Charles Dye MIX IT LIKE A RECORD

[Trebor Flow 2]

Any one else bought \"Mix It Like A Record\" (unfortunate tittle I know) I just got it from the states.

I'm just trying to get my head around it. It is three hours of Carles Dye going mental with plugins on an HD excel rig. Thing is at the end it really sound like a record. He uses McDSP AC-1 console saturation emultaion on the mix bus as well as Impact (SSL bus compressor emul.) on the mix bus, these are on all the time from the beggining and he mixes through them. His EQ methods are crazy but seems to work and every instrument gets DUY valve and DUY tape then DUY tape at the end over the mix bus.

It should all sound like S**T but strangly it sounds amazing - clever guy.

It would be great if someone else checked this out coz at the mo - I feel a bit thrown by his methods and would be keen to see what someone else made of MILAR.

Trebor Flow

 

[Trebor Flow 2]

Sorry about the tittle - I must learn to t y p e s l o w e r

Trebor

 

[Razorfish]

The idea is brilliant, the material very interesting and the editing... well, I've never done coke, but it might help to cope with the truly hyperactive production . Thankfully, the parts that really matter are your man doing a very cool show and tell about his plug-in use and thoughts on mixing, and these are shot in a much more chilled way than some of the segue bits.

For the price, you also get some very good material to practice with (i.e. professionally recored pro toos sessions).

Observation: they must have gotten some serious endorsements. I mean, come on, he uses like every compression plug under the sun, at least once. :?

 

[Trebor Flow 2]

Thanks for the reply Razorfish

What did you make oh his EQ technique - on the KICK/SD he is using tons of EQ then busing the different KICK or SD tracks to a KICK/SD stems and adding another EQ plug again - that's like about 20db of boost in places, seems crazy to me but strangley works on this song (though the track is pretty aggressive)

I still can't believe the amount of plugins he uses and ended up feeling quite jealous that I havn't got a HD3 Excel rig - those things seem to have almost endless DSP available.

Also what did you think of his method of mixing \"through\" the IMPACT compressor over the stereo mix bus - he's very passionate about that technique and he did seem to make it work. I use INFLATOR on the mix bus to simulate console saturation but I'm not there yet on mixing through an SSL type stereo bus compressor.

Any more thoughts

Trebor

 

[Michael]

Thanks for the reply Razorfish

What did you make oh his EQ technique - on the KICK/SD he is using tons of EQ then busing the different KICK or SD tracks to a KICK/SD stems and adding another EQ plug again - that's like about 20db of boost in places, seems crazy to me but strangley works on this song (though the track is pretty aggressive)

I still can't believe the amount of plugins he uses and ended up feeling quite jealous that I havn't got a HD3 Excel rig - those things seem to have almost endless DSP available.

Also what did you think of his method of mixing "through" the IMPACT compressor over the stereo mix bus - he's very passionate about that technique and he did seem to make it work. I use INFLATOR on the mix bus to simulate console saturation but I'm not there yet on mixing through an SSL type stereo bus compressor.

Any more thoughts

Trebor

Notice how everything is mixed with the uncompressed / unprocessed signal to retain the truer dynamics of the original signal Kind of like one step further that NY style compression .

 

[Trebor Flow 2]

Michael - what do you mean. I didn't really pick up on that. The drums OH where done that way using parrallel compression and the bass was too I think but everything else in the main mix went through compressors as inserts and therefore the whole signal was prosessed - did I miss something - I tkae it you have seen the whole DVD

Trebor

 

[Michael]

Michael - what do you mean. I didn't really pick up on that. The drums OH where done that way using parrallel compression and the bass was too I think but everything else in the main mix went through compressors as inserts and therefore the whole signal was prosessed - did I miss something - I tkae it you have seen the whole DVD

Trebor

Every element Guitars bass drums ect had an duplicat channel to compression disortion and other effects were added then he had the main channel with mabe some EQ and then mixed the 2 channels to the proper sound he wanted . Eg He would compress the sh!t out of the vocals even add tape emulation exagerate an EQ setting then mix in the uncompressed vocal which retain the original dynamics . Then proceed to mix the 2 together .
I do own the DVD set I personally think it should have been alittle less expensive . They gave the DVD alot of unnessesary stuff . like going out into a desert to talk about something . or driving through Las Vegas ect....

 

[Trebor Flow 2]

Thanks Michael

What did you make of his EQ settings - I just can't get my head round it.

Like he uses on the SD +10db 7khz on Ren EQ then on top of that he uses URS S series EQ with another +10db sim frequency all along he is layering EQ on EQ.

And also reverb on reverb - so he has a room on the SD and a plate and a gated verb. I'm like what the hell - I just don't get his mixing methods they seem wild to say the least.

Thing is my style is kinda Sting/Steely Dan and I'm not sure I got too my from Mr Dye towards this kind of music or did I miss something.

Whats your view Michael

Trebor

 

[Michael]

I tend to mix on the cleaner side also . To me some of those Tape saturation plugins are kind of like adding distortion . he likes to mix signals together with some bearly audible . Nothig at all like a Steely Dan or a Sting mix . I got some Ideas to try once I get to my next mixdown so I guess we'll see how it goes .

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

I still can't believe the amount of plugins he uses and ended up feeling quite jealous that I havn't got a HD3 Excel rig - those things seem to have almost endless DSP available.

There's always bouncing & offline processing, although the UAD-1's still buggy there. One thing we have going for us is tracks can be multed using sends, doing the same thing in PT might lead to phase problems.

One of my customers has a bunch of Grammy's & Platinum Records under his belt, mostly for rock stuff like Social Distortion & Motorhead. That guy EQ's things like you wouldn't believe. Highs & lows dimed, mids dipped out almost completely, all on a kick drum! Of course, it helps that he's using a custom-built API console.

 

[Razorfish]

Cheers Trebor.

I really didn't follow what he was up to EQ wise, but I'm sure it's just my own ignorance. Almost all of the stuff I do is acoustic trad and folk, so I rarely get a chance to explore the kinds of creative mixing techniques he's using. For instance, I'm mainly using EQ for giving instruments breathing space and trying to take care of comb filtering etc. Mix bus compression from the get-go I think would be pretty anathema to my goals as well, but I may try it for the craic. It obviously works for what he is trying to achieve, but these things are pretty genre specific--Bob Katz, for example, spends quite a lot of time decrying the over use of mix-bus compression.

I'll have to watch it again a few times. I'm a bit suspicious about the huge numbers of different plugs he uses and wonder if, when he's not on camera, he has a few favourites and sticks to them. There's no doubt he gets a great sound though. There's a lot of subliminal stuff there too, like the care he takes to get a good background vocal sound which eventually is so low in the mix you can hardly hear it.

I was hoping to use this with my 1st year students, but we don't have hardly any of the plugs he uses. It would be useful to sit down and take note of all of his compression and EQ settings etc. and 'port' them to the ubiquitous Digirack or UAD plugs for teaching purposes.

 

[living sounds]

>>And also reverb on reverb - so he has a room on the SD and a plate and a gated verb. I'm like what the hell - I just don't get his mixing methods they seem wild to say the least.

Haven't got the DVD yet, but actually using three different reverbs on a snare drum is not an uncommon thing. However, I do wonder if anyone really uses RenEQ with all the better plugs availible today...

 

[Fenris]

I have to say ... I do NOT like Chucky Dye's mixing style. It's wayyyyy over-compressed and lifeless sounding. It reminds me of my own work from 5 years ago when I was on Cubase VST and still thought Waves RenEQ and RenComp were the shit. He's using some pretty outdated plugs, and that's why he can run so many. UA's plugs are still the best vintage emu's, and they have apparently given up porting them to TDM.

Power? I network a $500 Dell P4 to my main computer with FX Teleport, and run multiple linear-phase EQ's and convolution reverbs in every song.

The guy is SO hilariously clueless that I spoofed him in my novel. http://geocities.com/blenderman666/48.html

 

[Demetrious]

I have to say ... I do NOT like Chucky Dye's mixing style. It's wayyyyy over-compressed and lifeless sounding. It reminds me of my own work from 5 years ago when I was on Cubase VST and still thought Waves RenEQ and RenComp were the shit. He's using some pretty outdated plugs, and that's why he can run so many. UA's plugs are still the best vintage emu's, and they have apparently given up porting them to TDM.

Power? I network a $500 Dell P4 to my main computer with FX Teleport, and run multiple linear-phase EQ's and convolution reverbs in every song.

The guy is SO hilariously clueless that I spoofed him in my novel. http://geocities.com/blenderman666/48.html

[-X

 

[ice-9]

so is this dvd worth buying ?

 

[Jim Shorts]

Thanks Michael

What did you make of his EQ settings - I just can't get my head round it.

Like he uses on the SD +10db 7khz on Ren EQ then on top of that he uses URS S series EQ with another +10db sim frequency all along he is layering EQ on EQ.

And also reverb on reverb - so he has a room on the SD and a plate and a gated verb. I'm like what the hell - I just don't get his mixing methods they seem wild to say the least.


Trebor

I think what you learned is most of the stuff you've read is bullcrap. Engineers are notorious for understating what they do to tracks--I believe there are many psychological reasons for this..but 1 is they want you to believe they dont need to do so much because they are so talented at what they do..they simply dont need to. Which is a crock

About the drums. If you look at the eq moves made on both Drumkit from hell versions you will see huge eq moves. A far cry from all the tips you read about. There is always this snotty attitude like, "why dont you just get the sound you want at the source". Yeah, whatever genius..like no one ever thought of that before.

Dye is just honest. Yes..he does some things different...but everyone does some things different. I have seen another mix of his online and he didnt do such drastic eq moves..so it depends on what the situation is.

 

[Trebor Flow 2]

So Jim

What do you think about mixing through an active mix bus compressor (like Impact) as Dye suggests.

His argument is you'll use less track compression and that the mix bus comp will add much needed glue in the sterile DAW enviroment. He only knocks off a dB or 2 but he does start using the Impact from the start of the mix - as opposed to bringing it in 4/5 ths of the way through.

I am about to mix a new album and was thinking of adopting this technique what's your milage on this subject.

Cheers

Robert

 

[aevan]

I haven't seen any of his stuff, but I mix with a master buss compressor in place from the start. Adding it later brings up reverbs and changes the overall tone of the track so you have to go and rebalance everything. I start by putting all the faders up and putting a couple of db compression across the buss. Then panning. After that I'll start looking at level, then eq. Not gospel, just works for me.
Cheers

 

[Suntower]

There is always this snotty attitude like, "why dont you just get the sound you want at the source". Yeah, whatever genius..like no one ever thought of that before.

-EXACTLY!

My overall impression (so far) is that he negates that whole 'get a good sound up front' deal. Take the guitars...

At least a DOZEN guitar tracks playing -simultaneously-. He just EQs the bloody life out of each. I don't think it would've mattered if the original tones were through a Marshall, a Fender, or a transistor radio. By the time he's done with them, each sounds puny and horrible. I was aghast at how much treble BOOST he puts on -everything-.

But then he puts 'em all together and Et Voila! They sound like 2-3 of the best sounding guitars you ever heard.

The whole sound is -totally- manufactured and he makes it clear that the reason everyone gets so frustrated trying to get the whole, 'just mic up 5 guys really well and capture a great performance' deal is that it's a complete LIE for the kind of pop music he's doing. Basically? Just play in tune and with good time and the rest really is 'fixed in the mix'.

If nothing else, the video has been great therapy for me---it's freed me from feeling like I have to always capture these pristine performances that sound great soloed. The great 'solo' sound -ain't- what makes for a great 'mix' sound. I actually feel quite relieved.

BTW: The style of music he presents has ZILCH to do with what I do, but I think -regardless- of style, this is the best 'how to' I have ever seen. Really makes you think about the whole -process- and thinking about WHAT YOU WANT rather than just always focusing on details.

Also, I disagree with those who think it padded with fluff (looking out into vast desert spaces!) Yeah, I thought it was a waste at first, but then it hit me that a LOT of the material requires -thought- and those little pauses that at first seemed so stupid, make complete sense. If it were jam-packed like Cliff Notes, I think I wouldn't be thinking as -hard- about each concept. So I think it's a -really- good didactic technique, even if he does remind me of some oily Guitar Center Refugee at times.

YMMV.

---JC

 

[aevan]

I've only seen bits, but it occured to me that the most brain opening experiences I had were the result of long conversations out of the studio with various mentors. With me a lot of them were in pubs/clubs but some of Charles' locations look like more fun.