My last blog was all about learning how to EQ drums, which needed a post all by itself as there’s so much to think about there, and that’s probably a great microcosm of how to approach the whole mixing concept. You have to balance out everything and make different parts of the drum set work with each other, which you then make work with all the other instruments. This can be frustrating but usually if you listen to what the speakers are telling you then you can’t go wrong. That’s one of the abiding memories I have of doing this mixing masterclass - apart from my head ringing with too much information - you have to trust your ears and do what sounds right.

This can mean that things you hear one year and think sound great you could listen to the next year and think “Oh my god what was I thinking?!”. That’s unfortunately part of learning how to mix. Realising that you’ll probably make things sound like crap to begin with is a hard thing to accept, but it does mean that you’ll have less of an ego about what you’re doing in the moment and produce a better mix. Let it happen and don’t worry too much is my main point.

Anyway on to the mixing! Next up is the piano. In a standard band’s mixing process, the next thing would be bass guitar but the song we were working on didn’t have it, so we had to move onto the next biggest thing that would interact with the drums and that was the piano. This is because it covers a wide frequency range and so we needed to make sure it didn’t cover up - or get covered up by - the drums. We had two mics on this piano to capture the full sound of the piano and give it a stereo width with each side of the piano being picked up properly. The first thing we did was to create a stereo auxiliary channel which we then bussed the two audio channels into so that we could work on the sound as a whole.

We put an EQ on the aux channel and start playing around with the low end. We put a 12db/oct High Pass Filter (HPF) on and started very low and ended up at around 58hz. We also found that the sound was a little boomy so we cut at 100hz at about 2.5db and swept around there until we found a sweet spot of 119hz that removed that sound without taking out too much of the bottom end. The Q wasn’t set too narrow (1.3) but it was still a concentrated area we were cutting from.

We then cut a little of the 400hz boxiness from the sound (-1.3db @ 420hz w/ .79 Q). It was missing a bit of sharpness to cut through the mix so we added 3db of 1Khz with a Q of 1. The last thing we did was to cut a little just above that at 2.5Khz. These final two items were done in conjunction with the acoustic guitar and the reason we did this will be explained later.

You might notice that the Qs above are less surgical than the Drum Kit EQs had on them and this is apparently a common thing to do. You want to be more gentle with the grand piano as its sound is a lot more rounded and has less harshness. This of course depends on the sound that you get from the piano to begin with. If it’s an upright that’s been badly maintained, then you might find that certain frequencies need more treatment but on the whole this idea should hold true.

After the piano we moved onto the acoustic guitar. This guitar part had a mainly rhythmical role to play within the song and that is something that you should consider when mixing a track. What is the instrument’s role? What does it do and how can I best bring out that quality in the mix? Another thing to think about is what is this competing with in the mix? Which instruments are going to overlap with each other and how do we get them to play nicely together? For the guitar, it was going to be clashing with the piano and strings.

We started off with the low end, again taking a 12db/oct HPF and sweeping it up through the low end until we finished at around 100hz. That was where the sound started to be affected so we stopped there. In all of this we were trying to remove things that we don’t want and keep the frequencies that we do. We then made another cut at 218hz to take out some of the muddiness. We also added some breath in the 5-8khz region. Beyond that we were then into the realms of juggling the piano and guitar sound.

As the piano is a warmer sounding instrument, we boosted at 1Khz on that EQ and in order to make the acoustic fit around that we cut that frequency from the acoustic EQ. We then cut 2.5Khz from the piano and boosted 3.2Khz on the acoustic, this allowed the upper-mid strumming sound of the guitar to be brought through and “sit” on top of the warm piano.

This cut and boost strategy is a good one to remember and allows different instruments to work with each other. Invariably you’ll have some sounds that want to play in the same frequency range and you have to think which part of each sound is the most necessary. If the song is well arranged then each instrument will sit in a certain place in the frequency spectrum to begin with and you just have to ensure that all the instruments have their own place. If they don’t then maybe you should think about changing a part so it does. It sucks to be confronted with this when you get to the mixing stage but it’s better to try and re-record parts and make them work than use the EQs, effects and dynamics to “fix in the mix”.

We found that we needed to do this with one of our tracks. We re-recorded the parts that weren’t working and it made a huge difference to the sound of the song. Everything sat nicely together and the EQ was just enhancing that situation. That’s the best way to think about EQing to my mind. EQ helps define something that’s already happening in the recording. It doesn’t create places for each instrument to sit per se, it just brings the instrument’s natural space into sharp focus.

I’ll leave it there for now as we’ve got strings and vocals to think about next and this post has already gotten pretty big. Hope you’re liking this series and if you have any comments about what I’ve said then please leave them in the comments box below.

Today is the last day of 2011 and what an amazing year it has been - this time last year Light Falls Forward didn’t even exist! It was exactly this time in 2011 that Charlie and I decided to have a go at songwriting together and see if it worked, and it did! We had both been gigging with other bands and writing parts and harmonies for them but we wanted to see if we could write our own songs, so we sat down last Christmas and wrote an EP of 5 songs that we put out on Soundcloud in February called Four Seasons and a Day. One of those songs, Rise Above It, has stood the test of time and made it through to our studio EP that we are releasing next month with the addition of drums.

We started gigging in Spring as a duo called C&Nome (pronounced Sea Anemone) at acoustic nights across London, playing at The Phoenix, 93 Feet East, The Luxe, Notting Hill Arts Club and lots of other lovely venues. We also kept writing and went away on a few songwriting weekends to Whitstable and Dungeness, recording new material at home and putting it up on Soundcloud.

After several gigs of explaining how to pronounce our name to everyone, we decided we should come up with a new name and wrote down a few lists of words that we thought summed up our sound. From that, we came up with Light Falls Forward which we both liked straight away and after running it past a few friends, we went with it.

Our good friend and amazing drummer, Ed Williams, joined us to go into the Fish Factory in September and record our debut EP, Songs and Shadows, which is being mastered at the moment. We also put together a string quartet to play on the album - Greg on cello who gave me a few cello lessons last year, Anais on viola who we had worked with as part of the Minds Ear Orchestra and two violinists (Lily and Peter) recommended to us by Davy Berryman who created Sea Stacks. They hadn’t played together before but after a couple run-throughs, they sounded like they’d been a quartet for years. They all gave up their time for free to record parts on a couple of tracks and it sounded amazing! 

The real highlight of 2011 was our last gig of the year, Light Up The Night - a night that we put together where the bands played in darkness, lit by the light the audience brought, to raise money for Shelter. Light Up The Night was a huge success and we were both overwhelmed by how many people came along to make it such a wonderful night. The Slaughtered Lamb was the perfect venue and Sea Stacks and The Portraits played beautiful sets that captivated the audience. The darkness and candlelight made it even more magical - we couldn’t believe that we had created this experience, it was an incredible feeling! T-Toe finished the night with a great set that got people up and dancing, and we raised over £150 for Shelter on the night too which is amazing! It was the first “LFF presents…” night and we are planning lots more for 2012.

We’re busy songwriting again now to get material together for a second EP and trying to find the right venue for our next live music night which will take place in February. More about that coming soon but first will be our EP release in January… watch this space for news on that! Happy New Year and may 2012 be an exciting year for you all! 

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and for a present Naomi bought me a five hour, one on one session with an engineer to go over the finer points of mixing and mastering. I thought I’d share what I learned in my session with you.

The morning was crisp and there was definite excitement and nervousness in the air as Naomi and I wandered down the back streets of Hoxton to the London Academy of Music Production where the lesson would take place. Naomi was accompanying me as I didn’t actually know where I was going but soon we pitched up outside the front door waiting for the tutor to arrive. 

She left me there to go and have tea and cake with a photographer friend of ours whilst I toiled and had my brain mangled with new concepts and ideas. She did, however, promise a nice ale at the local booze house afterwards, so I had a reward waiting for me after all my hard work/to help my brain to recover.

So here I was, being taught how to use Pro Tools after 7 odd years of using it haphazardly and the thing I found out? I suck at Pro Tools! Seriously, I didn’t realise how little I actually knew about the platform. So it was a great experience to be able to just ask questions and have my tutor guide me through.

We started at the basics, I finally got explained to me what the key buttons that exist in the edit window do (linking and unlinking cursors and the like essentially). Then we dived into the song itself.

The first thing I was told to do was to make sure all faders are set to 0. You do this so you can see what it all sounds like to begin with, and to be honest, it sounded horrendous! Everything competing for your attention like a school classroom you’ve asked if they want to go outside and play.

Then we made sure the workflow made sense. In mixing, it seems to make the most sense to start at the back of the band and gradually work your way forward. This means starting with the drums. When sorting out your workflow it’s easiest to work from left to right so stick your drums on the left hand side of the mix screen. Then put your bass instruments, then keys/guitars/strings and finally vocals on the right. This makes sense as you work from left to right in the same way as you read a book.

Now to work on the drums. We recorded the bass drums with two mics. One to capture the low end power and one to capture the click of the beater and the more mid-range snap. So you now have to make those sit together nicely and not cancel each other out. One way to do this is to invert the phase of the mics. As I understand it, this inverts the audio wave so the positive wave becomes negative and the negative positive. The easiest way to think of this is when you invert the colours on a photo.

The next thing to do is isolate the individual drums and listen out for anything that you don’t want. You want to use a decent EQ plugin and remove any frequencies that are superfluous. So we start with the deep bass drum mic. Anything below 35-40 hz isn’t needed so you can put a high pass filter on, set it to 12/18 db/oct and move up slowly from about 30 hz until you hear the sound of the bass drum being affected. Then move it back down until the sound’s back to sounding good. This is the essence of EQing and one thing that I’d never really understood about it. You’re trying to get to the essence of the sound and cut away anything that isn’t necessary. You can then have a look at 125hz, 200hz, 300hz, 400hz, see if they sound good or bad and cut away what you dont need.

Another thing you need to know is that when you cut at lower frequencies, you can have the Q setting quite thin as people can’t hear that sort of cut at that frequency. When you move up the frequencies over 1k, you have to have the settings more broad as people’s ears are more attuned there and will notice things you do. Be gentle.

After that you can move onto the other bass drum mic which is there to add more snap and capture the beater sound and the higher bass drum frequencies. So you can cut away the lower frequencies as they’re being covered by the other mic. To do this you can set a lower ratio on the high pass filter, 6 db/oct, and move up the sounds dong the same thing. You then blend the two sounds together and find the best fit with the two of them. You’re looking for one to provide the power, low end boom and the other to provide the higher snap, punch and crack of the bass drum. Blend those two together right and it’ll sound huge!

Next we’re onto the snare drum and we mic’ed the bottom and top of the snare to get both sounds, similar to the bass drum. Again all you have to do is cut away the things you don’t need and keep the good stuff. The high pass filter can be set similar to the second bass drum mic with 6 db/oct and then move it around a bit higher up until you get to where it sounds good. Remember that the snare will have been picked up amply by the over heads and so these close mics can be used just to add detail to the sound rather than being relied upon to provide the majority of the tone. Key frequencies here are 100-250hz, 1-3khz and 5khz. They are for the body, bang and stick/rim shot sound respectively.

Following the snare, come the toms and these bad boys sit around the bass drum. Low frequencies rule here and you have to be quite the surgeon with your lower frequency cuts. This will allow all of the toms and the bass drum to sit nicely together and you need to make sure of that. Solo the drum then un-solo it to see how the tom is sitting in with the rest of the kit, then solo again, tweak and so on. It’s really about trusting your ears and allowing them to show you what’s good and what’s not. Frequencies to look at here are 220hz, 330hz and 1.2khz, try cutting the two former and boosting the latter. The first ones are for resonance and boom, the last is for stick noise.

We then moved onto the overheads. These are there to pick up the cymbals and higher kit frequencies so don’t worry about trying to hear everything through these mics. Cut the lower frequencies out with a 6 db/oct high pass filter and then find the nasty harsh sounds in the overheads and remove them. I’ve read different things about where to pan overheads, some say pan slightly wide but not extreme but we did and it’s good to have the drums spread wide over the spectrum in my opinion but that might not work for your song.

Hi hats are a strange one as some people think it’s pointless to have them recorded as they’ll be coming through the overheads. I think it’s good to have them as they can get lost and need a little definition but use them judiciously as they can quickly become fatiguing. High Pass filter set up quite high (around 1.15khz) with 12 db/oct and then cut the harshness as well.

We had a room mic as well that gives you more depth to the sound and is there purely to pick up room reflections. You can treat this like an overhead and just worry about the higher frequencies as well. High Pass Filter and cut harshness.

I suppose the key thing that I learnt at this session is that you have to listen hard to your sounds and really get to know them well. We were lucky to have a great engineer (Adam Lunn, you’re amazing!) recording us and so he got us really clear, well recorded sounds that allowed us to really dive in and monkey about with. 

Hope you enjoyed this and we’ll post up the next parts in 2012! Let me know if you’ve got any EQ tips or general ideas on micing and the like.