Space Is the Place, Part 2

Jan 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Myles Boisen

           
 

OPEN UP YOUR MIXES BY AVOIDING "SPACE INVADERS"

Panning reverb to the side opposite from a dry track is a hip way to create vivid, dimensional space and draw a listener into the mix. This trick is one of my favorites to use on guitar solos, percussion, effects, and vocal accents. It is also possible to employ long, splashy reverbs this way, because the reverb return will be mono or narrow stereo and therefore will not dominate the entire stereo spectrum.

Manual or automated panning is a good way to energize the horizontal dimension in a mix. A Leslie cabinet or stereo Leslie simulation can help introduce some lateral motion into your recordings.

Another way to add space horizontally is to employ asymmetrical effects. Start by duplicating the desired track(s), then pan the original track to one side. Pan the copied track to the opposite side and try out some effects (modulated effects like flange, chorus, and tremolo work great), distortion, or radical EQ or compression on it.

Stereo keyboards, Leslie effects, stereo acoustic guitars, and the like sound full and can be relied on to add a lush sense of space to sparse productions. But as great as most stereo sources sound, adding too many can choke the horizontal spectrum of a mix. For this reason, I usually observe a limit of two stereo instruments (not including drums) in a mix, and pan these sources opposite each other with minimal overlap. Generally, with the occasional exception of synth pads and organ parts that are mixed low, any additional stereo tracks in the arrangement are panned in mono or very narrow stereo.

Spaced Out

Conceptualizing the space between the speakers as a three-dimensional realm — rather than as a line between two points — opens up limitless possibilities for the mixer's craft. And hopefully, thinking of mixes in terms of balance, symmetry, and space will help you get over some typical production hurdles.

The tips and methods described here are certainly not intended to be hard-and-fast rules. Nor does this information need to be embraced totally or exclusively. Consider these 3-D mixing concepts as a jumping-off point for your own creativity — a way to make audio dimensional, and to transform the mixing space into a sonic sculpture or an artist's canvas.

Myles Boisen (mylesboisen.com) consumes significant quantities of space and time at Guerrilla Recording and the Headless Buddha Mastering Lab in Oakland, California. Thanks to Jonathan Segel, David Blatty, Kevin Cunningham and the Goat Family, Freddi Price, Wink Paine, and Rube Waddell.

Compression: Don't Overdo It

Loud is good, and most of us have to use some compression to keep our final mixes competitive in this increasingly noisy world. But louder is not always better. Level-headed mixing and mastering professionals, joined by other voices of sanity in the music business, have been warning for years that the loudness war is simply a losing battle. To illustrate that point, this year even hard-rock fans are blogging that the new Metallica CD has suffered sonically from mixes that were brickwall limited before they reached the mastering lab.

So what are the implications for compression in terms of space and 3-D mixing? When a digital mix becomes squashed with compression, the foreground tracks can't get any louder once a high proportion of peaks have reached digital zero (0 dBfs). The background elements — vocal nuances, chordal decays, room sound, and so on — come to the foreground, hence the phrase “in your face.” And this sounds exciting, for a little while. But without some quiet dynamics, there is no longer any meaningful reference for what loud is.

In 3-D terms, if there is no background, your mix becomes a flat plane with no depth and no empty space in the horizontal (imaging) dimension. Similarly, spaciousness is squeezed out and listening fatigue takes over as a result of overcompression crowding the vertical (frequency) dimension.

Tips to Avoid “Space Invaders”

• Avoid muddying your mix with too much compression. Make sure that all compressor attack times are at least 10 ms. Combine judicious use of track compression with mild mix-bus compression.

• Keep arrangements relatively sparse. Decide what a real-world band would be for each song, and try not to add extra parts beyond that.

• Avoid excessive doubling of parts.

• Consider varying dynamics through the song by breaking down and building up the mix (through muting and unmuting) as the song progresses.

• Try panning a reverb return to the opposite side of the track it's affecting.

• Consider adding motion to your mix by automating pans and/or using rotating-speaker effects on selected elements.

• Avoid clutter by limiting the amount of wide stereo tracks in your mix to two. Pan other stereo sources more tightly or make them mono.

• Don't overdo additive EQ. Try to make an equal EQ cut to compensate for level added by boosting.

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