Episode 41 - Mixing Terms Pt. 2
Show Notes
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 41
Feb 23, 2021
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 38
Show notes by: Bradley Will
3D (Depth)
Jon:
It’s the marriage of the speakers and the room that allow the speakers to sound 3D.
Jon actually thinks in 4D, over time.
Height, width, and depth.
Without proper monitoring you can’t get the depth.
Having the sensitivity to know that reverbs are going to be too washy and should be made shorter.
Jon wants to be able to touch things and reach into the mix.
He finds there is far less resistance to achieving this with Atmos mixing. In Atmos he can achieve it effortlessly.
The mix sounds tangible. Like you can touch it.
Jon is about to be set up for Atmos. He’s talking to Maurice at PMC.
It takes 21 speakers and take a long time to set up.
Matt:
When he is listening to the 3D effect and depth he is monitoring at a low level.
At lower volumes he gets much more clarity of depth
Honky
Jon:
When something that’s not a horn sounds like a horn.
1.2k - 1.8k. That nasally harsh song.
There’s nothing good about honky.
An un-EQ’ed spring reverb.
Jon loves Non-lin reverb like the AMS RMX16
Matt:
It is mostly used as a negative.
There’s something in the midrange that is poking out too much.
Is an onomatopoeic word.
Depth
Is depth exclusively front-to-back space? Yes.
Is there depth to the lyrics?
Depth to the sound?
Front to back depth. The whole 3D image is front-back, left-right, bottom-top.
Hollow
Jon:
A resonant drum that is empty with a long sustain.
Like a tube being hit.
Jon thinks of hollowing out a reverb that is too dense. He would subtract the mid.
Jon filters the vocals no higher than 90-100Hz.
He tries to mix as full and full-range as possible.
Matt:
Thin is a lack of low-end
Hollow is devoid of midrange.
Tall/Short
People never ask for tall/short.
People have described Jon’s mixes as tall.
More height. More low-end. More Space.
Jon thinks proper monitors and PMCs helps him mix tall.
Jon’s guitars are sometimes mixed down to 6k-7k. You don’t need that frequency on a guitar.
Jon is very rarely additive in the hi-end.
Jon says the DW Fearn EQ is the most musical EQ he’s ever used on his master buss. So any brightness he does will come from there.
Jon thinks compressors gets rid of height. It lowers the ceiling.
Jon:
Similar to bounce. The pocket doesn’t have to bounce, but the bounce is the pocket.
Pocket is where the drum and bass sits.
Jon looooves when the bass player is right behind the kick.
It is the grid for the song.
Sometimes Jon will use a muted James Brown loop to SC the groove that he’s building.
Matt:
It is the essential rhythmic core of the song.
It is quantized in such a way that everything locks in.
Sometimes it’s all about nudging and taking things off of the grid.
Color
Jon:
Jon interprets this literally as a sound being “orange” or “red”.
Jon prefers to get notes that are more colorful in description and less technical.
Human/Organic/Natural
Jon:
The opposite is when something is too clean, or tightened, over-processed, too controlled.
Something is not angular enough or jumping out.
More acoustic, more realistic, more texture, less linear, less synthetic.
Matt:
In the mix process it can be how much you’re processing something.
Are you trying to control it too much?
Thickness
Similar to density. The amount of harmonic information that is in a sound.
Jon boosted 10dB of 800Hz on a side stick recording. That’s woodiness. That’s thickness.
If you want a thicker sound you need to be additive.
Tubes can do this without EQ.
It’s dramatic EQ, not subtle.
Thickness is the game. Thickness is the sauce. It is the fullest realization of the sound.
That’s an ideal of Jon’s: Thickness for every sound.
Boosting low end on a hi hat for thickness.
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Jon never solos a sound to EQ it or max it out.
He will solo groups. But not tracks.
Jon doesn’t like things to sound cartoony and toyish. On the best RnB records the backbeat is emphasized and it has length.
