TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

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jonetsu
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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by jonetsu »

42low wrote: So you can make a song sound great with about 4-12 basic regular plugins. Mostly about 6 is enough, depending of the needs of the recordings and size of the project. The magic of a song is not within the use of many plugins. It's in simple small details. And i good original recordings. Know those basics! Up to detailed level. Why to do what and how. Don't do to much.
It's indeed an interactive sum of details. A little thing here will have effect over there. The lows will interact with the highs. The listener mind will follow audio suggestions that are made. Processing is done by the mind also.

Some examples like: the mix has to come through with wind blowing through the windows at 100 km/h on a highway. Optionally when one raises the volume because he likes the song, the mix should open up according to volume increase to give the listener a better experience. It's all about little things interacting with each other in the field of frequencies. The mix is actually an artist signature. I don't have one yet as I'm stil learning.

In Linux we do not have the jungle of plugins available to Windows and Mac, so we're lucky in that sense. Of course, one could jeopardize luck by installing a Windows VST bridge :roll:
Veerstryngh Thynner
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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by Veerstryngh Thynner »

sysrqer writes: Can't build a house by comparing brands of hammers and the metal they are made with and their design.
As a matter of fact, I'm presently trying to figure out how best to rebuild a "house" (e.g. my home studio). I have a pretty good idea of what my tools are made of, but I'm not quite there yet as to what some "rooms" in my "house" should be looking like, after refurbishment has finished. :)

Graham Cochrane has been (and is still!) a major influence in this. So I'll say it again: he unfailingly (well, mostly) cuts through tons upon tons of crap, time and anon, and thus makes feasible - nay, actuallly solid, rather! - a truly operative, functional home studio that would otherwise not even slightly remotely come within reach of digital simpletons like myself! For that reason alone I'll defend Recording Revolution to the hilt!
42low wrote: So you can make a song sound great with about 4-12 basic regular plugins. Mostly about 6 is enough, depending of the needs of the recordings and size of the project.
Never in my life did I use a plug-in, apart from EQ, minimal compression & saturation and some reverb. Maybe that's because I come from the pioneering days of analogue multitracking, when not only multitrack consoles were bloody expensive still, but peripherals even more so. I never had enough money for the latter, which forced me, basically, to take as departure point the 'natural' projection of, for instance, a singer I worked with for a couple of years, and her guitar's, and fiddle around with that until I had the best possible result. But even when digital tech provided me with more bells and whistles than I ever had a need of, I remained sceptical of too abundant use of these. And I still am!

Call me conservative (or reactionary, even), but I sincerely believe, with Graham, that less is almost always more. Therefore, timbral qualities deriving of the human voice and or acoustic instruments, if that's the material to work with, should always be the primary source of audio capturing, I feel. After all, these are the very origin as well as the very core of any music produced by mankind!

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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by jonetsu »

42low wrote: I don't agree with this part about amounth of plugins.
For those (about a few hands full) important needed plugins we already can choose within several. Like say for compressor, i have about 10 different already (?? didn't count)

As seen from the few basic needed ones, i think i have going up to a hundred (or more?) all kinds of plugins available, and i didn't even installed all that are available. Although i can understand a far going sound quest from some, for which more can be needed.
More than enough IMHO. I can do that many with sounds that too me it looks like endless. If covering known music i can almost always equal that specific sound.
Yeah OK. When I open the plugin manager in Mixbus/Ardour there's quite a few being listed that comes with the OS or with the installation of Ardour or otherwise included. Never looked much at those though. I'm starting now with Guitarix that I've installed because I'm looking at variations in tone (cabinet, amp emulations) that could be useful. With Calf I had bad experiences in stability and distortion.

What I meant was more about the commercial aspect, the advertising the "YOU NEED THESE PLUGINS to ACHEIVE INCREDIBLE MIXES TRY THEM FOR FREE FOR NOW" type of thing.
42low wrote: I hear/read these kind of questions soooo often. :lol:
The example you gave are good ones. So typical. What hammer should I get to build the house ? Is the hammer by ACME made of a better metal than the one by STANLEY ? What about the ergonomic aspects of the hammers ? Is titanium better than steel ? Does it reverberate when hitting nails ? OK OK OK -- what about the house ? The architecture, the plans ? :)

I am not concerned by people making a business 'informing' people who are stuck on plugins. They're in it just for the money and they know their customer base.
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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by jonetsu »

Just starting a new mix now. Haven't finished to set it up so here's how it looks. One plugin: a substractive EQ. I do not count the 1/3 octave spectrum displays as plugins since they only provide feedback and not affect the sound. Not all tracks are shown.

(And yes, I will go back to jam112 in the virtual collaboration section and try out the idea by forestandgarden)
jam81-startingTheMix.jpg
jam81-startingTheMix.jpg (107.17 KiB) Viewed 1391 times
EDIT, ADDED COMMENT: The mix will stay like this, with the single subtractive EQ plugin for quite some time. I will gain stage everything then reach a balance and pan, with instruments carving out their spaces. Then I will see about enhancing the listening experience, hopefully in a direction that the piece suggests. At that point I will probably add a bit of reverb here and there. I will add compression to bring some life to some instruments, as if musicians were actually playing together in a band. I will also see about instruments that might need sonic artifacts. In 'Oneiric-1' I use a frequency shifter to modify drastically a voices. There might be chorus added to fatten some sounds. Then will come fader automation and how instruments play off against each other, how some take the place how some yield depending on context.
Last edited by jonetsu on Sat Sep 09, 2017 11:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Veerstryngh Thynner
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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by Veerstryngh Thynner »

Jonetsu & 42low,

Also have a look at my two cents in my post of 10.57 today (the fourth post up from here). It took me a while to write, whilst the two of you were debating. :wink:

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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by sysrqer »

jonetsu wrote: What I meant was more about the commercial aspect, the advertising the "YOU NEED THESE PLUGINS to ACHEIVE INCREDIBLE MIXES TRY THEM FOR FREE FOR NOW" type of thing.
Graham doesn't say this at all though, in fact he frequently says to use the stock ones in your DAW or any others you like because it is the principle that is important.
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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by jonetsu »

sysrqer wrote:
jonetsu wrote: What I meant was more about the commercial aspect, the advertising the "YOU NEED THESE PLUGINS to ACHEIVE INCREDIBLE MIXES TRY THEM FOR FREE FOR NOW" type of thing.
Graham doesn't say this at all though, in fact he frequently says to use the stock ones in your DAW or any others you like because it is the principle that is important.
This was not about Recording Revolution at all

It was about the low availability of plugins in Linux and the luck it provides. More to the point, it was about 42low's reply to that comment.
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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by jonetsu »

Veerstryngh Thynner wrote:Call me conservative (or reactionary, even), but I sincerely believe, with Graham, that less is almost always more.
Less ? Actually, it is exactly 12 minutes and counting down. As per the Recording Revolution web page about an upcoming webminar. :mrgreen:

The customer base is different. On one side you have people who are lost in Plugin Jungle and on the other side you have people who are saying all right we know it's not about plugins, can we now learn about audio and mixing without any fuss and w/o any advertising tricks ?

To address the Plugin Jungle crowd I guess one needs flashy colors, screaming adverts, constant reminders about buying courses and a timer. One has to cut through. While the folks who already know that tools are not the end do not need all that, but just plain solid audio lessons from someone that can also carry out the passion about the work.

Still, people wants to see a face. So here's Michael White, in the only video available where you see him. It's an advertisement, yes, but not even about his mixing/mastering/career/production courses. The guy has the mojo, the passion and the techniques. And the background (gold records) with Whitney Houston, Mick Jagger, David Byrne, David Bowie, etc.. In other words this is the straight dope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbF4kNW0aCk

As for music made by mankind and voice and acoustic instruments and capturing these audio expressions, that's a much different topic that would hijack the thread here. I'm more than glad to exchange about views on this in another thread. Do we have a music philosophy section in this forum ? :) (In short, even though I use synths extensively, I feel there's something strange with them as being human expressions)
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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by Veerstryngh Thynner »

Jonetsu wrote:
Less ? Actually, it is exactly 12 minutes and counting down. As per the Recording Revolution web page about an upcoming webminar.
But I was actually referring to Graham's recurring message that you actually don't need much more than a computer (laptop or desktop), an audio interface, EQ, compression, reverb and, perhaps, a few selected plug-ins, to lay down quality tracks. See also his blogs on creating a home studio for less than $500 (his very first ) and the follow-up on that, several years later, on how to build a home studio for $350.

My personal opinion is that he is right to hammer that home consistently. The times we're living in are offering so many options, often with only minimal differences between them, that making an actually informed, conscious choice is often close to impossible. Besides, excessive white noise all around us, all day long, is usually extremely hard to get rid off. What's more; this overkill of "choice" is bound to make a veritably balanced decision even tougher, predictably. One example of literally deafening white noise is MS conditioning their custom base into believing that there are no alternatives whatsoever to Windows. I kid you not! And another is about a customer being assured, by the salesman-du-jour, that a home studio will need an investment of $5000 at least.

No it won't! That salesman will say this because he is just eyeing up to the fat commission being dangled in front of him, most likely. And as to the business that's paying his wages: it only wants those 5000 delicious smackeroonies out of the customer's wallet, lickety-spit, and into their own coffers ASAP. How or by what means doesn't matter in the slightest.

Graham is always consequent and straightforward in cutting to the quick, in these matters. In my view anyway!

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Re: TIP: CHECK OUT 'RECORDING REVOLUTION'

Post by jonetsu »

Veerstryngh Thynner wrote: But I was actually referring to Graham's recurring message that you actually don't need much more than a computer (laptop or desktop), an audio interface, EQ, compression, reverb and, perhaps, a few selected plug-ins, to lay down quality tracks.
He nevertheless uses tricks such as the one I described to attract unsuspecting customers, to create pression, to create a need. It's a business, right. IMHO I prefer someone who does without that. And the constant emails about 'tips' and 'hints'. I don't want tips, I want knowledge and substance.
Veerstryngh Thynner wrote: The times we're living in are offering so many options, often with only minimal differences between them, that making an actually informed, conscious choice is often close to impossible.
Let's see. Ardour, QTraktor, Mixbus, Bitwig, T7(Waveform) maybe missing one or two. Plugins: Calf, LADSPA, OvertoneDSP, Traktion, u-he. Not a whole lot. I do not run Windows. I do not run any Windows bridge on Linux.

I agree that for people running Windows and Mac, there's a lot. But we already know that you don't need a lot to make a good mix, that one needs instead, knowledge.

I know what you mean about Windows and MS. I must say that when I comment on RR, it's from my own experience. I'm not commenting on the RR impact in the home/small studio recording in general out there. I was shopping for knowledge sources and RR was once on the radar. It's not anymore.

Right now as I type this, I got the RR page. Download the free guide a $17 value. I move the mouse, a big spalsh screen appears DOWNLOAD THE FREE GUIDE A $17 VALUE ! TODAY !! Then there are free tutorials, free guides, free this, put your email address here. If I click on Products and the 'Rethinking Mixing' course I'm greeted by GET IT NOW ONLY $147 and some other options. ADD TO CART ! I scroll down trying to find out more before spending money. There are testimonies but no contents description. Nothing. ADD TO CART !

This seems to be the salesman approach you described, wouldn't it be ?

Please take the time to compare with this to see what I mean:

https://blog.music-production-guide.net/

Then click on a course, say the 'Advanced Mixing' course (or any other).

https://blog.music-production-guide.net ... ng-course/

What you see is a complete program. See below. The complete contents of the course is shown so you know what you are paying for. And there's a special now. You get that for $29. Warning: it is a course. With lessons. As in a school, one has to pay attention and follow along. There's nothing pre-digested and spoon fed. For me, in search of knowledge - not hints and tips - the choice was a no-brainer. I'm not saying that RR is not good, I'm saying that I prefer someone whose value is in the courses themselves, someone who is open, and does not need 'cheap' tricks to attract customers. Actually, one barely sees Mike. His face is just about not there, ever. Only the material, the course and the lessons. Whitney Houston, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Remixes of Jimi Hemdrix, James Taylor, David Byrne, were amongst his customers.


As an example from another of Mike's courses, this is the contents of the Power Automation course, as described on the web site, before buying it.

Class 1: Automation Processing Primer

The history of automation sets the stage for all the terminology, techniques and advancements that have occurred over the decades. Each revolutionary advancement uncovered new possibilities and more advanced tools and computers systems that controlled them. Today, virtually everything can be automated, but the foundational principles of automation remain the same. Understanding these principles and a tried and true process that has endured for decades will help you achieve the same professional results.

Defining Automation
History of Automation
The Tools of Automation
The Automation Process Step by Step
The Finished Mix

Class 2: Pre Mix Automation Techniques

In the past, limitations of recording technology like analog tape forced engineers to be far more mindful of setting proper levels. This included level balancing compression techniques and the manual riding of performances during the recording process to limit distortion and tape hiss in the playback. The modern DAW era offers far more dynamic range but also leaves many recorded performances with inconsistent levels. Automating these imbalances plays a huge role getting consistent and effective results from the dynamics processing that follows. Inter Processing and Post Processing automation make up for lost performance dynamics without losing the flexibility of setting static fader levels while building a mix.

Pre Mix Gain Staging Automation
Region Editing and Mutes
Pre Processing Automation
Inter Processing Automation
Post Processing Automation

Class 3: Foundational Automation Techniques

Throughout the process of mixing a song, static fader levels are used to set the general balances. At some point in the mix, it will become apparent, that static fader levels are holding up the development of the mix. This typically marks the engineer’s transition from processing work to automation. The first stage of automation is to establish the envelope of the song by setting the peak and low points. Some styles of music like EDM have very fast and dramatic shifts in dynamic while others ebb and flow more slowly. Whatever the shape and pace of change, every song will also need to establish a primary and secondary focus the the rest of the tracks respond to. This foundation sets the stage for the detailed automation that follows.

Monitoring Tips for Setting Levels
The Give/Take Automation Principle
Mapping the Song Envelope
Gain Staging Automation
Establishing the Primary and Secondary Focus

Class 4: Detailing Automation Techniques

Detailing Automation establishes the consistency, focus, and brings out the nuances of individual performances. Most of this work will focus on phrase by phrase, note by note and transitional automation to enhance the dynamics of the song for the listener. There are many techniques and methods covered in this class that help to facilitate the efficiency of this sometimes tedious process. Particular attention is paid to the transitions from note to note and section to section where the song is woven together. This helps to establish the dynamic shifts from soft to loud & loud to soft, narrow to wide & wide to narrow, so that impact of each section is felt as well as heard.

Techniques for Refining Automation
Phrase by Phrase Automation
Note by Note Automation
Automating Transitions and Fills
Pan and Width Automation

Class 5: Advanced Automation Techniques

There are many tools in that can help to enhance workflow and productivity in the mixing process. Many of the techniques covered in the 2 previous classes will be revisited here with the added benefit of live performance automation. These are the same techniques used by professionals for decades to sculpt mixes in a more natural and responsive way. Whether you have a work surface or not, this class will provide valuable insight in your approach to applying automation. I will also cover some advanced, and sometimes complicated, automation techniques for working with group automation.

Using Work Surfaces for Automation
Automation Modes and Preferences
Using Write, Touch, Latch, Snap and Glide Modes
Trim Automation
Advanced Automation Enhancements
Writing Track Group Automation

Class 6: Automation Techniques for Vocals

If the total time spent on automation in a mix was 4 hours, working with the vocal tracks could easily be 2-2.5 hours of the total process. The average listener’s experience with the subtleties and inflections of the human voice are dramatically more sensitive than any other instrument. Getting every ounce of expression from a vocal performance requires intense focus and meticulously detailed work, but is worth every ounce of energy in the end result. When applied correctly, a vocal can sound equally focussed and understood when tucked deep into a mix as it would be raised above it. This work prevents the obvious issue of a vocal performance sounding disconnected or lost in a mix when the desired overall level is established.

Vocal Automation Primer
Automation for BG Vocals
Automation for Lead Vocals
Automation for Harmonies and Doubles
Vocal Automation Plugins (Vocal Rider)

Class 7: Automation for Plugins and Effects

The DAW has allowed for automation processes that were once either impossible to achieve or could only be performed live when the mix was being printed. Today, the range of possibilities may be as simple as the bypass of a filter in the bridge section of a song or as complicated as the live performance of sweeping filters, feedback controls and pitch dives. This class covers a wide range of demonstrations and offers solutions for enhancing the production to achieve a professional sounding result.

Bypass Automation for Plugins
Functional Plugin Automation
Creative Performance Plugin Automation
Automation for Sends
Advanced Plugin Effects Automation

Class 8: Mix Buss and Mix Stem Automation

Mix Buss and Stem automation, on the surface, seems like a simple end of the mix finisher for your song. Set the output level, slam in a fade and your good to go. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are many considerations that will greatly enhance your ability to create alternate versions, print stems and provide the mastering engineer with a well polished mix free of artifacts, noise and clipped starts and ends. Detailed understanding of the signal flow and it’s relationship to dynamics processing in the stems and master fader will help prevent any undesired effects to your carefully crafted mix.

Mix Buss and Stem Automation Primer
Insert Automation for Mix Buss and Stems
Mix Stem Level and Balance Automation
Master Fade Automation Techniques
Final Refinements, Tweaks and Print
Power Automation Course Wrap Up
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