Mixing Jazz is a different beast to many other genres, editing is no longer all important and can even affect the traditional authentic sound of jazz.. if that’s what you’re going for, and for these tracks it certainly is!
Maintaining the genuinuity of the performance becomes highly important, and minimism also takes a front seat, with highly produced and affected sounds taking a back seat or not even getting in the car! Because too much production begins to take tracks out of the traditional jazz genre.
I’m working with Carissa Jade mixing this EP, taking lead role as Mixing Engineer and Carissa as a Producer and Assistant.
We’ve got 5 freshly recorded three piece jazz tracks ready and waiting in ProTools. So where do we start?
Approach:
Reference tracks!
To define and create direction in the mixing process we need reference tracks and some verbal description of the goals. For this three piece band (electric bass, keys and drums) we have picked out a previous jazz band I've recorded as our reference which you can find in my projects! This is not a strict ‘we must sound like this’ kind of reference, but more of a loose guideline to follow for levels and frequency balance. Throughout the mixing process it is excellent practice to consistently refer back to your reference tracks.
Our first step was to edit the recording - all Carissa did here was select the best take of each track and save each separate track in its own PT session. This is not totally necessary as you can mix a jazz album all in the same PT session, however having separate sessions allowed us to treat each song easily as an individual. While using the ‘import session settings’ feature to bring over the plugins and settings from another track, this ensures that each track can sound similar to the others and also quickly be adjusted and changed without affecting the other tracks.
DAW set-up:
Setting up your DAW session can hugely affect how you mix and how the final result sounds. For mixing other genres like Hip-Hop, I use a completely different signal flow. But for jazz like this, here’s a few tips on how to route your session for a balanced, genre accepting mix.
Here is the base layout of my session, which stays fairly constant for each track we recorded. As you can see I've routed anything that has more than one mic to an auxiliary, eg. the Bass, the Snare, and then the entire drum kit as well. This enables me to mix these instruments both separately and together as a single instrument before sending them to my 'Band' auxiliary, which I am using to 'Glue' everything together with a touch (1dB or so) of bus compression, a tape simulator plug-in and a hint of reverb. Using this 'Band' aux is quite essential to achieving a mix where the instruments sound like they're in the same space - this is even more important when you're working with instruments that use DI's as well, like here with the keys and the bass.
I've also clearly colour coded each instrument for visual ease, and this really does make a lot of difference when you're looking at these tracks for hours! Plus working in a team, it is much easier for others to understand the layout of the session and make changes. The session is intentionally quite simple, with minimal auxiliaries and processing. This is because after the producers direction, we are after a live recording sound, without edits and basically as much dynamics as possible! None of those sausage waveforms here ;P.
Techniques:
1. Minimal compression
After receiving feedback from our first rough mix, the initial response was that I've used too much compression. And upon listening to it again, I was in complete agreement, I'd removed a lot of the dynamics and in doing so the feel of the tracks. I re-visited the compression settings and instances I've used the completely re-adjusted or even removed many compressors, bringing life back to the track with sharper attacks and larger dynamic range. Now the compressors I'm using each have an explicit purpose, from controlling the attack of the keys and giving colour to the bass guitar, to bringing the beef out in the kick and even some dynamic EQ'ing to control harsh frequencies in the key sound. Below you can see I've used the preset 'Glue' on the FG-Red, I often start with presets and then adjust the settings for my individual track from there - This speeds up my workflow considerably.
2. Virtual Tape Machines!
A big challenge in this particular mix was making everything sound like it's in the same room, like its been tracked together. This was hard for me as there was exceptional isolation between each instrument due to both our recording set - up and the nature of recording DI's for the keys and the bass. This isolation is good in most cases however is not always ideal for mixing jazz - where a great room tone and bleed between instruments can actually add to the character and feel of the mix.
I used two techniques to get the instruments in the same space, the first was simply adding the same reverb in a few different tracks, I've got busses from the snare mics, the stereo keys DI and the band auxiliary all going to the same reverb. This achieves a fair impression of space, but I found it was still lacking something else, which brings me to the second technique!
I've added Slates VTM (Virtual Tape Machine) in many different places, this tape machine adds harmonics and that classic 'tape' sound to whatever it's applied to. I've used it on every instrument here to add similar harmonics to everything, 'warms' the track up and in doing so, gives us another tie to hold everything together as one. It can also be used to 'beef up' the low end, which is what I've done to the drums and the bass guitar - the difference is remarkable when you remove all of its applications in any track here.
3. Panning.
The final technique I'll talk about here is how I've panned the instruments. In some classic jazz albums, there is some hardcore panning where the drums might be hard left, and the horns hard right for example. This is because when stereo had just came out, there was a switch for panning on the tape machine, Left, Centre, or Right.
What I've gone for in these tracks is a modernisation of that old school sound. panning the drums and keys around 40% left and right respectively and the bass in the centre. However the drums and keys are still stereo recordings, and you can still hear the difference in position between the high end of the keys and the low end, as well as the left and right overheads of the drums. One last thing that really stands out in this mix for me is the application of verb I've used. On the reverb I've really widened the stereo effect, this results in the reverb bringing the drums over to the right and the keys over to the left as well. Tying everything back in and avoiding that weird sense we sometimes get when listening to those old LCR jazz records.
Working as a Team:
A great thing about this project was that everyone involved had a specific role and no one deviated from it. I worked with Carissa Jade as the producer and project manager, Nell Maden as the assistant recording engineer, and Ash Saron as the mastering engineer. This makes it easy to focus simply on my role - mixing. Communicating effectively through messenger with updates on the recording details, mixing progress and mastering plans. Having these defined roles has proven to be very effective, we are each getting our role done and I believe our end result will be much better because of it, especially having separated the mixing and mastering engineer position.
What I'd Change:
One of the main things I'd love to change is the keys sound in some of the tracks. For my taste it has too much distortion for example in Dance Mortalis. I'd just love to be able to 'undo' some of the effects that have been the choice of the keys player. That said, it's really an aesthetic thing that comes down to who the band are.
Another thing I'd have done differently is the recording of the band, I'd have used more condenser microphones to achieve a different more open sound, with more bleed and have miced up a cabinet for the keys as well, providing a real room sound to be recorded. Rather than having to effectively simulate that feeling during the mixing process.
Other than those couple of things I really think we've done a stellar job here, with a professional sounding mix (if a little old school =P). Checking out the frequency response spectrum of each track, I can see that it's been levelled pretty well with perhaps some high end lift to be done in mastering. Those few peak from around 300Hz to 1kHz are the bass fundamentals, which I think sound great where they are, however if Ash feels like controlling them more in mastering, I'll leave that up to him.
If I listen to professional jazz records like Miles Davis's Freddie Freeloader - I notice that the high end can be sharper and pop a bit more, however the keys sound, the drum sound and the bass sound is all in the same ball park of quality and fullness. I even notice that in this track there is substantially more reverb on the trumpet, which leaves it sounding slightly like its in a different room, however it still works and this gives me reassurance that the reverb on my key mixing can be considered tasteful without having to be conservative and reducing it down to the level of the drums reverb.
I'm quite proud of this mix unreally think that after mastering we will have a jazz EP of professional quality.
References:
Wensem, C. (2019). 4 Recording and Mixing Lessons from Vintage Jazz Records — Pro Audio Files. Retrieved 8 August 2019, from https://theproaudiofiles.com/4-recording-mixing-lessons-vintage-jazz-records/
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