Here are the notes to my “Mix Engineering 101″ video:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mix_engineer => A mix engineer, also referred to as “mixing engineer”, is a person who, once all instruments, voices, and sounds, etc., have been recorded, creates what is called the final version (also known as “final mix” or “mixdown”) of a song, hence the term “mix engineer”.

He or she ‘blends’ or ‘mixes’ the elements of the recorded piece together, to achieve a good balance of the instrumental and vocal volume, as well their frequency contents, while also deciding other properties such as pan positioning, effects, and so on.

YouTube Link => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxrL8qpTeXE

Drums

The drums come from Logic’s “Ultrabeat” drum machine that comes stock with Logic 9.. In fact, everything that I use in this video comes stock with Logic Express (I don’t need Logic Pro because I already own Final Cut Studio, which includes Soundtrack Pro).

Instead of outputting the drums to one stereo track, I sent each individual element (Kick, Snare, Hat) to its own mono track so I could put effects on each one separately. If you don’t do it that way, when you add bass (low frequency information) to the kick drum, you’re also adding bass to the low end of the snare, which is a waste of bandwidth, changes the sound of your snare, and makes it tougher for your kick to occupy its own individual space in the mix.

Guitars

Guitars are double-tracked, meaning that I played the same line twice and panned each instance to the left or right.

What this does is it gives each side a slightly distinct flavor instead of seeming like a mono track that was copied and split.

Another thing you can do to make each side distinct is to put different amounts of delay on each one, giving it more of a stereo effect.

Another thing you can do is EQ (equalize) them differently so that one is brighter than the other, and people can clearly tell them apart.

Another thing you can do to create distinction, which I didn’t do in this video, is use different Pedalboard settings for each track. I could have used different stomp boxes or I could have used the same boxes with different values for the parameters.

Some musicians like to quad-track their guitars, actually. This would involve playing the same line four times, panning two instances to the right and two to the left, potentially at 100% and 80% to either side, and probably using two different amp/cabinet setups, creating a “wall of sound”.

Vocals

I used two tracks of vocals in this video, although I had eight (8). They’re both very slightly panned off-center (+/- 3) so there’s some separation between them and also because if I choose to widen the stereo field, they’ll become more distinct while still supporting each other.

I also sent each track to “bus 4″, which feeds my harmony tracks, which are panned hard left (100%) and hard right. Each track is delayed separately and pitch shifted in different directions (+9 cents on one side, and -9 cents on the other side). When you blend these in at a volume slightly lower than your lead vocal track, it gives a wider effect which makes it tougher for the other elements in your song that go straight down the middle (bass, snare, kick drum) to mask/block your vocal from being heard.

My two vocal tracks and my two harmony tracks both feed my Sub Voc, or vocal submix stereo track. The Sub Voc feeds my stereo output channel. There are at least three reasons to use a vocal submix. 1) You can automate your volume for all of your vocals at the same time with one fader, instead of having to automate each track individually. 2) You can put an effect on this one track instead of putting the same effect on all of your vocal tracks, saving time and CPU usage. 3) If your vocals don’t seem to sit right in the mix, you can put a compressor on your “everything except vocals” track (in the video, “Sub Inst”) and set your sidechain to listen to your Voc Sub track and duck the entire rest of the program every time there’s information on your vocal channel.

Reverb & Output

Reverb is something you may or may not want to use. What it does is emulate an acoustic environment, like a room or a stadium. The goal is to make each element seem like they were playing in the same space. Depending on the effect you’re going for with your song, that might be a good idea and it might not.

The way I have it set up in this video is that both my Sub Inst and Sub Voc are sending information to my Reverb channel. The amount that I send from each submix determines how loud each element is in the reverb (basically, the echo you would hear if you were listening to a band, live, in a large room).

Your “Output” track indicates the volume level that’s finally being heard. You don’t want that track to be too loud, or else you’ll hear unpleasant and unplanned distortion, that will make your song sound horrible (or unplayable), so you want to put a limiter on that track.

What the limiter does for you is restrict all output to a defined level. In the video, we don’t want the volume going higher than 0 dB (decibels), so the limiter is set for -.7 dB or something. This is where you get your loudness from (5m 45s into the video). Once you restrict all audio from going over a limit, you can increase the input level so the song itself gets louder, but it never distorts… The thing you have to watch out for, though, is crushing your sound and destroying its dynamic range. You don’t want every part of the song to be just as loud as every other part. This is dealt with by watching something I didn’t include in the video, which is RMS level vs. Peak level. If your RMS and Peak are almost the same, you’re pretty much screwed. While you want your Peak levels to be barely below 0 dB, you want your RMS to ride around -10 dB.

Mixing

From there, it’s a pretty straightforward mix.

1. Compress the kick drum to make it “smash”.
2. Equalize the kick to take out frequencies you don’t wan to use.
3. Compress & EQ the snare, mix it to a level that you like with the kick.
4. Bring in the hi-hat, EQ it, match it to the kick & snare.
5. Bring in the DI (direct input) of the guitar tracks.
6. Use Pedalboard to make it sound grungy, mix in with the drums.
7. Bring in vocals, add pitch correction, add harmony send/return tracks.
8. Add compression & EQ to “Sub Inst”.
9. Add compression & EQ to “Sub Voc”.
10. Send Sub Voc & Sub Inst to Reverb.
11. EQ Reverb track to remove bass frequencies.
12. Add limiter to Output channel to increase loudness.
13. Adjust individual elements that have been exaggerated by adding loudness.
14. Check to see how each section works with other sections.
15. Listen to the entire mix.

If you have questions, comments or would like to see an individual tutorial video on any of the sections I outlined here, leave me a comment below or on my Facebook page.
–
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Gina Carano is going to fight Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos this Saturday, August 15th, 2009 for the Strikeforce Women’s Championship.

Now, I’m not much into making predictions on blogs, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents here ahead of time so I can compare it to what happens during the actual fight.

Unfortunately… (or, fortunately, for some of us :D), American media, and probably media everywhere else in the world puts a lot of value on physical, visual attractiveness. I think that’s a good idea when it comes to commercials and modeling, but a VERY BAD IDEA when it comes to fighting.

Every time I hear about Gina, they’re talking about how cute she is and how she’s “The Face of the Sport”, yadda yadda…

Every time I hear about Cris, they’re talking about how she’s a savage and has been mauling every chick in her path.

Unfortunately, the way the fight game works, as I’ve watched through Boxing and now Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), it’s a ladder-based system where you make sure the best avoid the best until you can make a superfight and make a lot of good money from it. Because of this, I haven’t been able to see Carano & Santos go up against the same calibre fighters in order to attempt to accurately judge what should happen when they meet on Saturday.

Of course, this issue is exacerbated by the fact that there just aren’t very many women that are allowed to fight on television. As far as I know, there are ZERO women in the UFC, ZERO women in the WEC (which appears to be the minor leagues of the UFC?), I saw some rarely when Bodog used to have a show, and you see women fight now and then in Strikeforce, where this fight is going to take place.

Therefore… Basically due to a lack of female fight promotion, this is about to decide the female MMA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, very much in the same way that the World Football Champions are decided by the NFL, because there’s no viable competition anywhere else in the world.

The other question is “Where do they go from here?”. What can Strikeforce do to top themselves after this? I think they’d better hope that the fight’s really competitive so that people clamor for a rematch and they can drag this “rivalry” out for a couple of years.

Hopefully, what’s going to happen is that more people will see female fights as entertaining and request more women in the fighting organizations. Any decisions made are going to depend on how much money there is to make from female fights, so we’ll see how things turn out.

As far as my prediction for Saturday……. I’m rooting for Carano, because I’ve been following her longer.. Except I’ve been fully impressed with the ass-whippings that Cyborg Santos has been handing out to any chick that would like to step up and receive one. :D I haven’t been able to see them fight the same quality women, so I don’t have a good handle on this, but it appears to me that Cris is just too strong/brutal for Gina. I’ve seen Gina battle with other chicks. I haven’t seen Cris in trouble AT. ALL… Not that I’ve seen all of her fights.

I would love to see Gina win an unanimous decision over Cris, but realistically, my prediction is referee stoppage in the 4th round, declaring Cris Cyborg the winner, TKO via strikes.

Another issue here, though is that this fight is going to be five 5-minute rounds. For some odd reason, they’ve been forcing women to fight 3-minute rounds, which is obviously going to make this fight tougher to predict as far as stamina. Non-title fights are 3 rounds, meaning that men get to fight 15 minutes, while women only have 9 minutes to make it happen.

The obvious problem here is that when you decide to make a championship fight where women are going to fight five 5′s.. They now have to last for 25 minutes, or almost THREE TIMES AS LONG as their normal fights (3×9 being 27 minutes). The guys in the same situation don’t even have to fight TWICE as long (15×2 being 30 minutes), so this is really pretty retarded and they need to make it so that women are fighting 3x5s in their regular fights just like the men.

So this could throw a major wrench in my prediction, depending on which one of the ladies shows up with better cardio on Saturday. If Cyborg gasses out, I’m changing my prediction to Carano by tapout due to Rear Naked Choke late in the 4th round! :D

Either way, I’m about to enjoy my ass off! :D

Pass The Popcorn!!! :D

~Bill | @BillCammack

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We’ve already established in “Maury Show Tips: 01 – You Are An Idiot” that if The Maury Show calls you AT ALL, then either YOU are an idiot, your girlfriend is an idiot or BOTH OF YOU are idiots. That means there’s a 66% chance that you are an idiot, which is higher than 50%, so let’s just assume that it’s YOU. Here’s the proof:

You + Her = Result
================
Smart + Smart = Rejected. Never seen on the show [25%]
Smart + Idiot = She did something that will embarrass you = Guest [25%]
Idiot + Smart = You did something that will embarrass her = Guest [25%]
Idiot + Idiot = Ratings Galore = GUEST!!! (multiple episodes) [25%]

Now, because you’ve been invited as a guest, we can throw out Smart+Smart, which leaves us with two slots where you are an idiot and one slot where you are not = 66% chance that the idiot is YOU.

If your girl happens NOT to be an idiot (which, BTW… you wouldn’t be smart enough to figure out), then we can rule out the Paternity Test series. The only trick The Maury Show has left up its sleeve is The Lie Detector Test.

Like I mentioned previously, even the secretary who buzzed you in the security door to the studio is more educated than you are. PLEASE do yourself a favor and FORGET ABOUT TRICKING AN-NY-BOD-DEE until you get back out in the street, like FAR AWAY from the studio and make sure you turn a couple of corners so their outside cameras can’t see you either.

Of course, the entire point of this series is that you’re not going to take my advice and stay off the show, so here’s how to carry yourself when you’re a guest on the Lie Detector Test episodes:

1) How to pass the Lie Detector Test

There’s a very simple way to pass the Lie Detector Test……

Don’t lie.

The Maury Show hires professionals to administer the polygraph examinations… oh… sorry… I mean the Lie Detector Tests (let me not confuse you). These people catch ACTUAL. CRIMINALS. who did stuff they REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, *REALLY* don’t want to get caught for. You, my friend, are the proverbial “fish in a barrel”. They can break you WITHOUT hooking you up to the machine. For instance, the next time you want to know the truth about something, ask the person to their face and don’t blink while they’re processing what you said. If their eyes dart in one direction, they’re accessing actual memories. If their eyes go the other way, they’re MAKING. $#&%. UP! These people can tell by how much you start blinking or sweating what time it is. They don’t even NEED the needle to jump… So if you get strapped in for that test, TELL. THE. TRUTH!

Telling The Truth is the semi-valiant way to “survive” a Lie Detector Test episode. You’re going to come out looking bad either way, so if you’re strapped in, and you know damned well you’re about to lie… give up the ghost. Admit to what you did. That way, when you walk out on stage, you know there aren’t going to be any surprises, AND you know when to grab your girl’s hand, look her in the eye, tell her “You know I love you… right? :D ” and keep holding her hand until she rips it away from you when Maury tells her what you admitted doing with her favorite aunt.

If you go out like a sucker and lie about it, you’ll be sitting there on stage BELIEVING you passed the test, which is when you look like :O just before they cut to an audience shot because your girl hopped up and slapped the $#&% out of you. At least if you tell the truth, you have SOMETHING to lean on when she’s bitchin’ about it backstage, even though she’s going to counter with “Why couldn’t you have just TOLD me???”, and “You brought me on NATIONAL TELEVISION to tell me this???”

2) If you STILL have to try to pass….. :/

If you insist on not taking ANY of my advice and a) Not returning the Maury Show Producer’s call, b) Not showing up to the studio and c) Not lying during the polygraph examination, then your best bet is to “Act As If”.

Now, this takes incredible skill, because you’ll have to translate what the examiner says in your mind, on the fly. To complicate matters, there are positive questions, negative questions and, let’s call them “test” questions. You have to make sure that you have an “Act As If” for the positive and A DIFFERENT ONE for the negative. Meanwhile, you have to tell the truth during the “test” questions, so the examiner knows the machine’s working right.

The “test” questions are very simple. You had to show them ID to get in the studio, so they know what your name is. They called you on the phone, so they know what your number is. They have your address on file. They will throw these questions in so that when you answer them truthfully, the machine indicates that you’re telling the truth (or rather, does NOT indicate deception), and they know the machine is calibrated properly. These questions are a breeze. Here’s the hard part…

The questions that I’m calling “positive” are questions that your girl will be HAPPY if you are telling the truth about these things. When the examiner asks you a “positive” question, such as:

You have to figure out on the fly that it’s a POSITIVE, and before answering, substitute the name of a chick that you think is attractive…. like, maybe.. Veronica Belmont. :D

So the questions YOU answer are:

This way, you can truthfully answer “YES!!!!” to all three questions, and the polygraph will not indicate deception……. Unfortunately, since you’re probably not smart enough to convince yourself that he actually SAID “Veronica Belmont”, you’ll probably Epic Fail, because not only are you lying, you’re lying POORLY. :/

Same thing goes for the negative questions, such as:

You know the drill… Search & Replace. “Act As If”! :D

See how simple? :D

3) Do NOT answer escalating questions

This is the way Lie Detector Tests work… When you tell the truth, nothing happens. When you attempt deception, the needle goes YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAAAAAAAAA and the polygraph examiner knows that you just lied. The problem FOR YOU is that he’s not going to TELL YOU that he knows you lied. Here’s how to tell you just got busted, so you can STFU:

If dude asks “Did you ever cheat on your wife?” and you KNOW. DAMNED. WELL. that you did, but you answer “No, Sir” anyway (or some variation, “I’d never cheat on my wife”, “My wife is my heart”, “My wife is my whole life”….) and then the next question he asks you is:

“Have you ever cheated on your wife with FIVE different women?”

Do. Not. Answer. That. Question!!! You. Have. Been. BUSTED!!! Do Not answer ANY more questions along those lines. You have not cheated on your wife in a box. You have not cheated on your wife with a fox. You have not cheated on your wife for some Green Eggs & Ham. NUTH-THANG!… NOTHING! If you DO answer these questions, that’s when Maury gets to hit you with the double-shot, for the big Ratings Bonus:

Maury: “When asked if he’s ever cheated on you, he said ‘No’.”
Girl: :D
Guy: :D
Maury: “The Lie Detector Test said that is a lie…”
Girl: *silent with shock*
Guy: “What? No Way! I have NEVER!…”
Maury: “… more than 30 times.”
Girl: *Falls on floor*
Guy: *Starts imagining living under a bridge*

See that? You could have “survived” if you would have STFU when they started asking those escalating questions… “more than 5 times?”… “more than 10 times?”… “more than 30 times?”… Trust & Believe that wherever they stop asking you, you FAILED all the levels below that one.

4) The Green Room is not PHYSICALLY PAINTED GREEN!!! :/ (idiot)

“The Green Room” is a term used to mean a holding area for people that are not on the show at that point in time. Yes, it *MIGHT* actually have green walls, but it doesn’t have to. The episode that I saw that inspired this series featured a guy, sitting on a couch, in plain view of the camera, saying something to the effect of:

“I’m not going in the Green Room man, haha they send girls in there to trick you. I’m staying right here! :D “

Next thing you know, there’s a white flash, and there’s a girl sitting next to him on a couch. Wait. I need to go off on a tangent. :/

Dudes… PLEASE do not flatter yourselves that you came all the way from the sticks with your so-so looking girlfriend to New York City, where MILLIONS of people live, and according to disputed reports, there are 210,820 more single women than men, and it just so happens that you sit down on a couch inside a studio with SECURITY, where nobody can just walk in off the street, and some chick who’s there DURING WORK HOURS is gonna walk up to YOU, start a conversation, take her shirt off and make out with you. IT. IS. A. TRAP!… JEEZ! :/

On top of that, you are there WITH. YOUR. WIFE! (or girlfriend or whatever) After all that trouble you went through to lie your ass off through the polygraph examination, you think it’s a good idea to pick up chicks because your woman isn’t physically in the same ROOM with you? I mean, just because you can’t see your girl with your eyes means you can get away with ANYTHING?

Here’s your tip #4… Forget about The Green Room. How about, “If you come to NYC to prove to your girl that you’re not cheating, how’s about… NOT CHEATING UNTIL YOU GET BACK HOME?”

And Then… They don’t even send STUNNING chicks in there! :D They send your regular, average, run of the mill, pass five of them on every single New York City block type chick in there, and you go for it right off the bat! Way to make yourself look selective. Good luck getting a good spot for your cardboard box under that bridge.

~Bill

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