Good afternoon to you - I recently mixed/mastered some tracks for The Caress - an alternative five-piece based in London, and they’ve released the first two tracks ‘Bruiser’ and ‘Oh God (I’m So Lonesome)’. There are Soundcloud steaming links below, but you can also check them out on Spotify, iTunes and YouTube. And all the rest.
These guys write beautiful songs and I can’t wait to be able to share more soon!
With love,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
This post is long overdue - but I’ve been really busy (washing my hair, mainly). Here’s a track I engineered/produced/mixed/mastered by amazing songwriter and musician Michael Jablonka. He’s an amazing guitarist (he’s the touring guitarist for Michael Kiwanuka) and I love that the song has amazing hooks as well as a ridiculous guitar solo. At the end of the day if you have a gold sparkle guitar you better be able to play.
We tracked the drums and bass and some of the rhythm guitars at Press Play in London, the rest at my studio.
There’s a Soundcloud player below, and here are links for iTunes and Spotify. Michael is so talented and has a new EP coming really soon, can’t wait to hear it!
With love,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
Yes, I do realise that it's been a while since I posted, but I've been very busy recording an album. Isn't that nice?
Anyway, when it comes to compression, the truth is that even some experienced engineers and producers can feel frustrated when trying to set a compressor – especially the attack and release times. A technique popularised by Michael Paul Stavrou in his book Mixing with your Mind (a very expensive but highly recommended book!) helps to overcome this.
The method is simple: using extreme threshold and ratio settings makes it easier to hear the effect of changing the attack and release times. The key step is to first apply the following settings to your compressor:
• Attack to minimum
• Release to minimum
• Ratio to maximum
• Threshold giving at least 15dB of gain reduction – preferably more
Loop up a piece of audio, such as a snare sample or drum loop you’re familiar with, and start to adjust the attack time until you can hear the transients poking through, and really understand and get a feel for the way that the attack works on the particular compressor you're using. Try to ignore the distortion and extreme compression and just focus on the attack transients; pay attention to when there's too much 'clamping down' on the transient.
Random picture of a compressor I took at KONK Studios
I was going to included a screen capture video of myself, following the process with the built-in Logic X compressor, to show you how quickly it can be done - then I thought, you know what? Nah - you do it. You know? Okay, PERHAPS I recorded it several times, only to realise it wasn’t capturing the screen audio and would be useless to everyone, but let’s pretend that this is a lesson in tough love and DIY ethic.
Anyway, once you have the attack set to your taste, you can move onto the release. Listen for when it’s too fast and there’s too much distortion, or when extreme pumping occurs. Once the release is set move onto the ratio, and finally back the threshold down to give a more reasonable amount of gain reduction, and then set the make-up gain. How does it sound?
This is a great trick to try when you’re using a new compressor for the first time, and want to get to grips with it learning how it sounds and behaves. Be sure to adjust the settings in the following order:
Attack -> Release -> Ratio -> Threshold
According to Stavrou, you shouldn’t ever really need to go back and change the initial settings you chose, unless you decide to go for a completely different aesthetic. It’s a great technique, so give it a try! Bear in mind that different compressors sound… different! Some of them will behave in quirky, non-linear ways that you may or may not like…
You could do all that, of course - or you could just get me to mix it for you, which will, of course, sound quite wonderful. 😎
Next up, we’ll talk about serial compression - chaining these lovely things together in a row for further awesomeness and sonic beautification.
With love,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
…which is nice. The full Welsh Music Prize 2018 shortlist:
• Astroid Boys: Broke
• Boy Azooga: 1, 2, Kung Fu
• Bryde: Like an Island
• Eugene Capper and Rhodri Brooks: Pontvane
• Alex Dingley: Beat the Babble
• Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita: Soar
• Gwenno: Le Kov
• Toby Hay: The Longest Day
• Manic Street Preachers: Resistance Is Futile
• Mellt: Mae’n Hawdd Pan Ti’n Ifanc
• Gruff Rhys: Babelsberg
• Seazoo: Trunks
My work was last nominated in 2013, for the Metabeats album ‘Caviar Crackle’ (which I recorded/mixed/mastered/produced, played on, blah blah, and so on and so forth) - you can check it out here, if you like: https://metabeatsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/caviar-crackle
(But no seriously, if you like hiphop go listen to that as it still bangs.)
With love and Azooga,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
I’m over the moon to have had a small part to play in the creation (mastering) of this amazing, new track from my buddies BuzzardBuzzardBuzzard - the band so good, they had to name it three times (or something?). Wonderful video by the good folks @ On Par Productions.
You can listen here on Spotify or Apple Music or click the video below (he gets naked in it so you may as well).
They just returned from a UK tour with Goat Girl, and will be playing @ The Lexington on 28th November.
I’m quite sure that this is just the beginning of a wonderful future for them.... more to come soon….
With love,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
Happy to reveal the latest Boy Azooga track that I recorded/produced/mixed and mastered (ooh la laa) - it’s a cover of The Table’s, comic book dead body dance floor classic ‘Do The Standing Still’.
The video (by Toby Cameron) features Kliph Scurlock, a polar bear and some confused members of the public. Have a good day. Long live The Table.
Catch the Azoogas on their UK and US tour on these dates - I’ll be at the Scala gig tomorrow (Weds 17th Oct).
With love and Azooga,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
Where have you been? Busy I imagine. Me too, me too. I just checked my calendar and saw the date and remembered - to the day, it’s the one year anniversary of the official completion of the debut Boy Azooga album. By ‘official’ completion, I mean the final step of the music part of the process - the mastering - by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering, exactly one year ago today. How times flies!
I remembered that I had some short behind the scenes videos of the process, so what better time to post them? Twas a great day, can’t wait to get in back there again….
And just one year one and the band have a tour of the U.S. lined up for this November! You can find their live dates at boyazooga.co.uk/
Exciting stuff…
With love and Azooga,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
Don’t have much to post; finishing vocals for the last track of my (and Linford Hydes’) album. The band name is VOYA. We’re keeping our heads down and keeping on. More exciting stuff coming soon though - I promise!
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
Ahoy there - I've been so swamped recently, I've barely had time to post. Here with new music though - and one of my favourites off the record, which, by the way, is out now: http://smarturl.it/BA_12KF. The video was once again done by Toby Cameron of ON PAR Productions, shot on Super 8mm film.
With love and Azooga,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
Tracked drums for 3 days in KONK studios back in mid-April. One of the best sounding drum rooms I've been to! I'll definitely be back.
With Love,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
Hello there and good day to you - there is a new single and video out for the song Jerry off the forthcoming 1,2 Kung Fu! album (which you can pre-order here in lovely pink and/or blue vinyl). It's a song about a dog 🐶
The video was once again done by Toby Cameron of ON PAR Productions, shot at Cardiff Dogs Home, (please donate here) and the single is out on Heavenly Recordings. It will be available on your radio dials soon.
With love and Azooga,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
Some more good news - I now can officially announce the release date of Boy Azooga's debut album '1, 2 Kung Fu!', out on July 8th on Heavenly Recordings!! You can pre-order a signed copy of the vinyl and/or CD here: http://heavenlyemporium.com/buy/12-kung-fu/
You can pre-order it on iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/boy-azooga/1300260976
The CD version will be signed too. The iTunes version will not because that's impossible.
Enjoy the lovely album artwork below and have a lovely weekend, won't you?
With love and Azooga,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
So happy to finally show you another track from the Boy Azooga album I produced/recorded/mixed - one of my favourites - LONER BOOGIE!!! It's a song about how it's scary outside and sometimes you want to stay inside. You got the Loner Boogie. Gorgeous video by Toby Cameron of the mighty On Par Productions.
I do hope you enjoy?
With love and Azooga,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
OK, we're going to be talking about Side-Chain Compression. It sounds confusing but it's not at all. It's a relatively long post, but just imagine it's the olden days, when people read books and listened to vinyl and stuff. Everyone's obsessed with tape and vintage gear, but nobody wants to read an article full of lovely, free information? Come come now, you know your brain and music will thank you for it later.
Erm, anyway. Grab a coffee. Let's discuss.
Setting up side chain compression in Logic and selecting the kick as the input signal to turn down the bass guitar - but only when the kick hits
7. Side-Chain Input: So, if we're using a standard compressor (as discussed so far) the level of the audio going into the compressor is used to control the amount of compression; the compressor detects the ‘volume’ of the incoming audio, decides if it’s over the threshold or not, reduces the gain of that audio, and then outputs it. OK, easy, we're on the same page.
Side-chain compression works similarly, but the compressor has two inputs: one is the signal to be compressed and the other signal is used to control the amount compression. The "side-chain" of the compressor is the part of the circuitry that listens to the incoming signal to see if it should tell the compressor to... compress.
This can help to create the 'famous ducking effect’ or pumping sound used in electronic music – the kick is used as the side chain input, acting on the bass to ‘duck’ the bass sound (or perhaps all the instruments, if you want) while the kick hits, and then the music comes back in after the kick, helping create rhythm and groove (if the release is set correctly).
This can be used to... ahem, artistic effect as above, or it can be used simply to create more headroom and allow instruments to 'get out of the way of each other' – for example, if the bass and rhythm guitars are playing during a busy section in a mix and masking the kick and the snare, they can be ‘ducked’ a little in order to allow the kick or snare to bang through the mix a little more easily, as well as creating a little more headroom on the master bus (bonus!).
A cool and slightly advanced trick is to 'duck out' the rhythm guitars (or anything playing at the same time as the vocals) so that they dip out when the singer starts to sing. Go wild - you can even try using side-chain compression with a multi-band compressor and only compress the mid-range of the rhythm guitars when the vocals kick in! You only need a few dB for it to be worth it.
Additionally, using the side-chain gives you another important tool - it allows you to filter the input signal separately, before it is fed to the compressor. Using hi-pass and low-pass filters (see attached pic of Logic X compressor) you can compress the input signal, but only when the threshold is exceeded in the range of, for example, 10Hz - 100Hz. This way, when the signal has contains transients outside this frequency range, the compressor doesn't react. Get it?
Obviously, the settings you have on the compressor (Attack, Release, Ratio, Threshold etc.) will affect the character of the 'ducking'. The Release time might be the most important one here, as that will control the 'breathing' effect. Experiment. Stick it on 4:1, set the Threshold to give you -10dB of compression (i.e. enough so that you can hear it) and then experiment with the Attack/Release. You might like the Attack at the fastest setting.
Some compressors have a side-chain listen button that allows you to check which frequencies you're using as side-chain input (see the above GIF). If you push this, you send the side-chain signal straight to the output. Listening to this can really help you understand what the hell is going on.
Here is a picture of some compressors that I took at a session at Real World. It's just here to spice things up a bit, you know? Otherwise it's just a lot of text and people don't wanna read stuff these days. We need distractions. Plus, I think it looks better. Spruces the place up, like a nice throw, some cushions, or a nice lamp.
8. Compressor Metering - PEAK vs. RMS: OK, so we know that each compressor uses a side-chain circuit to measure the incoming signal, so that it knows when it needs compressing – it asks: ‘is the signal at the threshold, yet?’. But the important part to remember is that the compressor will behave differently, depending on whether the side chain detector responds to the average level of the input signal, or to the max/peak signal level of the input. What?
Well, some compressors can switch between Peak Mode and RMS Mode operations (don't panic, don't close the browser) – in Peak mode, the compressor responds more accurately to brief peaks in the audio - this ensures transients are more accurately controlled, but also introduces a risk that the output will be overly compressed if there’s a sudden loud, sharp transient sound. So Peak metering is usually used on drum and percussion sounds.
Most compressors use an RMS mode. RMS stands for Root Mean Square... which is *clears throat*.... "a mathematical means of determining average signal levels, which is designed to respond similarly to the human ear". Using a compressor in RMS mode means that the compression can sound more natural, but sharp transient sounds may pass through at a higher level than you expect, even with a short attack time. A great tip when working with RMS mode compressors is to use a limiter after the compressor to catch the transients, but be careful not to squash too much of the dynamics!
In the picture at the top (the Logic compressor) the options are 'MAX' and 'SUM' - which is the same as 'Peak' and 'RMS' respectively.
That's all for now. If you need any clarification on anything, just get in touch and ask. I love talking about this stuff. Next time, we'll talk about how to find the ‘perfect’ compressor settings - every time. I don't mean that in a spammy, click-bait way, it's a method I was shown years ago and it's pretty cool.
With love,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
