Can a professional ITB mix be done without extra plugins? Find out this week as Jon remixes one of his projects using only Reaper’s stock effects.
Download and compare the album mix to the new reaper fx remix (both unmastered)
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Free The Bunch – Money Don’t Grow On Trees EP (mixed and mastered by Jon)
Dueling Mixes
Home Studio Corner’s Humongous End-Of-The-Year Sale
GSAA!! Just for your knowledge Reaper has some great saturation js plugins, especially non_linear and bad buss mojo to give depth to the mix, and as for reverbs, you could always grab the ones included in freeverb3 open source pack, those reverbs (especially ProG and Hibiki) overcome what comes in Reaper by far (great presets included for lazy people).
Regarding doing your show live, I think it is a great idea. On my network we have been doing live shows for a few years now and recently adopted Googe hangout which makes live streaming infinitely easier. I think you guys will love it. There is definitely an element present in live podcasting that you dont get in prerecorded shows. It’s kind of addictive actually. Looking forward to your first live show and keep up the great work.
Hey guys, GSAA. I’m really enjoying the autopsies. And Jon, I really appreciate the Reaper-only plugin mix down. One quick question: Other than using one of the js plugins that Luciano mentioned, is there another way you could simulate saturation, maybe through a combination of overdrive, eq and compression? I’m guessing you’d need something with a little more color than what Reaper provides?
Well done on the remix Jon, man those reverbs were horrible and what you did with them made no sense until you played the full mix. To my ears all the raw tracks had a good amount of nonmusical room sound too which would have accentuated the cheaper reverb. Really though I am going to go out on a limb and say that had there been a bass guitar or something in that register the mix would sound so much better, which again proves to me that composition and arrangement rule the mix, especially in acoustic genres as messing around post recording is not so acceptable or sonicly pleasing.
As a tip for mixing cajon, copying the track and gating one with a low passed version of the original as a side chain triggar and the other with.a high pass can serve to give you a separate kick and snare type thing for extra control/extra room to mess it up. Alot of gate plugs have low and high pass filters for the triggar signal built in so the head ache of side chaining can be avoided altogether. I did this in a mix recently where I had lots of bleed from tracking old school all at once in the live room and I could get more creative with processing etc to make up for the limits I had with mic placement. Great episode and unusually all good ‘clean?’ fun. Man Ryan must be working hard what with the drop off in d112 he usually spews in terms of inuendo!
Ryan…. Did I hear you correct? You had answered my question about my broken interfaces and you said they are on the way out. What did you mean by this? How will we connect our analog world to the digital? Can you elaborate?
It was crazy how on the last episode you guys opened up with the news of the future video stuff and I had asked about it without knowing… I just want to say that night I got stoned (on herb, get over it everyone!) and listened to the episode again. I then started thinking of how that would be if I was in your shoes and MAN!! That has to bring a little nervousness does it? So in that realization, I want to take a moment here and once again Thank Ryan Canestro & Jon Tidey for not only bringing a very Fun and “simple idea of a podcast and simple meaning very good. in fact, Einstein once said, the most beautiful and effective theory’s are the ones a child can understand! You guys bring a heavy issue into a simple yet effective format and here you guys are stepping it up, responding in the way of a “TRUE” republic and giving what the people want…. Well, what I always wanted … VIDEO FEED!!! Or say it like Hank hill says Video games… Vidya feed…
I in return, I shall do my part and donate $50 to this great podcast witch that is free and call upon my fellow THRS members to do the same from $1 to $50 I’m sure the guys are great-full of all amounts. Cheers and thank you for bringing THRS to higher ground!!
Not Really a comment, other then GSAA… But A request for Feedback…
I recently had some of my mixes that we ripped out as demo’s redone, not by me, but by Nashville Pro Players and Recordists in a Pro Room recently…
Here is the link to the side by side….
Would love feedback!
https://soundcloud.com/stillwaterstudios/sets/our-demos-and-nashvilles-take
Jon, thx for proving that I don’t have to keep spending money on more plugins, now if only I could buy more talent. Donation to follow.
Just catching up on all the episodes!
Thanks so much for talking more about drum overheads in show 190, “overhead height is basically a fader for room sound” is a great way of putting it! Matt was too interesting, you need to do another episode with him!
Irrelevant:
Had an amazing time in the US, did plenty of audio stuff, masterng, tracking, teaching etc. and even got my own name in waveform tattooed on me (much to the joy of Jon) haha 😛
Hopefully see you all at AES!
Katie 🙂 xxx
Also, I forgot to ask!
What would you guys reccomend as a fairly cheap stereo compressor?
It has to be sturdy as I travel with gear a lot!
Katie xxx
AGTCTGAC (is what some DNA looks like)
With that nerdery out of the way, GSAA.
A video hang out would be awesome if i could ever get my scheduled to align to watch it live.
I think i will have to buy some of those fender logos to change my squire to an american standard, then im off to the garage to take a ride in my new 2003 Toyota Porsche 🙂
This was another great mix breakdown / autopsy. The song style and genre really help illustrate the mixing treatments. When you start with a characteristic raw track are there specific plugins/hardware that you usually go for, or is it a track by track basis. In other words if you start with an acoustic guitar do you automatically reach for say a compressor and an EQ.
Also when you do grab an eq, or what ever filter or effect, do you start with a preset. I still start with my preset training wheels, but im curious if you ever totally walk away from them or do you use them to save time as a starting point and tweak from there.
On your run of the mill mix, how many sub mixes do you have for things like reverbs. Right now with one of my mixes im having to do some major rerouting cause i just ran out of CPU power and im moving things so they can share reverb tracks.
kudos on the stock reaper mix. It is a testament to the awesomeness that is Jon.
Reap the chicken
Hey guys. I just recently started listening to your show and I really love it. I’ve been dabbling with home recording for about 4 years now–mostly for the purpose of recording the music that the music my wife and I write. Stylistically, our music is mostly a range between acoustic folk and ambient rock.
I’m currently using Logic Studio 9 with two Presonus Firepod interfaces. I’ve gradually been acquiring new gear to help improve the quality of our recordings–mostly condenser mics and recently two Grace 101 mic preamps–but I’ve never added any plugins to my DAW (free or not free). I like the idea of getting trying to achieve killer sound first before they are captured by my DAW. I don’t have any outboard comp or eq though so I do all this in the daw. Logic has all the basic stuff–but at times I also feel like I could benefit from a bigger/badder plugin arsenal. But I’m unsure of where to start.
Here’s a list of things sometimes I’ve wished for:
better soft synths (native instruments complete?)
better drum samples (native instruments complete?)
desser
better time/pitch correction (Melodyne?)
better vocal plugins–auto-harmonizer, clarity enhancement, etc
(izotope nectar?)
My question is this: if you were in my are shoes with no plugins, where would you start? Good free ones would be awesome…but also what should I be saving for?
Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge. Great Show!
I forgot to mention this in regards to recording on tape. Chris Mara (sp?) has studio dedicated to the old school. http://www.welcometo1979.com/Home.html
For the UK listener who was asking about sub £200 large diaphragm condensers…. The CAD M179 is a hugely versatile and great-sounding performer for £189! There are some shoot-outs and examples on other audio podcasts.
I forgot to say that the CAD has switchable polar patterns on a variable slider, which gives access to patterns such as hyper and wide cardioid as well as the more regular patterns.
Great work guys!
GSAA! There have been times when I’ve tried to find new plugins and incorporate them into m workflow, but I get impatient and just stick with the ones I know how to use. To Jon’s dismay I’m using the DIGI 002 and Pro Tools 8. But, I’m much more like Ryan. It’s not that I don’t want to try new things like plugins and Reaper, it’s just that is usually gets in the way of what I really want to do – make music. And I’ve been burned a time or two, learning to use something new then either not liking it or it goes away.
And great tip about running more channels through one reverb aux. I did that a while ago, and it made a huge difference in bringing my tracks together.
If you would recommend one plugin that isn’t super expensive and is worth the time you put into it what would it be (excluding valhalla room & slate’s stuff – just because you’ve already raved enough about them that I already really want them!)