First Basic Production Walkthrough?!?

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Hey guys, Ive been trying to keep track of this forum for a little bit now, but it's real hard for me to pick up anything starting from scratch (in terms of music production knowledge). Hope this doesn't seem too noobish of me but I was wondering if the smart people on this board could give me a small walkthrough (with specifics) on how to do some real basic productions on a rock/metal song. Nothing too fancy, just walk me through the "necessary" steps of mixing a song to qualify it for the "produced" title, hope that makes sense. Im using Cubase, and I can get whichever plugins you guys recommend or try to deal with the stuff that comes with Cubase. Just would love to know how to get my songs to sound more powerful with more depth etc.. like which frequencies to boost for which instruments and compress guitars?!? drums?!? and any other stuff that is really needed in a decent song production. Would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks.

 

[Ermz]

There's a bunch of stuff to read up on so that you get a greater understanding of what it is that you're actually trying to do. Most of the time, starting producers will get into it, wanting something 'good' yet not knowing what exactly constitutes 'good' in their mind. It's important to read up on all the theory so that you understand exactly what it is that you want, and how to achieve it.

I'll link you to a few sites that helped me, but there is one important one amongst them. It has a collection of all of Andy's major tips given on this forum. It's invaluable... especially his EQ guide.

Anyway, here are some sites for ya.

The main one: http://www.martyfireball.f2s.com/DOD/getrecording.htm

Compression theory: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/B425578C027460898625661000745390

Equalization: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/AFFCBC3A0382C83A862565D6001E69A8

Decibels:
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/EA68A9018C905AFB8625675400514576

Dynamics Processing:
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/F0057F0FA68D59DF8625664B00130E57

Seriously, read through all that, and alot of things will become alot clearer to you.

For VST plug-ins in Cubase I recommend the 'Waves Platinum Pack'. It's a nice bundle which will set you up with all the filtering tools you'll hopefully ever need, haha.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Thanks so much Moonlapse...I've got some serious reading up to do...but this is great..thanks again.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Hmmm...well Moonlapse, you are definitely a fellow Opeth fan, what kind of EQ stuff was done to the guitars on Blackwater Park as opposed to Orchid/Morningrise?!? I know they definitely used extremely different setups (guitars/amps), but what kind of frequencies did Swano cut down/boost as opposed to what Wilson touched?!? Seems like some of that EQ stuff I read was really helpful for other instruments, but Im still having a hard time finding a good sound for the guitars. What is a common thing to do to guitars to give them a real punch?!? I tinkered with compression and giving them an attack of about 50 ms, seemed to help a bit, but anything I can specifically do with the EQ or?!?

Also, one other question, what kind of EQ settings do you think were used to get that poppy yet warm and clear acoustic tone on the Still Life album (Opeth)?!?

 

[Ermz]

You'd have to ask each respective producer. It comes down to every bit of gear used in the studio influencing the tone.

However Opeth are very notorious when it comes to overdubbing guitar tracks. If you want to come off with a sound like Still Life, you'd probably want to lay off the gain a bit and layer the rhythm guitars about 3 or 4 times. Make sure to pan out to give the recording more clarity.

Apart from that, I don't think I can help. You'd need to ask Wilson or Swano what they did.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

When you say pan out, what specifically do you mean?!? There's usually two different riffs playing at any given section of my songs, so I double track each riff, total of four guitars playing at once, but then I mix the two respecitve riffed guitars down, making only two different guitar tracks for final tweaking, so pan one left a tad and one right?!?

 

[Ermz]

Well the way Andy does it is do 4 tracks for each riff. So I believe you'd do one panned hard left, one mid-left, one mid-right and one hard right. That can give a full sound, or a muddy one, depending on whether you're careful or not. So if say both guitars are doing a backing part, but its different for each guitar, you'd track the hard right/mid-right ones as the one guitar part, and the hard left/mid-left as the other guitar part. Then you'd add whatever lead ideas you had in mind, if you had any at all.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

I didn't want to make a whole stupid new thread dedicated to such a stupid question, so maybe someone can answer it in here. Whenever I mix down my songs, it seems that they play a little quieter than other professional mp3's that I have on my hard drive etc. What are the various (or easiest) solutions to this, basically, what do you do to maximize the volume of a song once you've produced it?!? Why do some songs sound louder than others while their frequency levels appear to be the same generally?!?

 

[Ermz]

That all comes down to the 'mastering' phase, as it's called. Once you mix the track down into a single .wav file (stick with 24-bit up to this point, only downsample to 16 after mastering) you should do what you feel necessary to get the volume up. Most people at least use a little bit of limiting, which lets you crank the volume but attenuates some of the highest peaks in your recording.

If you're serious about wanting the volume on par with most modern metal recordings, then you'll probably need to use some compression. I'm really bad at this so I can't give many pointers.

But some simple hard-limiting at the mastering stage should help you get decent volume out of the recordings.

 

[SickBoy]

I'd just recommend articles on www.soundonsound.com as well.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

I didn't want to make a whole stupid new thread dedicated to such a stupid question, so maybe someone can answer it in here. Whenever I mix down my songs, it seems that they play a little quieter than other professional mp3's that I have on my hard drive etc. What are the various (or easiest) solutions to this, basically, what do you do to maximize the volume of a song once you've produced it?!? Why do some songs sound louder than others while their frequency levels appear to be the same generally?!?

Theres a plugin called PSP Vintage warmer.

Get that and use the mix finalise 1/2 or 3 setting. It balances out the frequencies a little and is louder than god farting.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Theres a plugin called PSP Vintage warmer.

Get that and use the mix finalise 1/2 or 3 setting. It balances out the frequencies a little and is louder than god farting.

HAHAHAHA

Great, Ill definitely try to find that plugin, if it can be heard louder than lightning!!

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I will look into this!!

Another question. When you make the final mixdown after production, it still needs to be mastered, so you mix it down as a .wav still?!? And then after mastering you mix it down as a .mp3?!? Or what?!? When songs are put onto the actual discs what are they put on their as?!? .wavs?!? Or something not related to computer music formats such as this?!?

 

[2dark]

The files need to be in 44.1kHz and 16bit.
If you're working PC based you probably save them as .wav files.
Audio CDs are Red Book CDs. That's the standart format for Audio CDs.
If your use Samplitude, Wavelab, Sequoia or other software that is used
in Mastering you can burn the CDs directly in that software.
(But the files should be still 44.1kHz, 16Bit)

If you use the Disc just for personal use you can burn it with every software
that says it can burn "Audio Disc". If you're about to send it off to a CD printing plant,
than this is a no no. Always use professional software or a studio for that purpose.

Also check what kind of disc the manufacturer of your CD burner recomends and use
the lowest speed for burning the disc to avoid errors.

 

[Razorjack]

Never use .mp3's for anything other than putting your tracks on the net.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

HAHAHAHA

Great, Ill definitely try to find that plugin, if it can be heard louder than lightning!!

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I will look into this!!

Another question. When you make the final mixdown after production, it still needs to be mastered, so you mix it down as a .wav still?!? And then after mastering you mix it down as a .mp3?!? Or what?!? When songs are put onto the actual discs what are they put on their as?!? .wavs?!? Or something not related to computer music formats such as this?!?

The .cda format is roughly the same as a 44khz 16bit wav file.

 

[zenx]

If you're about to send it off to a CD printing plant,
than this is a no no. Always use professional software or a studio for that purpose.

I mastered one big file with all the tracks in T-racks, and then used Nero for burning and creating the different track indexes on the cd. Is Nero a no-no?

 

[Soundscaper]

nero is fine too, after all it is just bits ending up on a disc. What type of burner and what burning speed affects way more than the software used these days.

I've used all kinds of software to prepare discs for pressingplants and never had any masters coming back, or cd's sounding awful after pressing.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Ok, another question, my band tried recording drums at the drummer's house, we just tried to achieve best possible sound for a demo with just one mic (since we don't have a set of mics, just to see how terrible it would sound). But we had a big problem of the drummer not being able to hear the track or even a click track playing back through the headphones so we had t burn it to a disc and crank the volume through a shitty old cd player. Is there any trick to doing this that I don't know?!? I cranked the computer's volume and the volume of the click track in CUbase...so WTF?!? How do they do it in the studio?!? Just better headphones Im guessing?!?

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

Don't record drums in a little room for starters hehe.

The only thing to which out for when mastering to cd is not to overlimit it, it'll skip on older cd players. (Thanks to James "The Legend" Murphey for that advice.)

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Well, it wasn't in a small room, it was in a basement...Hmm.....stupid.