Britney Spears' production has got me wondering...

[pcm]

What you are hearing is the work of highly trained and experienced professionals. Magazine articles and gear ads like to imply that you too can do all the amazing things that the pros do, if you just buy this piece of gear or that. But it takes a lifetime to become an expert at anything. That is the difference you are hearing, nothing more, nothing less.

Oh, and they use Pro Tools.

(Just kidding......

[Proklaim Recording]

Wow! this is great stuff. Here is a link to some videos on the subject of sidechaining. The videos are not about DP, but can still be helpful to show what is going on. They helped me to understand more. Hope they help you.

http://www.wholinks2me.com/videos/search/sidechaining/


PR

[miller325]

I'll add my two cents for Scritti Politti's "Perfect Way", Frou Frou's "Let Go", and the music of Steve Earle. But it can be a strange world: Miles Davis covered "Perfect Way" and Steve Earle's new Washington Square Serenade CD uses drum loops. My favorite song of late has been Down Here Below from Washington Square.

Philip

[Shooshie]

I would say yes to side-chaining, multi-band compression, notching, and I'm going to make a guess (based on what you told us, more than my own listening) that they are using the L3 Multi-Maximizer. If not, then they should. That is one amazing piece of gear. Er... virtual gear. I'll explain a little of how it works, and maybe you'll see why it can do what you're talking about:

1) It's a limiter, based on the L1 and L2 technology, which is fantastic to begin with. The Waves limiters are seamless, with no artifacts. You can limit the heck out of a track and it doesn't give you a lot of clues, except for the obvious one: it's loud. Depending on where you placed the threshold, it may still be very musical, or it may have flattened it out into a solid brick of sound, but it still does so better than any other limiter I've used or heard. (that I'm aware of, anyway)

2) It also combines the interface and technology of the C4 and C5 (Linear Phase Multi-Band Processor) in that it gives you 5 flexible bands of operation with similar controls.

3) But it is not merely a combination of the C5 and th L2. It starts from a different approach. Rather than have a threshold, the "threshold" slider is actually a "priority" slider. It sets the priority for limiting in each band. If you move it down all the way, it sets the priority as low as it can go. Limiting in that band will take a back seat relative to the other bands. The sound in that band has to get pretty loud before it starts feeding the limiter. But when it finally DOES get loud enough, it takes its place in the mix and sounds as big as everything else. This is different from EQ or compression. EQ would rob the sound of that band no matter how loud the volume. By comparison, EQ sounds like cotton stuffed in the sound at that band's frequency range. Compression flattens the sound downward while limiting can actually expand it upward.

4) Because of the principles outlined above, the L3 can sound like it's side-chaining or notching around a sound. It can make a sound entirely different when it's quiet as opposed to when it's loud. By shoving the higher partial down to lower priority, they only come fully into play at the peaks of the sound, so the louder sound has a brighter timbre than a quieter sound, which will be darker. That's just one example of many things it can do.


Little, if any, attenuation in the extreme bands. Inner bands are experiencing some expansion and limiting, but not the outside bands.


The outside bands are now kicking in pretty well, which is to say that all bands are being expanded and limited.

The "Separation" control works like a knee in compression or the Q in EQ -- how closely the bands are associated with each other. Does the attenuation drop off sharply between bands? Or does it bridge the gap so that there is a slope between the bands? You can REALLY tell the difference. In these examples, the separation is full.

I don't know if I've conveyed anything here or not. It's hard to put this into words, but maybe I'll figure it out better so that I can say it more concisely and effectively later. I don't mean to sound as though this is a panacea for everything, but applied the applications for which I bought it, it's great. I can imagine it being used for the Britney tracks, but I may be wrong. If I heard them again, I might have a better idea.

Shooshie

[Frodo]

It seems odd that nobody has mentioned the fact that they are working on the best gear in the world. No offense to anyone on this board but most if not all of us are either mixing in the box or on some mediocre mixer. They have access to every piece of analog and digital gear on earth. Not that the gear makes good records but some of that clarity you are talking about comes from the ammount of headroom in the gear they are using... That being said while I am amazed by the way those records sound I also must point out that I HATE the way those reocrds sound......

If you are an engineer who always or only works with artists whose music you love, then consider yourself blessed.

Reality dictates that these experiences are fewer and farther between than most people would dare admit. That doesn't mean that one should settle for mediocrity, either. Anything can have a certain "quality" and "integrity" where production values are concerned.

Short of getting into the discussion of having to have ProTools or hundreds of thousands of dollars of analog gear, what FMiguelez is after can indeed be done ITB with virtual processing. A very good friend of mine who runs a studio gets an AMAZING sound this way. With great mics and hardware pres, everything stays ITB until mastering where it's summed through only two pieces of analog gear-- a comp and an EQ. That's it. And he uses DP with UAD-1 and Altiverb as his main plugins.

Even millions of dollars of the best equipment are not going to render the right results if they are used by the wrong hands and ears.

I'm a little confused by the assertion about all the best gear being used followed by the expression of hating the sound. That alone says something profound about the nature and purpose of the original question.

What FMiguelez is talking about is strictly skill-related, and what he seeks will serve him well no matter what equipment he's using. I admire him for baring his soul here in an effort to embrace his desire to improve his skills. I'm less surprised by the lack of discussion about expensive gear and much more suprised by the fact that more people haven't shown the courage to express what he has expressed.

There was a time when a recording session involved, among others, a producer, a composer, an arranger, instrumentalists and vocalists, and an engineer. The producer took on the role of the arranger. The producer-arranger took on the role of the composer. The producer-arranger-composer was most often one of the instrumentalists.

Enter the DAW, and the role of mixing and mastering engineer was suddenly dumped into the laps of anyone who bought a DAW. In a nutshell, private studios popped up all over the place while the ones that fell apart with the critical engineering aspects were simply called "project studios" or "pre-production facilities". That is to say that if you wanted something finished it had to be ported elsewhere for a variety of reasons, good or ill.

The DAW forces the user to wear many hats and to master many skills if his artistic sensitivities dictate as much.

I agree that there are not enough hours in a day or years in a single lifetime to fulfill a mastery of so many full-time jobs. But I do believe that what FMiguelez is after can be done with what he has as long as he recognizes the differences in sound from his source CD and his own mixes in the room he uses with the gear he already has. The point at which it is time to spend more money on higher end gear will make itself known. At that point, he will understand when some plugin or outboard piece of gear isn't cutting it for him.

[Guitar Gaz]

James Brown definitely had side chaining going on - didn't you ever see him do that dance, where he's standing on 1 foot, and then all of a sudden, as if pulled by an invisible chain, he starts moving sideways?! Side Chaining, right there, Gaz.

That's when he is being taken to the bridge isn't it?

I tend to take a Luddite approach when talk of all this gear and fx and plugins etc start to seem so important - most of it is used to polish turds - and be honest most people listen to music now on mp3's on tiny earphones, in the car, on ghettoblasters etc. Perhaps thats why you need all this gear so that it sounds loud on even crap speakers and is to make up for the difference between mp3 and raw audio. Not sure its musical though.........

[newrigel]

.and selective EQ.

That's MOST likely it...
Making EQ POCKETS and having each instrument not invading the next instruments frequency spectrum... Plus, some of that analog bass stuff just has a real FAT sound and stands out in a mix...
I know guys that won't let go of their old E-mu SP-12 or AKAI MPC 2000 samplers (12 bit) because of the dirty street sound they achieve...

[monkey man]

Just a reminder to all to keep your mits off Britney, and Paris for that matter.
Dem gals is mah buddies.

Sorry. That's all I've got.
I'm here to learn from the pros... carry on.

[emulatorloo]

FM, how could I forget Miguel Bosé -- "Bandido," "Salamandre," "XXX" and "Bajo El Signo de Cain" to me are real "classics" in this genre too -- great production, great songwriting.

His new duets CD "Papito" has some pretty stellar production too. Standouts for me from disc one:


Morena mia -- w/ Julieta Venegas
Si Tú No Vuelves -- w/ Shakira
Nada Particular -- w/Juanes
Amante bandido -- w/ Alaska

Como un lobo -- w/ Bimba Bosé WOW!

Lo que hay es lo que ves -- w/ Michael Stipe


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[FMiguelez]

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Man, I LOVE this Forum



Shooshie:

Well, I can see now why you were so upset about not being able to use your L3 for all that time. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and contributing with abandonment
Now that Waves have responded, I'll have no problem upgrading to the Diamond bundle, and try all those thing you talked about. I do have the small version of it, but it doesn't have many parameters. Now, THIS, one the other hand...

The DAW forces the user to wear many hats and to master many skills if his artistic sensitivities dictate as much.

I agree that there are not enough hours in a day or years in a single lifetime to fulfill a mastery of so many full-time jobs.

Exactly. And add to that the fact that different styles of music call for different skil sets, and we'd pretty much need a couple of life times, if not more, to do a decent job in those many areas. Orhcestration and composition alone can easily take decades to attain mastery and produce meaningful results
Man, is so easy to feel overwhelmed.

Thank you, Frodo, for your wisdom and your words of encouragement. I really appreceiate them.


After some investigation, I decided I'll get those Waves books/courses.

http://register.waves.com/wavesstore/storemain.aspx

I mean, what te hell. It'll be a nice way to spend X-mas vacation, I suppose. They can not possibly be too bad, and i'm sure I'll pick up a few tricks and understand things more. They seem to give me enough of the info and hands-on approach I need at this stage I am right now.

I've come to realize that I've reached a certain comfort zone level with my own music, where knowing a few things of a few plugs get me good results. BUT, if I want to take my productions to the next level, I obviously need to get into these things much deeper. I need to experiment more, and do deep with every plug (to learn it inside out), and this electronic music is the perfect style to do that.
It can also be a creativity booster. I mostly work with orchestral music. I do a lot of Jingle writing, so I do get to do a lot of different styles and all, but it's different. I definitely need to get out of my comfort zone and try new and more advanced things.

The term "notching" and "notch EQ" have come up a few times above. I confess I never heard of that before. A quick Google search told me it means EQing with very narrow bands. Coudl someone please cite an example where notching a band so narrowly would be called for? Are they a "special" kind of EQ in terms of how it deals with the sound of the narrowed bands? I ask this because I've tried using very small Q's when searching for a particular frequency (with my Waves' Q10), but if you go too far you basically get a harmonic note. You can almost hear a definite pitch if you go too far. Is that precisely the point? Or these notch EQs deal with that differently?

FM, how could I forget Miguel Bosé -- "Bandido," "Salamandre," "XXX" and "Bajo El Signo de Cain" to me are real "classics" in this genre too -- great production, great songwriting.

Funny you mentioned that. My girlfriend just went to see him at his concert a few days ago. I guess I won't have any problems checking his stuff out, she's got ALL his albums
I've heard him lots of times before, of course, but more like when riding in the car, or in the supermarket, etc, so I've heard it, but not LISTENED.

Thank you all for spending time here and for sharing your knowledge. More comments are more than welcome.

Saludos a todos!!

[Tripi]

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Actually I like pretty much anything EXCEPT reggaeton.

ahhh..... that hurts. Country over Reggaeton? Maybes not.


FMiguelez - it sounds to me that you are really interested in the production aspect of the B.S. tracks. I've heard some of them, and they are well produced, but don't consider these to be the best examples of good production. Take a listen to some of BT's tracks on "This Binary Universe" or "Emotional Technology". The production quality of these tracks is so impressive because so much of it happens in a digital environment. There are vocals, and live instruments on some of the tracks, but they fit in so seemlessly with the synthesis part of what he does. The key is that he is sooooo careful about what the synth parts are doing, and locking them into his grid. The sounds are also very original. He didn't just pull up Stylus and pick a drum beat. Even if you were more into classical or orchestral music, take a listen to his score for the movie "Stealth". Fine blend of synth + (live) orchestra.

If I can add to the production listening list:
BT - Emotional Technology (esp. Somnambulist)
Mirwais - Production (solo album), and Madonna's "Music"
Esthero - Breath From Another
Rez - How I do (same producer as Esthero)

Keep in mind too that no amount of fancy shmancy gear will get you anywhere without good writing & good performance. Which begs the question..... who produced that B.S. album anyways?

[FMiguelez]

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Cool. Thank you for your listening list suggestons, Tripi. I'll check out BT. That rings a bell. Isn't he the producer who got his studio stolen, or something like that?
If so, pity I know that and not his music

Keep in mind too that no amount of fancy shmancy gear will get you anywhere without good writing & good performance.

Totally agreed. I would add to that statement that no matter what amazing gear you have, it won't do any good if you don't have the skills to master it and make it rock.

What good would a Neve console do to me at this point? I probably wouldn't even know where the power switch is

But in a few years, maybe...

[Tripi]

.

Cool. Thank you for your listening list suggestons, Tripi. I'll check out BT. That rings a bell. Isn't he the producer who got his studio stolen, or something like that?
If so, pity I know that and not his music

Yes. That was BT. Happened last year. Case in point why we should all have studio insurance.

[Shooshie]

James Brown definitely had side chaining going on - didn't you ever see him do that dance, where he's standing on 1 foot, and then all of a sudden, as if pulled by an invisible chain, he starts moving sideways?! Side Chaining, right there, Gaz.

That's when he is being taken to the bridge isn't it?

I tend to take a Luddite approach when talk of all this gear and fx and plugins etc start to seem so important - most of it is used to polish turds - and be honest most people listen to music now on mp3's on tiny earphones, in the car, on ghettoblasters etc. Perhaps thats why you need all this gear so that it sounds loud on even crap speakers and is to make up for the difference between mp3 and raw audio. Not sure its musical though.........

Nobody would doubt the truth of what you're saying here. My approach, however, is quite different. I'm not recording real orchestras and pianos and bands. I've done a lot of that in my life. In earlier times, I spent most of my time with room treatments, microphone setup (this can take days to get the best sound), preamp quality, and all the things that go with recording analog instruments in real space into a digital medium. That's a lifetime of learning, right there, but that's not what I'm doing now. I'm recording virtual instruments with the ambition of making them sound so good that people will listen and not be distracted by the "fake" sound of the VI's. One only needs one set of instruments: the ones that are convincing. It's nice to have others for variety, but I keep looking for that "holy grail" of VI's, the ones that sound like an orchestra when I perform them into the tracks. I'm pretty good at the performance part; I'm not worried about that. But getting them to sound real? GEEEZZZ!!! Let me tell you, it's not going to happen without a boatload of that hi-tech gear that we've been warned so much to avoid.

The best among those hi-tech doo-dads is Altiverb. With it, I am confident that I can get the sound 90% there. But that other 10% is the hardest. I've got to find instruments that seem to play a chord in real space. You know... where you hear the chord and its difference and combinaton pitches, and it sounds like those intervals are happening right there between the trumpet and the oboe. Holographic. Like you could walk around it and hear it from the other side. And the instruments themselves... even the best Vi's I've heard are not really like "real" instruments. They may sound like it as long as they are playing one note, but when they start moving around, it gives them away. I've got to process them to get them where I want them.

Waves processors help me get that. Some do, anyway. And though I have yet to achieve "TOTAL" realism, I've gotten consistently closer. I don't know of a tutorial for this. It's just step-by-step, feeling your way along. But it's the only way I'll ever direct my own orchestra in a studio. It's this or nothing at all.

So... moral of story: processors are not evil. They're necessary. It's just that unless we keep a "control" track handy to refer to constantly to keep our ears centered, we get off-track. We start applying too much of a good thing, and pretty soon we've got a huge mess. I've been there. I've returned. And while I don't want to go back, I'm sure I will a multitude of times until I find the sweet spot. I use processors to whatever extent the moment requires, and sometimes that's pretty heavy. Other times it's pretty transparent. Just depends.

I just wanted to speak up and give the rationale for using processors freely and without guilt. They are good. We're in a new ballpark now, a whole new recording world that changes with each new wave of technology. Each new approach to sampled instruments makes it necessary for us to go back to a zero mix and start over. But I have yet to find an approach that works like the old analog methods. It's just not the same.

Shooshie

[emulatorloo]

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FM, how could I forget Miguel Bosé

Funny you mentioned that. My girlfriend just went to see him at his concert a few days ago. I guess I won't have any problems checking his stuff out, she's got ALL his albums

That's fantastic -- I am so happy for her . . . I would love to see him perform!

She has great taste in music, and I think in boyfriends too!

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