Avid S6 Session: Team Work and Aesthetics

In my last Blog "Avid S6 Session: Unwanted Noise and Performance Correction" I spoke about my recent session with Callum, today I will be continuing this session update while focusing on our Team Work, Our Aesthetic choices and Techniques, as well as reflect on how I feel Callum and Myself are going overall through this project.

This past session saw us focusing on getting the right sound for the Mufaro production. The session began at 3pm and ran till 7pm, I was unfortunately 30 minutes late due to my class, which finishes at 3pm, running overtime. The past few session's we have had in the S6, I have been late. Which is a bit of a let down on my side, though the way this session ran showed a different view. Due to both of us working on this mix, we have to take turns operating the console / DAW due to its single person work flow. This is forcing Callum and Myself to try find a unique work flow that gives each member a satisfying amount of time to work on the mix while only allowing one personal at a time to do so.

This resulted in a simple 'taking turns' method, in which each member would get 30 minutes to an hour on the controls while the other looked over their shoulder. This approach gave a less cluttered feel to our session, letting one help with direction and support while the other controls and moves the session forward. It seems to be something that Callum is approaching with confidence, I am unsure to what his exact feelings behind this method are but from an outside perspective he seems positive. My own personal reflection upon this though, is very positive. Allowing each member control the session and implement their own workflow is only going to help each other progress forward and learn new workflow methods. Even more so, it gives myself a sort of comfort as I can sit back and let Callum do as he will to the session. I am usually quite controlling and vocal about how and what to do when in a session, so by allocating each member a time slot in which they are in control forces me to learn and adapt my own session curtesy or so to speak.

I do though, believe that this method might cause some unwanted negative results. I can see, for example, that the song could result in a Frankenstein sort of monster, where there are so many different tactics and methods put into the mix that its results can sound off-putting. If we, for example, come at the mix from two different mind sets of what should be in the forefront, it could result in some unwanted frequency clashing. Though this might not be that noticeable to one listening to the song, it might be something that personally effects myself when listening to the song - not having the result I wanted. In saying that, It also could create a better mix through the clashing of ideologies, pushing it even further then one mind could do alone, which is something I could see happening between Callum and Myself; due to the faith and trust I have in both Cullum's and my own capabilities.

Aesthetics

We focused on the aesthetic direction of this track among other things. Our plan for the aesthetic direction is characterized through our reference track, "Me and Those Dreamin' Eyes of Mine (Brown Sugar)" by D'Angelo.

Some noticeable points we are trying to capture through our mix are;

• Percussion Mix - Tight and Solid

• Piano Track - Clear and bright

• Vocal Cut - Smooth and warm

• Bass - Warm and Clear

This past session we kept our focus on the Percussion and Piano tracks, tackling the percussion first. Callum had already spent a recent session in the Neve studio sending our two miscellaneous drum room microphones (a 57 placed by the drummers knee and a 414 in front of the kit) through compressors to crush them. These extremely wet and brick walled signals were then send back and fed slightly into the mix; after using a bit of subtle EQ they gave the percussion track a bit more body and helped create and effect of "tightness". We gave the Drum Bus a few more rough touch ups to get it up to scratch as all the levels had been sitting at unity since recording.

A goal of the session we had was to have a great sounding scratch track for Mufaro to overdub vocals and extra percussion and to do so, we gave the Drum Bus some rough Compression and EQ. First step was sending the bus through the Manley Stereo Variable Mu Limiter Compressor, which was as simple as adding an I/O Insert (9-10) into the Drum bus then patching the signal through the hardware. Simply because of how great the Manley sound is, we opted to just give the Signal a very subtle compression, effectively acting as a subtle glue. We set the compressor to only touch the peaks if anything and boosted the output by 2db, this gave the signal a solid feeling and brought it all together, but it was still leaving a little to be desired in the way of 'tightness'. This is where the Dangerous Bax EQ comes in, we sent the output of the Manley through the Bax. We cut the signal below 30Hz and above 28kHz to remove unwanted any unwanted signal. We also felt that the high end of the track was quite sharp due to the Ride Cymbal our drummer used, so to treat that we put a high Shelf at 7.5kHz of -0.5 to give it a subtle reduction. We treated the Low end the same but at 32Hz to give the Mid Range a bit more room in the mix.

The Sound of the Manley and Bax allowed us to get close to our Aesthetic direction but we were still not able to fully reach that sound. Both of the Hardware Units we ran through, as well as the Destressor Callum used on the Miscellaneous Mic's allowed the sonic texture of the sound to match the Aesthetic Direction we were hoping for but the Mix of the percussion track did not fit that build. The Drums do not carry that overall clarity that the reference did, which in terms of our result, is pretty good. Seeing as we did not give this drum track the full attention we would for the final mix, the sonic quality is almost exactly what we are going for. After achieving this result, we took to something a bit more unique, Printing an External EQ of the reverb send from the Piano Tracks.

We found that the EQ was slightly dull on the Reverb we had for the Pianos, thus not letting it fit the bright characteristic we were going for. To get this sound, we sent the Reverb send, which was effectively the piano signal being sent through a standard 7Band High and Low pass into a TSAR1 reverb unit. The unit was set to a more Dark reverb setting but that was due to the sound of the bright, which wasn’t sounding very pleasant (must be a part of the algorithm). We send the Reverb out 11-12 into the Avalon Pre-Amps. We gave the Reverb a simple Low Shelf of around -2dB at 80Hz and a boost at 32kHz by around 3-4dB. This gave the signal a lighter feeling while keeping it bright and clean, achieving the sound we were going for aesthetically. Thankfully, the subtle EQ we had already dont to the Piano allowed us to give it minimal treatment this session to achieve our desired sound.

Leaving the session, in reflection, we achieved a lot more then anticipated. Not only all of the audio correction we did (accounted for here) but also the aesthetic improvements and techniques we achieved. The result is an improvement to our workflow and trust in team, as well as a scratch track that the artist has said is what he wanted. This is the type of session I hope to have every time I enter a studio, It wasn't without its Trials and Tribulations but that is to be expected. Below is the Scratch track we rendered at the end of the session, Thanks!