Recording Tip 35: On a related note, I’ve heard of a fellow turning on a vacuum cleaner as he listens with the same purpose.

Now this is something I’ve never done, nor am likely to do, but it’s worth bringing up as it relates to Tip 34.  Again, maybe 1% of people who hear your mixes will listen in a quiet room with their head between the speakers.  At best it will be with headphones, but they’ll still most likely be doing something else when listening.  

The vacuum noise will mask a lot of things.  And if your mix is in good shape, you should be able to hear all the important elements over the din of the motor.  

I’m not saying to do this, but on the other hand, hey...if it works, do it!

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. A look back after Jobs' passing

A few months ago I wrote a blog about Steve Jobs upon his decision to step down from his position at Apple. Not long after that, he passed away. Recently I read the fantastic biography on his life by Walter Isaacson. It was one of the quickest 900+ page book I’d ever read and I highly recommend it. With that on my mind I felt it good to rewrite the blog a bit and update it after his passing. So here are some of my thoughts. I think there’s a lot to be learned from his life, no matter what field of endeavor we pursue.

In the fall of 2011 the news came from Apple which most of us knew we’d hear sooner rather than later. Steve Jobs resigned his position at the company he started. Over the last few years many of us watched with concern and sadness as Jobs’ physical condition deteriorated. We knew of his tremendous drive and passion for his work and that if he ever stepped down, it would only be because he was very ill. That proved to be more true than any outsider (and many insiders) knew. And as Isaacson revealed, Jobs dealt for a long time with pain very few could handle during his last year on the job.

It’s no stretch to say that Jobs’ vision and creativity has impacted all of us to one degree or another. It’s likely that a majority of you are reading this on some device created under his watchful eye. Even those using Windows or an Android phone are using technologies clearly traceable to Apple’s innovation. And beyond that, who doesn’t have at least an iPod or iTouch? Job’s influence in our world is all around us and his vision clearly set a standard for how things should work.

I remember when I bought my first Mac. It’s still in my studio, now sitting silent on top of my rack of gear. It’s a Mac SE, with a 20 MB hard drive and 4 MB of RAM. I had Speed Doubler installed so it runs at what was then a screaming 8Mhz. It’s a 1984 product which cost $2000. (Funny thing about that...That price point is still the cost of a decent desktop over all these years) It still works and had zero problems over the years. And like all Macs, Y2K came and went without any need for patches to make it cross the millenium boundary.

So what’s to be said for the end of the era of the Silicon Valley Pirates? There are probably some still in trenches who began back with Jobs and Gates, but these days Gates is a figurehead, and has been for a long time. Jobs however was the last active leader of that group. His passing marked the end of the era of the creators of personal computing. Jobs and others like him were Malcom Gladwell’s “Outliers.” They had the right skills, were born at the right time, and put in the ten thousand hours required for world-class proficiency. His retirement closes the book on one of the most significant eras of human invention. The world has forever changed due to their ingenuity and drive.

By now there are numerous articles and blogs written about Steve Jobs by folks much more connected and reputable than I. I’m just a knob jockey who’s never purchased anything but Apple products. So what’s to be said that hasn’t already been written? I may echo other’s writings, but here’s what comes to mind.

When I think of Steve Jobs the first thing that comes to mind is his passion. You could see it every year at the Mac Expo when he spoke of the innovations Apple was going to release. No other CEO has ever commanded such anticipation and spoken to a live and web audience of such number every year. More than once I’d be in the studio and someone would ask, “Hey, did you see the Apple webcast?” It was that significant. But as good as the new products were, we didn’t watch just for information. We watched to be inspired by Jobs himself.

Yet not only did I feel passion when Jobs spoke, I felt it when I used Apple’s products. And that’s something truly remarkable. To be able to create a product which causes an emotional response by the user is nothing short of amazing. I recall the first time someone showed me an iPod. There was no need to demonstrate how it worked. It was as plain as day. After a few seconds of fiddling with it, I was breathless with the realization of what I had in my hand. It was complex, sophisticated, yet agonizingly simple to operate.

Wired writer Steven Levy was the first to show one to Bill Gates at a dinner after the iPod’s unveiling which sort of says it all.

I brought along my new iPod. At the end of the meal, just as the other guests at the table were pushing away their chairs, I pulled out the iPod and put it in front of Gates.
"Have you seen this yet?" I asked.
Gates went into a zone that recalls those science fiction films where a space alien, confronted with a novel object, creates some sort of force tunnel between him and the object, allowing him to suck directly into his brain all possible information about it. Gates' fingers, racing at Nascar speed, played over the scroll wheel and pushed every button combination, while his eyes stared fixedly at the screen. I could almost hear the giant sucking sound. Finally, after he had absorbed every nuance of the device, he handed it back to me.
"It looks like a great product," he said.
Then he paused a second. Something didn't compute.
"It's only for Macintosh?" he asked.
Yes, it was. (Then.)

The iPod was a paradigm shift in handheld digital products. The Mac OS was the same. There was a brilliant clarity about how it worked, and a kind of sex appeal about it. Sure Windows OS worked...at least sometimes. (I’m still baffled at how Vista left Redmond for release.) But somehow Apple continued to make product after product that worked with great efficiency and beauty.

The other thing which occurs to me with Steve Jobs is the personal power of a human being. Of course Jobs had his flaws. His rants and tyrannical behavior are legendary. (Again, read the book!) Perhaps such things were necessary for his work, perhaps not. Yet one cannot deny the very large mark he left on the world.

In 2005 Jobs gave the commencement speech at Standford University. At just under fifteen minutes long, it’s one of the most profound speeches you’ll ever hear.

In it Jobs tells three stories from his life. Three simple stories, all related to what he called “Connecting the dots.”

In this brilliant speech which he wrote himself, (He tried to get a famous Presidential speechwriter to write it for him. But when the writer’s commitments were too great, as was typical, Jobs just did it himself.) In it Jobs discussed how events in life which might seem unrelated today, often have great meaning later. He began with his experience at Reed College, his creation of Apple and his getting fired, then rehired. And finally, his experience with cancer.

I could hardly do justice to Jobs’ speech with some expository ramblings. Do yourself a favor and listen to it yourself. It’s perhaps the finest commencement address ever given. But I will include a few quotes from the speech in the hope that it will provoke you to take time to hear it.

CONNECTING THE DOTS
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.....You have to trust in something....Because believing that that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart...even when it leads you off the well worn path. And that will make all the difference.”

LOVE AND LOSS
“I didn’t see it then. But it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced with the lightness of being a beginner again...less sure about everything. It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my life.”

“You’ve got to find what you love....Your work is going to fill a large part of your life. And the only way to be truly satisfied...is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”


DEATH
When he was seventeen Jobs read a quote which said, IF YOU LIVE EACH DAY AS IF IT WAS YOUR LAST, ONE DAY YOU’LL MOST CERTAINLY BE RIGHT. Jobs said, “And for the next 33 years I’ve looked in the mirror and asked, “IF TODAY WERE THE LAST DAY OF MY LIFE, WOULD I WANT TO DO WHAT I’M ABOUT TO DO TODAY” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Jobs always felt he would die young. Perhaps that was a part of his unshakable drive.
As he gave that speech in 2005 he thought his bout with his illness was over. So of course those words carry even more weight today.

As I said before I’d be a fool to summarize Jobs’ speech. His words and his immense passion speak well enough on its own. My desire is to take them to heart and apply them to my own life. It’s probably no stretch to say that most all of you reading this are blessed to be doing what you love, or working toward that goal. But as the years and decades roll on, we still need to be sure we’re still doing what we love. Times change. We change. And with these changes most all of us are needing to adapt. So while we’re hopefully involved in a career we love, we may need to refine again what we’re doing.

Jobs finished his speech with a quote from the last issue of “The Whole Earth Catalog.” For those of you too young to know what that was, it was an indie magazine published from the late 60’s to the mid 70’s. Jobs described it as, “One of the bibles of my generation.” It was sort of like Google in paperback form....it was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.”

They published several issues and when they felt it had run its course, they published their swan song. On the back cover was a photograph of a early morning country road. Jobs described it as, “The kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on, if you were so adventurous.” The quote under the photo was, Stay hungry, Stay foolish. Jobs closed his speech to the assembled class by saying, “Stay hungry, Stay foolish. And I’ve always wished that for myself. And now...I wish that for you. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Recording Tip 34: When printing a mix, I’ll often go to small speakers at low volume and turn on the TV to check the mix one last time

This was another happy accident found when working. I was printing a mix, listening on my small speakers with the volume low. As it played, I turned to take a look at the muted TV, which I keep behind me so I don’t get distracted. I had a news channel on and as the mix played a story came on which was of interest to me, so I unmuted it.

As I listened to the news report and continued to listen to my mix, I discovered something rather fascinating. One might think the audio of the news report would have made critically listening to the mix rather pointless. However I found that the dialog over the mix actually helped me hear the mix in a different way, and for the better. I found the that TV playing over the mix revealed bits which needed a bump in spots, a vocal line or solo or whatever. I found something which might seem fine listening to the mix on it’s own was covered by the dialog.

Well if course that wouldn’t do, so I stopped and made one more pass and this time I left the TV on. Once I could hear everything important in the mix with the TV dialog over it, the mix was right. As bizarre as it seems, I’ve found this a very useful way to check a mix just before printing it. Now this only works with dialog. It doesn’t work if any music is playing.

This may seem a bit kooky, but think of the places we hear music. We hear it at the mall, at your house, or a friend’s, restaurants, bars, clubs, the car, etc. Most of the time we hear music there’s some other sound source competing with it. I’ve begin to pay a good bit attention to mixes in those environments. With a great mix, no matter the other noises, it still sounds like a great mix and I hear everything. And as I said in Tip 32, very few people listen to a mix in total silence and with their head between the speakers paying full attention. So it really makes sense to listen to your mix with some sort of sonic competition.

So I’ve now adapted this this as the last way I listen to a mix. And I’ve rarely found that after listening like this the changes don’t work. It’s one more way to get your mix in a typical consumer situation and see how it stands up. And it’s less trouble than turning on a vacuum! (Tip 35...the next tip to come)

Home Recording Tip 33: I’ll often listen to a mix playback outside of the control room….mostly with the door closed.

This tip came from another of those happy accidents.  I was working on a mix one day when a client arrived to hear what I’d done. As he sat in my chair to hear the mix, I hit play and then stepped outside the control room to grab a drink. As the door closed I decided to remain outside, mostly so he’d listen to the entire mix before picking it apart. (The minutia this guy would tweak to is legendary in this town) But while outside the closed door, I began to hear the mix differently. I began to hear a number of things that no matter his impending novella of comments, there were things I wanted to fix as well. (Yes I’d given him a legal pad to write on. Something one should always do...and always make your clients listen to the whole mix before commenting.)

As the playback finished I came back in and we went about our changes. But this closed door listen was a good lesson and I was amazed at what I heard listening from there.  

Since then, I’ve continued to listen that way on a regular basis. This is a bit related to Tip 32 regarding monitoring with my small monitors off to the side. You can hear a lot when you’re head isn’t stuck between the speakers. And there’s something else that happens when the door closes. The acoustic filtering of the door and walls allow me to hear balances that I don’t hear when inside the room. I read that George Massenburg would listen to mixes outside the room with the door open. I tried that as well, but I like it better with the door closed  

So now, even before the clients arrive, I’ll grab my own legal pad and listen to the mix outside the closed door. I found it especially good for vocal levels and oddly enough, it helps me hear if the bottom end is right. It’s now a secondary listening spot. The third of course, my car. (I’m working on a way to mix from there!)

Recording Tip 32: Keep an eye on playback levels. Listening at varying volumes.

We all know listening too loud for too long rarely results in a great mix. It’s tempting to do, and even veteran mixers get tripped up with this at times. Loud playback levels have a sense of authority so there’s a natural tendency to listen loud when uncertain about a mix, especially if clients are in the room. The problem is it’s rarely helpful when mixing.   

After my own battles with this I finally developed a system which helps me from listening too loud and gives consistent results. The way I did this is to find a consistent position on my volume knob and mix to where it should be 85dB when at that spot.

The concept of listening with a specific volume pot setting is something I learned from the legendary mastering engineer, Doug Sax. I was in a mastering session with Doug when he told me he does almost all of his work with his volume pot at a specific place. He knows his set up well enough that once he’s got proper eq, level and compression, and the volume pot is at a certain position, the resulting sound will be a certain dBSPL. If it felt too loud or too soft, he would make adjustments to what he was doing to achieve the level he wanted rather than changing the volume. Of course Doug’s role and mine are different. But the end game of getting consistent results apply to both of us so I took this concept to mixing and have found this to be very helpful. It’s not a complex idea, but really makes a lot of sense.

At this point you should be saying, “There’s no 85dB spot on a volume knob.” And right you are. So how do you know at what dBSPL level you’re listening? You can find an old classic Radio Shack dB meter but I have found the apps for my iPhone to be very accurate. Of course you don’t have to use a dB meter at all. A lot of mixers don’t. The goal isn’t a dB number, but finding a consistent monitoring level. Once I got my setup figured out, I rarely turn the dB meter on. Like Doug, when the volume pot is at it’s place, I know how loud the mix should feel.

So how did I find this spot on the volume knob? I called up several mixes I had done in the past which I liked, and played them back. With the dB meter on, I turned up the volume pot until I found a spot where I got a 85 dBSPL playback level. I then took a pencil and marked that spot. I now had a place I set the volume pot for the majority of my time mixing.

My Method

I begin mixing on my main monitors at decent volume...about 90dB. At that volume I’ll get basic levels and pans and begin to apply eq and compression. Once I’m going, I’ll listen a bit louder, up to 100 dB or more to feel the presence and power of the mix. I’ll then go back and forth in level for a while and when things are feeling pretty good I’ll back the level down to 85 dB and listen a bit more. Once I feel pretty good with what I have, I’ll switch my smaller monitors.

My mains are the old Mastering Lab Tannoy 10” Golds, run by a Yamaha P2200 amp with the Mastering Lab modification and a Bag End subwoofer. I also have a secondary main system, The Rock by Unity Audio. These are a great bang for the buck. They’re powered monitors and I highly recommend them. I also have a third set, the TOA M120, but instead of having them next to the mains, I have them off to the side of the room like a separate stereo system.  

They ended up over there not by design, but by necessity. When I bought them I was in my old studio and there simply wasn’t enough room to place them in front of me. So in desperation I got a small wooden shelf and put them on top of my power amps which were off to the side of my room. My intention was just to stick them somewhere and deal with the problem later. Surprisingly, I immediately loved it….another of those happy accidents. By having them off to the side, outside of the normal listening field, they are similar to how most consumer stereo systems are setup. After all, people rarely sit right between the speakers when listening to music, so it makes sense to listen that way when mixing.

So back to mixing...by now I’ve already gotten through the basics of the mix and it’s time to do nitty gritty of the balancing work. I go back to the Tannoys and set the volume knob at the pencil mark and by watching my master level, adjusting my compression on the master buss, I work the mix to hit 85 dB. By doing this I found that not only were my mixes better, but volumes from song to song were more consistent.

So now my mix is at the right level, both in the master bus and at or near 85 dB on my main monitors. At this point it’s time for automating the mix. Once I get a pass I like I’ll switch to one of the alternate monitors and work from there without changing the volume knob. The reason I don’t change the volume knob is because I’ve set the amp for those monitors to match the volume of the mains so it feels consistent. This is important for you to do as well. If you have multiple monitor speakers, adjust the amps so there’s no big change in volume when switching from one set to another. Most often by making a pass on each my monitors the mix will be very close. Now while I try to keep the volume knob at the preferred setting, of course I’ll turn up or down at times. But I’ll always come back to that spot for most of the work.

One thing that is critical to know concerning volume is that there is there is a difference between true level and apparent level. A mix that is very aggressive with heavy compression and severe eq will sound louder even with the volume knob at the same place. Music with real dynamics, such as jazz or classical music may have peaks at or near 0 dB, but will not feel as loud as metal, rock or pop records. As a mixer, you should be aware of this and let the music dictate what you should do.

Now when it comes to listening in your studio, one of the most important thing one needs is a clean path to the monitors.

One thing I highly recommend is the Dangerous Monitor ST. This little box has made a HUGE improvement in my studio. When I got it, it was like I got new speakers, a new amp, and a tuned room! It may be the best $1800 I’ve even spent for my studio. It’s not cheap, but it has helped my mixes in ways I never imagined. I realize it may be more expensive than some can afford, but it’s been very worth every penny for me. Whether you get it or not, be sure to clean up that path as much as possible. Remove extra connections, extra cables, etc. Monster Cables may sound better than the cables you have. But whether you buy them or not, again...remove anything unnecessary so there is only one good cable in the path.

So to restate the lesson for today; listening at loud volumes is good to get the mix in place. But spend most your time tweaking at moderate volumes, and do it until your mixes begin to be consistent. Like anything in music, there are no rules. Experiment and find what gives you great results. Once you find that volume, be sure to stick to it.

Recording Tip 31: Alcohol of almost any kind will mess up your hearing, especially on the top end.

Two-Step Jack

This tweet has generated a lot of reaction and questions. Some of the comments were quite funny, and some more serious, asking if I meant permanent hearing damage. While of course heavy, long term abuse of alcohol can result in a number of negative outcomes, all I really meant was that whenever I’ve had a drink I notice my hearing suffers.

Beer probably has the least affect...wine and liquor more so. When I have something to drink the top end of my hearing goes away to some degree, and what remains sounds odd. Of course that makes things like mixing a bad idea when one imbibes. Critical listening is pretty difficult when that’s going on, so when mixing I refrain from even wine, much less anything else.

When it comes to editing, tuning, etc where sonics aren’t a factor, alcohol may play a role in good judgement. You may approve things but when listening the next day wonder, “What the heck was I thinking??” It could be that you approved something awful....or perhaps you were loose enough to have an inspired idea! More times than not though, it won’t be the latter.

I’m not advocating drinking while working, but if you do be aware and know your tolerance. When in doubt, don’t! Especially if you need to drive home.

I’ll finish with a funny story I was told happened here in Nashville a number of years ago. There was a country singer attempting to track a song with a full band in one of the big studios. They’d been working all day and well into the evening on a little country waltz. Naturally in the good ol’ boy way, drinks were flowing freely and they were hard at it. Despite all the hours of trying, the song just didn’t have the right feel. Finally around 4am they had a track they were happy with so they all staggered home to get some rest before returning to record the remaining songs they didn’t get to that night.

Of course it wasn’t till mid-afternoon when they dragged themselves back to the studio to hear what they’d done. They began listening but after a minute the producer stopped the playback with a funny look on his face. “Play back the demo.” The assistant played back the demo and the producer yelled, “STOP!!! What that #$^%#!!! He just then realized why they’d had such a hard time with the song. The demo was a waltz, but their 4am track was a two step! Sometime during the night the entire band dropped a beat to the bar and totally changed the song....and one one noticed!  

I guess Jack Daniels wasn’t a fan of the waltz!

Recording Tip 30: I once heard an over eq-ed snare drum described as a stick hitting an equalizer.

As far as I know, this phrase was first coined years ago when I was assisting my mentor, Bill Schnee in the course of struggling with a snare, so over-eq-ed there was hardly any quality of the instrument remaining. He worked with it a while, then uttered that great phrase in disgust. (Bill now has adapted that phrase to over-compressed snares. “This sounds like a stick hitting a compressor.”

There can be many reasons why a snare doesn't sound good. But you're having real problems getting the drum to sound good, severe eq is probably the last thing you should use. Better to change mic, move it, or change the drum itself. Do understand the challenge you’re facing is not only dealing with your skills, but with the drummer and their ability to make a good sound. I was told this was true early on in my career. That the biggest part of the sound is due to the player. But I never realized how true it was until I was recording a session where a drummer was swapped mid-session.

I was recording a commercial session for a theme park and knew we’d have two drummers for the date, as the first would have to leave early. I’d recorded the first drummer many times before and had never really happy with the results. But I was a young engineer as these were commercial sessions and I never had the time I would have on a record date, I concluded the lesser results were mostly due to the lack of time. We had decent, but not great drum sounds. When the new drummer arrived I asked him to play a bit to simply check his levels. When he played the entire drum kit lit up and sounded IMMEDIATELY better! I was stunned. It was so much better the producer jumped up off the back couch and asked, “What did you do to the drums?” “Nothing!” I said. “Just hire HIM next time!”

All this to say when you’re dealing with difficult drum sounds you have not only your abilities, but the studio, the gear, and also the drummer to deal with. And while you probably can’t change drummers, you must understand their role and when needed, take steps to help them make better sounds.

One huge misconception for drummers who are new to the studio is that they think they need to hit their drums hard to sound good. It's especially common for drummers who’ve played live most of their career. The fact is often the opposite. The harder the drums are hit in a studio, the more choked they sound. Medium hard hits often do all that’s needed. So if you’re having trouble with drum sounds, go out and listen to the drummer in the studio and find out if they’re hitting really hard. If they are, remind them they don’t need to do that as you have all these mics right near the drums. It's like a close up in film.

This can be very hard for some drummers to do, but it may be what’s needed. You'll need to listen and see how they react to your comment. If they can't do it without losing feel, then you'll need to tell them to go back and hit harder, and find some way to make it work. Feel and performance trumps sound.

But as the engineer, it's your job to take charge You must thread the needle to help your players give not only good musical performances, but good sonic results.