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Pablo Ramirez
Wow! Chapter 18 already! It seems like it's gone by so fast but MAN have I learned so much! So as the title says, "acoustics and monitoring" is what this lesson covered. There is quite a few things you should know about acoustics, first, and most importantly, low frequency build up. Explaining it by the definition in the ebook and in my own words is far too complicated for me to explain. As much as I would like to explain it I just cannot find the right words I would have to draw it out for you (as my mentor did for me). My mentor pulled up a sinewave on his computer in the control room that had a lot of low end and he played it for a bit. First we stood in front of it from the listening position, stood up and we can hear a lot more low end when you would stand, it was louder. As great as his control room is acoustically set and the thousands of dollars he put into building it, he showed me parts that would not be great for listening to. We walked towards the corner and the closer to the corner on the opposite side of the console it was as if there were no low end listening from the back. As we walked around we heard it different in different parts of the room. It blew my mind how that little to huge difference it makes when your not sitting in the listening position and still have your room professionally treated acousticaly! He also had also flown someone down to tune his monitors to his room, a professional that does monitor tuning for a living! As Jim has told me in the past this chapter says putting your studio monitors on your desk or console is a bad idea. You'll get a lot of reflections coming off of it if you have a mixer or outboard gear or there can be vibrations and plenty of other scenarios of why not to have them there. Stands behind the console and away from the wall is the best we hear a lot of low end the closer it is to the wall and we tend to cut off low end from those frequencies because of that problem! Kind of like the problem I had in the past with my old "mixing" headphones I got rid of, Beats by Dre!
I sat in and watched him use his techniques today for mixing 8 songs of a client he has. He didn't track it he just got the files sent to him. Man this musician was very artistically talented! He composed the beats and sang all the vocals. It was crazy how he sang, he can sing background vocals in so many layers and make it sound as if it were actually different people, from a female singer to different male singers! This guy also did some crazy stuff with his beats, you'll hear a song sound jazzy and tribal and all of a sudden flipped into some techno type of stuff (that was only 1 song) and other crazy things that blended well on each song. After the songs were mixed and not completely some things have to be re-recorded, mainly vocals, I got to finish my Metal mix I was working on last week. I referenced the same song as last time from Megadeath. I went in and touched up minor nuances I didn't have in the mix before and man this mix has been my BEST! My mentor again told me things to look out for and when I would ask a question on how to do something he wouldn't tell me how to do it he would switch it back to me and ask me the question in different words that I had just asked and it helped me understand what I needed done and I got it! Big thanks to Jim and his teachings!
