back. Due to family circumstances and work I haven’t been able to share some time with you. HOWEVER, very soon I will start posting up some new blogs. Currently I’m in the studio with producer Drew Lane and will soon be back in the studio with Killa Kela to finish off his album.

One other thing, some of you already heard the rumour about me becomming 50% company partners with the famous The Grinehouse Publishing Works lead by two incredible multi platinum producers/ songwriters and Sony BMG Entertainment’s VP of A&R Kathy Hughes. This rumour is true! Soon I will be posting more info on this. In the meanwhile If any of you guys want to submit tracks please email me on koen.grinehouse@gmail.com.

That’s it for now I hope every thing is good with you’all.

Much musical love & blessings,

Yours truly!

Killa Kela in the house!

Killa Kela, for those who are not familiar with his name, has appeared onstage with Pharrell, Justin Timberlake, Super Furry Animals, Prince, De La Soul, and Plan B. He is considered to be one of the best beatboxers in the world alongside Kenny Muhammad and Rahzel. Kela released the album “Elocution” in 2005, the follow up to his debut album “The Permanent Marker” in 2002. He is also known for a UK advert for “Fruit Pastilles” and regular appearances on TV shows such as “Big Brother’s Little Brother”.

Currently Kela is finishing his new studio album with legendary UK producer Martin Rushent best known for his countless hit records from Human League, The Stranglers, Altered Images, and Generation-X. Martin won a Brit Award for Best British Producer back in 1982 for Human League‘s album “Dare”.

I had the pleasure to work on the first spin off (single) of Kela’s new album.

UK Top 40 Act "Addictive" Mix Session

Just a quick insight on me mixing the new single “Hot” by UK Top 40 Act Addictive. Music produced by IKONIX. Video shot by the studio owner Jason Ong (Jasonair Music Studio).

Antares Sells "T-Pain/ Cher" Effect

First off all I want to thank my friend Stylo for sharing this information.

Intro
He hit me up through iChat today informing me that Anatares has made a “new” plugin named Antares Auto-Tune EFX. Which in basic terms, is just a simplified Auto-Tune with extreme tuning settings which can be manually switched between soft, medium, and extreme.

Antares Auto-Tune EVO vs. Antares Auto-Tune EFX
I remember loads of people in studios world wide were already making the joke that Antares should use T-Pain in their add campaigns to get more sales, or even sell a seperate plugin; which right now has happened. However, the very first one to do that T-Pain effect was on the track “Believe” by Cher. My main question is: Why would you want to buy a plugin like this? To further explain this, we all need tuning. Why buy tuning and tuning efx? Meanwhile both are already in one, which is the actually tuning (pitch correction) plugin. For me it’s simple, just buy Antares Auto-Tune EVO.

So how does the T-Pain effect work?

• In Automatic Detection Mode(not graphical)
• C Major (or whatever root key the singer sings)
• Retune-0
• Tracking-67
• Vibrato Section: All zero except for;
• Amplitude-30
• Formant-100
• Pitch knob can be tweaked for more effect.
• Voice input type: Alto/Tenor, or your choice.
• Retune is usually always at 0, but the Tracking can be tweaked for different effects.
• The Vibrato section is real important for the effect. All other vibrato settings except for those listed here are set to “0”(example- “rate”). Usually I have maxed out the Formant and Amplitude settings, but its track dependant.

NOTE: Auto Tune needs to be correcting the pitch to get good effect. Therefore I first apply Waves Tune on the vocal to get it sounding right before I apply the Auto-Tune effect. This way the effect will sound much smoother and solid.

Signing out,

Yours Truly

Links
Antares Auto-Tune EVO
Antares Auto-Tune EFX

Pro Tools Keyboard Shortcuts Added!

I have added the Pro Tools 7 keyboard shortcuts in the menu on the right hand side under the header “Important Documents for Clients”. The reason for this is to give students and people using Pro Tools but don’t own it a chance to study the various keyboard shortcuts. Listed are both Mac OS.x and Windows XP keyboard shortcuts. For those who own Pro Tools, you can find the entire list (for the version you are working with) under the menu “Help”.

Although the keyboard shortcuts are from version 7, they are still active in 8.

Good luck!

The Music Surgeon

"Snapshot" Automation in Pro Tools

Today a very good question draw my attention when I was reading my emails. I got a question that came forward about an earlier post of mine, the “Starting the Mix” blog post of last month.

Intro
The question basically was about the way we mix a song in sections. The reason for this is quite simple; every song contains different phases, these phases are engaged to different types of emotional expressions. For example the verse might be more relaxed, meanwhile the prehook rises it’s emotion and by the time the hook (chorus) hits, the song becomes loud and very emotional. We can’t simply mix these phases in the same way we thread the verses, bridge, intro, outro’s, and so on. Therefore we like to use the so called “snapshot” automation. This is available on both Pro Tools as the Solid State Logic, AMS Neve consoles among many other analogue and digital mixing consoles. To make this blog post more mainstream and understandable for most of the readers I will explain only how “snapshot” automation works in Pro Tools.

What is “Snapshot” Automation?
“Snapshot” in general is basically just the way of writting a static mix. Meaning that you will only write one setting, or series of settings with the same time stamp of the mixers setup across a section of your mix. To bring back the example given before, mixing in this way you will be able to make your mix suite the structure of the song. You can set up all the levels, mutes, voice keyboard, drum processing, and so on for each section (phase) of the song and write them as the foundation of your (final) mix.

So how does it work (Pro Tools HD)?

1. Select the selector tool to highlight acoss the section where you want to write your “snapshot” automation (e.g. chorus). NOTE: make sure you have selected all the tracks and parts you want to be included in the “snapshot” and that the selection is of the correct length.
2. Enable playback looping (ctrl + click on the transports “play” button). I’m always mixing in this mode.
   
3. Click Auto Suspend in the Automation Enable Window (command + 4 on numeric keypad).
4. You will now be able to loop around your selection (section) and set up your mix. When done press Stop.
5. Choose Write Automation to all Enabled Parameters (command + option + forward slash).
6. Take off Auto Suspend in the Automation Enable Window (command + 4 on numeric keypad).

Thats it!TIP: I always work in Relative Grid Mode while mixing. This mode allows you to move “regions” while retaining their position relative to the nearest beat. In practice this would, for example, mean that when you move a “region” who’s starting point is 360 samples after the beat, can be moved without causing the “region” to automatically snap to the beat. Which would have been the case in Absolute Grid Mode.

Hope this little entry will help you guys get mixes going with various states of emotions!

Signing off,

Yours truly!

M/S Techniques in Mixing; Mastering Legend Bob Katz Explains

Bob Katz and I talk from time to time about mixing engineers delivering sessions to the mastering engineer and the various ways of work (Us vs them and vice versa).

Quite a while ago I send him an email concerning my earlier post (which can be found here) about M/S Techniques in mixing, but using it as an effect and how it affects the work of the mastering engineer, if it does at all!

Click here to find out what Bob replied.