Module 01 I Should’ve Run To You

Module 1: I Should've Run To You written and

produced by Rob Raede
‘I should have run to you’ is a very cleanly recorded song. Compared to some recordings there
are comparatively few tracks. This can be achieved if each track is full and strong in its own
right.

Where a recording has been made with weak, basic sounds then more instrumental layers are
often added to compensate for that basic weakness.

Of course, it might be intentional to create a recording with comparatively thin sounds so that
there is room for more complexity.

One reason this song has few tracks is that the drums are recorded onto one stereo track rather
than being presented as individual instruments. The reason for that is that the drums have been
taken from a library of drum loops.

This may seem like a shortcut but it is commonly done professionally and to make loops sound
like a living, breathing human player requires a fair degree of care and attention in the editing of
those loops.

Firstly, let’s hear a simple mix of this song then we will consider how this mix can be improved
in certain ways. After that we will look at individual tracks and a combination of tracks and
finally we will hear the producer’s thoughts on what this song should sound like.

Example file: isrty-mix-1.m4a

Let’s look at the edit screen of this mix...

As you will see, some changes have been made to the raw tracks. The first thing you will notice
is that beneath the drums stereo track there is a drum accent track and a drum accent two track.
The producer chose to include drum accents to add excitement at certain parts of the arrangement
and in the producer’s mix they do seem to work.

However, just because material is present on the original multi-track recording doesn’t mean that
as a mix engineer you have to use it. The object is to come up with the best possible mix of the
song and whether or not you use all the material from the original multi-track recording is not
particularly relevant.
In fact, as a mix engineer you are at an advantage in that you can judge the tracks objectively. If,
for example, the producer had struggled long and hard to complete a certain instrumental track,
and indeed it is possible to spend a whole day just on one instrument, then how would that
producer feel about dropping that track from the finished mixed?

When you have worked really hard on achieving something you become very attached to it and
it’s very difficult to make the decision not to use it even if that decision is actually necessary.

As the mix engineer you won’t know how much struggle has gone into recording the individual
tracks. You will listen to it objectively and if you find there are some elements that you think
isn’t contribution to the overall result then you can simply drop it.

And so it is here, as you will see, some experimentation has been done with the drum accent
track and you will see that part of it has been dropped onto a fresh track so that it could be
manipulated individually but ultimately it was felt that the drum accents didn’t add anything
substantial to the overall feeling of the song so the two tracks were muted. They could have been
deleted from the session to save processing power if necessary.

Next take a look at the Elec 1 track, obviously one of the electric guitars. This guitar has a solo
about two thirds of the way through the song which has a rather different sound quality to the
rest of that track. If you have enough tracks then generally you want each track to be of one
instrument but also one instrument playing one quality of sound.

If at some point the quality of sound changes, for example the guitar player might change from
one pick up to another, then very often it is useful to treat that as a completely separate
instrument and give it its own track and indeed this has been done here. Also on the lead vocal
this has been separated out into verse and chorus. It is commonly advantageous to do this for two
reasons - the first reason is that the tone of voice often changes between the verse and the chorus.

Indeed in this song the verse is quiet and a little breathy, whereas the chorus is much stronger
and full sounding. With some singers the voice tends to thin out in tone when singing loud. This
requires EQ to compensate to make it comparable with the quiet parts of the song.

The other reason for treating the verse vocals and chorus vocals independently is that the
instrumentation of songs commonly changes at the chorus usually becoming heavier, louder and
perhaps more congested. So to be able to balance the vocal against this purely for the chorus is a
flexible way of working.

It is of course possible to use fader automation to change levels where necessary. This is a matter
of personally preference.

Let’s take a look at the mix screen for this song...

The multi-track recording of this song has two points which could be considered problems and
we will deal with those before we move on to the original individual tracks and partial mixes.
Listen to the end of the song and see what you think.
Example file: isrty-end-mix-1.m4a

And this is what it looks like on the screen..

What can you hear about this that might be a problem musically? Clearer the producer knew
what he intended to do otherwise he wouldn’t have left it like this. However, we will make a
slight modification to the content of the end section of the song and also to the timing of the end
section of the song.

What you might notice is that the vocal seems out of time with the background music
particularly right at the end where the lyrics go ‘I couldn’t stand’. Underneath ‘I couldn’t’ there
is an instrumental chord that does seem out of time with the vocal.

Possibly the easier way of remedying this is simply to take out the background music at that
point leaving the vocal to stand on its own so that is what we will try. Sometimes we have to try
things and find they don’t work but this time we will probably find an improvement. Here is
what we have done...

As you can see in the drums, both acoustic guitars and two electric guitars, we have marked out
separate regions and they have been muted in Pro Tools. When a region is muted then it turns
gray. The bass hasn’t been changed as the bass does not actually play a note at that point
although there is a note that is continuing. That bass note will continue to support the vocal.

Also, electric guitar four at that point doesn’t need to be muted because it is playing although
you will see that a cut has been made just before the last chord from electric guitar four. It
sounds like this...

Example file: isrty-end-mix-2.m4a

As you can hear, this has worked very well particularly for such an unsophisticated edit. It
wasn’t necessarily to find particularly precise edit points, neither was it necessarily to perform
cross-fades, sometimes it would be. So this seems to be an improvement.

There’s no longer the clash between vocal and backing instruments in terms of timing. However
if you listen to the vocal carefully it would seem that the singer has been somewhat distracted by
the background instruments and isn’t phrasing the line in the best way possible.

What we will do now is we will modify the vocal line to improve the phrasing, in doing that we
will also have to apply the same correction to all of the other instruments. What we will do is
make a cut just before the last word ‘stand’, in fact just before the ‘s’ of stand. You can see it in
this graphic.

Now we will select all the regions that we’re going to move. Firstly we will delete all of the
regions that were previously muted because now we have decided that we don’t want them and if
we left them they would be cluttering up the screen. Next we will highlight all of the regions that
we need to move. It looks like this.

You will notice that Pro Tools has made the selection on all of the tracks from the point where
the vocal region begins, potentially this could be a problem but if there is a problem then we will
easily be able to correct it. So we will zoom in on this part that we are interested in…

And simply drag the highlighted regions to a slightly earlier point in time.

It sounds like this.

Example file: isrty-end-mix-3.m4a

At this point, you may feel that there is still a slight hesitation before the word ‘couldn’t’ so we
will improve that too and this is what it sounds like.

Example file: isrty-end-mix-4.m4a

So with the help of the few edits we have corrected the timing of the last line of the song to a
point where it sounds completely natural. To be honest, if this had been performed by a band
rather than being done to a sequenced looped drum track then they would have just felt the right
point to play the last chord. It is common in professional production to manipulate timing
extensively and this is just a simple exception.

So we have fixed one problem but we still have another which you will hear in this example...

Example file: isrty-end-mix-5.m4a

This starts alright but as the vocal decays then noise becomes increasingly apparent and this
amount of noise is definitely excessive.

The first thing we need to do is to determine which track or tracks the noise is on. Electric guitar
three seems like a likely culprit and this is what it sounds like in isolation.

Example file: isrty-end-mix-6.m4a

It almost seems as though the noise gets louder.

The noise might indeed get louder if the track has been compressed so perhaps the guitar was
compressed during the recording process which we can’t see now.

There’s certainly no compression applied in the mix and to be honest, no compression is

necessary for electric guitar with this texture of sound but also there is the auditory masking
effect and what this means is when one sound is much larger than another sound than the ear
pays attention to the louder sound and completely ignores the other sound in the background and
that’s what’s happening here.

When the electric guitar plays then it is so much louder than the noise that the noise is
completely inaudible but then as the electric guitar decays into silence the noise becomes
increasingly audible so even if the noise doesn’t actually get louder it appears to get louder. So
what we need to do is to deal with the noise on this individual track and that will make a
significant improvement. This is what it looks like on screen.

The noise is easily visible so what we need to do first of all is to pick a point where we think that
the electric guitar is about to finish and the noise is about to become apparent. This is worth
experimenting with so it is suggested that you try it for yourself and decide where the point is
that the noise is becoming really excessively loud. Some noise is acceptable. This is an electric
guitar and we expect a certain amount of noise. So we’re not looking for a zero noise criteria,
just a point where it is really rather too much.

Having done that, we will delete the portion which is useless noise and apply a fade out to the
rest. What we have done is this...
It really looks rather drastic. We have cut away a lot of the end of that last chord and faded out a
considerable portion of what is left and in isolation it sounds like this.

Example file: isrty-end-mix-7.m4a

It sounds rather sudden and even so there is still some noise audible at the end but in the context
of the entire track it sounds like this.

Example file: isrty-end-mix-8.m4a

The fact that we have edited out that noise and put in the fade-out is entirely inaudible so that’s a
good result. There is still a small amount of noise at the end. This quantity of noise is probably
small enough that we could just provide an overall fade out at the end and get away with it.
However we will look into it in more detail and find out which instrument is creating this noise.

By listening to the individual tracks we can hear that it is electric guitar four that is creating the
problem. It sounds like this...

Example file: isrty-end-mix-9.m4a

It isn’t a great deal of noise but it is worth dealing with in exactly the same way as we did earlier
and the result sounds like this.

Example file: isrty-end-mix-10.m4a

So now we have completely dealt with those two problems towards the end of the song. One last
nicety will be to trim the ends of the tracks so the regions end exactly where the audio ends
rather than overhanging for five or six seconds. To do that, listen closely to the end of the song
so that you can detect the point where the audio has completely finished. You will have to listen
closely because it is easy to cut prematurely.

You might like to have your hand on your monitor level control so you can turn it up a little bit
at the final fadeout just to hear more closely. When you have done that, highlight all of the
regions like this...

...and delete them like this...

Just to be sure that the end is clean, you can put a fade on every track like this...

You could do the same thing with automation in the master track. That will achieve exactly the
same end result. So now we are ready to hear the entire example mix with those alterations we
have made at the end.

Example file: isrty-mix-2.m4a

Individual tracks
Drums

Listen to this extract from the drum track...

Example file: isrty-drums-extract.m4a

The kick drum is pleasantly full. The high-hat has some ambience but even so it is a pleasing
sound. The snare drum however sounds like it is in a completely different acoustic to the rest of
the instruments. It’s tuned so that is ringing quite significantly.

Snare drums are commonly damped more than this so that they ring less. However, in the
context of the whole song, this ringing is not excessive and it works well and adds weight to the
overall sound. You will notice that the snare drum is larger than the kick drum. You might not be
able to hear this but you can see it from the waveform.

Often it is a useful rule of thumb to balance the snare drum and the kick drum to the same levels
but you don’t always have to do this. Whatever seems to suit the nature of the song is the best
solution. In this case since the drum track came from a sample library, if the track is sourced
from a loop of playing rather individual or drum samples then it is difficult to control the level of
individual drums.
If one was to pick out any negative aspect of this drum track, it would be that one of the tones is
found to the extreme left of the stereo image. Something you should think about when mixing
drums is how close are they or how far are they in the stereo perspective.

If you imagine standing right in front of a drum kit then the high-hat will be well over to your
left and the floor tone will be well over to your right in a drum set that is normally positioned.
However if that drum set is further away then the apparent width will be less.

So in recording, this is something of a contradiction that you want the drums to have an upfront
sound but you don’t necessarily want to have the feeling of standing right in front of them.
You’d like them to have the upfront sound characteristic but still have the drums at the back of
the band and you can achieve this by panning in the drums rather than letting them fill the whole
width of the stereo sound image. This is a small point but nevertheless worth thinking about.

Bass guitar

The bass guitar in this recording is very cleanly played and cleanly recorded. The emphasis is on
the actual bass frequencies. There is some presence in the high frequencies but there is little in
the high frequency end of the spectrum. The sound suits the song very well.

Sometimes the bass guitar can be a little uneven in level. This causes it to be too loud at some
parts of the song and too quiet at other parts of the song and this can vary on a note by note basis,
hence bass guitar can often benefit from a little bit of compression. Sometimes, like in this case,
the playing can be reasonably consistent but compression can be used to bring the tails of the
notes up in level so that they are closer to the level of the attack of the notes.

Here is the bass guitar without compression...

Example file: isrty-bass-no-comp-extract.m4a

Here are the compression settings used...

And here is the slightly compressed bass...

Example file: isrty-bass-extract.m4a

Acoustic guitars

The acoustic guitars are clearly played and cleanly recorded and the instrument seems to be of
reasonable quality. However acoustic guitars often have a rather boomy sound that can be a little
over aggressive in the context of the other instruments. So in this case some EQ has been used.
Here is an extract from the acoustic guitar track without EQ.

Example file: isrty-acoustic-no-eq.m4a

To take away some of the boominess, EQ has been applied. The frequency is 176 hertz and a cut
of 6 decibels. The curve looks like this...

And it sounds like this...

Example file: isrty-acoustic-eq.m4a

...which is a much more smooth balanced and polished sound. Notice how the guitars have been
found partially left and partially right. Since both acoustic guitars are playing exactly the same
notes and chords then it would be possible just to have one acoustic guitar. Then you would have
to decide where the foot in the center of the stereo image, where it might compete with the lead
vocal or if you panned the acoustic guitar to one side or the other, you would almost certainly
need to balance it up with another instrument on the opposite side.

Electric Guitars

Here are all the electric guitars playing over the full duration of the track.

Example file: isrty-electrics.m4a

It isn’t usual to listen to the electric guitars in isolation like this. On the other hand it is
instructive to realize what contribution they are making to the overall sound of the track. You
can almost think of it like an orchestra and this is the electric guitar section playing.

You’ll notice at the end a complete silence caused by the editing we did to correct the timing. In
isolation, this is very noticeable but in the context of the rest of the mix it is completely
unnoticeable. As is often necessary, some EQ was applied to the electric guitars. Here is electric
guitar one without EQ...

Example file: isrty-elec-1-no-eq.m4a

This sounds fine in itself but there is significantly low frequency content which would tend to
clutter up the rest of the track excessively so EQ has been applied to take out that excess low
frequency and also provide a little bit extra presence where the instrument is strong. The EQ
curve looks like this...

...and it sounds like this...

Example file: isrty-elec-1-eq.m4a

The same EQ was applied to the solo electric guitar. Electric guitar 3 has also been processed
with EQ. Without EQ it sounds like this...

Example file: isrty-elec-3-no-eq.m4a

With EQ it sounds like this...

Example file: isrty-elec-3-eq.m4a

The EQ curve looks like this...

Electric guitar 4 didn’t seem to require any EQ processing. Here it is for the same section of the
song...

Example file: isrty-elec-4-extract.m4a

Vocals

Firstly, let’s listen to the whole of the vocals for the full duration of the track as they actually
appear in the mix.

Example file: isrty-vocals.m4a

As you will hear, the vocals are very smooth and fairly fault free. There is some noise in the
background but the level is low enough to be fully masked by all of the other instruments. There
is one click but you probably wouldn’t have noticed it in the context of the entire track. It might
have been nice as a finishing touch to have been able to hear the ‘d’ in the final word ‘stand’.

Let’s look at the individual vocals in more detail, firstly the verse vocal. Here is the vocal in the
first verse without any plug-ins and without any reverb.

Example file: isrty-voc-verse-clean.m4a

This vocal is already strong and the balance of frequencies is good. We can make it a little
stronger by using a small amount of compression. There is always the question of whether to EQ
first or to compress first. The reasoning you should use is this – is there a fault with the balance
of frequencies? If there is, that fault should be corrected with EQ before compression otherwise
the compressor is working on false information.

Once the balance of frequencies is good then you can compress it. If the balance of frequencies
is already good, as in this case, then there is no need for equalization before compression so the
compressor can be the first plug-in in the chain and when the sound has been improved by
compression then equalization can be applied to the result.

Indeed quite commonly it is a good idea to EQ first to correct the frequency balance that is
necessary then compress and then EQ again. So the first EQ was for corrective purposes and the
second EQ was to help the track blend in with the mix. Here is the vocal in the verse with only
compression applied.

Example file: isrty-voc-verse-comp.m4a

In this example, the makeup gain of the compressor has been set slightly too high so the
compressed version appears louder than the original version but even setting them both to the
same peak levels then the compressed version would sound stronger. Here is what the
compressor settings look like.

Now we will add the EQ...

Example file: isrty-voc-verse-comp-eq.m4a

Here are the EQ settings which you can see cut the low frequencies slightly and provide a lift in
the high frequency region.

The problem with applying compression and EQ or even applying compression or EQ is that it
can emphasize the ‘s’ sounds unduly. In this case you may choose to use a de-esser plug-in. A
de-esser needs to be set very carefully so that it only works when ‘s’ sounds are present and not
during other sounds otherwise it can make the vocal dull, and since we used EQ to make the
vocal brighter then that is the exact thing we don’t want to do. Here is the verse vocal with
compression, EQ and de-essing but no reverb.

Example file: isrty-voc-verse-comp-eq-des.m4a

Here are the DSA settings...

It would be interesting to see exactly what the de-esser is removing from the signal. So what we
have done here is to take the non-de-essed signal and the de-essed signal and invert it, the non-
de-essed signal before adding them together. Thus everything that is the same in these two
signals will be subtracted hopefully leaving nothing behind but where they differ in the ‘s’
sounds, that will not subtract completely therefore you will hear it.
In this example, the de-essing process has caused a slight phase shift which has led to incomplete
cancellation so you will still hear some of the vocal in the background. Nevertheless, the ‘s’
sounds start loud and clear showing that they have been reduced in level as they appear in the
final mix.

Example file: isrty-des-subtraction.m4a

Not every vocal requires reverb. The reason you would add reverb would be to make the vocal
sound fully and warmer or if there seems to be a space in the track that reverb could fill. In this
case the vocal is a full sound in its own right so the reverb is, in a sense, filling a gap.

Here is the vocal with all the plug-ins applied plus the reverb...

Example file: isrty-voc-verse-all.m4a

For comparison, here is the complete mix of that section of the song without reverb.

Example file: isrty-mix-verse-no-reverb.m4a

And here is the same section with reverb...

Example file: isrty-mix-verse-reverb.m4a

It is up to you as the mix engineer which you prefer although bear in mind that your client may
have their own preferences. One thing that it is interesting to note is that we have only used the
standard de-verb plug-in that comes free with Pro Tools. This would not be regarded as a
particularly good reverb plug-in, however, in this context it sounds perfectly fine. It is often the
case that reverb doesn’t need to be perfect to work well.

The plug-in settings for the compressor and the de-esser for the vocal in the chorus are exactly
the same as for the vocal in the verse. However the EQ is slightly different. The low frequency
area has been cut a little bit more and the high frequency area has been boosted a little bit less.
This was done to make it fit in with the track rather than to change the sound of the vocal itself.

Here is the vocal in the chorus without EQ but with compression and de-essing applied.

Example file: isrty-chorus-voc-no-eq.m4a

...and with EQ...

Example file: isrty-chorus-voc-eq.m4a

Here is the EQ setting for the chorus vocal...

There is no reverb on the vocal in the chorus as there isn’t the same amount of space in that
section of the song as there was in the verse. Also there is a vocal of double during the chorus
that supplies the fullness we need at that point. You will notice that the vocal double has a delay
applied to it.

Here is the delayed setting for the chorus vocal double.

You will notice that this is a pure delay. It doesn’t incorporate any of the delayed signal, neither
is there any feedback for repeated echoes. It is purely to make the vocal double a little later in
time by just 72 milliseconds.

The reason for this is that without the delay, the vocal double seemed to be clashing to a certain
extent with the lead vocal itself. Here is what they sound like together with the delayed plug-in
deactivated. Deactivated means taken completely out of the signal chain. If it was left in but
bypassed there could still be a slight delay on the signal.

Example file: isrty-chorus-voc-voc-dbl.m4a

And now with a delay in place...

Example file: isrty-chorus-voc-voc-dbl-delay.m4a

Compressor settings for the vocal double and the EQ settings are slightly different to the other
vocals but this came about as part of the natural mixing process and the differences are small and
not particularly significant. Here are the settings for the compressor.

and the EQ...

The harmony in the chorus did not require any further processing but you can hear that it has
been processed already in a raw file that was presented in the original multi-track recording,
indeed rather severely processed with a pitch correction plug-in probably auto tune. This track
was presented as a stereo track but indeed a mono track would have sufficed.

Example file: isrty-chorus-harmony.m4a

Partial mixes.

Let’s build the track up from its foundations. Here is the entire track with just drums and bass.

Example file: isrty-mix-drums-bass.m4a

Here we add the acoustic guitars...

Example file: isrty-mix-drums-bass-acoustic.m4a

Let’s add the electric guitars...

Example file: isrty-mix-all-but-vocals.m4a

And for completeness, here is the example mix again.

Example file: isrty-mix-2.m4a

And finally the original producer’s mix...

Example file: I Should've Run To You.m4a

Your next step should be to create a mix that is comparable to the original producer's mix. Try
and get as close as you can to the original.