Our Head of Product and Audiomovers co-founder Igor Maxymenko joined renowned mix engineer Dave Pensado (Beyoncé, Usher, Mariah Carey, Elton John, Michael Jackson) and show creator Herb Trawickon the legendary podcast and YouTube series, Pensado’s Place.
Discussing all things Audiomovers, the trio delved into the inception of the LISTENTO plugin and how we strive to maintain Audiomovers’ core value of simplicity on future product updates.
For over 10 years, Pensado’s Place has revealed the secrets behind some of the most successful records, providing in-depth tutorials in production and featuring the engineers and mixers that dominate the industry, including our collaborators Jesse Ray Ernster and Bainz.
Watch the full video below:
We’re taking a look back at Abbey Road Studios and Music Tech’s series Ask Abbey Road, where the esteemed in-house engineers at the studios answered a variety of recording mixing and production-related questions.
In the first instalment, we call on the knowledge and expertise of engineer Chris Bolster. Chris joined the team in 1998 and has since engineered for countless artists (The 1975, Architects, Foo Fighters and Kate Bush) as well as recording the scores for huge soundtracks including 12 Years a Slave and Punch Drunk Love.
Take a look below at Chris’ essential recording tips and techniques.
What is your ‘essential’ mixing hardware rack?
How big can my rack be? There’s just so much to choose from, and I would definitely change a few items depending on projects, but most-used are as follows: compression:Urei 1176, Teletronix LA-2A, LA-4A, Fairchild 660, Smart Research C1 or C2, ADL 1000, EMI TG12413, dbx 160X. EQ: Neve, SSL, Pultec, Helios, API, Prism. Effects: EMT plate, Lexicon 224 and 480 or Bricasti M7, AMS RMX-16 and DMX, Eventide H3000, a good tape delay and spring reverb unit and definitely some guitar stomp pedals. See, that’s more than a rack already!
What’s the most important piece of gear a bedroom/home-studio producer could invest in?
That’s such a difficult question. There are just so many different elements needed to compete with a pro studio. This is why studios are there, so you don’t have to be purchasing, updating or maintaining gear continually to compete. Someone’s done all the hard work for you.
But, yes. A good mic, a good preamp, compressor, EQ, effects are all useful tools, not to mention the computer, converters, software and monitoring system! It’s all about budget and requirements for what you are looking to record.
Also, there’s the problem of needing different tools for different jobs. So a few multipurpose items are going to be your best bet. Or, before you know it, your bedroom/home studio will be a fully loaded professional studio with all the bells and whistles.
Could you give us some kick drum tips?
The best tip is simply to get a great-sounding bass drum. Shells, sizes, tuning, skins and any damping are the keys to a great drum sound. And don’t forget a good or sympathetic-sounding space to record it within.
Hopefully, you have an idea of a basic sound or vibe that you’re looking for. Also, you have possibly heard recordings made within the space that sound good; perhaps you’ve listened to an instrument played in the space, giving you an idea of tonality, reflections and decay time. This is based on size, shape, building materials, and so on. A microphone and processing are only there to capture and excite the sound and not the key to achieving a desired tonal outcome. But, placed correctly, ie, put where tonally the microphone and its personal character sounds best, you will be off to a great start.
I have tried loads of ideas over the years; AKG C547 BL, Neumann U 47 FET, Beyerdynamic M 88, Neumann U 67, Neumann TLM 170, DPA 4006, AKG D30, STC/Coles 4038, Audix D6, Electro-Voice RE20, Sennheiser MD421 and loads of variations of the NS-10 speaker idea [This is a classic studio trick where a Yamaha NS-10 driver is wired as a microphone and placed in front of the kick. The signal is usually blended with another mic to enhance the low-frequency thump of the drum – Ed]. Mic choice is always dependent upon the sound of the instrument and any additional production notes.
I suggest always using a good amount of processing to sharpen or soften transients with compressors. Boost missing frequencies and cut exacerbated frequencies. Also, just try a few crazy ideas every now and then. For me, this sometimes involves using ribbon mics – just having them close enough to overexcite the ribbon, but not blowing them up. Or over-use of hard compression to achieve low-level saturation or distortion.
But mostly, I’m excited about achieving monster sounds through the selection of drums, skins, dampening and tunings. Mostly, I go through a Neve or SSL preamp or channel with a Neve or SSL/Smart compressor, 1176, 660, or dbx-160. For EQ, I use Neve or SSL again, or an API or Pultec.
My choice of compressor is mostly based on what’s available and/or best for achieving the type of compression desired. Mostly, I would use something with adjustable attack, release and ratio. The thing to remember is that you constantly need to be improving the overall sound, not adding something that degrades the transients or tonality. Just listen, try lots of different things and then recall these ideas in different scenarios.
Head to the link here to read all three parts of the Q&A with Chris.
We are thrilled to be joining an impressive line-up of brands to support the audio programming community at the Audio Developer Conference (ADC), taking place online and in-person between 14-16 November in London.
Now in its eighth year, ADC gives audio software engineers a unique opportunity to focus on recent developments, frameworks and audio applications.
Audio innovation is at the very heart of our business, and we are proud to sponsor the event bringing talent together, as well as support the ADC Celebrating Women in Audio initiative.
Come and find us to chat all things tech, streaming and job opportunities with the Audiomovers team (#WeAreHiring).
In time for Halloween, we teamed up !llmind for the finale of #HorrorStories, as he reveals the moment he learnt to make failure his friend.
Having his beats met with indifference by his hero in their first session together, the two-time Grammy award-winner shares how a situation he initially perceived as his greatest failure, became the driving force for the culmination of his success.
Full transcript:
“I was like ‘Fuck, he doesn’t like any of this shit, like, Dre hates my beats’.
Back in 2013, I got a text from a friend of mine. His name’s Tyhiem. And he was like ‘I’m actually up the block from you. I’m with Dr. Dre.’ I did double take on my phone. I was like ‘Dre? Like Dr. Dre? Okay, cool!’
Tyhiem and Dre walk to the studio and he’s like ‘Yo, plug in. Let’s hear some stuff’. I’m playing beats for like 10 minutes and I glance back and I see Dre sitting down on his phone, with his head down, like not moving at all, just bored.
I stopped the music. I turned around and Dre was like ‘Yo ill, your stuff was cool. But it wasn’t anything I haven’t heard before’. I felt like I really failed in that moment.So I went back to the studio and it gave me that extra fuel to go a step further with my music.
A year later, I got a call back from Ty and he was like ‘Yo, we’re in the studio with Dre, he wants you to come over.’ I was like ‘oh shit, perfect’. So I ended up being in the studio with Dre and we ended up recording like three songs.
So it worked out in the end, but it was a super big learning lesson for me and I’ll never forget that.”
Picture this. You’ve produced a track packed with potential to realise you’ve later deleted the entire project. Many may abandon it, however Alina Smith from the production duo, LYRE MUSIC GROUP, proves just why you shouldn’t in her edition of #HorrorStories.
After losing the session files for one of her tracks, she reveals how remaining positive and deciding to rebuild the song from scratch allowed her to achieve a better end result than she initially expected.
Full Transcript
“About a year ago, I wrote this song for a YouTube collaboration. So it was part of a video. And I accidentally deleted the session.
Inever ever do that I have everything backed up like 17 times, but I think it was in the folder with the video files. And I usually, you know, delete old videos that already were posted.
Months later, I looked for it and was like ‘oh, yeah, this was really good. I should like finish this for real as a real song and pitch it to Kpop’ And then I was looking for a session and it was gone. It was not anywhere.
But I asked a collaborator of mine to rebuild the track around the mp3 that I had. And he did such a spectacular job. It ended up being so much better than the original version. You know, something very positive came out of me losing these files and being really upset about it.“
Legendary producer, songwriter, and educator !llmind, tells the story of sending beats to Kanye and the moment he learned one had made the grade.
“It was one of those moments where preparation and opportunity meet”. At the time making five to ten beats a day, !llmind has a tireless work ethic. So, when the call from rapper Rhymefest that he was with Kanye and needed beats came through, !llmind was ready, sending dozens of beats for the session.
Full transcript:
“I think that was one of those moments where preparation and opportunity met.
In 2010, I created an album, and one of the rap features on that album was a rapper named Rhymefest. And then around 2011, he hit me up and he was like ‘Yo !llmind, do you have any beats? I’m with Kanye.’ And I was like ‘Absolutely!’.
Thankfully, I was prepared due to the fact that I’d just been making beats every day, you know, like five to 10 beats every single day, like non-stop, no sleep.
So I sent him like 30 or 40 beats, and then one of them ended up getting in the studio. Then he recorded it and you know, he texted me like ‘Yo, Raekwon just jumped on the song.’ And then he was like ‘Yo, Pusha T’s on the song. I was like ‘oh shit, this is actually happening’.
Diving into it too, I think what helped me in that moment was not overthinking. The beat that Kanye chose, I did not expect at all. Those melody and synth lines, I never knew were ‘Kanye sounding’.
From there, it was kind of like ‘okay, I’m headed to like the next phase of my career’.
Matt Genovese takes us through some of the amazing gear he’s cultivated through the years, picking out the choicest pieces in his collection and taking us through the kit he would save in a worst-case scenario.
If a fire broke out in your studio space and you could only save five pieces of gear what would you save?
We knew the question we had to ask, when we visited producer and songwriter Matthew Genovese at his drool-worth analog studio in LA.
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO
TRANSCRIPT
“I’m responsible engineer and I have backups that stay in my computer. And then I have another backup that I do every day.
Then I take it out of my studio and put it in my house, in case my studio burned down. so I wouldn’t have to grab a hard drive or a computer.
I would grab my Stevie Ray Vaughan Strat that I’ve done all my hours on, and my Martin OM-28 V. That’s two.
I would probably wheel out my tape machine, my Scully 280 And then maybe my Oberheim OB-8 and the DMX drum machine.
Those are replaceable, but it would be hard to replace. Everything else I think insurance would cover and I could find.”
With Halloween around the corner, we’re asking the best in the business for their #HorrorStories. First up to the plate is two-time Grammy-nominated engineer Teezio.
Every pro has one – the unwavering memory of a mistake too big to forget.
#HorrorStories brings these memories to the surface, as the world’s biggest producers, songwriters and engineers unveil the most outlandish blunders of their careers — providing a much-needed reminder that even the greats make mistakes.
Full Transcript:
“There’s a really big fuckup that goes like beyond the average fuckup. And it wasn’t entirely my fault. But you could say that it is the engineers fault to make sure.
There was a thing a long time ago that UNICEF did where everyone was singing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. So I recorded a bunch of actors, David Arquette just his daughter, like all these people like all these famous actors, everything is being filmed as they’re recording, right?
So guess what? The audio somehow has to line up to the video. So usually with Pro Tools, if the interface is capturing at one sample rate 48k and the Pro Tools session is at 44k, you’ll get some sort of error automatically Pro Tools will tell you ‘hey, you need to change it’. Cool.
There’s one converter in New York and I’ll never forget it. It was at Jungle City Studios. This thing did not communicate with Pro Tools. Everything sounds fine in Pro Tools. But then when I started making the renders to give to the video people they’re like, ‘dude all of this is off sync. How could it be off sync?’ The assistant opens the closet and the converter says 48k and we literally had to throw everything away. We couldn’t use any of it.”
Jesse Ray Ernster’s rise has not been without a few bumps along the way, which he shares with us in this brutally honest edition of #HorrorStories.
With a Grammy win and over a billion streams to his name, it’s safe to say that Jesse is one of the top mixers in the industry, but the journey has not always been so smooth.
Full transcript:
“I’ve lost like hundreds of gigs by overstepping you know, the bounds of their intention and their desire sonically.
I had this thing for a while where I would send the first pass like, ‘Hey, this is my liberty pass, I took some liberties, I threw in some ideas, I really think that this takes the song to the next level, like dynamically, this improves the record. And you can either take some of the ideas, or we could just put it back, I’ll put it back. And I’ll just give you the mix that I think you probably want.’ I would do that a lot.
I think that first pass just scares people and they’re like ‘No, this is this is wrong. This isn’t the song we made’. I mean, my life could look way different. If I had gotten that gig, and it’s just not the way to look at it.
So the encouraging message to anybody else out there is like, you get some W’s get some L’s, like you win some, you lose some.
The coolest thing about losing a gig is when the mix comes out. You can stack your mix up against theirs, and listen and try to deconstruct what that individual did to those files in order to get it to knock the way it did. And that is extremely educational. This is a universal principle to it’s not just about mixing or career. It’s life. If you’re not learning from the L’s, you’re not looking at it the right way.”
Producer and Mix Engineer MixedByJocelin showcases his #AllStarMixTricks for upping the energy of Drill and Trap beats.
Sometimes it can be the simplest techniques that help to bring your mixes over the line.
Pulling up the original Logic project for his mix for the Clavish freestyle on Kenny Allstar’s YouTube series ‘The Generals Corner’, MixedByJocelin demonstrates how b-cuts can be used to build energy.
Full transcript:
“My name is MixedByJocelin and my Mix Trick is adding beat cuts. Let me show you.
I took the first hit of the beat, but I’ve cut the group totally and I’ve simply copied and pasted it two times in front of it .
This is going to give us like almost like a DJ queue effect so it’s like ‘boom boom’ before it drops in, which is going to build energy and bring more of a vibe to the song.”
