Producer Profile
TOP TIPS FROM SOME OF AUSTRALIA’S BEST RECORDING ENGINEERS AND PRODUCERS.
Over the last few years, a lot of extremely talented people that work behind desks in recording studios across Australia have revealed their tips, tricks and sound capturing secrets for our little column. Many of these have almost been lost to the pages of time, sitting in boxes, back issues or buried in hard drives. So, we decided to dig through the archives to bring you some of the best bits of professional advice that we collected from over 30 interviews.
HOW TO BALANCE COMPRESSION AND GUITAR DISTORTION
“Compression is extremely important for any song where you want a powerful sound, especially for the vocal tracks and drums. But the reason guitars are distorted to start with is basically due to the limitation of the signal, so it’s important not to make them seem lifeless by compressing the distorted signal, which will result in zero dynamics. Just about the only time I’d run distorted guitars through compressors now is to impart the sound of the compressor without actually compressing it. When guitars are layered up, this especially helps the whole mix to move and breathe, because they still have dynamics.” – Joseph Cheek
TIPS FOR WORKING WITH LOUD GUITARS IN A LIVE RECORDING
“Gain structure and cutting frequencies are the two biggest things that make live sound sound good. Push all your faders flat and push all your levels up by gain when you start. There’s no point giving yourself 20 decibels of gain on a fader that you’re going to pull down by 20 decibels – it’s pointless and it gives you gain structure issues. But if you have everything flat, you have more control and you’re not pushing your master all the time. You have headroom, and things aren’t going to feed back.” – Daniel Brown
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU’RE MIXING A BROAD RANGE OF FREQUENCIES AND DYNAMICS
“These days, I use a combination of EQ, compression, panning and effects to place instruments and parts accordingly, because it’s important for each instrument to have its own space in the frequency spectrum. It varies from track to track, but some key frequencies that I tend to focus on initially are around the 50-hertz, 80-hertz, 100-hertz and 330-hertz area. In terms of dynamics, contrasting dips and peaks are very effective. Also, one way to catch the listener’s
attention and draw them to another instrument or part is by creating little inconsistencies in a mix. For example, a ping pong delay coming through a vocal reverb panned further out to the sides.” – Jessicca Bennett
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF PRODUCING YOUR OWN (OR YOUR BAND’S) MUSIC.
“The hardest thing is managing perfectionism when I mix. There’s always a nagging feeling about how my work stacks up, and I can sink hours into tweaks or different approaches to try and bring the best out in material. Obviously this is amplified when it’s my band. I’ve been training myself to sever that emotional connection to some extent, simply for the preservation of my sanity! But understanding the personal dynamics of the band, the things each musician needs to excel, and feeling satisfied with the result, are some of the really tricky things about producing. So the deep personal connection I have with my bandmates means that they can be pretty straight‑up with me about what they want and what needs to be better.” – Alex Wilson (sleepmakeswaves)
FINDING THE RIGHT INSTRUMENT TO SUPPORT YOUR VOCAL TAKE
“The bottom end of an arrangement is pretty important. With a male vocal, the resonance of the persons voice usually sits between 150 hertz to about 300 hertz, and a female vocal will be around 300 hertz. The bottom end of a mix will almost always be below that, so I’ll make sure that the bass, double bass, cellos, synthesiser – whatever’s in the bottom end – is really controlled and sitting comfortably under the vocalist. But as I move up the frequency spectrum towards the vocal, I try to pan the instrumentation to the left or right so there’s a definite gap in the centre that’s not intruding on the vocal space.” – James Englund
HOW TO SLOWLY BUILD A SONG UP TO AN EXPLOSIVE FINISH
“[It’s] detailed automation in the mix. If the volume increases too much by the end, then compression comes into play, especially when it comes to mastering. If the intro is too quite relatively, the whole track may need to be compressed too much to stand up, taking the impact away from the end. The key is to increase intensity in performances, rather than pure volume. A guitar player that gradually digs in harder, letting the amp break up more and more as the song goes on, is far more effective than just turning it up, for example.” – Fraser Montgomery