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Rock music has stuck with the formula its fans know and love: big, bombastic drums, walls of distorted electric guitars & at the front of it all a singer belting out powerful, brazen vocals. A distinctive tonality comes with nearly every voice in rock that exudes confidence and authority in a way that no other genre consistently does. As the mix engineer on those sessions, how can you be sure that you’re enhancing your singer’s performance to showcase those features?
Truth be told – turning up the gain on the amp and the effects of gain reduction aren’t very dissimilar at all. They both add harmonic distortion and saturation to a signal. They both work to effectively even out the peaks of a signal, resulting in a smoother, more even sound. So if they’re virtually doing a lot of things the same, how does gain reduction stand out from other processes in the recording studio?
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When it comes to working on mixing a hip-hop track, great low end is expected from your audience. They want something clean and punchy – a kick drum and sub combination that they can feel. To accomplish this, there are...
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Today, the same aggression and raw performances are there, but the technology has changed the way we approach recording and mixing grunge.
So what’s an engineer or mixer to do when their cleaned tom tracks don’t have the same body and decay they did in the session?
