[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp_IZzBNUCw&w=560&h=315]

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Hands-on training

Especially suited for church volunteers

A comprehensive and affordable sound course in George.

STARTING: 22-23 February

Duration: 18 hours over 3 weekends between February and May
(the date of the 2nd and 3rd weekend will be decided together with the students)

The course will cover:
Sound Production
Tone and Equaliser
Mixing principles

Learning is made extremely real for the students with tailor-made exercises
with a supplied DAW software and studio productions*

[vimeo 162274117 w=800 h=340]

COST:

R 1800 for the course

R 700 per weekend (x3)

FOR BOOKING AND MORE INFO:
tim@thesoundkitchen.co.za | 083 413 6117
Registrations close on 14 February

Booking subject to payment. The course will only run with a class of 6 students or more
* each student will need to bring its own computer

thesoundkitchen.co.za

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This week we feature Tim Lengfeld

1. When does it happen? When does a session leave the realm of chaos to hit the stage of clarity?
After the first full listen through a project

2. Your greatest inspiration is?
Great music mixed great

3. Your top 3 production / mastering values without which you will never mix / produce?
– Ears must be in top shape, strictly enforce breaks every 45 minutes
– Quality Control is as important as the manipulation of audio
– Treat every project with the respect it deserves

4. Your top 3 all time albums?
– Rammstein “Reise Reise”
– Arvo Part “Fratres” / Bournemouth Sinfonietta
– Radiohead OK Computer

5. The 3 most frequent mistakes “inexperience” makes?
1) Limiting/noiseshaping/resampling the mixes before sending to mastering
2) No or unrealistic brief
3) No slack built into deadlines

6. The question everyone asks you?
What is mastering?

7. Your most memorable mistake?
When I melted a rare vinyl while transferring.

8. Your current influences?
The great sounding masters of a few decades ago.

9. A crazy production story?
Sending a DDPi for replication and getting back CD-ROMs containing the DDPi files…

10. The advice no one gave you that you would have loved to have had when you started?
I was very lucky to receive great advice from the start. One thing that comes to mind is the advice that it is sometimes better to turn down projects

11. What do you do to keep your productions fresh?
Approach each project as unique

12. Your greatest ever mastering lesson gained?
The buck stops with ME

13. The recommendation you would love to give to any producer / engineer (especially young ones)?
– Don’t stress about gear
– Experiment

14. Anything else you would like to add?
Clients like to work with nice engineers. Try to be nice.

More about Tim here: mastering.co.za

Previous article of this series:

REEL TO REEL: JÜRGEN VON WECHMAR
REEL TO REEL: JULIAN WIGGINS
REEL TO REEL: DAVID LANGEMANN

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This week we feature Jürgen von Wechmar

1. When does it happen? When does a mix leave the realm of chaos to hit the stage of clarity?
The mix proses starts with discerning the content and establishing the vibe/soul/sound for the mix – Its identity. From there its working to the goal of serving the song to be the best mix it could be within its identity.

2.  Your greatest inspiration is?
Any music that has been well crafted, form songwriting to production to recording to mix. Everyday I hear great new music that’s fresh and exiting and this inspires me to be innovative.

3.  Your top 3 production / mixing values without which you will never mix / produce?
Be a true Producer/Engineer and work accordingly. Have good admin and hygiene in you project – lots of great songs are flawed with bad production admin and messy tracks which makes the mix process tedious.

The client (artist) is mostly right. Its their song and their dream. You can advise but ultimately the artist has to sell the song and can only do that successfully if they are very passionate and proud about their product

Don’t cut corners. The client believes in you, that’s why they hire you. Give your best effort with each project!

4.  Your top 3 all time albums?
There’s way more than 3… to many to list

5.  The 3 most frequent mistakes “inexperience” makes?
Not paying attention to the 3 values in (3)

6. The question everyone asks you?
Do you really know how to work all those knobs?

7. Your most memorable mistake?
Vocals are the most important element! Always!

8. Your current influences?
All music/genre’s that excites me does play an influence, from hip-hop – classical.

9. A crazy production story (studio or live)?
Every project is a journey and they all have their special moments. The realm of being creative is the best space to be in!

10. The advise no one gave you that you would have love to have had when you started?
Follow the 3 values in (3) , and vocals are always King

11. What do you do to keep your productions / mixes fresh?
Build a toolbox of  great mixing techniques, but always push the boundaries. Exploring new ideas always pays off!

12. Your greatest ever production / mixing lesson gained?
Serve the song

13. The recommendation you would love to give to any producer / engineer (especially young ones)?
Follow the 3 values in (3) and vocals are King.

14. Anything else you would like to add?
Be humble and have fun! Nobody likes a smart-ass with bad vibes.

More about Jürgen and his studio here:Sunsetrecording.com
Facebook – Sunset Recording Studios
Soundbetter.com – Jürgen Von Wechmar
Youtube.com – Sunset Recording Studios
Soundcloud.com – Sunset Recording Studios

Previous article of this series:

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This week we feature Julian Wiggins ( Van Morrison, Cliff Richard, LSO)

When does it happen? When does a mix leave the realm of chaos to hit the stage of clarity?
Shawn Murphy mixes straight to two track… And this is firstly because he’s a genius and secondly because music he is recording has been properly arranged in the first place. (note from Tim: it happens before you mix it)

Your greatest inspiration is?
David Sanborn

Your top 3 production / mixing values without which you will never mix / produce?
1 Selecting the repertoire
2 Setting the right key and tempo for the song
3 Choosing appropriate arrangements

Your top 3 all time albums?
The Spin- Yellowjackets
Secret Story- Pat Metheny
Take 6- Take 6

The 3 most frequent mistakes “inexperience” makes?
1 Recording a song in the wrong key
2 Recording a song at the wrong tempo
3 Inappropriate instrumentation

The question everyone asks you?
What’s the biggest film you’ve scored?

Your most memorable mistake?
Almost missing my entrance on stage at Sun City’s 1999 New Years Eve Millennial Concert

Your current influences?
Snarky Puppy
Dirty Loops

A crazy production story (studio or live)?
Finding out I’d won a SAMA with ‘Dondo’ whilst we were live onstage in Namibia

The advice no one gave you that you would have loved to have had when you started?
Invest in great microphones and preamps

What do you do to keep your productions/mixes fresh?
Always try and include a live/real instrument element

Your greatest ever production/mixing lesson gained?
Don’t talk too much between takes

The recommendation you would love to give to any producer / engineer (especially young ones)?
Listen with understanding

For more info on Julian julianwigginsmusic.com

Previous article of this series:

REEL TO REEL: DAVID LANGEMANN

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This week we start with David Langemann (Freshly Ground / Johnny Clegg)

When does it happen? When does a mix leave the realm of chaos to hit the stage of clarity?
When the emotional direction has been chosen or found, and the technical obstacles cleared out the way, i.e. muddy frequencies, overlapping musical parts, etc. Then the final stretch mix adjustments takes it to an inspirational level.

Your greatest inspiration is?
People with a story in their music. Honest and direct music.

Your top 3 production / mixing values without which you will never mix / produce?
– Go with your instincts, don’t overthink.
– Mix at quiet levels and occasional loud level too.
– Learn how to “step out of yourself” for objectivity.

Your top 3 all time albums?
– Fred Hammond, Something ‘Bout Love
– Van Halen, 1984
– The Beatles, Rubber Soul

The three most frequent mistakes “inexperience” makes?
– Not properly listening and understanding what the artist wants you to achieve for them.
– Spending too long on details such as the drum sound before achieving a good overall balance.
– Don’t allow preconceived notions of what a situation or person needs from you. Start from an open, clear place always.

The question everyone asks you?
How did I start as an engineer?
The answer is “live sound” and taking on any sound related job.

Your most memorable mistake?
Spending an hour punching in line by line for a guitar solo with producer and artist holding their collective breath only for the computer to crash without saving. Since then I save after every few moves in Pro Tools and directly after every recorded performance.

Your current influences?
Briana Babineaux
Philip Tabane and Molombo

A crazy production story (studio or live)?
Working 36 hours on a deadline for German TV Christmas special. Taking 15-minute sleep breaks rolled up in the studio’s piano cover while the music editor prepared the next song for mixing.

The advice no one gave you that you would have loved to have had when you started?
On a business note, take deposits before you start working for people. The ones that have no intention of paying or don’t actually have funds will quickly disappear.
On a technical note, be yourself. Follow your strengths. If that means that your gifting is in wiring studios or managing a studio instead of being an engineer, then pursue those paths with equal passion.

What do you do to keep your productions / mixes fresh?
Listen to ALL styles of music. Ask friends for new music they can give you to listen.
Watch Pensados Place.

Your greatest ever production / mixing lesson gained?
Listen to the song from the beginning as much as possible when making arrangement changes. Context is king.
Also, make sure to get the optimal tempo for a song. Take your time to decide, testing in 1 BPM increments until you find it.

The recommendation you would love to give to any producer / engineer (especially young ones)?
The more good you put into yourself, the more good will come out in your work.
Know the technical aspects inside and out so the music can flow. Blockages and delays during recording sessions kill creativity and productivity. Prepare all aspects for recording sessions. Have fun!

Anything else you would like to add?
Work with good artists. Your recordings will naturally sound good.
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Be happy. The music industry can lead a person to think that career in music is the be all and end all. If you give your gifts to God and let him work through you, then your efforts are worth it.

For more info on David: https://za.linkedin.com/in/david-langemann-b3699a18

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A rule of thumb for minimising phasing issues is to have around 10dB difference in the level between the microphone “versions” of the same source.

A typical example of this problem is heard when microphoning a choir, because you have one source that is covered with several microphones simultaneously.

To help in achieving the 10dB difference mentioned above, a common practise is something we call the “3 to 1 rule”. The rule states that the source-to-microphone distance of numerous microphones should be three times the distance between the sound source and the nearest microphone.

That said, the presence of a source in 2 different microphones in a live scenario is essentially unavoidable (i.e. think of microphones on a drum kit), which leads to the second problem that we call “bleed” or spill. This is particularly acute when a member of a band plays much softer than the rest. If everybody plays soft or loud, the bleed will be inconsequential; however in the above scenario, the amount of bleed of the loud source into the soft one will prove hard to handle. As always, the first course of action is with the source, the band: Get them to all play at similar intensities and you will solve a lot of issues.

Bleed within this context is the presence of a sound into a source which is not the intended one: hi-hat into the snare microphone, electric guitar into the double bass microphone, etc.

Phasing issues and bleed problems often overlap, herewith few approaches that help with  both:

1. Use the bleed
This is the most difficult of the 3, as it requires the most experience, and the most experimentation time. Instead of trying to get rid of the bleed, use it. If you do so it will become “ambience” and add to the sound rather than be detrimental to it. Maybe you are recording a brass section with a double bass. You can try to box everybody in and in the process destroy the magic of musicians playing together or you could use the bleed. How do you transform bleed into ambience? You move around the bass microphone in the room until you find a position where the brass section ambient sound actually adds to the brass sound. Then you place the double bass there and do the “moves” we looked at in the previous articles.

2. Get rid of it
This is achieved with dynamic control called ‘gating’. Gating is super helpful, but it will only work if:
A. you hit the right gating groove (i.e. the settings are all in the right spot) or
B. you are able to compensate for any possible audible artefacts

3. Couple it well
Part of the tricky aspect of sound that ”bleeds” into another microphone, is that the same sound hits the 2 different microphones at 2 different times creating a phasing / timing problem. At times this can be solved by hitting the polarity reverse switch on the “bleed in” microphone channel. It does not always work but it is definitely worth an attempt. If it works, it will make the bleed very helpful. A typical example of this are drums’ overhead microphones (they obviously get a lot of the snare sound in them). Try to reverse the overhead microphones’ polarity on the mixer one at the time, and then listen to the one you are working on with the addition of the snare microphone. Listen to the snare and particularly listen if the 2 sound better when the phase is normal or reversed. it might just work.

If you work with a DAW or a digital mixer that allows introducing delay on different channels, then delaying the source of the bleed to align it with the “bleed in” channel will bring the “bleed source” in phase with the bleed-in channel/s.

I trust this series of articles have been helpful. What this space for more helpful / insightful material in the weeks to come!

Ciao

Tim

Read the previous article:

THE PERFECT MIC – PART 7: Stereo rules
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 6: A piece of sky – movement two and three
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 5: A piece of sky – movement one
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 4: Tonic Tone
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 3: The Matching
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 2: The Prelude
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 1

The post THE PERFECT MIC – PART 8: the bleed appeared first on theSoundKitchen.

Vibrations traveling through the air end up stimulating one or more of the 25000 “trigger” cells we have in our ears, more precisely in an inch long chamber known as the organ of Corti. Each of these triggers are connected to the brain where the received stimuli are further analysed. If you could see a real-time brain scan, you would see it lighting up in different parts of the brain (we will leave this discussion for another time) at different times as stimuli are processed and interpreted.

That Christmas tree lighting event hopping around your grey matter ends up processing things like tone, time, phase, levels and few other variables which in turn end up giving you the sensation of sound, making you experience the pleasure of music, or rather the pleasure of its anticipation.

Furthermore, the combination of all these variables analysed at the same time ends up giving you some truly important information, like location of the source in terms of distance and relative angle, which translates into depth and staging of a sound or sounds within a sound field. The entire wonder (our perception of sound staging) is based on our brain’s capacity for comparing data between the left and the right ear. If you close one ear, you would essentially lose a big chunk of that ability.

What does this have to do with microphones?

Every time we place a single microphone in front of a source, in essence, we close an ear. We loose (to a great extent) the intrinsic depth of the sound within its sound field; we also lose part of its tone as different parts of the instrument contribute differently to its acoustic tone. Unfortunately, by just using one microphone quite close, we end up focusing only on a portion of its natural tone.

Using two microphones with specific angles and distances between them, creates a similar pick-up to what our two ears do naturally (because the two microphones end up capturing phasing and time differences of the same sound that can be conveyed to our ears).

It goes without saying that this is not always or often practical or logistically viable (or even justifiable, because in most cases, live events run mono anyway). Talking about microphone positioning without mentioning stereo techniques would be like eating pasta without knowing or experiencing the undeniable taste of freshly grated parmesan on it. Can one eat pasta without parmesan? Absolutely (for the record some pasta types do not need or require parmesan on it), however never having tasted parmesan would imply that you never truly experienced pasta or food.

Listen to this short guitar clip, we used a technique called DIN

Listen to this grand piano, we used a technique called A-B

Listen to this Hammond Lesley, we used a technique called ORTF for the top of the cabinet

Listen to this wider than life piano, we also used a technique called MS

All the above are totally unprocessed sounds, no eq, no reverb no compression. Some of the clips came out of great preamps and others didn’t. The story is always the same: natural beauty before you even start mixing!

It is worth mentioning that stereo techniques that mono well are also helpful in live and in broadcast scenarios. In my book I mention that if you do not know how to take advantage of stereo techniques, your are definitely poorer for it.

To find out more, visit the DPA microphone university where you will find loads of great tips, among which a bunch of stereo microphone techniques explained. (http://dpamicrophones.com/mic-university)

Next week we will be concluding our perfect microphone series with a few bits on phasing and “bleed”

Till then

Tim

Read the previous article:

THE PERFECT MIC – PART 6: A piece of sky – movement two and three
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 5: A piece of sky – movement one
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 4: Tonic Tone
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 3: The Matching
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 2: The Prelude
THE PERFECT MIC – PART 1

The post THE PERFECT MIC – PART 7: Stereo rules appeared first on theSoundKitchen.