Task 2: Michael Brauer’s multi-bus compression

Recording:

Jonny and I played piano, acoustic guitar, drum and bass parts for our composition. For piano we used a pair of DPA omni microphones in an A B arrangement (60cm apart, approx. 1m from open piano). For guitar we also used the A B technique, but this time using microphones in a cardioid pattern. (also taking a DI track) For drums we used the Glynn Johns technique; using a pair of AKG 414’s in cardioid pattern equidistant from the snare, one directly overhead and one to the side, as well as close-micing the kick and snare with an AKG D112 and an SM57 respectively. Bass was recorded in mono via DI and an EV RE20 mic.

Mixing:

Drums: My drum performance had some timing issues, so I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to use one of the techniques that came up both in class and in my research when reading about Trent Reznor, and how he quantizes audio drums. To do this, I was able to learn about Cubase’s hitpoint editor and time stretching. I concentrated mainly on the upbeats and downbeats after a lot of experimentation with more detailed settings – which left the drums sounding too processed for this track. The kick and snare were time delayed to compensate for time of arrival differences, and get the transients in line with the hits in the overhead track. A small amount of compression was used mainly to tame snare, and I added a parallel compression drum bus. at this stage I chose the most transparent compressor I could find (Tokyo Labs Feedback Compressor) as the MBC busses would add ‘colour’ later on. There wasn’t much need for the kick and snare mics, but it was nice to feed a tiny bit of each in for added presence.

One note on the drums is that I use quite an unusual arrangement with the ride on the same side of the kit as the hi-hats, plus the crash cymbal was closer to the left mic than the right, which resulted in all the cymbals being dominant in the left channel of the recording.

Piano: The piano was treated with eq to tame the harsh frequencies in the piano room, I felt we did a good job of getting the sound as intended mostly with the mic positioning – close enough to sound present, but with plenty of the reverberant sound of the room.

Guitar: The acoustic guitar was eq’d quite heavily to remove some problem frequencies, the DI track was sample-delayed and blended into the centre of the stereo recording to fortify the lows and low mids.

Bass: The bass was eq’d partly to control the low-end frequency response, and give the high frequencies a boost. A small amount of clean compression was also used – about 2 db of gain reduction at the most.

Brauerising:

My first step was to find some compressor plugins, as Cubase comes with only one very basic compressor:

I followed closely the step-by-step instructions garnered from my research: four compression busses were created, A B C and D using different compressor plugins. Keys were sent to A, Bass and Drums to B, and Guitar to C. The outputs for each track were disabled,

and the four compression busses were sent to the master fader. For each bus I followed instructions on setting up a test tone in order to calibrate the compressors and EQ’s (detailed in my research), but this was rather difficult due to my limited selection of limited compressors. The compressors are all shown below:

Finally, I adjusted the bus levels for a good balance, then bounced down.

Michael Brauers multi-bus compression

I use 5 busses (4 processed, 1 unprocessed), and 6 auxes (1 stereo aux and 5 mono sends, all going to compressors) to accomplish my multibuss techinique. The combination of busses and auxes is what makes this technique unique.

1 – The function of Multiple Busses is to avoid having one instrument or a group of instruments adversely affect the level or sound of another single or group of instruments.
2 – The function of Multiple Auxes is to generate tone, fatness, attitude and urgency to a sound.

A quick demonstration of Stereo vs. Mulitbuss Compression:
Scenario 1: All tracks feeding one stereo buss with a compressor across it. Bring up the vocal too loud and the stereo compressor will kick in and adversely effect bottom end instruments like kick and bass. Bring up the bass or kick too much and it’ll cause havoc on the vocal level. Compression is triggered more by bottom end frequences than high end. (That’s why I have some compressors modified to have a low freq. side chain HP to allow the bottom end through.)

Scenario 2: Separate instruments into different catagories that will allow freedom of movement.
A – Instruments that are in the upper midrange of a song, such as vocals or keyboards, synths, percussion. Bring up the vocal a lot and it will only effect the instruments assigned to A. Choose instruments for a buss that will compliment each other.
B – Instruments that anchor the song such as drums, bass, maybe cello, congas. Adding more bass or kick will only have an effect on the other instruments assigned to B. Choose instruments that will compliment each other.
C – Instruments that create transient midrange power and will have a lot of rides, such as guitars.
D – Instruments that need the warmth of tube and are not played staccato. To be used in combination with other categories for glue factor.

Bringing up the bass will not effect the vocal and vise versa. Each has its own pump going and is independent of each other.

(from http://mbrauer.com/qna2.asp#overheadsinb)

Buss A
Neve 33609 into Pultec EQ 1a3s

1. Set the 1k tone at “0” going through the Neve with pultec toggle switch in bypass. The gain on the neve should be at Zero. bring the threshold back 1 click. you shouldn’t see any movement on the tone. (sometimes I give it 3 clicks and it brings it down about 1 db, but it’s best to do that after the calibration)
2. Switch the pultec toggle switch to put in the chain. On the pultec select 100hz for the low end and 8k for the high end. At the Oscillator select 100hs and Turn the gain on the low end of the pultec until it reads +1 and then select 10k on the Oscillator and turn the high EQ gain until it reads 1.5 on the meter.
3. Select 1k again on the Oscillator and it will read +1db. That’s good.

Buss B
Initial Setup for Using Distressors w/o EQ’s in the Chain

1. Set the 1k tone at Zero with the Distressors out of the chain.
2. Next, choose the ratio amount and if you want the British setting in or out. (I set it at 6:1 with british in)
3. Set attack at 10 (no compression). Set a release speed. Set detector to HP. Set Audio to your liking (I set it at Dist. 2)
4. Set the input at 5 and output at about 5 1/2 . The ouput will vary a tiny bit around 5 1/2, but your aim is to be reading “zero”.
5. Slowly turn on the compression until the first green LED is fully lit. Do the same with the second unit. I do not link my compressors, therefore I must fine tune both units.
6. Run 10k and 100hz to be confirm the unit is treating those frequences the same on both units.
7. The sweetspot of the console and the compressors should be about the same.

Using Distressors w/ EQ’s (The EQ should be post the Compressors, and they are properly terminated)

1. Run 1k tone and confirm you are reading “zero” both in and out of the chain.
2. Run 10k and select a high freq like 8k or 10k on your EQ to + 1 db
3. Run 100hz and select a low freq like 100 hz and bring it up to + 1db
4. Run a 3k tone, if you wish, and turn a mid freq up about 1 db
5. Re-adjust until they sound good for the application.

When you go back to 1k, you’ll notice that it is now running hot, maybe 1 to 11/2 db up. That’s normal. it was probably caused by the low freq boost.

Buss C
Pendulum ES-8
Mode -fast

1. Turn compression off
2. Set input gain to read +1
3. Set output gain at 1 oclock
4. Input gain should be +1
5. Set Compression until output reads “0”
6. You want to get 1 db of compression going.

Buss D
Inwards connection TSL-1 or any other limiter

1. Turn compression off
2. Set input gain to read +1
3. Set output gain at 1 oclock
4. Input gain should be +1
5. Set Compression until output reads “0”
6. You want to get 1 db of compression going.

(ref https://brauerizing.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/brauerizing-a-how-to-guide/)

Brian Eno’s generative delay technique

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct05/articles/brianeno.htm

Eno used generative principles, often making innovative use of the technology of the day, such as synthesizers, tape machines and delay lines. (Eno also famously devised the Revox tape delay process that was applied extensively by guitarist Robert Fripp, who unselfishly called it Frippertronics.)

Frippertronics is an analog delay system consisting of two reel-to-reel tape recorders situated side-by-side. The two machines are configured so that the tape travels from the supply reel of the first machine to the take-up reel of the second, thereby allowing sound recorded by the first machine to be played back some time later on the second. The audio of the second machine is routed back to the first, causing the delayed signal to repeat while new audio is mixed in with it. The amount of delay (usually three to five seconds) is controlled by increasing or reducing the distance between the machines.

Fripp used this technique to dynamically create recordings containing layer upon layer of electric guitar sounds in a real timefashion. An added advantage was that, by nature of the technique, the complete performances were recorded in their entirety on the original looped tape.

Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa: LA, Early work particularly combined live instruments ith studio (tape) generated sounds, for example “e’re Only in it for the money” (1967) hich uses musique concrete experimentation in the manner of Pierre Henry, inspired by Edgar Varese, also used tape collage to create segues from song to song.

Other techniques include Xenochrony; layering guitar solos from different songs into tracks for a modal, time-shifting feel.

Trent Reznor – Protools

Trent Reznor;

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep12/articles/classic-tracks-0912.htm

Now: Remping: ability to adjust guitar amp during recorded performance, change amps or send one signal to multiple amps. Warp Markers / Flex time to quantise drum recordings and treat audio as midi

Radiohead & Jonny Greenwood’s ambient soundscapes

Radiohead

“Idioteque” (Kid A) was built from a drum machine pattern Jonny Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser. Feeling it “needed chaos”, Greenwood experimented with found sounds and sampling. He gave the unfinished 50-minute recording to Yorke, who said: “I sat there and listened to this 50 minutes. And some of it was just ‘what?’, but then there was this section about 40 seconds long in the middle of it that was absolute genius, and I just cut that up and that was it.” – “Thom Yorke Talks About Life in the Public Eye”. 2006-07-12.

From BBC ‘mixing it’ interview:

(http://www.citizeninsane.eu/t2001-01-20MixingIt.htm)

Jonny: “Yeah. And there’s songs like ‘Treefingers’, which is just one guitar, but people just assume that it isn’t.”

Mark: “And so presumably you’re using the guitar through lots of effects processors, or to trigger samples, so that actually, what is triggered by a guitar doesn’t necessarily sound like a guitar.”

Jonny: “Yeah. That’s pretty much how it happened. Ed just played lots and lots of guitar loops, and was just creating wonderful texture, and Thom turned it into a structure, rather than something aimless, that was all.”

Mark: “That’s the song called ‘Treefingers’?”

Jonny: “That’s right.”

Mark: “It’s quite Eno-ish, isn’t it, in a way?”

Jonny: “Yeah, it is, it’s very… yeah, exactly… It’ll break… it’s quite speaker-breaking as well. It has frequencies in it which can disturb the neighbours, while still being very kind of slow and ambient, having no rhythm in it.”

[Plays ‘Treefingers’]

Robert: “‘Treefingers’ from Radiohead’s latest album Kid A.”

Mark: “I wanted to ask you also about the vocal treatments, ’cause maybe this comes back to what you were saying about being bored with the limitations of your instrument, or trying to find new sounds. So I was really struck by the way sometimes the vocals are very disguised, I mean, particularly on ‘Kid A’, there’s almost a Stephen Hawking sound to the vocal. Is that something you were deliberately trying to do?”

Colin: “With regards to Thom… I think, I suppose, he’s obviously… he’s someone who’s very into the fine voice that he has, and at the same time, you know, he’s always looking for new ways to try and express different personae, and a way of doing that is by treating the voice, you know, and the… I don’t know which track…”

Jonny: “‘Kid A’.”

Mark: “‘Kid A’ was the one which struck me…”

Colin: “Oh yeah.”

Mark: “It does all sorts of things.”

Colin: “Well, that was a vocoder whose notes… he sang through a vocoder, and the notes were triggered by the Ondes Martenot that (to Jonny) you were playing at the same time as he was singing, wasn’t it?”

Jonny: “Yeah, that’s right.”

Colin: “That was pretty mad.”

Jonny Greenwood & Max MSP:

For yet another side to this explorer, beyond the rigid sequencer technologies of Kid A, Mr.Greenwood is experimenting with interactive programs like Max/MSP, and Cycling ‘74 also gets a credit on the most recent album. He thinks it unlikely that he will be producing solo computer music though:

The idea is that taking a laptop off a shelf is like picking up a guitar or an organ. Newer technology, but not better, just different. Having said that, I can’t imagine using it alone.

When we play the song Gloaming live, the laptop takes over for the end section, using a Max/MSP patch which steals sections of what everyone else is doing, and carries on when they all stop. But I don’t use laptops for generating sounds very often, mainly sound manipulation and MIDI generation. I prefer generating sounds other ways.

His experiences with Max/MSP may strike a chord with readers:

I’ve always felt uncomfortable having to use other people’s software to make music. However limitless sequencers, audio editors, and plug-ins claim to be, you still find yourself being forced, however subtlely, to work in certain ways. My copy of Emagic Logic insists on looping the first four bars whenever it can (although it’s good software in lots of ways)… With Max/MSP I finally got to think about sound and MIDI, and their manipulation, in a much purer way… I felt that all direct contact with computers had been taken away from me, until I found Max/MSP.

Pete Townsend’s guitar tone

Pete Townsend Guitar Tone: 1959 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollowbody electric guitar and a late ’50s Fender narrow-panel tweed Bandmaster 3×10” combo amp used on 1971’s Who’s Next, 1973’s Quadrophenia and other albums.

The Gretsch 6120’s “FilterTron” pickups provide decent sustain and good punch, but they are also fairly low-output humbuckers, and provide plenty of string definition and harmonic sparkle. Coupled with the hollow guitar, they excel at anything from the musical feedback that Townshend liked to induce as a recording tool, to an enticing blend of crunchy sparkle that helps power chords and arpeggios alike slice right through the mix. The tweed Fender Bandmaster, for its part, is an extremely rare and desirable amp that produces about 28 watts from a pair of 6L6GC tubes through the unusual speaker complement of three Jensen alnico 10”s. It offers enough clarity to present a yield, shimmer soundstage at clean settings, but breaks up early enough to provide chunky tube overdrive at volume levels that won’t send most delicate condenser and ribbon mics into meltdown. Together, they create “a sound from paradise”, as Townshend told Guitar Playermagazine in 1993, having just used the rig once again to record parts of the latter-day Who album Psychoderelict.

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine – mixing for stereo and mono

Kevin Shields of the group My Bloody Valentine stated:

[Our album] Loveless was meant to sound really good if you play it loud on a ghetto blaster and also if you play it loud on a hi-fi…When people make records, they have treble and basses for everything to kind of tame the mid-range and make it sweeter and more hi-fi sounding using stereo separation, reverb and ambience–to make everything sound big and spacious and wide.…Everything I did is mostly mono: “Soon” is mono, and “To Here Knows When” is mono–there’s no set area of separation. The sense of bigness just comes from the depth of perception. Pet Sounds and Phil Spector’s productions were mono as well–it’s more the balance of frequencies that creates a sense of depth than stereo separation and ambience; they’re not as important. For me, everything that seemed to really affect me didn’t affect me because I heard something coming out of one speaker and something else coming out of another speaker. The classic ’80s version of stereo was basically a drum sound that’s really widened by stereo effects and gated, and the guitars are really panned to extremes and it’s just vocals and drums in the middle with overdubs. It was a corporate, weak sound.

Giorgio Modo vocal technique

Giorgo Modo – disco – I feel Love; Donna Summer – Vocal Treatment: Ading a little chorus and reverb as the verse ‘descends’..

Glynn Johns drum recording technique

Glyn Johns

Glyn Johns is a british musician, engineer, and producer who most notably worked with Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, and even started his career assisting for The Beatles. He really made a name for himself in the annuls of recording legend with his monstrous John Bonham drum sounds on all those Zeppelin records. And the kicker…he only used 4 microphones to do it!

pecifically all you need for this method are 2 overhead mics (ideally large diaphragm condensers), one kick mic (dynamic or condenser), and one snare mic (usually a dynamic). The big picture is that the sound comes from the overheads while the kick and snare mics act as “spot” mics to fatten up those two huge elements of the kit and give you a bit more to mix with.

But before you think this is nothing special, you have to realize that the way these two “overhead” mics work together is very unusual and is part of what makes the Glyn Johns method so interesting.

The method starts with taking your first overhead mic and placing it about 3 to 4 feet directly above the snare (or middle of the kit). It should be pointing down at the kit. Record a little bit and listen back to that one mic. You are listening for a complete balance of the kit. You want to hear a nice blend of snare, toms, and cymbals all in one mic. If you have don’t have enough of the hi and mid toms, then angle the overhead a bit towards the toms. If the cymbals are too abrasive, move the mic up a bit more. Rinse and repeat.

Once you have a good balance of the kit with your first mic, things get a bit interesting. Take your second overhead mic and place it just to the right of  your floor tom, maybe 6 inches above the rim and facing across the the tom towards the snare and hi hat. As you can see this “overhead” mic isn’t overhead at all, rather it is a side fill mic capturing the kit from a different perspective.

The key to getting this mic in phase with your first overhead mic is tomake sure that the grill of the micrphone is exactly the same distance from the center of the snare as the first overhead mic.Simply take a mic cable, have your drummer hold one end of it firmly to the center of the snare as you stretch the cable up to the first overhead and pinch off the distance. Then with your drummer still holding his end firmly to the snare, swing the cable over to the second mic and make sure that mic is lined up with where you are pinching it.

When panned, these two microphones alone should give you a completely balanced, clear, and punch stereo recording of your kit. You should hear the crack of the snare in the center, cymbals all around, and toms punchy and clear. What you will however lack is some obvious low end punch to the kick and some fatness to the snare. That’s where the final two spot mics come into play

With your overheads sounding good, things get simple. Grab your kick mic and place it close to the resonant head or inside the drum. Place it where you get that fullness and attack that you want to compliment your first two mics. With the snare, place your mic a couple of inches above the rim angled across the snare. Experiment with the angle of this mic for big differences in sound. Adjust these two mics to taste to round out your drum sound. Remember,  you already will have the kick and the snare in your overhead mics to some degree so these two close mics should bring what is missing from that initial sound.

• New drum heads (beater and resonant) are a must to getting the best tones out of your kit. For not much money new heads can guarantee dramatically better drum recordings.
• Where you record really affects the sound. To get that classic big Bonham drum sound that Johns was made famous for you  need to record in a big sounding room. Of course even in a smaller space, you can get a great sound. The better the room sounds though, the better your recordings will sound.
• There are no rules. Use this method as a starting point for your recordings if you like. But move things around, experiment, change it up. Rumor has it that this method was discovered by accident anyways, so don’t be afraid of “screwing things up”.