Tool Thursday w/ Jed Hackett.
I’m often really glad that with the coming of Pro Tools we are now able to see what is going on, not just hear it. The grid is an invaluable tool both with time and pitch. I use to dread flying backgrounds from one chorus to another, either with a sampler or a 1/2” machine. Thank god for Pro Tools and the grid! But the fact that we can now see the grid has brought about it’s overuse.
I get lots of people who tell me I should give beat detective another try. That it is much improved and it could save me a lot of time lining up drums. They know I sit and edit the song manually and they just want to help save me some time. I usually just nod and politely say thanks because the advice is coming from good friends who are also great engineers and I don’t wish to offend them. The problem is, the grid ain’t right.
The classical world calls it rubato, the pop world calls it groove... and it doesn’t live on the grid. There is a reason that the drummer is laying back the high hat in between the kick and snare, or rushing a fill, or pulling a fill back, or laying the snare back within the groove. There is a reason that the drums have pulled back while the guitars push forward in certain heavy grooves. There is a reason the piano is pushing and pulling in a pop ballad. An alto sax just doesn’t sound the same when it isn’t just a bit sharp. Etc. ad nauseum!
There are plenty of times when the performance can be spruced up a bit with some editing and tuning, and that’s how I make my living. However, you have to be careful that you only move those parts of a performance that detract from the whole; that you are correcting mistakes and not vibe. When we go through a song chopping the drums at every note, then quantizing them, we very often lose the groove. Overall the track may settle a bit because it now has consistency, but you’ll notice something is missing. Usually people will just deal with that lose because they just can’t take the mistakes in the original performance. I’d like to give you a few things to think about that may help you keep the musicality in a performance while editing.
1) Before you start to edit, listen to the song as a whole and get a feel for what is going on, the vibe of the track
2) Start with the instrument that is the driving force in the groove. It may not be the drums, it could be the acoustic or the piano. Go through that track first and fix what bothers you. All the while keeping in mind the overall sense for the groove that you first got when you listened to the whole track. Pay close attention with your ears, not your eyes. Use the grid only to help you verify what your ears are hearing. If the snare is right on the grid but it feels rushed, then it is rushed so pull it back. It was an eye opening experience when a producer convinced me of that. He was insisting that the snare was early and I was insisting that it was dead on the grid. I pulled it back for him and darn if he wasn’t right! That was the day I stopped worshiping at the alter of the grid.
3) Once you have that key track tweaked so that it feels really good, then go to the next key element, and so on and so forth. All the while only using the grid to help you verify what you are hearing, not necessarily to place everything on the grid.
4) When you get to the end of things, go back to the original playlists on everything and A/B it with what you did. Make sure what you have done is an improvement. If not, figure out why and make the changes.
Here are some more specific tips that can be useful to you:
1) One really helpful hint is to find a part of the song where things feel really good and zoom in, analyze what is going on and why it feels so good. If you notice a pattern in how a particular instrument was played, mimic that feel in the rest of the song where appropriate. For example, if you find that the drummer is 3 or 6 milliseconds back on the high hat in relation to the rest of the kit and you have figured out that is the reason you like those couple of bars so much, then take that in to consideration when you are tweaking the drum track and where appropriate mimic that feel.
2) Sometimes on a shuffle feel everyone has a different idea as to how far to swing, so I usually find an instrument that has the groove nailed and measure the swing on the upbeats. If I find a consistent pattern, I will use that amount of swing when I find an instrument that just didn’t get the groove and I have to fix it.
3) If you need to tighten a track, you can get away with clamping down more on drums, bass and acoustic. Then if you let the electrics, keys and vocals float more, you’ll get the stability you want in a track yet maintain the raw energy.
4) If in doubt, always tweak less. I always err on the side of less and if at the end I find out I need to go farther, then it is really easy to do so. Once you go there, it is hard to go back. If you over tighten you’ll end up starting over from the original track. And that’s no fun.
Well I think this article is long enough and it’s too nice out today not to go running. Talk to you soon.
Take care,
Jed
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Knowing When To Make A U-Turn
Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett.
I just recently edited a track for a client... drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, etc. As I worked, everything seemed to be falling into place quite nicely as usual. However, when I finished with the track something just wasn’t settling with me about it. Usually when I get that settled feeling I know everything is right. With this track I just couldn’t get to that point. Each part individually seemed to groove but the whole picture just seemed a bit off. When I went back to the original playlist I realized that even though it had problems, the underlying groove felt better to me. I knew I couldn’t just leave the track in it’s original state because it did have a jerky feeling to it that the producer wanted to fix, but there was something that had gotten lost in all of my tweaking.
I started comparing the two versions closely and decided to switch back to the original playlists on the electrics in the choruses, let some of the lead instruments and vocals rush a bit more and pushed some of drums fills. I ended up with a compromise between the original and the tweaked track. Once I did that I finally got that settled feeling and knew it was right.
When we dive into editing, or tuning for that matter, it is easy to lose perspective, even when we are aware that it can happen. When I finish a track I always go back to the original playlists and compare it to my tweaked version just to make sure I did the song justice. I usually find a few things that I like more about the original and incorporate them into the final product. I think the hardest thing to do as an engineer is to know when to turn around. There are plenty of times when we can use technology to enhance the music we work on, but we have to possess enough humility to know when we’re just messing things up.
See you next week,
Jed
I just recently edited a track for a client... drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, etc. As I worked, everything seemed to be falling into place quite nicely as usual. However, when I finished with the track something just wasn’t settling with me about it. Usually when I get that settled feeling I know everything is right. With this track I just couldn’t get to that point. Each part individually seemed to groove but the whole picture just seemed a bit off. When I went back to the original playlist I realized that even though it had problems, the underlying groove felt better to me. I knew I couldn’t just leave the track in it’s original state because it did have a jerky feeling to it that the producer wanted to fix, but there was something that had gotten lost in all of my tweaking.
I started comparing the two versions closely and decided to switch back to the original playlists on the electrics in the choruses, let some of the lead instruments and vocals rush a bit more and pushed some of drums fills. I ended up with a compromise between the original and the tweaked track. Once I did that I finally got that settled feeling and knew it was right.
When we dive into editing, or tuning for that matter, it is easy to lose perspective, even when we are aware that it can happen. When I finish a track I always go back to the original playlists and compare it to my tweaked version just to make sure I did the song justice. I usually find a few things that I like more about the original and incorporate them into the final product. I think the hardest thing to do as an engineer is to know when to turn around. There are plenty of times when we can use technology to enhance the music we work on, but we have to possess enough humility to know when we’re just messing things up.
See you next week,
Jed
Thursday, January 24, 2008
What The F#$@!
Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett.
Come on, you know that’s the exact phrase that comes out of your mouth when your session is running smoothly all day long and at the most inopportune time you get a DAE error, or worse, the Chinese screen of death. Many of you know the drill on dealing with DAE errors and crashes, but for those of you who just reboot and hope it goes away, here are some tips on figuring out exactly what is going on and how to get rid of it for good.
First of all when it happens, either write down the error code or if you can, take a screen shot of your desktop by pressing shift/apple/3. You may also want to keep a log of error events. Write down what you were doing at the time the error occurred. By keeping a log, you may start to see a pattern. Maybe it happens every time you pull up a particular plug-in, or try to play through a certain spot of your session.
The next thing you should do is go to the Digidesign website and do a search for the error. Here is a link to the Digidesign support page. They can usually tell you what the error means and sometimes guide you as to how to fix it. If you strike out with the search on the Digidesign support page, you can do a search on their Digi Users Conference. The DUC is an online community of Pro Tools users who post lots of useful info.
Once you find out what the error means then what? Sometimes the solution is easy. For example, it may say that you are having trouble recording to your drive because the volume’s name is too long. So you shorten the name of your drive and no more error. Or maybe it says that your drive is too slow or too fragmented, so you copy your files to another drive and you are back up and running again.
Sometimes however, the solution is not quite so obvious. If that is the case I recommend you read my column “Trashing Those Preferences” and follow the instructions. Many times that will fix the problem. If after trashing your preferences and repairing your disk permissions, you are still experiencing the error, go to the Digidesign site and make sure your computer, operating system, and Pro Tools version are all compatible. I wrote more on that subject in “To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade?”. Next you can try posting your problem on the DUC and see if you get some help as to how to fix it. Also, try running the problem past some of your friends to see if they have had a similar experience. We all learn from each other, so don’t be afraid to ask. Have you noticed that the really great engineers always ask?
There are so many types of errors out there that it would be silly to go into much more detail here, but maybe this will get you headed in the right direction. And if none of this helps, I recommend going immediately to your local brew pub. If you’re in Nashville, try Yazoo.
Let me know if you have discovered any other good ways of trouble shooting, or good sources of information, I’d like to know. Talk to you soon... and for those of you headed to the brew pub, here is a great toast I got from my dad. “Here’s to you and here’s to me and may we never disagree. But if we do, to hell with you and here’s to me.”
Take care,
Jed
Come on, you know that’s the exact phrase that comes out of your mouth when your session is running smoothly all day long and at the most inopportune time you get a DAE error, or worse, the Chinese screen of death. Many of you know the drill on dealing with DAE errors and crashes, but for those of you who just reboot and hope it goes away, here are some tips on figuring out exactly what is going on and how to get rid of it for good.
First of all when it happens, either write down the error code or if you can, take a screen shot of your desktop by pressing shift/apple/3. You may also want to keep a log of error events. Write down what you were doing at the time the error occurred. By keeping a log, you may start to see a pattern. Maybe it happens every time you pull up a particular plug-in, or try to play through a certain spot of your session.
The next thing you should do is go to the Digidesign website and do a search for the error. Here is a link to the Digidesign support page. They can usually tell you what the error means and sometimes guide you as to how to fix it. If you strike out with the search on the Digidesign support page, you can do a search on their Digi Users Conference. The DUC is an online community of Pro Tools users who post lots of useful info.
Once you find out what the error means then what? Sometimes the solution is easy. For example, it may say that you are having trouble recording to your drive because the volume’s name is too long. So you shorten the name of your drive and no more error. Or maybe it says that your drive is too slow or too fragmented, so you copy your files to another drive and you are back up and running again.
Sometimes however, the solution is not quite so obvious. If that is the case I recommend you read my column “Trashing Those Preferences” and follow the instructions. Many times that will fix the problem. If after trashing your preferences and repairing your disk permissions, you are still experiencing the error, go to the Digidesign site and make sure your computer, operating system, and Pro Tools version are all compatible. I wrote more on that subject in “To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade?”. Next you can try posting your problem on the DUC and see if you get some help as to how to fix it. Also, try running the problem past some of your friends to see if they have had a similar experience. We all learn from each other, so don’t be afraid to ask. Have you noticed that the really great engineers always ask?
There are so many types of errors out there that it would be silly to go into much more detail here, but maybe this will get you headed in the right direction. And if none of this helps, I recommend going immediately to your local brew pub. If you’re in Nashville, try Yazoo.
Let me know if you have discovered any other good ways of trouble shooting, or good sources of information, I’d like to know. Talk to you soon... and for those of you headed to the brew pub, here is a great toast I got from my dad. “Here’s to you and here’s to me and may we never disagree. But if we do, to hell with you and here’s to me.”
Take care,
Jed
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Trashing Those Preferences
Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett...
Is your Pro Tools rig prone to crashes? One source of trouble for your rig are preferences. Certain changes you make to your Pro Tools session are stored in temporary files called preferences. For instance, when you change your hardware, playback engine, or preference settings, those changes are stored in preference files. When Pro Tools crashes, those preferences are easily corrupted. If you don’t get rid of them after a crash you are much more likely to experience more crashes until you do.
Note: PC users consult with digidesign about this before you do it. This is meant for mac users.
After a crash you should throw away the following files found in Home>Library>Preferences:
1)DAE Prefs
2)Digisetup.OSX
3)Pro Tools v7.x Preferences
4)com.digidesign.ProToolsHD.plist
Next, on each hard drive connected to your system there is a folder called digidesign databases. Trash that as well. Don’t worry, Pro Tools will rebuild all the files that you just trashed the next time you fire up the program.
Once you have thrown those files away, reboot your computer. When the mac reboots, it will repair any damage to the boot up drive before launching OSX.
After your mac reboots, open the disk utility program located in Applications>Utilities. You will notice that for each drive on your system the disk utility lists the technical name for the drive and underneath is the name you gave the drive when you formated it. For example 233.8 GB Maxtor 7Y250MO>Mac Drive. Click on the tech name for the drive so that it is highlighted and click Repair Disk Permissions. This will take just a minute or two. The disk permissions are also easily corrupted and repairing them will help alleviate problems.
Next, launch the Pro Tools software, then open the session you were working on. Pro Tools will be just a bit more sluggish opening up for the first time after you follow these steps; it has to rebuild the files that you just trashed. Pro Tools will set your preferences back to the factory presets.
The last step is to set your session settings back to the way you like to work. For those of you that don’t live and breath Pro Tools tech geek stuff, here are some basic settings to restore:
1) Under Options> turn on Quick Punch and Mute Frees Assigned Voice. Also, make sure your Delay Compensation is set as you want it. On if you’re mixing, Off if you’re recording.
2)Go to Setup> I/O and make sure your I/O settings are back to normal. How you set them will depend on the type and number of I/O’s you have.
3) Under Setup>Preferences>Display turn off Tools and Tips. I don’t know about you, but the constant pop up bubbles drive me nuts!
4) Under Setup>Preferences>Operation choose Record Online at Insertion Selection. For Open Ended Record Allocation Select Limit to XX Minutes. Set the number of minutes to the maximum amount of time that you would ever need to record a song, for most people that would be 10 minutes. Lastly, make sure that AutoSave is turned on.
5) Under Setup>Preferences>Editing change Conversion Quality to Tweakhead (Slowest).
6) If you have Pitch N Time or another TC/E plug-in, under Setup>Preferences>Processing change the TC/E Plug-in back to the one you wish to use. If you don’t have an alternate TC/E program just leave this setting alone.
Now that you have set things back to normal you are all set to go. This may seem like a lot to go through but it is well worth it. You will have fewer crashes and less stress.
Take care,
Jed
Is your Pro Tools rig prone to crashes? One source of trouble for your rig are preferences. Certain changes you make to your Pro Tools session are stored in temporary files called preferences. For instance, when you change your hardware, playback engine, or preference settings, those changes are stored in preference files. When Pro Tools crashes, those preferences are easily corrupted. If you don’t get rid of them after a crash you are much more likely to experience more crashes until you do.
Note: PC users consult with digidesign about this before you do it. This is meant for mac users.
After a crash you should throw away the following files found in Home>Library>Preferences:
1)DAE Prefs
2)Digisetup.OSX
3)Pro Tools v7.x Preferences
4)com.digidesign.ProToolsHD.plist
Next, on each hard drive connected to your system there is a folder called digidesign databases. Trash that as well. Don’t worry, Pro Tools will rebuild all the files that you just trashed the next time you fire up the program.
Once you have thrown those files away, reboot your computer. When the mac reboots, it will repair any damage to the boot up drive before launching OSX.
After your mac reboots, open the disk utility program located in Applications>Utilities. You will notice that for each drive on your system the disk utility lists the technical name for the drive and underneath is the name you gave the drive when you formated it. For example 233.8 GB Maxtor 7Y250MO>Mac Drive. Click on the tech name for the drive so that it is highlighted and click Repair Disk Permissions. This will take just a minute or two. The disk permissions are also easily corrupted and repairing them will help alleviate problems.
Next, launch the Pro Tools software, then open the session you were working on. Pro Tools will be just a bit more sluggish opening up for the first time after you follow these steps; it has to rebuild the files that you just trashed. Pro Tools will set your preferences back to the factory presets.
The last step is to set your session settings back to the way you like to work. For those of you that don’t live and breath Pro Tools tech geek stuff, here are some basic settings to restore:
1) Under Options> turn on Quick Punch and Mute Frees Assigned Voice. Also, make sure your Delay Compensation is set as you want it. On if you’re mixing, Off if you’re recording.
2)Go to Setup> I/O and make sure your I/O settings are back to normal. How you set them will depend on the type and number of I/O’s you have.
3) Under Setup>Preferences>Display turn off Tools and Tips. I don’t know about you, but the constant pop up bubbles drive me nuts!
4) Under Setup>Preferences>Operation choose Record Online at Insertion Selection. For Open Ended Record Allocation Select Limit to XX Minutes. Set the number of minutes to the maximum amount of time that you would ever need to record a song, for most people that would be 10 minutes. Lastly, make sure that AutoSave is turned on.
5) Under Setup>Preferences>Editing change Conversion Quality to Tweakhead (Slowest).
6) If you have Pitch N Time or another TC/E plug-in, under Setup>Preferences>Processing change the TC/E Plug-in back to the one you wish to use. If you don’t have an alternate TC/E program just leave this setting alone.
Now that you have set things back to normal you are all set to go. This may seem like a lot to go through but it is well worth it. You will have fewer crashes and less stress.
Take care,
Jed
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
deliver me a house
check out this story on how one of our eTalent members, Byron House (bass) saved the dixie chicks tour!
dixiechicks.msn.com
image by bryan sutton
peace!
dixiechicks.msn.com
image by bryan sutton
peace!
Thursday, December 6, 2007
tool thursday, with jed hackett...
Clean Up Your Room! Or in This Case, Session.
So you’ve got your tracks cut, overdubs complete, and things are all tweaked up and ready to be shipped off to your favorite mix engineer. Let’s talk about a few things you should do to make everyone’s lives a little bit easier.
First of all, save your mix as My Song for (some engineer with three names) so that when you clean things up you don’t lose your original files. Now it’s time to do a little house cleaning. Get rid of every track that you are not using from your new session. Then remove every alternate playlist from the tracks that you are keeping. If you have a hidden playlist that you would like to include with your session, make a new track and bring that hidden playlist to the top layer of that track making sure you label it appropriately, like “Alternate guitar solo”. The idea is to only have the tracks that you want the mix engineer to use in the mix, in this session, with no alternate playlists.
The next part requires a little communication with your mix engineer. Find out what plug-ins they have on their rig. If you are using a plug-in that they do not have and it is critical to the sound of an instrument, say Guitar Rig or Amp Farm, then you should print a track for them with the audio processed by that plug-in. If you have soft synths like Trilogy or Stylus in your session, make sure you print those tracks as well. You may also have a chat with them about the size of your session and see if they would like you to submix any parts together, like the 16 tracks of Oohs you put in the chorus. See if they like automation and plug-ins left in the session. Some engineers like to build off what you already have going on and others just want a clean slate. If you use the comments field to leave notes about the tracks, make sure you leave that field open so they realize you have left comments. You may also want to warn them that they should look for the comments. It’s also not a bad idea to print a rough mix for the engineer so they know what you and the A&R department have gotten use to.
Now that you are on the same page with your mix engineer, it’s time to clean up the remaining tracks. Go through and check that all of your crossfades are clean… you did put in crossfades, didn’t you? Clear out any unwanted noises between phrases, check that you didn’t cut off any breaths on your lead vocal, etc. Once you are sure you have everything all neat and tidy, no laundry on the floor, go ahead and copy the first click of the song from the click track to every track that you have. This will give the mixer a fail safe way to line up your tracks if for some reason they aren’t lining up when he/she spots them in their session. ( And don’t be putting a click over some audio you intend to use at the top of the song! Make sure you paste these clicks before everything starts.) Now consolidate every track from the same start point to the end of the last piece of audio in the session. Once you so this, every track will have only one piece of audio, start and end at the same point in time, and have a click at the front just in case.
The next thing you need to do now that you have cleaned up all the clutter is to empty out the trash. Remove all unused audio from the session. In the Regions menu within the Edit window choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove. If you choose “delete” instead, as I said before, all of your files will go into the intergalactic bit bucket, never to be heard again.
The final step is to Create a new folder on your drive entitled Ready to Mix and save a copy of your mix session, with the audio, into that new folder you just created. In the Pro Tools menu, under File, choose Save Copy In. When the copy window opens up, next to “Where:”, find the folder you just created, check the box under Items to Copy labeled All Audio files. Also check the box labeled Session Plug-in Settings Folder. If you don’t check these boxes, your audio files and plug-in settings won’t be copied along with the session. Click Save.
Congratulations! You now have a very neat, organized and hopefully idiot proof session to send to your mix engineer. If you follow these steps you will quickly become one of their favorite clients. Cleaning things up like this can cut hours off of their set up time and leave them more time to do what they do best…mix. It may even translate into cheaper rates for you in the future!
Mixers, please write in with any other helpful advise on this subject. Thanks and see you next week.
Jed
So you’ve got your tracks cut, overdubs complete, and things are all tweaked up and ready to be shipped off to your favorite mix engineer. Let’s talk about a few things you should do to make everyone’s lives a little bit easier.
First of all, save your mix as My Song for (some engineer with three names) so that when you clean things up you don’t lose your original files. Now it’s time to do a little house cleaning. Get rid of every track that you are not using from your new session. Then remove every alternate playlist from the tracks that you are keeping. If you have a hidden playlist that you would like to include with your session, make a new track and bring that hidden playlist to the top layer of that track making sure you label it appropriately, like “Alternate guitar solo”. The idea is to only have the tracks that you want the mix engineer to use in the mix, in this session, with no alternate playlists.
The next part requires a little communication with your mix engineer. Find out what plug-ins they have on their rig. If you are using a plug-in that they do not have and it is critical to the sound of an instrument, say Guitar Rig or Amp Farm, then you should print a track for them with the audio processed by that plug-in. If you have soft synths like Trilogy or Stylus in your session, make sure you print those tracks as well. You may also have a chat with them about the size of your session and see if they would like you to submix any parts together, like the 16 tracks of Oohs you put in the chorus. See if they like automation and plug-ins left in the session. Some engineers like to build off what you already have going on and others just want a clean slate. If you use the comments field to leave notes about the tracks, make sure you leave that field open so they realize you have left comments. You may also want to warn them that they should look for the comments. It’s also not a bad idea to print a rough mix for the engineer so they know what you and the A&R department have gotten use to.
Now that you are on the same page with your mix engineer, it’s time to clean up the remaining tracks. Go through and check that all of your crossfades are clean… you did put in crossfades, didn’t you? Clear out any unwanted noises between phrases, check that you didn’t cut off any breaths on your lead vocal, etc. Once you are sure you have everything all neat and tidy, no laundry on the floor, go ahead and copy the first click of the song from the click track to every track that you have. This will give the mixer a fail safe way to line up your tracks if for some reason they aren’t lining up when he/she spots them in their session. ( And don’t be putting a click over some audio you intend to use at the top of the song! Make sure you paste these clicks before everything starts.) Now consolidate every track from the same start point to the end of the last piece of audio in the session. Once you so this, every track will have only one piece of audio, start and end at the same point in time, and have a click at the front just in case.
The next thing you need to do now that you have cleaned up all the clutter is to empty out the trash. Remove all unused audio from the session. In the Regions menu within the Edit window choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove. If you choose “delete” instead, as I said before, all of your files will go into the intergalactic bit bucket, never to be heard again.
The final step is to Create a new folder on your drive entitled Ready to Mix and save a copy of your mix session, with the audio, into that new folder you just created. In the Pro Tools menu, under File, choose Save Copy In. When the copy window opens up, next to “Where:”, find the folder you just created, check the box under Items to Copy labeled All Audio files. Also check the box labeled Session Plug-in Settings Folder. If you don’t check these boxes, your audio files and plug-in settings won’t be copied along with the session. Click Save.
Congratulations! You now have a very neat, organized and hopefully idiot proof session to send to your mix engineer. If you follow these steps you will quickly become one of their favorite clients. Cleaning things up like this can cut hours off of their set up time and leave them more time to do what they do best…mix. It may even translate into cheaper rates for you in the future!
Mixers, please write in with any other helpful advise on this subject. Thanks and see you next week.
Jed
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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