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Joined: Apr 2010
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Excellent tip. Thanks Bob
Regards,
Bob
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Absolutely useful. Simple and elegant.
It's both a mixing tip as well as an arrangement tip.
It's always SO tempting that if I recorded a full-song track, I should use the full song track. I raise my hand as a member of 'use all tracks all the time' addiction group.
-Scott
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"I raise my hand as a member of 'use all tracks all the time' addiction group."
Hi. My name is Bob. I'm a Use All Tracks All The Time addict, and a recovering Reverbaholic.
I'm hoping that the shock treatments works.
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Expert
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Great find Bob, thanks for sharing.
Rob
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I am a trackoholic with a compression deficiency.
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After viewing that clip, I watched a few more, including one about keeping it simple, and one about "tightening up" background vocals. I watched that one 3 times. Then I came home and put what he said into practice, and remixed a 2 year old song that was a total cluster mess, and in just 90 minutes or so, after singing the vocal again to remove a track that was so drenched in reverb and EQ (all outboard so I could not get rid of them) that it was inaudible, some gain reductions, some sliding to line up BGV with lead vocals, slight panning, better level blending.... amazing the difference a little bit of knowledge makes.
And to think that at the time the song was done I thought it was done well.... after listening to the old version and the version... wow.
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He's great Bob. I've watched all his stuff and some of it twice. Oh that it were that easy when I do it..... I'm less of a trackoholic now but still a compressor-phobe. I try to use it but I'm always paranoid it sounds too compressed. I can hear the slightest shhh a compressor makes like my ears zone in on it. Back on topic of this particular tip, I'm not in any way disputing what he's saying as we all know it's true. BUT Spector did okay with the wall of sound - use 'em if you got 'em. LOL! Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. Just saying.... 
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Josie, thinking of what Spector was going for and how things are 50 years later, the "quiet mode" is pretty effective for creating tension and release. Phil produced with a very deliberate "in your face-ness" and it worked great. be My Baby was the best, but the clips of (was that?) Nellie Furtado were not the genre that Spector turned out and needed a more deft touch like what was described. The difference when quieting a backing track is quite subtle yet very effective. Easiest way I know to get dynamics into songs. Just the little bit I played with it last night made me think down a different path.
One of my songs (from almost 2 years ago) was SO MUCH LOUDER than the others and I didn't know how I was going to fix that withoug sacrificing parts. Watching the clip that was the topic of this thread didn't necessarily fix it, but it got me thinking about how. I went in and did a bit of gain cut across the board, took of all the effects, and started vanilla. Removed one backing track that is not missed, did some panning, slid the BGV to line up with the lead, did the singing again because the original was recorded with outboard reverb that I could not erase. In verse 2 I cut out 2 of the backing instruments for the first half of the verse, did a cresecdo on the drum fill leading back into the 2nd half of the verse, then brought the rest of the instruments back and the song took on a whole new flavor. Much of it had to do with me being 18-ish months wiser, but those tips from Graham's videos are outstanding.
As I start getting better results, this is becoming fun again. Hooking up with people to do tracks and not being a one trick pony is awesome, particularly since those other people can do those "tricks" better than I can.
I am totally juiced to hear what Josh does with one of my songs. Totally.
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Good sound advice in that video.
Common sense really, when we take the trouble to wrtie a song and record it, its only fair to ourselves and to the song that the listener is going to hear it without guessing at the lyrics.
except of course if you are aiming for that effect.
musiclover
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I have watched maybe 2 dozen of his videos so far and they are really good. Teh advice is not any better than what we get from the experienced users here but being able to see it on the screen while hearing the explanation makes it add up more. He is using Protools but the concepts of reverb and filters are the same no matter what DAW you are in. He is also making me THINK about things (scary thought, I know) first before running willy nilly into them.
The information is what we get from Mac, and Harv, and Scott.... et al... but seeing it done helps me because that's how I learn. I used to learn first by reading, but now I learn more from touching and then reading the supporting information.
Much still to learn about RB, like grouping so I can apply reverb or compression across all tracks on a bus. I have never done that and will have to play with it to learn how. It looks as simple as assigning an effect to A-B-C-D and then adding level routing to that bus for each track with the knobs on the mixer panel.
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Eddie, the more standard way of using a single effect on a group of tracks is to use an aux send/return bus not groups of tracks. This should also be more familiar to your hardware mixer outboard effects experience.
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So I assign reverb to "A", then on each track I can send and return as much as I want to control wet vs dry.....
There is also a way in RB to group tracks so I can boost or cut all the vocals as one, all the guitars as one..... that's what I need to learn.
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thanks Bob! great link!! and thanks to Eddie and others for this on-going discussion. I am struggling with how best to use BIAB to complement my tracks and mix it all up so it sounds good. my problem is BIAB makes it so easy to do something good that I have trouble motivating myself to continue working and produce something great!!
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Eddie, Actually the Spector comment was meant as a joke....lame I know....LOL! BTW, I posted a question about creating subgroups in the RB forum - maybe someone will answer as I'd like to know how to do that in RB too.
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Out of all the tips I got from those videos, one of the best is "walk away". As you sit and make tiny, very minute tweaks, after a while it gets hard to hear those small changes. I was working on something tonight and after about 45 minutes I got up and went outside with the dog for a little air and a little walk. Then with that little bit of space and time to let my ears recalibrate, I went up and was able to finish quickly after that.
One other tips was to remember that there is a time to STOP TWEAKING.
I plan to watch every one of Graham's clips. Good stuff.
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If you find that you can't groups in RB, you should still be able to do it via aux send/returns - except that you put the slider volume all the way down on the tracks you want grouped and you control the group volume with the return amount knob. Since I don't have a current version of RB, I don't know if there are group tracks or not - can't recall seeing that on the mixer anywhere. I also think that there is a limit to the number of aux busses in RB. The DAW I use has both grouping as well as unlimited aux sends/returns through it's modular nature. You can insert a send as an 'effect' and on another track, you place the matching return with whatever effect chain you want to use. You can place as many 'sends' from the tracks of your choosing, to that 'return' and control both send and return amounts wherever you decide to place them in the signal chain on those tracks, pre or post fader. Keeps screen clutter down since you only use the sends where you want - it's not a 'knob' sitting on every channel. Very handy, actually.
Anyway, I plan to watch more of those videos as well. I hope the author of the videos is getting enough traffic to get some YouTube advertising revenue. Bob, thanks again for posting the first one.
-Scott
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Quote:
I don't know if there are group tracks or not - can't recall seeing that on the mixer anywhere. I also think that there is a limit to the number of aux busses in RB.
Hi Scott.
Just for information, there are eight aux sends/returns and sixteen sub-groups in RB.
ROG.
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