A Little Piano

Listening through the rough mix that Rob had provided me, it was apparent that there was a piano part that doubled the bass line. Since I had decided to base the verse around the bass part, this doubled line was very important. I knew that if those parts were going to work together, then I had better pay close attention to the piano and get it sounding right early on.

Soloed, I though that piano was rather muddy and mono. It was recorded as a stereo track, but the sound was very up-the-middle. EQ could fix the muddiness. I didn't need any more bass down there, but I definitely saw room for the piano's nice overtones. They would really help the bass line stand out. With some radical EQ - a -18 dB low shelf @ 50 Hz combined with a +7 dB boost @ 2500 Hz, the piano lost its tubbiness and became meaner.

But, with the bass guitar distorted, the piano just didn't cut through. So I ran it into the same FX bus used for the bass guitar's Amp Sim, and applied a nice edgy distortion to the piano. The thinned-out, distorted piano track was tough and gritty, and really makes the mix move during the verse.

Rhythm Tracks - Bringing it Together

I want you to hear how the basic rhythm tracks come together for this song. First, we start with the basic, straightforward drum tracks. Then we add in bass guitar. As I started working other tracks into the song, right here something started bothering me. I'm a drummer, and it was obvious that the drummer on this song was really attacking the crash cymbal. But with that over rack on it, it was just going "dink - dink - dink". There was no CRASH! At this point I decided to overdub a crash cymbal into the section where the drummer was riding his crash. You can hear the effect here.

Now we add in the ugly room mic and the piano bass. I have hard-panned both ot these sounds. They occur together, during the verses only, and sonically balance each other out by occupying the same frequencies on either side of the stereo image. This pulls the drums off to one side for the verses, but brings them back to the center during the choruses. Who said the drums always have to be centered? Not me. Also, this is a busy, dense mix, and I needed to keep the center reasonably empty so there would be room for the vocals. If the room mic and the piano were in the center, they'd crowd the vocals severely, since they are all midrangey instruments.

Finally, we add in the ugly snare sound. On this track I used an EQ set up to roll off the lows at 120 Hz and the highs at 8000 Hz, then followed that with a massive, crushing compressor to bring out every single BB: 14:1 ratio, ultra-fast attack, and as much as 20 dB of gain reduction. While the dry track doesn't have a lot of BB sound in it, the effected track sounds like a box of rocks. Note that it has a long, sloppy decay that is almost like reverb. It's a very cool sound, and really emphasizes the 2s and 4s in the beat. In fact it is a kind of call-and-answer between the bass and snare, "doo doo doo -- kahhhh! -- doo doo doo doo -- kahhhh!"

Time for some brutal honesty. You may notice that the nasty, ugly snare sound is NOT in the final mixed version of the song you downloaded. That is because - in the final rush to get these songs mixed on time - the track was accidentally muted and the song was mixed without it. With our tired ears and brains, we all flat-out missed it in the proof process, and the song went to manufacturing without that part. I didn't discover the mistake until I went back to the mix to write this article, and I had to sheepishly call Rob up and explain my mistake to him.

Lessons learned? Two:

1. Always give yourself enough time to make sure that you are not rushed and can be methodical
2. No one little production part is enough to make or break any song.

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