Pro Tools Mixing Engineer

Online Audio School

2009-11-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

I've been receiving a lot of correspondence regarding audio engineering education. There is desire amongst home studio mix engineers to learn more about their craft. There appears to be a limited amount of options available. The two most common sources for such an education are the big name music schools and instructional dvd's. There doesn't seem to be any other alternatives. After years of fielding the same questions, I've developed an online audio program that fills the gap between the two. It is designed to increase your skill set as a mix engineer and to increase your audio engineering salary. I've drawn from my 23 years of experience in recording studios to assemble what I think can be of tremendous value to home recording enthusiasts and established mix engineers who want to advance their careers in the music industry. The technical details are being finalized and within the next week or two the program will be detailed on my website. Please check back and feel free to contact me as your input will help me shape the program.

Mixing In The Box

2009-11-05T20:08:00.000-08:00

An ongoing debate amongst mix engineers of varying skill that “you can’t mix in the box or shouldn’t”. And my response it that I can “mix in the box” only because I’ve retrained myself to do so. It’s an ongoing debate with valid points made on both sides. Mixing in pro tools is certainly not the same as mixing on a big console. Having spent almost 2 decades in the analog world, I have a different point of view then those who’ve started their careers using pro tools. In the early versions, doing anything in the box sounded pretty lousy. When Digidesign got the HD together, I was sold. Not just on recording in it. It was a great digital recorder that replaced reel to reel machines forever. But it also was a great editor. It changed the way in which records were made forever.
But it was a few years before “mixing in the box” became an issue. Technically, you should be able to do a much better job mixing pro tools files through an SSL or a NEVE in a big name recording studio. And at fist that’s exactly what I thought. And then the budgets started shrinking, fast. I saw the budget tsunami on the horizon and built my own HD mixing studio with a ton of plugins as well as my analog gear. I spent a lot of time tuning my room and it’s pretty damn flat. Then I had to re-learn how to mix. This was a challenge, but I had my analog experience to draw from. One of the first projects completed in my new room won Best New Artist on the MTV awards, The Gym Class Heroes. There have been many since, including a Grammy Award for the Broadway cast album for “In The Heights”. So yes, it can be done without compromising quality. I would never work in a manner that would give my clients anything but the best that I could possibly give them. It would be professional suicide. I think I have successfully made the change to mixing in the box. When considering your options, try not to be discouraged by the confusion surrounding this passionate debate. Let the results speak for themselves.

Vocal Mic Technique

2009-11-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

The most important elements of recorded music are the vocals, with the obvious exception being instrumental music. The drums are the engine to a mix and the vocals are the navigator. One of the biggest challenges as a recording engineer is the get a great vocal sound.
To start, the most appropriate microphone should be chosen, not the best. Often the most expensive tube microphone will not sound as good on a particular voice as an inexpensive condenser mic. If given the luxury, set up 3 mic’s next to each other and have the singer run through the song acapella. Switch between the three mic in the control room (make sure the singer doesn’t have headphones on, this will drive them crazy) and one of them should jump out as the obvious choice. One chosen, have the singer run through a verse or chorus with their headphones on and listen to how the sound of the vocal “sits” in the track. No that you’ve picked the appropriate microphone, it’s time to place it. First, raise the mic to the height of the singer’s mouth. Then flatten your hand and hold it parallel to the ground and place in between the capsule and the singer’s mouth. This is usually a good distance to start from. Finally, place a pop filter in between the mic and mouth and you’re ready to record.
What does this have to do with mixing records? Well, we don’t spend all of our time as audio engineers mixing. A well recorded vocal will make your life exponentially easier when it comes time to mix.

What makes a good mix good and a great mix great.

2009-10-26T21:47:00.000-07:00

What makes a good mix good and a great mix great.
When I’m asked what I do for a living, there is a now familiar look of confusion when I say that I’m a mix engineer. Or a recording engineer.
Mixing records is a very difficult concept to describe to someone who has no idea what a recoding studio is, never mind what an audio engineer does. Once that difficult task is overcome, the next challenge is describing what makes a great mix.

Most people will know a poorly mixed record when they hear it, but will not be able to describe why. But I’ve never met a non-engineer that understood what a great mix is and why. In my opinion, formed over two decades in recording studios, a great mix is one that is transparent to the song. The listener should never “hear” a mix, they should “hear” the song. A bad mix is easier to identify than a good mix. They sound “cheap” or like a demo. A good mix sounds “nice”. A great mix should create an image, a visual to put the listener in the setting of the story of the song. And it should do this without being obvious. A great mix engineer is able to pull the listener into the story. A great mix should have the same effect that a great movie does: it should pull you into a space where you forget where you are. My favorite example of a great mix is that of “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel (engineered by Roy Halee). It’s a visual masterpiece. Pro Tools has given me the ability to create unique spaces easier than when I was working solely with analog gear. "My Own Zero" by Zap Mama is a mix that I feel that I created a stage for the lyrics.

Professional recording studio speakers

2009-10-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

Monitors: The ears of your studio.
A question that’s often asked when someone is putting together a recording studio or mixing studio is what monitors they should use. I think your monitors are the most crucial piece of gear in your studio. They need to be comfortable to listen to, but more importantly, they need to be accurate. I use Genelc 1031a’s because they “fit my ears”. That is to say that I find when I take mixes out of my studio they sound as good as they did in the studio. You can have all of the best plugins in the world and the best analog compressors built, but if your speakers aren’t telling you the truth, the results of all of the time you spend mixing records might be misleading. While most speakers in every price range are pretty accurate in the higher frequencies, the achilles heel of all monitors are the bass frequencies. Some have too little and you’ll end up adding too much bass to your mixes and some are the opposite giving you a false sense of low end.

Spend time at your local music store listening to your favorite mixes on different speakers. Remember, expensive doesn’t always mean better. There are some very affordable self powered monitors that sound really good. A lot of this is a matter of taste. Find a pair to use in your recording studio that translate to the real world. Next installment: your studios' acoustics and how they relate to your choice of speakers

Pro tools tricks to save troblesome tracks

2009-10-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I’ll receive tracks that were not recorded very well.
In the analog recording world this used to present more of a problem. Now that we’re all in the pro tools mixing world, there are more tools at mix engineers disposal.

Studio time tends to be expensive so there are times when the recording engineer can’t spend too much time getting the perfect drum sound. “We’ll fix it in the mix” has been the battle cry for decades. And it used to mean quite a bit of extra work during the mixing process. It meant collecting your own bunch of drum samples and having some primitive ways of triggering them. A favorite secret weapon used in pro tools to enhance drums sounds is a plugin called Drumagog. An engineer can insert the plugin on any given track and instantly start to audition drum sounds. These newly triggered sounds can be used alone or as I like to do, blend them with the original sound to “fill in the holes”.

Digital equalizers are another pro tools mixing weapon which can be more aggressive than their analog eq counterparts. This means that a mix engineer can get more surgical when sculpting sounds. A poor vocal sound can be rescued by eliminating the problem frequencies with a sharp, very specific eq that has been traditionally more difficult to do in the analog world. There are many more benefits to mixing in pro tools and I will spell them out as I blog away.

Protools goodies at AES convention

2009-10-14T11:12:00.000-07:00

I spent the last few days at the AES convention in NYC, gawking at gear (not listening to it). There was plenty of I wanted for my mixing studio, but only some of it practical. I ran into some colleagues from Battery Studios and my friends from Electric Lady studios as well. It was encouraging to see that the recording studio business is still alive. There were plenty of veteran engineers attending as well as some future mixing stars. There were a few Digidesign pro tools plugins that piqued my interest. I’m going to download the demo versions to see how they sound in my mixing studio. This week I’ll be doing all of the file management that I’ve put off for too long. I’m looking forward to mixing a few new projects with Bill Sherman ( producer from In The Heights).

Welcome To My Blog

2009-10-08T15:12:00.000-07:00

Hello peoples. Welcome to my blog about record mixing. I first stepped into a recording studio in 1986 and have been working in the record business ever since. I’m a Grammy award winning audio engineer who has also received multiple gold and platinum awards. I have recorded and mixed records for a wide range of artists from The Black Eyed Peas Britney Spears and Gym Class Heroes to Lou Reed Fun Lovin’ Criminals and the Broadway cast album for In The Heights. My career started in the analog world and has advanced into the world of digital recording and mixing. I currently have a Digidesign Pro Tools mixing studio in New York where I do most of my work. In the following weeks I’ll be discussing recording and mixing techniques, technology trends, and the state of the music industry. Thanks for stopping by.

Testing 1-2-3

2009-10-06T17:13:00.000-07:00

Test post. Tim Latham is learning how to blog. Actual posts to follow regarding mixing records in protools, along with some fun anecdotal stories from behind the mixing board. Stayed tuned.

Protools Mixing

2009-10-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

This is a fansite for Grammy Award winning mixer Tim Latham. Tim engineered and mixed some of my favorite hip hop and R&B records from the late 80s and early 90s including records by Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Pharcyde, Erykah Badu and D'Angelo and has gone on to work with Grammy award winning Latin artists as well as pop Icons like Lou Reed and Brittney Spears. You can follow Tim's real website which is all about being a Protool Mixing Engineer.

That's all for now- more information about Tim, and Mixing your record in protools soon.