Here's a great tutorial from engineer/producer Prince Fatty that taught me some tricks. I really like the way he thinks about sound and gear, and creativity in the studio.

https://youtu.be/AmEwSLuUbsI

He mostly focuses on dub in this video, but a lot of his tricks are handy in other genres, particularly the stuff about re-miking sounds and using physical solutions to audio issues while recording, like putting a pillow in front of an amp to cut high frequencies to tame highs instead of using an EQ after recording.

The first half of the video mostly discusses the history of Jamaican music, the tricks start around 19:00 in, and general studio/mixing advice 28:30 in. I enjoyed the whole video though, worth a watch (especially if you like reggae at all).

Cheers
Kent
PG Music

Thanks for posting, Kent. I'm off to have a look.

Kent,

Thanks for that link.

A lot of good stuff. I like how a lot of what he does is based on "logic and rules", but then he experiments with it however he pleases - until he hears what he wants to hear. Sort of "know the rules" but don't be afraid to break them - combined with "if it sounds good it is good".

We (as home recordist) can't possibly have access to the hardware he does - and would need to translate a lot of that into "how can we do that with plugins"...

Hi Floyd,

Exactly, the experimentation is a lot of what I took away from this. I have a much smaller, much less drool-worthy mixer (A&H MixWizard) and some reverb and delay guitar pedals, so am able to pull off some of his effects tricks like the feedback loop for a delay when jamming with synths, or when sending tracks out of my DAW through my mixer when I don't feel like automating with my mouse.

That trick does work with a delay plugin in a DAW too, but it can get out of control pretty quickly if you don't throw a limiter after the delay (found this out while mixing with headphones and my ears were not happy).

Cheers
Kent
PG Music

I put my twin reverb inside a cardboard box in the garage, and then put the mic I used to mic it in a tin can, and put the tin can inside the box, then recorded it into a one track cassette tape player, but ran the audio output from that into a four track and then fed that back into Ableton with some plate reverb.

It sounded like Whole Lotta Love.

Is that the kind of thing you guys are talking about???

I know cool articles about mixing that help me in the past :
https://theproaudiofiles.com/essential-mixing-tutorials-from-2015/ ;
https://www.lucidsamples.com/blog/daw-programs/drum-breaks/ ;
https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/a-basic-guide-to-mixing-and-mastering--audio-11038;
https://modernmixing.com/how-to-mix-music/

Thanks for sharing that.

J&B