Recording & Mixing

In the third and final part of this series, Rob Toulson focuses on recording drums and talks us through the issue of frequency cancellation in a multiple mic setup, details how to choose the recording sweet spot in a room and explains the various stereo mic technique options that are available.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:52 - Phase Coherence
03:00 - Time Delays
05:10 - Comb Filtering
07:53 - Flipping The Polarity
12:22 - Choosing A Recording Space
14:56 - Mic Choice And Placement
17:43 - Stereo Techniques
18:08 - Spaced Pair Technique
19:02 - Glyn Johns Mic Technique
20:12 - Coincident Pair Technique
21:16 - ORTF Technique
22:20 - Mid-Side Technique
24:30 - Comparing The Techniques
25:22 - Other Mic Techniques

Professor Rob Toulson Biog
Rob is Director of RT60 Ltd, who develop mobile apps for musicians and sound engineers. RT60’s iDrumTune Pro app assists drummers with learning the skills of drum tuning and has been the number one music app in over 100 countries since its launch in 2012. More recently, Rob and RT60 developed Songzap, which simplifies the process of recording and capturing musical ideas, enabling songwriters to focus exclusively on their creativity.

Rob stared his career as a mechanical engineer with a doctorate in digital signal processing, before following his passion and moving into the field of music technology and specialising in percussion acoustics and audio software development. Rob has held a number of academic research roles in his career, including Professor of Creative Industries at University of Westminster and Director of the CoDE Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. Rob’s also a successful musician, music producer and sound designer, having worked with many artists including Talvin Singh, Wilfy Williams and Mediaeval Baebes, who have previously topped the UK Classical Music Chart.

Rob is author of a number of music related books and articles, including ‘Drum Sound and Drum Tuning’, published by Routledge in 2021, and co-editor of the ‘Innovation In Music’ book series, which is also published by Routledge. His sound design work has been included in films by BAFTA Winner Shreepali Patel and has been showcased at Glastonbury Festival, The V&A and The Natural History Museum.

https://www.robtoulson.com/
https://www.rt60.uk/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

In part 2 of this 3-part series, Rob Toulson explains how to optimise the drum sound for recording by experimenting with drum head, damping system, tuning and drum shell combinations.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:09 - Drum Heads
01:44 - Mersenne's Laws
04:05 - 1 and 2 Ply Drum Heads
05:45 - Damping Systems
07:10 - Centre Dot Drum Heads
09:27 - Choosing Your Timbre
11:44 - Selecting Your Drum Shells
14:25 - Optimising The Whole Kit
19:41 - Tuning The Kick Drum

Professor Rob Toulson Biog
Rob is Director of RT60 Ltd, who develop mobile apps for musicians and sound engineers. RT60’s iDrumTune Pro app assists drummers with learning the skills of drum tuning and has been the number one music app in over 100 countries since its launch in 2012. More recently, Rob and RT60 developed Songzap, which simplifies the process of recording and capturing musical ideas, enabling songwriters to focus exclusively on their creativity.

Rob stared his career as a mechanical engineer with a doctorate in digital signal processing, before following his passion and moving into the field of music technology and specialising in percussion acoustics and audio software development. Rob has held a number of academic research roles in his career, including Professor of Creative Industries at University of Westminster and Director of the CoDE Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. Rob’s also a successful musician, music producer and sound designer, having worked with many artists including Talvin Singh, Wilfy Williams and Mediaeval Baebes, who have previously topped the UK Classical Music Chart.

Rob is author of a number of music related books and articles, including ‘Drum Sound and Drum Tuning’, published by Routledge in 2021, and co-editor of the ‘Innovation In Music’ book series, which is also published by Routledge. His sound design work has been included in films by BAFTA Winner Shreepali Patel and has been showcased at Glastonbury Festival, The V&A and The Natural History Museum.

https://www.robtoulson.com/
https://www.rt60.uk/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Rob Toulson dives into the science behind how drums produce sound in this three-part series. In part one he talks us through the different pitches, frequencies and overtones, to help producers, recording engineers and indeed drummers to better understand the essentials of tuning.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:16 - Dealing With Multiple Frequencies
05:19 - Tuning The Fundamental Frequency
10:56 - Smoothing Out Modulation
13:31 - Harmonic Overtones
19:12 - Controlling Decay And Damping
23:11 - Summary

Professor Rob Toulson Biog
Rob is Director of RT60 Ltd, who develop mobile apps for musicians and sound engineers. RT60’s iDrumTune Pro app assists drummers with learning the skills of drum tuning and has been the number one music app in over 100 countries since its launch in 2012. More recently, Rob and RT60 developed Songzap, which simplifies the process of recording and capturing musical ideas, enabling songwriters to focus exclusively on their creativity.

Rob stared his career as a mechanical engineer with a doctorate in digital signal processing, before following his passion and moving into the field of music technology and specialising in percussion acoustics and audio software development. Rob has held a number of academic research roles in his career, including Professor of Creative Industries at University of Westminster and Director of the CoDE Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. Rob’s also a successful musician, music producer and sound designer, having worked with many artists including Talvin Singh, Wilfy Williams and Mediaeval Baebes, who have previously topped the UK Classical Music Chart.

Rob is author of a number of music related books and articles, including ‘Drum Sound and Drum Tuning’, published by Routledge in 2021, and co-editor of the ‘Innovation In Music’ book series, which is also published by Routledge. His sound design work has been included in films by BAFTA Winner Shreepali Patel and has been showcased at Glastonbury Festival, The V&A and The Natural History Museum.

https://www.robtoulson.com/
https://www.rt60.uk/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Eddie Bazil dives into some of his favourite plug-ins and gives us a series of examples on how to use these tools creatively for designing unique and interesting beats, sequences and mixes.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:21 - What Makes A Tool Creative?
03:25 - Example 1: A Cinematic Piano Effect
07:03 - Example 2: Creating A More Dynamic Beat
10:19 - Example 3: Sequencer-Based Multi Effects On A Drum Beat
13:26 - Example 4: Reshaping A Musical Sequence
21:21 - Example 5: A Sound Design Exercise

Credits
‘Puppet’ track written, performed and recorded by John Walden

Vocals by Yvonne McKeown

Eddie Bazil Biog
Eddie Bazil launched his music industry career at the age of 17 as a synth programmer for a range of Electro / New Wave bands including Art of Noise, Spandau Ballet, Pet Shop Boys, Bobin, Paul Dee, DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, Jets Orchestra. By his 20s he was working as a sound designer for Akai, Roland Emu/Ensoniq, eventually signing on exclusively with the latter. Later, due to a growing demand for software instruments and libraries, Eddie started to develop libraries for various software manufacturers, including Native Instruments, Kiesel, Sound Effects Library, Arturia and Propellerheads. A meeting with Phil Allen, a Capital Radio DJ, resulted in the company Samplecraze, which Eddie has spent 20 years developing as an educational resource. At this time he trained in music production and soon gained a number of prominent contracts working with some notable artistes such as Busta Rhymes, Greensleeves, 9 Bar, SFP, Sleeveless, Chris Campbell and Gam Productions. He contracted to Island Records and Chrysalis as a producer and remixer,  plus was commissioned to write the score for Macbeth that ran at 2 Way Mirror at Alexander Palace for the Cambridge Shakespeare Company. His ongoing development of Samplecraze has led to him offering educational workshops and classes, releasing four books via PC Publishing and becoming a contributor and forum moderator for Sound On Sound. Recently he has established The Audio Production Hub for online education and been invited by the Recording Academy to become a Grammy judge.
https://eddiebazil.co.uk/

https://samplecraze.com/

https://theaudioproductionhub.pivotshare.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

In this fourth and final episode, David Mellor, a sound engineer and the founder and Course Director of Audio Masterclass, delves into Gain Staging your plug-ins and how to avoid clipping during the mixing and mastering stages.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

00:50 - Gain Staging Your Plug-ins
08:08 - 32-Bit Float
11:35 - Mixing And Mastering
16:27 - Gain Staging The Mix
19:32 - Headroom
21:50 - Mastering Using LUFS

Listen to Gain Staging Episode 1
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 2
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 3

David Mellor Biog
David Mellor got his start in pro audio through the Tonmeister course at Surrey University studying music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

He went on to work at London's Royal Opera House, with responsibilities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has also had over 600 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music). Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

David has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He also worked with John Cage on the International Dance Course at the University of Surrey. David now specialises in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.

https://www.audiomasterclass.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

David Mellor, a sound engineer and the founder and Course Director of Audio Masterclass, introduces us to Gain Staging in a brand new series of podcasts. In the third episode David continues looking at preamps, outlines the use of VU Meters and talks about the benefits of balancing a track prior to mixing.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

00:56 - More About Preamps
05:38 - Preamps With Valves
09:20 - The Mixing Process
16:17 - Using VU Meters
24:05 - Mixing During Recording

Listen to Gain Staging Episode 1
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 2
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 4

David Mellor Biog
David Mellor got his start in pro audio through the Tonmeister course at Surrey University studying music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

He went on to work at London's Royal Opera House, with responsibilities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has also had over 600 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music). Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

David has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He also worked with John Cage on the International Dance Course at the University of Surrey. David now specialises in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.

https://www.audiomasterclass.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

David Mellor, a sound engineer and the founder and Course Director of Audio Masterclass, introduces us to Gain Staging in a brand new series of podcasts. In the second episode David focuses on gain staging during recording, by balancing mic input, preamps and gain within your DAW to achieve the optimal sound level.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

00:40 - Dynamic Microphones

05:19 - Capacitor Microphones

11:25 - Gain Staging First Step

14:00 - The Pre-amp

16:39 - Headroom

20:49 - Audio Examples

Listen to Gain Staging Episode 1
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 3
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 4

David Mellor Biog
David Mellor got his start in pro audio through the Tonmeister course at Surrey University studying music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

He went on to work at London's Royal Opera House, with responsibilities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has also had over 600 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music). Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

David has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He also worked with John Cage on the International Dance Course at the University of Surrey. David now specialises in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.

https://www.audiomasterclass.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

David Mellor, a sound engineer and the founder and Course Director of Audio Masterclass, introduces us to Gain Staging in a brand new series of podcasts. In this first episode he teaches the correct use of terminology and gives his three golden rules of Gain Staging.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:38 - Using The Correct Terminology
05:56 - Why Use Gain Staging?
11:04 - The Benefits Of Gain Staging
15:31 - Working In Digital Audio
27:17 - Three Golden Rules Of Gain Staging

Listen to Gain Staging Episode 2
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 3
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 4

David Mellor Biog
David Mellor got his start in pro audio through the Tonmeister course at Surrey University studying music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

He went on to work at London's Royal Opera House, with responsibilities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has also had over 600 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music). Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

David has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He also worked with John Cage on the International Dance Course at the University of Surrey. David now specialises in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.

https://www.audiomasterclass.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Eddie Bazil demystifies Compression and Expansion with a detailed explanation of their uses and with a range of practical examples using plug-ins.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:22 - Compressors And Expanders Explained
01:33 - Compressor Behavioural Types
02:40 - Common Compressor Topologies
06:06 - Example 1: Boz Digital Manic Compressor On Drums
10:26 - Example 2: FabFilter Pro MB On A Synth Line
13:28 - Example 3: PreSonus Studio One Expander On A Drum Beat
15:26 - Example 4: A Drum Beat Using Different Topologies
20:24 - Example 5: Using Sidechaining On Reverb
23:28 - Example 6: FabFilter Pro MB On A Vocal Line
27:16 - Example 7: Sidechain Compression And Expansion To Create Texture And Motion

Credits
Example 6 - The song and the poem are both called Everyone Sang. The poem was by Sigfried Sassoon and was set to music and performed by Anne Gregson.
www.annegregson.co.uk
Recorded at www.mrpunch.info

Eddie Bazil Biog
Eddie Bazil launched his music industry career at the age of 17 as a synth programmer for a range of Electro / New Wave bands including Art of Noise, Spandau Ballet, Pet Shop Boys, Bobin, Paul Dee, DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, Jets Orchestra. By his 20s he was working as a sound designer for Akai, Roland Emu/Ensoniq, eventually signing on exclusively with the latter. Later, due to a growing demand for software instruments and libraries, Eddie started to develop libraries for various software manufacturers, including Native Instruments, Kiesel, Sound Effects Library, Arturia and Propellerheads. A meeting with Phil Allen, a Capital Radio DJ, resulted in the company Samplecraze, which Eddie has spent 20 years developing as an educational resource. At this time he trained in music production and soon gained a number of prominent contracts working with some notable artistes such as Busta Rhymes, Greensleeves, 9 Bar, SFP, Sleeveless, Chris Campbell and Gam Productions. He contracted to Island Records and Chrysalis as a producer and remixer,  plus was commissioned to write the score for Macbeth that ran at 2 Way Mirror at Alexander Palace for the Cambridge Shakespeare Company. His ongoing development of Samplecraze has led to him offering educational workshops and classes, releasing four books via PC Publishing and becoming a contributor and forum moderator for Sound On Sound. Recently he has established The Audio Production Hub for online education and been invited by the Recording Academy to become a Grammy judge.
https://eddiebazil.co.uk/

https://samplecraze.com/

https://theaudioproductionhub.pivotshare.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Paul White takes us through the history and evolution of guitar synths, from early attempts at creating onboard sounds and audio to MIDI pick-ups, through to using pedals and plug-ins to emulate synth effects.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:13 - Types of Guitar Synths
04:03 - The Introduction Of MIDI
05:19 - Pitch To MIDI Pickups
08:04 - Alternative Systems
10:38 - Using Pedals To Emulate Synths
13:31 - Introducing Plug-ins
15:10 - The Future Of Audio To MIDI

Paul White Biog
Paul White joined the Sound On Sound team in 1991 where he became Editor In Chief, a position he held for many years before recently becoming Executive Editor. Paul has written more than 20 recording and music technology textbooks, the latest being The Producer’s Manual.

Having established his own multitrack home studio in the 1970s he’s worked with many notable names including Bert Jansch and Gordon Giltrap. He’s played in various bands over the years and currently collaborates with Malvern musician Mark Soden, under the name of Cydonia Collective. Paul still performs live claiming that as he has suffered for his music he doesn’t see why everyone else shouldn’t too!

http://www.cydoniacollective.co.uk/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts