Mixing With Pink Noise

Freebird

Yay or nay?

spark240

Well I saw a vid on it recently.....looks like voodoo to me....cant see the point.

Musicwolf

I haven't tried it myself yet but I keep meaning to give it a go.  From what I've read it is a tool which can be of particular help when being asked to set up a mix with a high track count and where you may not be already familiar with the material.  Since I'm mixing my own tracks and the track count isn't particularly high I'm not expecting it to be life changing but it is simple enough to try and, if it works for you, then what does it matter what other people think?

octatonic

It is an interesting but fringe approach.

The problem with people learning to mix on the internet, through YouTube videos and such, is they can be seduced by a series exotic techniques when in reality people are better off learning how to use filters (EQ), compressors and simple techniques to achieve musical balance to get productions sounding professional.

There is a laundry list of exotic techniques that people want to know about. 
These include: Side-chain compression, Parallel compression, Brauerizing a mix, Pink noise mixing, Multi-band compression, Mastering whilst mixing, Using compressions as tonal devices, Fairchild compressors (usually plugins).

That is all good stuff and I use those techniques from time to time- but if you prioritise that stuff above and beyond the less sexy, but more useful techniques, like microphone positioning, understanding different compression types and how to use them, knowing the core frequencies of instruments, how to manage bass (especially in acoustically substandard rooms) then your productions are always going to sound unprofessional.

When I learned to play drums my teacher, Mike Glozier, was pushing me to stop 'majoring in minor things'- focus on the beat keeping and being on time, rather than overplaying, trying to use advanced techniques too soon. It is a great phrase and I've adopted it myself in a number of areas and mixing is very much one of those areas.
I'm not saying you shouldn't mess about with any of the above techniques but just give it the right amount of your time and attention- i.e. not a lot.

Concentrate on the stuff that actually matters.

FWIW I see it with a lot of guitar players too- they can shred the fingerboard but cannot play rhythm guitar in time.

PolarityMan

So I've tried doing the thing where you play pink noise at a certain level then pull each track up so you can just hear it over the pink noise. It does produce something where you can hear every individual track and they are pretty similar volumes.....but .....that's not the same thing as a good mix.

PolarityMan

Musicwolf said:

I haven't tried it myself yet but I keep meaning to give it a go.  From what I've read it is a tool which can be of particular help when being asked to set up a mix with a high track count and where you may not be already familiar with the material.  Since I'm mixing my own tracks and the track count isn't particularly high I'm not expecting it to be life changing but it is simple enough to try and, if it works for you, then what does it matter what other people think?

Im very much a beginner but I dont think pink noise is going to work with a high track count tbh. In a high track count you typically have lots of copies of the same source. So tons of mic options on a single guitar performance. Double / quad tracked guitars. Huge vocal stacks etc. And the thing is you don't want all those things to be equal volume. Hell you might not even want to use them all.

I prefer doing a consolidation process where I get rough tones for each element as a submix (in a bus or folder), ie/ I'll use all 4 mic options to get guitar 1 sounding ok then treat that bus as a single track when it comes to balancing.

Plus doesnt pink noise mixing take ages for high track counts. 

Danny1969

@octatonic ; "majoring in minor things" that's  really cool phrase and very true. 

I've seen a video showing the principle of mixing to a sample of pink noise but all the hard work was already done in terms of EQ sculpturing and compression before the pink noise was used to set the fader levels .... and it's the EQ and compression that's actually the skill in mixing  ... with a lot of subtle automation too obviously 

octatonic

Danny1969 said:

@octatonic ; "majoring in minor things" that's  really cool phrase and very true. 

John_P

octatonic said:

It is an interesting but fringe approach.

The problem with people learning to mix on the internet, through YouTube videos and such, is they can be seduced by a series exotic techniques when in reality people are better off learning how to use filters (EQ), compressor and simple techniques to achieve musical balance to get productions sounding professional.

There is a laundry list of exotic techniques that people want to know about. 
These include: Side-chain compression, Parallel compression, Brauerizing a mix, Pink noise mixing, Multi-band compression, Mastering whilst mixing, Using compressions as tonal devices, Fairchild compressors (usually plugins).

That is all good stuff and I use those techniques from time to time- but if you prioritise that stuff above and beyond the less sexy, but more useful techniques, like microphone positioning, understanding different compression types and how to use them, knowing the core frequencies of instruments, how to manage bass (especially in acoustically substandard rooms) then your productions are always going to sound unprofessional.

When I learned to play drums my teacher, Mike Glozier, was pushing me to stop 'majoring in minor things'- focus on the beat keeping and being on time, rather than overplaying, trying to use advanced techniques too soon. It is a great phrase and I've adopted it myself in a number of areas and mixing is very much one of those areas.
I'm not saying you shouldn't mess about with any of the above techniques but just give it the right amount of your time and attention- i.e. not a lot.

Concentrate on the stuff that actually matters.

FWIW I see it with a lot of guitar players too- they can shred the fingerboard but cannot play rhythm guitar in time.

I'd give that post a lot more than 1 wis if I could.      

There's no harm with experimenting with different techniques for fun and interest but they aren't going to fix a poor mix if you haven't got a good graph of the basic - I do live rather than studio mixing but the basics of gain, eq and compression will sort so many issues if people bothered to practise those.     imo hours spent practising using hpf and how to tame low mids will be a thousand times more useful than worrying about which compressor plugin - worry about that when you can hear the difference by changing ratio and threshold settings.

Same with guitar - you'll get more gigs being in tune, in time and knowing  the song than worrying about the colour of your patch leads and how fast your sweep picking is.    

octatonic

Thanks @John_P . 

I try not to sound like a dutch uncle but it is such a common problem.

I should ask say that I pretty fell into the trap of everything I am saying you shouldn't do- it is easy to do.
It wasn't until I started paying attention to the basics that my mixes started sounding as they should.

Musicwolf

PolarityMan said:

Im very much a beginner but I dont think pink noise is going to work with a high track count tbh. In a high track count you typically have lots of copies of the same source. So tons of mic options on a single guitar performance. Double / quad tracked guitars. Huge vocal stacks etc. And the thing is you don't want all those things to be equal volume. Hell you might not even want to use them all.

I think that having too many tracks, especially multiple options for single sources, is where many people, not just beginners, come unstuck.  Grouping things to a single fader, as you are doing, is a sensible approach but I'd seriously question the need for 4 mic's on a single guitar if you are working in anything less than a top end studio with excellent monitors and a well balanced room.  Much better to learn how to get the sound with either two, or even one, mic.

Here's an article on Pink Noise mixing by the well renowned, and newly appointed Grammy Judge, Eddie Bazil;

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mixing-pink-noise-reference

PolarityMan

Musicwolf said:

PolarityMan said:

Im very much a beginner but I dont think pink noise is going to work with a high track count tbh. In a high track count you typically have lots of copies of the same source. So tons of mic options on a single guitar performance. Double / quad tracked guitars. Huge vocal stacks etc. And the thing is you don't want all those things to be equal volume. Hell you might not even want to use them all.

I think that having too many tracks, especially multiple options for single sources, is where many people, not just beginners, come unstuck.  Grouping things to a single fader, as you are doing, is a sensible approach but I'd seriously question the need for 4 mic's on a single guitar if you are working in anything less than a top end studio with excellent monitors and a well balanced room.  Much better to learn how to get the sound with either two, or even one, mic.

Here's an article on Pink Noise mixing by the well renowned, and newly appointed Grammy Judge, Eddie Bazil;

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mixing-pink-noise-reference

Our last EP was kemper so didnt suffer that problem

In the past though I've put up more mics because I'm not confident in my engineering, and especially working in an unfamiliar space with different monitoring, often monitoring through headphones in the same room etc under time pressure due to low budget, I wanted more options in case I fucked up.

Nowadays even though I think you end up with very slightly less mojo in the performance I tend to prefer to record a DI at home and then either reamp or just use plugins. I think I would need to spend *a lot* of time experimenting with mic placement and listening back to takes etc to get even close to the quality I can get in the box and at the level Im at the time.money is better spent elsewhere....like paying someone to time the drums which is the one thing that I will 100% be doing for our next project.

I subscribe to nail the mix so I've also got quite a few pro sessions and some of those have a lot of mics on each source, if you watch back the live mixes though often they already have an idea of what they want to use each mic for. I dont have the experience with different mics to be able to do that though...and if im brutally honest probably not the ears for it either. 

Musicwolf

PolarityMan said:

Our last EP was kemper so didnt suffer that problem

I love my Kemper, but then the danger is that you end up procrastinating about which of the 2,000+ amps you use.

Life was so much simpler in the old days.

PolarityMan

they are great, id love a software player though.

Freebird

Musicwolf said:

PolarityMan said:

Our last EP was kemper so didnt suffer that problem

I love my Kemper, but then the danger is that you end up procrastinating about which of the 2,000+ amps you use.

Life was so much simpler in the old days.

On the other hand, if you are reamping you can easily find an amp sound that fits the track 

andy_k

I'll just leave this here--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QkyzM0xLLk

andy_k

and this.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGSTEBwxSbo

jacklawtey

octatonic said:

It is an interesting but fringe approach.

The problem with people learning to mix on the internet, through YouTube videos and such, is they can be seduced by a series exotic techniques when in reality people are better off learning how to use filters (EQ), compressors and simple techniques to achieve musical balance to get productions sounding professional.

There is a laundry list of exotic techniques that people want to know about. 
These include: Side-chain compression, Parallel compression, Brauerizing a mix, Pink noise mixing, Multi-band compression, Mastering whilst mixing, Using compressions as tonal devices, Fairchild compressors (usually plugins).

That is all good stuff and I use those techniques from time to time- but if you prioritise that stuff above and beyond the less sexy, but more useful techniques, like microphone positioning, understanding different compression types and how to use them, knowing the core frequencies of instruments, how to manage bass (especially in acoustically substandard rooms) then your productions are always going to sound unprofessional.

When I learned to play drums my teacher, Mike Glozier, was pushing me to stop 'majoring in minor things'- focus on the beat keeping and being on time, rather than overplaying, trying to use advanced techniques too soon. It is a great phrase and I've adopted it myself in a number of areas and mixing is very much one of those areas.
I'm not saying you shouldn't mess about with any of the above techniques but just give it the right amount of your time and attention- i.e. not a lot.

Concentrate on the stuff that actually matters.

FWIW I see it with a lot of guitar players too- they can shred the fingerboard but cannot play rhythm guitar in time.

Amen. 

octatonic

andy_k said:

I'll just leave this here--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QkyzM0xLLk

I prefer his mix to the original.
Daniel is brilliant.
Nice AWS he has too.

PolarityMan

Freebird said:

Musicwolf said:

PolarityMan said:

Our last EP was kemper so didnt suffer that problem

I love my Kemper, but then the danger is that you end up procrastinating about which of the 2,000+ amps you use.

Life was so much simpler in the old days.

On the other hand, if you are reamping you can easily find an amp sound that fits the track 

Thats what we did, we had the DI's and we flicked through in context going through a selection of likely candidate amps, mesa boogies, diezels, 5150s etc until we hit on something we liked. We prob auditioned a max of 15 profiles per sound and the process was about 15-30 secs of each profile.