MANIC STANLEY
The Same - Live @ The Six Six Bar
The Logic Session
GUITAR
Guitars V1
This mix has seen about 3 different versions. All of which revolved around how to get the guitars to sound ‘right’.
The issue I faced is that I had one amp recording to work with, meaning that without some dubious widening or other methods (which ill come to later) the guitar was going to be dead centre or off to one side (which I hate).
In the studio you’d generally take a DI along with the guitar, and double track allowing for panned guitars and options.
The first mix had the guitars in mono and while it was fantastic for mono compatibility (everybody’s best friend), it sounded naff on anything with more than one speaker.
Guitars V2
So quickly ditching that, I tried the ‘Van Halen trick’. Whereby you pan the original guitar most of the way in one direction, then hard pan a reverb heavy version the other way. While this did work, there was a noticeable loss in clarity and the ability to hear individual notes.
Now honestly, I should have expected dumping a load of reverb on a guitar would do that. However in the heavier sections (chorus’) it actually worked really well to the point it sounded like it had been double tracked but for the verses it was just too much and almost sounded worse than the mono version.
As a further step I even tried adding a small delay to the wet guitar and reducing the reverb but it just wasn’t working.
Guitars V3
So, I was left with one option – Stereo Widening.
I really don’t like stereo widening. Overdone it sounds – W E I R D and in headphones it can sound really, really bad.
For this project I used the Polyverse ‘Wider’ plugin. It is advertised as completely mono compatible which I don’t dispute but I found when summing to mono the guitar did have a habit of disappearing to the shadow realm. It was still kinda there but also not.
So I also added the mono signal into the mix as well.
I first made the whole mix mono on the output, mixed in the mono signal – then in stereo added the widened signal back to taste.
The Final Setup
Separate the guitar into intro, verse, chorus and ending. Allowing me to change the stereo effect without having to mess around with automation.
Then have an aux send from each guitar channel with Wider on it.
This ended up with a solid mix between mono compatibility and the stereo effect. It’s obviously not perfect. Had I had a DI as well I’d just have re amped the guitar (and hoped for no phase monsters).
DRUMS
Overheads
I went into this gig knowing that mixing the drums was going to be interesting. As I knew that as it was a small venue there wasn’t going to be overheads.
So I had to get …. Inventive
My first stroke of luck was that the drummer in band playing after us (OAKES) used a microphone. It was actually in a really good position – just over my left shoulder. However I was a bit worried about the right hand side of the kit as most of my cymbals are over in that distant corner of the stage.
I was surprised then, that there was a mic over on the right hand side of the stage with …. wait for it …. MINIMAL GUITAR BLEED.
So, I joined these together – hard panned them left and right and my god, I’ve got my self a pair of ‘overheads’ (or probably should be called “to the side of’s”)
Snare
Once that was sorted I had to turn my attention to the snare and the kick. The kick was actually alright, however my snare had seen better days.
It sounded really, really thin.
So, It was sample reinforcement time.
I used Slate Trigger 2 (the free version) to add the body back to the snare.
Having never used this before, I had to have a play around with the controls to get it to actually see my ghost notes, but once that hurdle was crossed, it really brought the snare to life. Next was some compression from the UAD 1176, some reverb and a bit of NI Transient Master to get the cut I wanted.
This song also has sections driven by a rim click. While this was picked up by the snare mic it wasn’t nearly loud enough against the noise. So I used a sample from Splice and manually placed the click. Further reinforcing the sound.
Kick
Now if you remember I said that the kick was good. Well I replaced it with two samples anyway just using the logic replace/double feature, because I wanted absolute control over the tone of the kick. I split the kick into low and high so I could fettle them appropriately. I tried using Trigger 2 but didn’t like the two kicks that came with the free version. Add on a healthy amount of the API-2500 and I had my kick.
Toms
I’ll be honest, the toms didn’t get that much attention. As they are only used VERY sparing throughout this song – I deemed it more important on focus on the rest of the kit.
However that doesn’t mean I ignored them.
The rack tom has a bit of the UAD Distressor but nothing more as there was actually quite lot of tom in the overheads.
The floor was processed in a very similar way to the kick. As a rule of thumb I generally treat my floor tom as an extension of the kick wherever possible. If I’m playing my kit, that’s how it is tuned.
So like the kick, I had at the lows and highs split off from each other to control the bass and the attack individually. Other than controlling levels individually, the biggest difference in processing here is that the rumble split got the Manley Massive treatment (basically the Pultec trick, but I’m liking the Manley more at the moment).
Drum Bus and Parallel
A staple of my drum mixes at the moment is the UAD Oxide Tape Machine. This came after watching this video on ADAM Audio’s Youtube with Josh Colby.
It adds a really nice warm layer of compression and saturation when you run it into the red. Generally adding a really nice layer of glue to the drums.
Next follows the classic SSL G Bus Compressor. Very standard 4:1, 30ms Attack and Fast Release and only doing about 2-3 dBs of GR.
During the final stages of the mix I also added a multipressor to try and control the cymbals, as I found them very overbearing. It also generally tightens up the drum mix.
I also had the Kick and Snare running into a parallel channel. I used the Distressor again for this and mixed it back to taste. This really beefed up the sound and brought in some of the punch.
BASS
This was probably the quickest and easiest part of the whole mix, as the bass was a DI (happy days).
As I do normally I split the bass into two. The DI and a distorted top layer.
With the DI I want to make sure that the bass sub is as consistent as possible so its always there supporting the drums and the guitar. I do this by using an absolute tonne of compression. I’ve been using an LA-2A for this at the moment and have found it to work really well.
I did experiment briefly with side-chaining the bass with the kick to see if evacuating the bass when the kick hit would clean up the bass.
Long story short it didn’t sound good and just killed the bass tone.
Distorted Aux
I’ve found recently when trying this that even songs that didn’t originally use bass distortion really benefit from top end bass distortion.
Think bands like TesseracT and Periphery – that’s the kind of bass tone I normally try to target if the song suits.
Firstly it actually makes the bass audible on a phone and also thickens the guitar layer.
The second point is especially important when you have a three piece band with only one guitar.
I used STL Tones AmpHub to create the distorted effect but when I had my trial of NeuralDSP Parallax – I preferred that.
Getting into a more production aspect here I found that keeping the crunch part down in the verses and then really driving it in the chorus created a nice distinct change that stopped the mix from feeling stale.
VOCALS
Now I will admit – this is generally the part of the mix I look forward to the least. Its the bit I struggle with the most the get sounding right and almost always over or under do the processing. it definitely an area I’m working on.
I’m making excuses now before you see my vocal processing chain.
You’re probably looking at my vocal chain in shock and horror – I have nightmares about it to. But I swear it works.
First off we have Melodyne doing a very very small amount of correction on some higher notes. Next into Vastaus which is a bit like Soothe2 (which I probably need to invest in) to try and stop some of the harshness in the vocal.
Next is a very lax noise gate only there to cut when there is no singing. I did try to have it work mid verse but there was too much cymbal bleed and it just sounded really unnatural.
Next is two EQ’s cutting some rumble out, boosting around 3k and 6k to get some presence, then cutting some boxiness out at 300Hz.
Next we have three sends:
– Reverb (To add space to the vocal)
– Distortion (To add a little bit a grit to the vocal in the chorus and louder sections)
– Delay (To add a little bit of slap back to make the vocal a little more interesting)
Vox Sub
First I started off again with an EQ. Cutting the lows out again incase the sends were adding any false low end information and then sorting out some whistles with some small notches. Just tidying up really.
Next two stages of compression.
The first stage is the main levelling compression stage (but parallel). Just making sure that there are not really any massive peaks. I have anywhere from 5-7dB of GR max. As it is parallel the GR worked.
Next is the Logic Opto there just to catch the peaks. The singer is quite dynamic, live so there are sections that really had to be controlled such as in the last chorus / ending section.
Next is a DeEsser. I’ll be honest, it’s mostly there out of habit but due to the amount of cymbal bleed it gets very confused. So it’s only doing a very small amount of GR and I’m not convinced it’s actually doing anything meaningful.
Finally, Oxide Tape. I love this plugin. Like with the drums – Its adding warmth and a bit of compression and saturation, while also taming the highs some more.
MASTER BUS
My master bus combines the stereo out and mastering stages.
First I start of with a SSL G Comp again doing about 2-3dBs of GR just to create some glue.
Next moving into the Linear EQ. This was actually one of the last things I added and it was use to how Oxide was responding to the bass in my mix. It was create an more extreme pumping effect that I personally quite liked but it was really a bit too much. So I added a very small HPF at 30Hz which calmed down Oxide. I picked the Linear Phase EQ mostly out of caution as I didn’t want to cause more phase issues than a live recording already presents. A standard EQ probably would have been fine but I’d also never used logics Linear Phase EQ and wanted to try it out. In hind sight I think I removed a bit too much of the bass signal. It does get a bit hard to judge sometimes but it’s just something to consider for the next mix.
Then as said before, Oxide. As per my previous uses of it. It adds compression, saturation and warmth. Its lovely. Try it out.
Then was Black Box. This is another emulation of analogue hardware. I can’t seem to get enough of emulations. It was just here adding more saturation.
Next is another EQ where I apparently decided I didn’t like 3k anymore (tbf who does let’s be real here – all the real ones hate 3k).
Moving on to the Limiter, at the loudest point of the track it is only doing about 3 dBs of GR but that’s only on the peaks. This is still a bit I’m working on as I really don’t like overly limited masters but you still need it to be loud.
Finally, Brainwork Masterdesk just to remove a very very small amount of treble, ensuring that the bass is mono just incase something in the master chain made it stereo for some reason and utilising the resonance filters.
DONE
This was the first time I’ve mixed a live performance that hadn’t already been edited and that wasn’t mic’d up like a studio recording (I’m looking at you Telefunken), and their are definitely some key things to take away from this.
The guitars are probably always going to be a sticking point unless they are:
- DI
- Emulated Output
- Use a mic with really good rejection
So in future I need to get the guitar sounding right first then build around that.
I need to work on reducing my vocal chain as it is really unnecessary to have that many plugins on it.
I need to be more accepting of high frequencies. I have a tendency to remove too much 3-4k where it is not necessary.
SOLUTION: Turn down the monitors (HS7s give me bad ear fatigue. PMC if your listening id love some 6’s 🫡)
If you read down this far. First of thank you for reading my ramblings. Second, if you need something mixing – chuck me an email