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Tutorial collection thread

i knew about this place all the time but i think it would be cool to have it here:
http://www.tcelectronic.com/TechLibrary

and of course we shouldn't forget about the really cool tutorial pages of Beat Kaufmann:
http://www.beat-kaufmann.com/tipspcmusic/index.html
 
Thanks for the useful links everyone. Waywyn - love your cliff notes on how to engineer and compose. Regarding muddy dull comps, you say to take away the instruments causing the mud - but even with a few instruments, my comps are way too muddy and dull.

I understand that well-engineered comps are a combination of a thousand things; good composition, as few instruments/notes as possible, good panning, the right volumes, but let's assume all that is good, what is the next most important thing for well engineered mixes? Do you typically first eq each instrument and then eq the overall mix in most cases? If you could only do one, which one would you say is most effective?

Also, I am working only with the standard eq in Cubase SX, which I don't think is great. It's possible I need to move to something better. What do you think about that? Should I be able to acheive fairly decent sound comps with the standard Cubase SX tools?

Do I need to move to an outboard analog mixer maybe? I remember when my studio was more hardware based, I had the exact opposite problem of mud. My comps where too bright and too thin when I worked with hardware, so maybe I need to bring back my outboard mixer.

Thanks,
Joanne
 
Hi Joanne,

well, thanks, but what do you mean with cliff notes? If you mean the written word document, that wasn't me alone. It was done on NS (by basically all the members which are here now) and i put it together for all the guys over there and posted it as a file.

when i was banned i simply put the link to VI, so that everyone still can get the best out of it :)

i think i can't answer all those question just like telling a joke but i think the best would be to visit the page of beat kaufman. he has a lot of tutorials about how to eq and use plugins.

well, i really dunno what to say, when you ask how i work, or if i eq first and then later at the end of the mix.
basically i go with my ears. if something sounds dull then i eq, but first i try to go with the instruments. if the horn melody sounds to dull i double it with strings or a piccolo flute or whatever.

in terms of plugins, it is best to download demos and compare how they work. if you like something then use it. i was really surprised as i was looking for a really good and not too expensive compressor. then i heard the blockfish of digital fishphones and this thing damn rocks. sooner or later i will get a uad1, but til then the blockfish does it. not because it is cheap or for free - it simply sounds awesome!

as for the cubase eq's i only use them when i want to get rid of a frequency (taking bass of a snare mic or so). i really tried to work with them but they just sound crappy. best eq i find is the dynamic eq of the powercore or the sony oxford.

.. to be continued :)
 
Hi Waywyn,

I forgot you are in Germany. In the US, students who don't have time to read the full book in school go to a store and by the book's Cliff Notes. It is a small abbreviation of the full work and focuses on only the key main points. Your doc was quite to the point and easy to read.

I appreciate verification that Cubase eq is bad. Maybe I will check out UAD or Powercore, but to your point, it is far more complex than simply buying better tools and I need to begin training my ears and take things instrument by instrument. You've brought up another component, which is compression - which I'm even more clueless about than eq.

I think I simply need to buckle down, read the links/literature provided, begin hands-on experimenting and stop whining.

Thanks for your help,
Joanne
 
German students have time but American students don't...hmmm...... :???:

OK here's a pretty good tutorial on compression:

http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/Articles/Compression/ (http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/ ... mpression/)
 
Thanks Synergy. If I work exclusively with sample instruments, would compression "generally" be used only in the final mix process, or do you personally use compression routinely on individual samples as well?
 
Scott Cairns @ Sun Sep 04 said:
This might be useful;

http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm

I think the site used to be called Studiocovers and it went down for a while.

Its indexed a bunch of great information into categories and provided links.
Click to expand...

Really helpful info Scott.

"The key is to figure out which frequency range is most important for each instrument and to REMOVE any non-important frequencies that are competing with the important frequency range of other instruments."

This really is an art and either you have the ears or you don't. Sort of scarey.

As I mentioned to Waywyn, when I was mixing with a hardware mixer, I found creating clear, sharp cues so much easier. Do you use a hardware mixer? What eq, reverb, compression tools are you using these days?

Thanks,
joanne
 
Thanks Waywyn. It always helps hearing two people agreeing on the basics.


Question about final mix compression, is there a difference between multiband compressors used for final CD mastering than the type of compressor tools used on a single track? Mutliband would be applied to the Left/Right Stereo out, but just trying to understand if the actual algorithyms for final mastering is any different than compression on a single vocal track. Compresson is compression, right?
 
Hi Joanne, compression on a single track basically amounts to levelling the volume out like Alex mentioned previously.

Multiband compression on a stereo mix is where you can boost certain frequencies to make them sound louder.

For example, you might boost the bass of a whole track to make it sound more beefy.

This is particularly useful in mastering as you are trying to match the overall brightness/bottom end of all your tracks across the board.
 
For orchestral work on individual instruments, I would tend to smooth out dynamics with MIDI volume and expression rather than with a compressor plugin. I guess there might be a few cases where you might want to add some compression to individual instrument tracks (most likely percussion or brass) but I would generally prefer to do it with MIDI control myself. This way you have control on specific spots rather than having a plugin automatically control it. However, if you have already have a track recorded and you want to "tone down" some of the peaks or smooth it out, you could use a compressor for this I guess. Its kind of the "Cliff Notes" approach to problem solving dynamics.....its fast and easy and probably nobody will be the wiser. However, za "German students" vud probably meticulously edit ze MIDI data to control ze dynamics for more precise control.

I'm half German so I use both methods. :lol:[/quote]


Hi Synergy. I appreciate the detailed explanation and thanks for taking the time. In general, unless there is an occasional special application, samples, especially orchestral likely will not need compression for individual tracks.
 
Thanks Scott. I know we've had this conversation before, and I appreciate everyone's patience. I also had a few other questions for you in an earlier post in this thread if you have the time.
 
100-250Hz ~ Adds roundness
250-800Hz ~ Muddiness Area
Click to expand...

Looking at that again, with all due respect I'd argue with some of the esteemed Mr. Cairn's ranges. There's some room for subjectivity, but in general the mudrange is in the fourth octave (if you start at 20Hz), roughly between 160 and 320Hz. That's independent of the instrument, not just strings, unless you happen to hit a resonance.

Middle C is 260Hz, and it's already getting out of the "nothing good happens here" area, but 320 is the business octave in the treble clef where most things happen (A=440 is a 6th above middle C, of course). There's no mud to be found there.
 
Hi Nick, no problems. :)

What I posted is actually a guide from; http://www.futureproducers.com/site

I dont live by it, but it has helped me "zero in" on various instruments and get me in the ballpark of what to cut and boost etc.

I only recommend it as a guide, it took me while to get my head around some eq ranges and their functions and this list helped.
 
but i think in general you could say that around 300 to 400 you will find a lot of mud :)

of course, depending on the piece of music, but usually i find myself of taking out around 300 hz and 1 khz
 
Joanne Babunovic @ Tue Jun 13 said:
Thanks Scott. I know we've had this conversation before, and I appreciate everyone's patience. I also had a few other questions for you in an earlier post in this thread if you have the time.
Click to expand...

Hi Joanne, no problems, sorry I missed it earlier.

Joanne Babunovic said:
Do you use a hardware mixer? What eq, reverb, compression tools are you using these days?
Click to expand...

I dont use a hardware mixer, Im a big believer in that unless you have state of the art A/D and D/A converters, (devices that accurately convert your audio signal from analog to digital and back again) your doing more harm than good. Kind of like applying sandpaper to your mix. :)

In other words, the damage done to your pristine recording, by travelling out of your DAW, to a hardware mixer and back again, is not worth the trouble. (Unless you have those great converters I just mentioned.)

I have a Powercore PCI card, I quite like some of the effects on that, plus Im using Waves EQs, and the L2 limiter.

Im splashing out on the Win version of Altiverb soon, cant wait for that. :razz:

One good suggestion I follow is that I mix inside Cubase, usually applying small amounts of compression where I need to focus certain instruments, also using small amounts of EQ to cut muddy frequencies and clean up the mix. When im happy with that, I export a 24bit stereo wav file and take it into SoundForge.

In there, I can visually see the effects of applying the L2 limiter and so on, sometimes, I might do a further small cut of the low mids if things still sound a little muddy.

BTW, the idea of doing the "mastering" side of things (I use that term loosely) outside of the sequencer, was suggested by Peter Roos, a member of VI.
 
Waywyn @ Tue Jun 13 said:
but i think in general you could say that around 300 to 400 you will find a lot of mud :)
Click to expand...

I actually agree Alex. As different instruments have different fundamental freqencies, the "muddy" section is going to vary. Also, different instruments have different overtones, so that repeating of freqs varies yet again. A Clarinet actually has an overtone of a twelfth. If you overblow a clarinet note, you get a perfect octave jump. :)

Im not sure if this has been posted yet, but I also find this chart really helpful (as a guide of course!);

http://www.fastestmanintheworld.com/misc/frequency_chart_lg.gif (http://www.fastestmanintheworld.com/mis ... art_lg.gif)

These days, if I have to mix in a hurry for a deadline, I buss things by their approximate range; cellos/basses/bassoons together; 1st and 2nd violins etc, I do a seperate cut of eq for each buss, wherever I find the most "muddiness"

Some instruments (like French Horns) can be tough, as theyre range is so big. Usually, Ill buss a solo horn seperately, if its playing a melodic part and kind of sitting in its own space.

I also do a steep rolloff below an instruments fundamental note; Im not sure if its noise in some of the samples, but some seem to sound a bit rumbly without the EQ cut.
 
cool chart. for those who want this one in big i can suggest the vsl poster.
my girlfriend presented it to me on a birthday and since then it blazons my studio :)

as for the mastering outside of the sequencer, same here as scott. there are so many reasons to master outside the sequencer:

1. you can save more ram for plugins, tracks and samples.

2. you ALWAYS have a clean mix without mastering available.
sometimes the company wants to have a smoother, softer or more aggressive version of it. sometimes the customer just wants an unmastered mix since it will be used with other audiotracks together.

3. in an external editor like soundforge, wavelab or audition 2.0 (that's what i use) you have so many options on editing and tweaking the soundmaterial :)
i really enjoy the photoshop-lasso-approach in audition, to get rid of disturbing signals or noises.
 
Scott - talking through your workflow helped a lot and thanks for the names of the eq/compression/reverb. I'll forget about the analog mixer idea.
 
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