Normalization...... and Reverb... and other things

[TimWalter]

Hey guys and gals..
Well, on Sunday I had my bi-weekly sax lesson. This one was the most difficult, as I played for my instructor a recording I had done for a taxi submission. I put a short sax solo on it, and I wanted to hear his comments. I wasn't prepared for his comments (in general about my sax playing, that day at the lesson and in the recording, and other issues about the recording). Unlike his past easy going character in all past lessons, whether intentional or not, I walked out of the lesson as down as Ive been about my music in recent memory.

One of his comments was that he suggested I normalize the sax track to get the volumes more even. he said normalization was the opposite of compression (!!).

Here are some salient points:
1) he has a Ph.d in music, with sax as his main instrument. There is no doubt he is a an animal on sax, and knows what he is talking about. He started winning national recognition for playing sax in high school, and is amazing (eg played Monterey Jazz festival last year, among many other resume points).
2) at the local Division 1 university, he also teaches other subjects, such as multi track recording. Ive noticed other comments he has made in the past were counter to my understanding of good practice for recording (based on what I have learned from Ronan Chris Murphy's boot camp, books like Mike Senior and others, and from knowledgable people on this forum, and other reliable sources).

One of his comments was that the sax was way too dry compared to the rest of the track, I was too flummoxed to respond at the time, but when I got home I pulled up my DAW and listened to the sax track isolated, and it DID have reverb on it, any more I thought would b overkill, there could be a question as to whether there should be more or less reverb, but it definitely was NOT dry.

Anyway, based on my research, normalization does nothing more than analyze what is the highest volume point on a particular track, and then adjust the overall volume so that peak point is 0db. Normalization does NOTHING to the dynamics of the track, and in fact normalization done on all tracks as a matter of course is probably not a good idea, as if you have a bunch of tracks all normalized, there WILL be clipping and distortion.

Pls help me with this normalization issue, is my understanding correct, or is my instructor correct?

Since he is a college professor teaching subjects like multtitrack recording, I think if i tried to correct his understanding there obviously would be an awkward moment there, and it might change the dynamics going forward. My intent is just to keep quiet on that front, as when it comes to the reason I go to him, sax playing, he is in my mind an undisputed expert (all I have to do is listen to him play.. wow.. if I could play like that one day... a dream)

Anyway, if you are curious enough to listen to the track its https://soundcloud.com/bluzmannn/boogie-out-55. Regardless interested in hearing comments on the meaning and effect of normalization.

( NOTE: Id love to post these in Peer to Peer to gather comments before submission, but it seems I am always still finalizing them with 15 minutes to go before the 11:59pm California time deadline. I need to get things together sooner, so I can gather valuable feedback from my peers on recordings BEFORE submission.. something I am working on. lol)

Thanks and best regards.
Tim

[andygabrys]

Hey Tim.

Being a teacher doesn't make you an expert, and even teaching at a college level does't mean you know what you are actually doing (although everybody hopes that you do).

So while this guy might be a wizard on Sax, his comments wrt the mix and production of your tune don't resonate with me (other than I agree that the sax is too dry - more on that below).

I understand normalization to be exactly as you described it a gain change operation - and if there an "opposite" to compression it would be "expansion" - not normalization.

First - a grain of salt - maybe I don't know how to mix a Saxophone (or a song in general) either, but I'll let your ears determine that. Here is a page with a number of albums by Josh Maxey https://joshuamaxey.bandcamp.com - there is saxophone on about half the albums, and I have mixed and mastered all of them save for Incarnate which was his first solo record. These two turned out really well and both include saxophone: https://joshuamaxey.bandcamp.com/album/ ... on-of-soul and https://joshuamaxey.bandcamp.com/album/ ... and-spirit

Now enough of the shameless self promotion. My impressions of the track:

1) the "space" that the drums are in is not reflected in any other instrument.
2) the drums are a little quieter overall compared to every instrument than I would mix them. Although the kick is very forward. The kick doesn't sound like the same kit as the rest of the kit. The snare is buried.
3) Is the bass panned right?
4) Everything is really dry - the lead guitar, the sax etc.

If it were me to resurrect this recording:

1) mix the kit itself so the volumes of the various kit pieces are a little more in line - give the kick some roundness (bump at 65 hz, possible small cut at 3khz) add some snare volume
2) check the location of the bass. Make it do some kind of line that hooks into your kick drum pattern while still doubling the riff that the guitars play
3) at low low level, monitor and check volume of the R side guitar
4) with the instruments playing in the mix (not in solo) add ambience to the lead guitar and sax so they sound like they are in a similar "space" to the drums. This might require some subliminal level slap delay (like 125 ms length), some tempo timed 1/8th or 1/16th or 1/4 note delays (low in level so they don't muddy things up), as well as use of reverb (which might need to be eq'd as well to reduce "splash" or excessive mud)
5) balance the lead instruments with the rest of the track so that they aren't out in front nor buried. Again monitoring super low should help you.

If you do everything in solo, you always optimize the sounds for things in solo. EDIT I mean to say: Instead of in solo, make your eq compression and ambience decisions in the full mix with everything playing - this can make the decisions matter a lot more. We don't get to listen to albums with tracks in solo. We listen to the full mix.

Note: sometimes sax sounds good with an EQ bump down around 100-200 hz to make it sound a little more authoritative especially if its expected to sound big (like a tenor) but also might need a little up high to bring out the intensity. For this kind of track maybe A/B'ing against some of the more modern Maceo Parker stuff would give at least one reference point.

HTH

[hummingbird]

+1 Andy great post

[TimWalter]

Andy (and Vikki)
Thanks so very much for taking the time to listen and post. Very valuable feedback. I will take a look at every suggestion.

The kick is the same kit on EZ Drummer, in fact (if memory serves) I left the mix as preset by whatever setting I choose, will have to revisit.

The bass is panned middle. On the right is a guitar doubling the bass line. On the left is the higher bass track with a high pass filter around maybe 500htz, dont reclal exactly, trying to get stereo panning but perhaps the guitar on the right is too dense with lower frequ info?

Thanks for the comment on too dry. I guess I read somewhere that a sign of newbie mixers is too much reverb, and maybe I over compensate... lol I really appreciate your comment on this one, will help me recalibrate.

I will also listen to the songs that you mentioned that you mixed. Thanks for the reference.

Thanks again.
Tim

[Kolstad]

When I hear the track I thought that the sax, which is an acoustic instrument, was blended in between electric instruments like bass and gtrs, and that the mix could be more balanced (depending on your vision of the role of the sax in the track). It's hard for an acoustic instrument to cut through between those high powered electrics.

So when I think of his comments from that perspective, I too wanted to hear the sax better relative to the gtrs (especially from a sax players perspective). And I'd say it's true that you might not want to compress the sax track too much here, because then you just get 3 in-your-face tracks trying to compete with each other.

The issue is then how to get to hear the sax better, and basically get a proper balance between your instruments in the mix.

I can understand the idea that normalizing the sax track is about making the waveform and volume of the sax bigger and louder without compressing it, but then there's an issue that you are loosing headroom, in stead of gaining it (as you would by compressing the track.

But there's another way to achieve that balance, and that would be to instead turn the louder elements in the mix down, and match the levels, and then either normalize (I know some prefer to do this, despite it's not being best mix practice, as you say) or compress the whole mix together (to "glue" it, and perhaps make some headroom for mastering/ limiting the mix up to levels).

So, I think your guy is right in what he wants to hear, but perhaps does not have the mix experience to elaborate proper advice for you, like Andy can (which is a much more elaborate way to proper mixing of the track).

[Paulie]

Great feedback Andy. You are a treasure trove of awesomeness.

[mojobone]

Great with a sax maybe, but not so good with your head. Very careless with the terminology, too. You can be a great player, get a big ego and still know next to nothing about pedagogy. Another way of putting this is, "How many majors did Tiger Woods' coach win? Think about it and think about getting a better teacher rather than a player-it's not the same job. *EDIT; I'll go a little further here, and use a non-sports, non-metaphorical example/comparison. Diane Warren has a string of hits, so she obviously knows how to write a hit song, but you may have noticed that she never wrote a book about how to write hit songs; Robin Frederick has written two, because she not only knows how to break down and analyze what makes a song work but she's also able to clearly convey that in an understandable format. There are limits to what you can learn by osmosis; maybe ask your guy who taught him and see if he's still teaching.

As to your mix? What Andy said; he's dead on, as usual.

[mojobone]

When I hear the track I thought that the sax, which is an acoustic instrument, was blended in between electric instruments like bass and gtrs, and that the mix could be more balanced (depending on your vision of the role of the sax in the track). It's hard for an acoustic instrument to cut through between those high powered electrics.

So when I think of his comments from that perspective, I too wanted to hear the sax better relative to the gtrs (especially from a sax players perspective). And I'd say it's true that you might not want to compress the sax track too much here, because then you just get 3 in-your-face tracks trying to compete with each other.

The issue is then how to get to hear the sax better, and basically get a proper balance between your instruments in the mix.

I can understand the idea that normalizing the sax track is about making the waveform and volume of the sax bigger and louder without compressing it, but then there's an issue that you are loosing headroom, in stead of gaining it (as you would by compressing the track.

But there's another way to achieve that balance, and that would be to instead turn the louder elements in the mix down, and match the levels, and then either normalize (I know some prefer to do this, despite it's not being best mix practice, as you say) or compress the whole mix together (to "glue" it, and perhaps make some headroom for mastering/ limiting the mix up to levels).

So, I think your guy is right in what he wants to hear, but perhaps does not have the mix experience to elaborate proper advice for you, like Andy can (which is a much more elaborate way to proper mixing of the track).

Some good stuff here, too, but the succinct way of putting it is your guitars are too loud; my teacher would have said it sounds like a guitar player mixed it. In a live ensemble, when someone takes a solo, the other players adjust their volume to help highlight what's being featured in the arrangement. If this didn't happen on the floor, because...overdubs or whatnot, you can use a ducker, a special kind of compressor that's keyed by the sax track to turn the guitars bus down by a predetermined amount whenever the sax energy crosses a predetermined threshold, OR you could just nudge down those faders when the sax comes in, then print your fader move.

[JAMRecording]

If you do everything in solo, you always optimize the sounds for things in solo. EDIT I mean to say: Instead of in solo, make your eq compression and ambience decisions in the full mix with everything playing - this can make the decisions matter a lot more. We don't get to listen to albums with tracks in solo. We listen to the full mix.

HTH

Andy hit the nail on the head. Especially with the the advice above. I preach this every time someone asks me about a mix they have done. It can't be overstated. No one listens to tracks in solo....except us cave dwellers. The other piece of advice I got from a mentor of mine was to get the sound in the tracking stage to be as close to the finished product as you possibly can. The more time you spend tracking, the less time it will take to mix. In the world of plug ins, we tend to rely on them to "fix" issues later. I still fall into this trap now and again, but not nearly as much as I did when I started out, and mixes sound much better.

[eeoo]

The other piece of advice I got from a mentor of mine was to get the sound in the tracking stage to be as close to the finished product as you possibly can. The more time you spend tracking, the less time it will take to mix. In the world of plug ins, we tend to rely on them to "fix" issues later. I still fall into this trap now and again, but not nearly as much as I did when I started out, and mixes sound much better.

+1 to this. I try and get my session to sound pretty good, maybe 80% mixed, if i simply pull my faders up to unity. This makes mixing SO much easier.