mate, this is the greatest lesson ive had in the short while that ive started my own music production, (4 months of constant constant obsession) (insanity). do not apologise saying this "might be boring" thank you so much for your words FOR REAL!!!!

You're comments on frequency placement vis a vis: how to separate two more or less identical instruments within an arrangement, is very important. Indeed, because a lot of music nowadays is produced via midi or otherwise "in the box" kids are learning music in isolation and, I imagine, missing this. If you grew up, as I did, playing in bands - and listening to records made by musicians who'd learnt playing in bands - you'd learn this lesson very quickly as you just couldn't hear each other if you didn't do it! Thus, if you had two guitarists in the band playing chords then you'd stick these guitar parts in different registers so you didn't end up with a pointless wall of mush. This is music 101 stuff but, as I say, possibly missed nowadays due to the isolationist way people are learning about and then producing music. Back in the day, bands knew this stuff way, way before they got near a studio and the parts were often written with such separation of register by rote. Likewise, creating the illusion of frequency by a having one instrument fill in the perceived missing frequency for another instrument was commonplace, even on stage. Take a band like The Stranglers: noted as being a band (in their early years) as having the bass guitar as more or less the lead instrument and coloured by a very aggressive and "heavy" bass attack. In reality, the sound was achieved by having the bass guitar's low end rolled off but with boosts over given frequencies in both the mid and top and then overdriven via the bass amp. This would normally result in something of a hollow sound for a bass guitar of course, but it doesn't sound this way in The Stranglers sound. And the reason it doesn't is because the bands' keyboard player, whilst simultaneously playing "Doors" like runs with one one hand, would, (where required), pedal root notes in the low end on an organ with his other hand: thus filling in the "missing" frequency for the bass guitar but giving the over all aural impression of the bass guitar covering a wider frequency range than it was in actuality and producing the trade mark "heavy" bass guitar trademark sound the Stranglers had as the end result. (The low end organ would be lower in the mix than the rest of the keyboard levels - even on stage - as it was only there to "fill" the missing frequency, so to speak, and not be "heard" as a distinct part.) Again, all of this was arranged by the band for their live sound a long time before they got near a recording studio or had a recording contract. Ultimately, when the band - or any band of that era - went to record, much of the preliminary work was done, prior to any engineer or producer getting involved. So, yeah, much of this knowledge is going missing nowadays, and probably cos' people don't learn their chops in band settings before getting near a recording console.

@beenmicrophone5817

5 жыл бұрын

dude. deep

@rockymaldonado7758

3 жыл бұрын

Soooo fucking right on

@beenmicrophone5817

2 жыл бұрын

HAHA, i was just about to replyt to this comment... and what do u know, who did i find 🤷‍♀️🤣🤣

@goodchakras

Жыл бұрын

Amazing comment. I feel like a lot of new musicians/artists go in half cooked to sessions more excited with the process than having any form of pre-existing character. The point about live setting is also true, and the best way around this for solo musicians is to use your DAW as a band. Try to imprint the sound almost live before any ideas of mixing it later. Use the Arrangement, Drums/bass and maybe a tracked vocal (scratch) to keep the vibe flowing and add in the guitars, keyboards or whatever before going back to the start to get the proper bass/drums sound required to drive it and just spend that time getting the character performed live as possible so that when it's done it sounds like a band and dont tweek the mistakes to the point there's not a single happy accident. Or you'll fall into sounding indie instead of rock n roll. Obviously this all takes both technical ability within the daw as well as having proper recording gear and knowledge. But patience and deliberate action beats tutorial based knowledge. That's why a great bulk of producers can't break the mold, because they are in the box. If the band are in the box, the production is in the box and the song is a carbon copy. You will need to be the best in the world to get noticed, so good luck there.

@mennovanwijk2967

Жыл бұрын

Thats so true. 24 and producing techno/IDM mostly in the box, and I do struggle with this approach exactly cause its all just MIDI notes. No live playing (sometimes with hardware jams). I did play the drums for years as a kid and was in a band as well.. didnt really learn this from it though. Ty :)

There's a reason why 70's album sound so full and rich. And you explained why. Well done!

In order of importance. 1. performance 2. Arrangement 3. tones , instrument quality ,production effects dynamics etc ive fallen into the trap n the past of focussing on technical aspects but if the song or performance is shit it doesn't matter how good mics and compressors etc you have

Wow! What a great topic. I've been waiting forever for someone to talk about the mixing (& production) of these classic 70's albums. They had far less tools to work with yet the mixes are so rich and alive.

"This might be boring for some of you guys.." As someone that has begun music production some years back and am super self-taught and almost on almost all my other music skills, who needs to take classes in music production, now, your information was incredibly eye-opening to stuff I didn't think of and I truly appreciate the advice/info. Thank you.

Not boring at all. This is great information, that really makes sense. A lot of modern mixing is done LCR, which is fine for sparse mixes but in more dense projects can still have competing instrumentation.

Wow, I almost came to tears listening to this. It had me wondering for years and years why those musicians have such clean and hifi stereo mix. No other videos would ever talk about the whole overview or the philosophy behind the mix, only tips and tricks. I would just imitate them without knowing why I should do this. Thanks a lot. Wish I could give more than 1 like.

@Eric_In_SF

10 ай бұрын

the real trick is mixing in mono. Only then, can you pick out and place everything with surgical precision. Spend an hour in mono and put it back in stereo and you will be crying tears

@CaelJones

10 ай бұрын

Last time I checked Phil Spector was in prison

Man, what a lesson in under 15 minutes! You nailed it precisely. Some of those records that came out around that time that you mentioned, had a wholesome sound to them. Things, these days are way overdone. I am fortunate enough that I spent the late 70's to the mid 90's in the New York studios watching the masters pull off miracles. I also feel that a lot was lost when the hair bands started to emerge and the doubling of parts had to be identical. It became mechanical sounding. Gaucho is one example that I often reference when I'm mixing in my home studio. If you're not careful, the kick and bass can rub against each other causing certain notes on the bass to not penetrate through the mix. Then, add a vocal to that center spot from a baritone male singer, and everything disappears. Great explanation on your end. Every kid with a computer and pro tools should watch your video.

Great video man NOT boring at all for us passionate musicians who care about the quality of our projects. Keep posting videos!

I think you're right on point and also consider those 70s albums to be the pinnacle of music production. Thanks for elaborating on the panning, I'll be playing around with that.... it makes perfect sense to me. Good job.

Hands down one of the best videos for music production

You hit the nail on the head with the time frame. I love music from all eras, but I have to say from about 1970 to 1983 is where it all happened for me.

We are blessed a live front end and digital recall of our mixes.

I have watched so many vids about mixing, I have read books etc..No one ever tell this stuff. This is gold! Thanks you so much for sharing. Subscribed.

Fleetwood Mac recordings are always my benchmark of what I would like to achieve.

@rissairenemusic3894

2 жыл бұрын

Same

This is great. I feel like this is all stuff I'm familiar with and was aware of... but the way you explained it really made it actually click for me. Thank you.

i didnt even try it out for myself with the panning advice but thru simple thinking (logically) this makes total sense when im looking at my experience since 7 years of beat production. thank you for clearing this up for me i didnt thought about this at all

100% spot on. It's all about carving out space, both in frequency and across the stereo stage.

Game changing advice. Thank you! Here's another technique for finding space: Switch the mix to mono. Now pan the instrument until it sounds more present in the mix. This usually means it's in a good spot.

Every time I hear the eagles on the radio the mix always jumps out at me and how perfectly balanced it is

Definitely not boring - very insightful and immensely useful. Thanks so much for this vid!

So not boring at all, my dude. Thank you for your revelatory insight on an era of recording the likes of which shan’t nigh be recreated. Everything you were explaining made perfect sense to me and your visual analogies really helped get the point across. Now I know what high pass and low pass are actually for.

I heard a famous engineer from the 70's era once say, "in mixing, there are no set in stone rules" he says, if your kick drum is not cutting through the mix, and you have to use 12db of 1500kz to bring it out, then, so be it! I just discovered that a R&B bass player from a group I love used a shit load of high mid and low mid cuts to achieve his bass tone....

Excellent explanation. I have been in the studio for most of my life and your clear-cut explanation hit home. It reminded me of a lot of “tricks” I had forgotten (or set aside with all the new technology getting in the way). Excellent video!!!!

Thanks for sharing this. As a beginner in mixing, what you presented here was an eye opener. It will change the way I do things now. Have a great weekend.

All good info and great perspective. All I can think to add is this: the best low/hi cut filter --- by a wiiiiiiide margin --- is the instrumental part itself. Like in the rhodes example, yeah, you can filter the lows, and if your only job is mix engineer you'll have to... but if you're the player, and/or the producer, you need to create a part that better slots itself into the arrangement. It's amazing how far you can get if you just stop playing the bottom 2 strings on the guitar, and/or if your left hand rarely if ever goes lower than an octave below middle C. Let the rhythm section OWN the bottom, and if another instrument encroaches, it better be for a very clear emotional payoff, and as soon as the moment passes you get the f&*k out of that space. Much love to the geniuses who made those classic records, it's insane what they pulled off and I'm with you, stuff today may be equaling it in terms of creativity but IMHO nothing is touching the sheer size of the soundstage on those old records. Compression is fun, but stuff gets real small real fast, and the older I get, the more I prefer to use saturation and distortion to control dynamics, and use compression as a form of distortion. Low ratios don't get enough love!

Best mixing / production tips i've heard in a while! Thanks!

I’ve been using Fleetwood Mac as a reference track because my client said they wanted a seventies sounding mix. And you hit it right on the head about the clarity.

Great stuff especially the part about panning makes so much sense.

YES! This is what I've been trying to tell my other music friends. the balance of sound! different fretboard positions, different pass filters to balance frequencies

Love your channel, man. Real life stuff.

Thanks man! One of the most interesting things on mixing here, truly brilliant findings.

Love what you are saying about panning. Great channel dude!

Yeah this was golden material. Not boring at all! Thank you!

Lots of respect bro.....the way you research all this stuff.... love the idea of panning.... so that frequency does not clash .... thnx alot.. 😉👍

one of the best YT videos on mixing!

Awesome video dude, absolutely not boring, inspired to dig deeper!

Great knowledge, great musical refs, great post!

this video is actually majestic

This is absolutely my topic - what an amazing video! your insights are invaluable

This is an amazing tutorial, Thanks. Would love to see you making videos again

Thank you so much for sharing this small analysis with the world man!

That’s exactly what I was thinking about when listening to that 70’s sound. These guys didn’t have all those crazy surgical eq options like we have today so instead their mixing decisions were based off of a wisely selected sonic characteristics of the instruments. Something we lack of today.

Thanks a lot for this video! This knowledge was so much more than just the technical stuff I see all the time, it was more advice and tips that will help the overall sound! I appreciate it a lot and though I am currently working on more modern music I first got into music listening to classic rock with my father!

Extremely relevant. Thank you🙏🏿

I've always loved the Dire Straights first album from 1978 and thought it sounded amazing. I've been countless hours listening in awe to the subtleties of his second to none guitar playing. After finally getting serious about learning how to hear for production and not just performance, I've been listening to it, amongst others, and wow! I hear things swapping places in the Pan throughout a song to make room and balance the frequency spectrum as different elements move in and out of the track. Hearing some of the tricks I've been learning about like panning the reverb of a vocal to the opposite side and then putting some sort of modulation effect on only the reverb. This has been an amazing journey, being able to find all these awesome treasures in songs I've listened intently to hundreds of times before is worth the effort without even considering The reason I've been studying in the first place, which is to increase my still level in the studio. If I never apply my new (and developing) skill set to a single track, I'll not regret a single minute spent studying.

AMAZING dude! just lovely

This was freakin gold! Thank you!

THANKYOU ! for this , needed that.

thanks man, that was very useful. Just started production school and could grasp pretty much all the ideas. Awesome

Such a great info and idea to mix! Simple but effectiv. Yes, you still learning every day... ;-)

Sooooo much good information. THANK YOU

Words out of my mouth!!! ELO and Hall and Oates too

You’re definitely on the right track. but you can’t put it in peoples head that all they have to do is use numerical positions on the clock to try to space out everything. And especially not rely on visuals to apply low pass and high pass. You got a really dig in to find the essence of the instrument and always use your ears. The real magic with panning happens when you throw your mix into mono! It’s not about just tossing an arbitrary position on your pan knob you’re literally finding space in your mix where that instrument shines the best and when you do it in mono it sticks out like a sore thumb and then you can start playing with EQ once you’ve found a space for it. Some of the most incredible mixes you’ll ever get is after playing with things for a half an hour in tweaking in mono and then you popping into stereo for the first time. It’s absolute magic.

That is Passion My Friend! Thanks for sharing!

Spectacular information! I had never considered panning frequencies before.

Jesus. You just nailed some stuff. Thanks!

I know I'm late to the party watching this is 2022. But I have been absolutely obsessed with making a song with the production quality of the Eagles. I consider them like you as one of the greats. Been looking for years and couldn't find anything. I listen to their music all the time just trying to find little things like you said. And I've found a lot. But when I try to lets say play a guitar in the middle, and have one also playing softly on the left side. Like in the song Lyin' Eyes for example. I just can't get it to sit right like they did. Your knowledge has GREATLY helped me out. Thank you so much! I'm one step closer to achieving my goal! (:

Thank you so much for this content. I always thought this things about "any major dude " clarity and asked myself how is this become the way it is.

yup, this is the way producers should actually be thinking about music and production as a whole, I actually remember my old production partner telling me about the slots technique many years ago. Also our fave era of music and art is the 70s. We studied, channeled, and meditated to those records all the time in the studio religiously.

Really fascinating, gonna try and use everything you said. Thanks!

One of my favorite mixes has to be CCR's cover of 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine'. The sound of it is just beautiful.

Great video man. Really good observation!!!!

great shot out to roger, love your channel. it is very inspiring .

Awesome video! Excellent thoughts

dude, you're speaking my language. I love your channel

Amazing, thank you for sharing!!

Love your enthusiasm.

Can’t believe this video has only 52 thousand views in 5 years, should be more, valuable information for all music producers.

Awesome.

Really great video man!

Very awesome, thanks for uploading

Gaucho! Interesting that you mentioned that album. That was one that I used to audition speakers and understand what an ideal mix/master sounds like.

Very insightful excellent points couldn't agree more

Amazing video, so well explained! Thank you so much!

Loved the video. Thanks for the tips! You earned yourself a new sub!

Great stuff bro great info, got me into it right from the beginning, definately got me thinking different, will dig into this right away, thanks cheers

Super helpful and compelling. I followed along easily :)

Really good observations.

it´s very interesting! not boring at all!!! thanks for sharing! Greetings from Mexico.

Excellent video, but the SSL 4000 G series console came out in the late 1980s. Still a wonderful console. The E series SSL 4000 came out in the early 80s and would have been perhaps on a few early 80s records. A neat thing that developed by the 1990s was the mixing of channel strips from an older E series SSL into a SSL 4000 G desk. Then they would use the E channels usually for drums and percs, and the G series channels for instruments and vocals. Then gluing it altogether with the G Buss comp, and master channel EQ. I know we are talking about 70s here and I agree the late 70s and early 80s were the peak of sound engineering technique and technology. Another one to consider is the Harrison Mixbus 32C which faithfully emulates the Harrison 32C console which was the Ferrari of mixing consoles in the mid 70s to about the mid 80s. That's a must have for getting the sound quality of the period you are talking about in the video. Anyway just wanted to drop some stuff I learned myself, that will help you get that rich and robust late 70s early 80s sound. I am excited to see people are trying to bring back this quality. Great video once again. :)

Super helpful video, thank you so much!!

Wonderful video, I have been trying to figure out what sort of techniques the​ producers were using back then. Thank you!

This was a very informed video I fell your grove on all of your vids keep it up.

This is awesome

Brilliant. Thanks.

I have an album coming soon and I'm nearing mixing and mastering stage. I feel you have just solved my problems. I'm going for that 70's sound

subbed.... and this topic (70's production techniques) is so important that I'd suggest you do a video series on just this.... one trick per episode.

Interesting stuff for sure

Thanks for sharing mate!

A lot of people around my age( born in 79 ) love 80s music but I feel like the worst thing to ever happen to music was the 80s. This helps to understand part of what went wrong with music in the 80s.

Outstanding video. Exploring analog instrumentation solutions to clarity problems -- instead of just looking for some knob to turn -- is exciting and has a much higher potential of creating unique and memorable sounds.

Just watched an interview with Elliot Scheiner who mixed Gaucho and the 2 previous ST albums, and he said he used no high pass filters and very little processing overally. This takes nothing away from the benefits of hi-passing of course, just for the record. The need of hi-passing became stronger as the number of tracks in a project increased drastically to ridiculous numbers: Gaucho was still a 24 track project.

Really like this, useful stuff. thanks

Great video man!

Thanks a lot for this advice!!!

mate i loved it thank you sooo much I learnt a lot from this

Thanks for the inspiration!

Good insights on that time period...the biggest difference I notice personally is compression. I was in the bathroom trying to think deep thoughts and Rush's Farewell to Kings- 1977 (right in the middle of the period you refer to) popped in my head as my favorite Rush sound mix, the albums before and after those years are also great sounding, with big dynamic ranges. Ironically, their most popular album, and still one of my favorite, is also when I think things really went down hill- Moving Pictures, sounded narrow, digital, and flat. Their latest albums are so compressed that I feel worn out listening to them. Its pretty interesting to trace long lived bands and see how their mixes have changed.