Inside Out : Brad Madix

Final Rush Rehearsals—Geddy Helps Fine-Tune His Own Sound

Brad Madix — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Geddy Lee courtesy of Tina Davey.

One of the greatest advantages of being able to listen back to tracks in preproduction is that you can do the listening with the client. When I started live engineering lo those many years ago, I would hand the artist—or their assistant, more likely—a recording of the run-through on something called a cassette tape. The artist would listen to the cassette on their Walkman (who remembers those?), make some notes, maybe call in the middle of the night to talk about it, come in late the next day and give you the notes, and then start the run-through before you had any time to make any adjustments. Later, the audio was upgraded to CD-quality recordings—and then downgraded slightly to MP3—but the process remained essentially the same, and adjusting the mix to suit the singer/guitarist/drummer/keyboardist/bassist’s tastes was laborious.

More than occasionally, the artist would listen to the next day’s cassette and say, “No, that wasn’t what I meant… I said it was ‘blue and glassy sounding’—not ‘metallic.’ Please try again and this time add some more highs to the low midrange.” Then the engineer would try again to interpret this into something grounded in the real world of physics and electronics.

Fast-forward to today… now you can sit with the artist in a room listening to a live recording of them singing and playing and make a tweak and say, “You mean this?” They can say, “Yes!” If the singer wants more highs on the low midrange (I’ve had this request), you can boost a frequency and sweep around until he shouts, “STOP!” If you’re having an issue with an instrument, like it’s a little too overdriven, you can play it back for the artist and point it out to them, saying something like, “Are you sure this is what you’re going for?” Maybe it is.

Geddy Lee’s bass sound is a combination of five channels, which represent various aspects of an entire bass sound, and run from clean to distorted-beyond-all-reason. The two main components of his sound are an Avalon DI and a Palmer DI. The Avalon is warm with a punchy midrange, and the Palmer is super clear with an extended low end. The last three channels are all distorted to one degree or another. There’s an instantiation of Eleven dialed up to sound like an old Fender Bassman—slightly distorted, but not crazy. There’s a SansAmp, which is more distorted and further down in the mix. Then there’s an Orange amp, which we run off to a bass cab backstage and throw another Palmer PDI-03 on. It’s cranked wide open and is preposterously distorted. It sits in the back of the bass mix. All of this gets sub-grouped, compressed, and run into an instantiation of Waves API 550A EQ.

Geddy and I have discussed his bass sound on any number of occasions over the years, but Eleven and the API EQ are new to this last set of rehearsals, so we revisited his tone. He stopped by the room one morning before rehearsals and sat down in the chair with me while I soloed up the bass subgroup on the Genelecs. The first thing that showed up on the screen was the API EQ. When Geddy saw that, he remarked how much he loved those things, and that it was great that you could really “wang” something right up, and it sounded fantastic. One point for the engineer! The next thing we listened to was the instantiation of Eleven. I think we really nailed that old Bassman sound, personally. Geddy wanted a little more overdrive, and I brought the speaker breakup down a touch.

Then we started digging into the balance. I rode up the Avalon fader and brought up the Palmer next to it—about equal level. Geddy asked for a bit less of the Palmer, favoring the midrange point that the Avalon gives his bass. Next into the mix was the Eleven channel. This came up and instantly added realism to the bass tone. Then I added the more distorted elements to the mix. First up was the SansAmp channel, which I rode in slowly until Geddy said, “Stop.” Next, I added the Orange amp channel. When I reached the point where the Orange was even with the SansAmp, we both concluded that it was too much.

I pulled both of the distorted channel faders down to the bottom, stood up, looked at Geddy and said, “There’s the faders. Put ’em where you want ’em!” He sat down in the driver’s seat and brought both faders up until he heard what he wanted and told me, “There, that’s where I like it.” And that’s where they’ve been ever since. Total time elapsed—about 20 minutes. Try that with a cassette tape!

Brad

10 Seconds in the Time Machine

Brad Madix — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Hey this is Brad again, wrapping up final rehearsals before heading out on Rush’s Time Machine tour. Today, I’d like to share a tip that helped me fine-tune parts of the band’s mix. Probably the most obvious use of Pro Tools in preproduction rehearsals is to adjust channels and plug-ins during playback. Of course, you’re going to fiddle with EQs and adjust plug-in parameters as Pro Tools chunks away off to the side. Isn’t that all that’s left to do?

Well, yes and no. The point of all of this is to hone your mix to be the best it can possibly be. Touching up the mix as you play it back… well that doesn’t require much explanation. You make it the way you want it to be.

I’d like to detail how one specific tool—Loop Playback—helped me dial in an aspect of Rush’s mix. No matter how good a player they are, the backline tech will never be able to play the instrument for you the way the artist does. Even if the backline tech is better than the artist (which happens sometimes), it’s still not the same as having the real thing. If you get the actual artist sitting down to play a part for you, it’s unlikely they will put up with playing it 40 times while you dial in that EQ or compressor.

Arguably, the most well-known Rush song ever recorded is “Tom Sawyer.” Towards the end of the song, there’s a set of huge drum fills that everyone in the audience knows by heart. Half of the audience is air-drumming along! This section lasts 10 seconds, and in that span of time, Neil hits nearly every drum in his formidable kit. Being able to loop that 10 seconds of playback and listen to each drum individually—as well as the section in its entirety—was a huge help for sharpening the mix.

For example, I tend to gate high toms lightly, but low toms and floor toms require deeper gates with tighter thresholds. Adjusting side-chain settings can also be critical in making sure the gates will open when the drum is hit but stay closed when the snare is hit or when the kick comes through the monitor subs a few feet away. If the gates open, the mic just picks up the head rumbling away or whatever noise is coming back from the PA. This can be quite unpleasant coming through 90 18-inch speakers! That this particular fill needs to ride up in the mix, a few dB exacerbates the issue.

So I turned to Pro Tools and Virtual Soundcheck in VENUE to save me. I played the band’s rehearsal-recorded song right up to that drum fill point (the end of the guitar solo) and marked it in the timeline. I scrolled to the tom tracks (eight of them) and picked out the first fill, which is a couple of seconds long. Dragging across the timeline to select this section, I right-clicked on the play button to set Pro Tools to loop this fill and turned back to the console.

While Pro Tools repeatedly played back this section, I soloed up the first tom Neil smacked and started twirling knobs. The first drum he hits is a high tom, so there wasn’t much for me to do on it. I listened back to it a couple-dozen times and set the gate so it opened every time, filtering out some low end from the side chain. Neil plays down the higher toms on this first fill, so I just soloed each drum along with him and gated each of the three top toms in much the same fashion. Lightly, easily triggered, filtered side-chain, low range setting.

Tom four is the first drum where I have a bit of an issue with bleed into the mic. The drum rings a bit when Neil plays, and it helps to get that ring out of the mix. I had to spend a little more time with that one, but the same principle applies. I had the luxury of hearing the man himself hit the drum repeatedly in the context of the song so that I could adjust the noise gate (and EQ, and compression, etc.).

The next fill incorporates three of the floor toms along with tom four. I selected it, looped it, and went through the same process. The floor toms required a little more work, and the context here wasn’t perfect since we were not in a hockey rink with a ton of PA. I did get to hear the influence of the drum subs on playback though. These toms require a little more aggressive gating than the higher ones, as they tend to just ring in the close mics as Neil plays.

Having adjusted all the tom gates, I played back the whole 10 seconds several times to listen in context. This process—hearing the actual musician play the actual kit repeatedly, in context, while soloing through it—was helpful beyond description.

-Brad

Exploring Your Options with Virtual Soundcheck

Brad Madix — Thu, 05 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

In this post, I’m going to discuss using Pro Tools playback with VENUE to audition plug-ins, presets, and mics you might want to use in your live mix. Preproduction before the tour is the perfect time for this. You’ve got multitracks of the band playing through several songs, with solid head amp level and faders up, so there’s already a rudimentary mix developing.

First, boot up your VENUE system in Virtual Soundcheck mode and you’re ready to do some manipulation of dynamics and equalization. VENUE has some first-class processing built right into it. I use plenty of the onboard expansion, compression and equalization, and it sounds great. And that’s just the beginning of the power of VENUE. With plug-ins, you can turn the console into almost anything you want.

Exploring plug-ins

At this point, I suggest loading the desk up with every plug-in you might find interesting. If you’ve downloaded a demo of something, put it in there. This is your chance to try everything available, and the fastest way to switch between and rearrange plugs is to have them already instantiated. Organize them in a scheme that will help you find things quickly. I’ve got three guys to deal with, so I give them each a rack column on the VENUE software Plug-ins page and take one for myself for mastering. Whatever makes sense to you. Instantiate plug-ins until the desk won’t take anymore.

Begin with an instrument that’s critical to the mix (aren’t they all?) such as the vocal. My approach is to start with dynamics, work through EQ, and add effects last. Hence, the first thing I would do is start auditioning compressors on the vocal. Often the simplest plug-ins are the best. Heck, some of my favorites have one knob! Sometimes it takes something more powerful with more options. Occasionally, you need something “vintage.” Try them all until you land on something you like and then start auditioning EQs.

Investigating presets

After dropping a plug on a channel, click on the folder in the upper right-hand corner of the Plug-ins page. This will open the plug-in’s preset window. Start clicking on presets and assess what you hear. You’ll likely hit on something that works quite well, and you can tweak it from there. Many plug-ins have a number of usable sounds built in.

You can also save your favorite presets in your own folder. Go to Filing > Transfer and highlight “Preset Folders.” To the left is a list of available folders likely consisting of just “Factory Presets” and “User Presets.” Go to the bottom, click “New,” and make yourself a preset folder. From now on, whenever you land on an EQ or dynamics setting you really like, add it to your folder and keep it synced with a USB key. I have separate folders dedicated to each band I’ve worked with and find that re-auditioning my own presets can be expeditious.

Auditioning mics

Pro Tools is also a powerful way to audition mics. It allows you to switch between transducers and manipulate blends in a way that is more flexible than doing it while the band plays, looping sections, for example. More intriguing to me is that it allows for truly blind comparisons between mics using playback.

Occasionally, we set up shootouts to confirm (or repudiate, or just experiment with) mic selections. It amazes me how prejudiced I can be when performing these listening tests, even with the most honorable intentions. Say someone told me “Mic X” is a great vocal mic, so I favor it. I know “Mic Y” is very expensive, therefore, it sounds best. “Mic Z” sounded great in the kick drum on the last tour, so I’m determined to make it work on this one. We listen with our minds, so it’s easy for our minds to trick us. To do an honest comparison you must listen to Mic X, Mic Y, and Mic Z side-by-side, and you cannot know which is which. Experience has taught me this can produce jaw-dropping outcomes.

On guitar, recording for this is straightforward; you place the mics in question on separate speakers, create channels and tracks, get levels, and record. Ditto for drums—where there’s room. It gets tricky on small toms or the snare, and it’s downright impossible on a vocal. In those instances you’ll need to do multiple takes.

Before listening back, take your audition tracks, copy the audio files to new tracks, and normalize them. Assign these tracks to separate channels in the desk through Assignables and have someone shuffle the channels around! It’s critical that you not know which is which. The audio files in Pro Tools will be labeled, but the channels on the desk mustn’t indicate which track you’re listening to. Listen back with no EQ or dynamics, and make written notes while soloing through these channels before you stop and ask “this one sounds great… which is it?” Maybe it’s the same mic you’ve been using all along. Maybe.

-Brad

First run-through for the RUSH Time Machine Tour

Brad Madix — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Last post, I talked about setting up preproduction for Rush’s Time Machine tour and made VENUE Link operational. VENUE 2.9 software’s main new features are its interoperability with Pro Tools through VENUE Link, giving you the ability to set up and get recording rapidly, as well as mark sessions and “locate to markers” on playback. Through VENUE Link, I had created a brand new session in Pro Tools from my VENUE setup, with tracks arranged just as they are on the desk, and saved it as a Template.

Here’s a suggestion regarding this new Pro Tools session. At this point, VENUE must reboot to play back from Pro Tools in “Virtual Soundcheck” mode. This requires over four minutes for the Rush show. When the band hears that you are recording, they are going to come into your space and say, “Hey dude, can I hear the ______?” About the tenth time I had to say, “Sure, let me finish what I’m doing and restart. Bring me back a latte.” I decided to find a better way—here’s what I did.

Start with your main mix, but break out other items like the drum groups, bass group, and guitar group and assign these to the Pro Tools Assignable outputs available e in the patchbay. VENUE Link will automatically create tracks for these when you open a session, so you can easily return the tracks to channels through the User Assignable inputs. Use PQs or Matrices as alternate outputs, and effects inputs as returns. Now when Alex Lifeson (the guitarist) asks if he can hear himself, I just solo the corresponding channels and press the space bar. No waiting. You can even try plugs and equalization on these returns, though you’ll still need to reboot if you want to affect the actual channels. Musicians often just want to hear a part, and this is an expeditious way to let them.

Today the band will join us in the Time Machine to shake off the rust with an abbreviated run-through. I’ve laid my VENUE Profile out the way I want, checked through the lines, and I’m standing by for rehearsal, with all Pro Tools tracks armed and ready to record.

As the band begins to play, focus on gain structure first and use Pro Tools to get your gain right. Gain structure is the most underestimated component of live mixing. If I have a band for ten days, I might spend the first day or two getting proper levels at the head amps. Maybe you don’t have the luxury of a couple of days, but don’t rush the process. “Right” doesn’t mean “super hot,” nor does it mean that all of your faders line up at exactly zero. It means you have solid level at the head amp, allowing you to run your faders in a useable range without blowing up your outputs. Spend time getting proper level through the console. You can work on other details during playback.

When setting the head amps for the first time, gain the channels all the way down (with the pads in) and bring them up to get good level. One way to get levels quickly is to start with faders down and select “Gain” for the encoders on the Profile. Press the encoder down while someone plays the instrument. On release, the desk will “guess” the proper level, and the desk’s guess is often perfectly usable. At least it will be a functional starting point, and you can get to it posthaste. VENUE can even “guess” on more than one channel at a time. You can have someone play the drums and then “guess” on the kick, snare, hat, and overheads—all at once!

I encourage you to track in Pro Tools while getting levels. I like to check meters in Pro Tools’ Mix window in Narrow Mix View to get a view of a number of channels simultaneously. Also, I like Pro Tools’ metering better. I find the default metering on VENUE to be very conservative, leaving plenty of headroom even after a channel lights up red (tip: use RMS metering and set the clip threshold on the Interactions page to your liking). I’m absolutely not suggesting that the VENUE should look like a Christmas tree during your show, but if you’ve got good level on Pro Tools, you’re going to be sterling on the VENUE.

After the band plays through several songs and you are happy with the levels, drop a marker in on the session and let them play a while more. Once you’ve committed a few songs to hard drive and the band quits for the day, reboot in Virtual Soundcheck mode to allow playback and go get that cup o’ Joe. With the band gone, this is the time to start working on sounds. Locate to your “I’m happy with the gain” marker and start listening back. Even now, continue to work with gain structure foremost in your mind. If you see something that bothers you regarding head amp gain, fix it! When you reboot to the Stage Racks, VENUE will ask you if you want to transfer those changes to the head amps. Why yes, you do!

Until next time...

-Brad

Welcome to preproduction for the RUSH Time Machine Tour

Brad Madix — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 06:00:00 GMT

We’re journeying back to before the tour to explore what goes into building the mix.

We loaded in some days ago, and I tinkered a bit with the new VENUE software (VENUE 2.9) and settled into my little control room. Here I want to second Greg Price’s recommendation of the "Live Recording Guide for VENUE Systems and Pro Tools.” I consulted it during the process I’m describing below and found it helpful.

The band’s gear is set up in a treated room about 60 feet wide and 45 feet deep, arranged as if it were on a stage, facing one of the long walls. The techs are in the same room restringing guitars and programming keyboards. The FOH console (VENUE Profile) and Pro Tools rig are in a much smaller treated room (hung drapery and carpeted floor) across the hall. Behind the curtains is wood shelving stacked with cable to diffuse the slap, flutter, and standing waves that’d otherwise manifest with five hard walls and a concrete floor. While not completely isolated, it’s acceptable. The monitors mask leakage sufficiently, and I’ll do most detailed work when the band isn’t playing.

My FOH comprises a five-DSP Mix card VENUE Profile System, an 8-core Mac Pro (running Mac OS X 10.6.6), and Pro Tools HD 9.0.1. The computer is connected to the VENUE FOH Rack with three DigiLink cables from two HDx cards, and I’m monitoring on a set of Genelec 8040As with a 7060 Sub.

Job one is to implement VENUE Link to enable VENUE and Pro Tools to directly communicate with each other. One needn’t be an IT expert to do this (thank goodness, ’cause I ain’t). While it’s not exactly the most exciting endeavor you’ll ever undertake, I thought it worthwhile to walk you through my experience of setting it up for the first time.

I “borrowed” an Ethernet cable, ran it between the VENUE ECx card in my FOH Rack and the Ethernet port in my Mac, and fired everything up. Router-less, the VENUE and Pro Tools systems require manual configuration as follows:

1. On the Options page in the VENUE software, click the Interaction tab and under Ethernet Control, click Network Settings.

2. In the resulting dialog, select “Use the Following Address,” enter the following settings—IP Address: 10.0.0.1, Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0, Default Gateway: 10.0.0.1—and click Apply.

3. Back under Ethernet Control, select the “Enable VENUE Link” checkbox and you’re set.

If a router is involved, the process is simpler, as you would set the VENUE console and Pro Tools computer to configure automatically.

To ensure that these settings match my Pro Tools system, I turned my attention to my Mac and made these adjustments:

1. Choose Apple Menu > System Preferences and select Network.

2. Select Ethernet in the left pane and from the Configure IPv4 pop-up menu, choose "Manually.”

3. Enter the following settings—IP Address: 10.0.0.2, Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0—and then click Apply.

4. In Pro Tools, choose Setup > Peripherals to open the Peripherals dialog.

5. Click the VENUE tab and from the VENUE System pop-up menu, choose “Enter IP Address.”

6. Enter the address of your VENUE system (10.0.0.1).

7. In the Advanced Network Settings, enter the same TCP/UDP Port number as your VENUE system (29291, in my case), and click OK.

I’d been forewarned that this might require a restart of the system to gel, so I shut down and started back up. Success! Upon Pro Tools launch, on the Options > Interaction > “VENUE Link Status” page, it showed “Connected to Default 10.0.0.2.” (As an aside, we did this later with the Monitor desk, and it synced right up without the restart.) Super exciting stuff, huh? The good news is that this concludes the dreadfully dull portion and it’s time to play!

Upon sitting at the desk, I observe that my snapshots have sprouted glowing green diamonds next to them. Has the leprechaun added a new marshmallow treat to my Lucky Charms? Sort of: these enable marker creation and location functions. With the diamond highlighted while recording, snapshot recall writes a marker in Pro Tools. Firing a snapshot locates to the corresponding marker in Pro Tools during playback.

This feature becomes useful when focusing on certain passages and tweaking the snapshots. I find myself listening to a bit of Subdivisions to rebalance the bass a bit. Being able to locate playback without turning my attention to the computer keeps my head forward, focused on the mix and the Profile’s screen. I find that I don’t necessarily want to mark every snapshot though. Mainly the start of the songs, guitar solos, and any special sections that warrant extra attention. I’ve gone through and disabled a number of snapshot markers and kept the significant ones.

Another feature VENUE Link enables in Pro Tools is “Create New Session From VENUE”. Upon finally setting up the layout on your console just right, the realization that you’re gonna spend 20 or 30 additional minutes creating, naming, arranging and assigning corresponding tracks in Pro Tools can be a vibe crush. Now Pro Tools imports that information straight from the VENUE system.

The “New Session” dialog box in Pro Tools now allows the option to “Create New Session from VENUE.” Just give it a name and hit enter. Pro Tools goes to work and presently we have a fresh session with new audio tracks corresponding to channels patched in the VENUE patchbay. Track outputs are assigned to the corresponding HDx returns to the desk.

Items assigned to Pro Tools through Assignables are slightly more complicated. I assigned the Left and Right to Pro Tools in the VENUE Patchbay, and the computer created a stereo track for it. However, it doesn’t seem to know what to do with the output, which I usually return to an effects input. I had to make that assignment manually. Saving the session as a template allows convenient future startup. Boom! Ready to rock! This eliminates tons of tediousness when initially implementing Pro Tools recording from VENUE.

So there’s an introduction to VENUE Link from preproduction. The band will be coming in soon, and it’ll be time to record, playback, and program.

Hello and welcome to the Time Machine

Brad Madix — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 05:00:00 GMT

This month Rush gears up to head out on the road to finish their Time Machine tour. We’ve loaded into a space for a couple of weeks of expensive hotel-dining, evening hockey-viewing, NCAA bracket-busting, and band rehearsals—otherwise known as “preproduction.”

If you’ve poked around the blogs here—and I recommend it—you’ve read wonderful material about how VENUE and Pro Tools work together live. Greg Price’s posts from the Ozzy tour have offered fabulous insight into on-the-road workflow. I’d like to try to emphasize the power of these tools before the tour starts. Loads of valuable work can get done during this time, and the VENUE/Pro Tools combo has tons to offer besides sound checking with cardboard cutouts of the band, as extraordinarily useful as that feature is.

Fundamentally, the VENUE/Pro Tools combination offers an opportunity during preproduction that you won’t have for the rest of the tour—the chance to screw up big time without severe repercussions. Personally, once a tour is up and running, I develop a very healthy aversion to taking major risks. Everyone makes mistakes, but mistakes during a show are magnified, and big mistakes during a show are magnified in a big way. This isn’t to say one shouldn’t try new things—just that one might want to try them when one is alone.

Preproduction is the perfect place for experimentation that you can’t do on a show day. You can try a new mic or you can try several new mics at once. You can ditch the mics and try a DI. You can set up a truly blind listening test on playback and humiliate yourself by picking the cheapest mic as the best sounding. You can feel your sense of self worth restored when everyone else picks it as well. You can try a plug-in you’ve never tried without fear of retribution when it sounds bad and still take credit when the band says it sounds good! The chance to take chances reaches its height in this environment, and you can never do this again, until the next tour.

Furthermore, there’s never a time quite like preproduction to focus on the finer points of the mix. It’s tough putting on a great-sounding show in a hockey rink or convention hall even when it’s well rehearsed and refined. Building that mix from scratch in a preposterously bad sounding environment is orders of magnitude more difficult. You will likely have your hands full making sure the vocal is even audible. In preproduction, you can forget about riding the vocal for a time. Heck, mute the thing! Go work on equalizing the guitar in such a way that you might find a place for the vocal later. Adjust the tom gates. Correctly! When you do get into that echo-dome, you will find your job made easier having properly laid the groundwork.

One other significant thing: preproduction is the one chance you’re going to have to sit down with the artist and listen to things together in a controlled environment. This cannot be overstated. Handing the band a CD is simply not the same thing as being together in a room and affecting the mix in real time. Needling issues that are hard to communicate (“I listened to the CD last night, and the guitar still sounds a little blue and glassy”) are suddenly trivial when you can spin the knobs with the artist in the room. I’ve even watched as an engineer politely told the artist to go ahead and EQ it how he wanted it, and he did! The input wasn’t touched for the rest of the tour! Potentially weeks of grief, frustration, and bickering over some little sound that bugged the poor guy evaporated in a minute with no hard feelings! Don’t play down the power of playback in preproduction!

Over the next several weeks, I’ll cover the time between loading in to preproduction and the end of the first leg of a tour. Specifically, I hope to consider: setting up a room, the console, and Pro Tools to record and play back, including implementing VENUE Link’s features; tracking the band and some tips for monitoring and playback; listening back to audition mics, presets, and plug-ins; listening back to adjust inputs and plug-ins; listening and communicating directly with the artist; building a preset library and using it on other projects; building snapshots for songs and within songs; recall scope and recall safe dos, don’ts, and maybes; taking a near-field mix to the big PA; tracking a show and tweaking it the next day; and getting off and running for the tour.

So wave goodbye to the conductor and disembark the Crazy Train. Step into the Time Machine and let’s go back and explore the weeks leading up to the first call of “house lights, go!”

Brad