THE 88R EQ SETTINGS USED ON DAVE GENN ’ S GUITARS
Osbourn ’ s guitars throughout the show . Their playing and tones both work so well together . Again , I had one mic on each amp to work with , so I created some effects to give them more space . I gave each guitar a bit of Aux 3 ( Music Club ) as well as a 15IPS slap into a plate reverb with the slap pushing the plate like a pre-delay . For this , I used Soundtoys Echoboy into the Waves Abbey Road Reverb Plates . I panned an additional slap around 3:00 on the opposite side to approximate some live reflection on each guitar . You can hear this effect on the intro of “ One Day in Your Life .”
The guitars also were sent to a vintage Roland Dimension D and returned on the console on a stereo pair of faders . Adding the Dimension D to the signal gives it a slight chorus sound and makes the signal appear like it ’ s coming from everywhere . This trick was used on many Stevie Ray Vaughan songs and gave his guitar more “ dimension ,” adding a liquid-like tone . The guitars were heavily carved with the Waves Q6 plug-in with a sharp Q around 86 notching out ringing and “ unfriendly ” resonant frequencies and whistles . This cleans them up dramatically and allows so much more space for them in the mix . It ’ s always “ to taste ” and sometimes you can really neuter a sound , but , for me , if I don ’ t like it , I get rid of it . The main EQ was the 88R supplemented by two API 550 graphic EQs and a Waves Kramer HLS adding its distinctive glassy 2.8K . Obviously I ’ m not afraid of EQ and will sometimes use multiple units that are doing very little .
For compression , both guitars went into a Plugin Alliance Purple Audio MC77 with a fast attack and fast release with the mix knob at about 50 %, as well as a Urei 1178 slammed for parallel compression .
The Hammond organ was present throughout the show and added some excitement and texture to the songs . This was mic ’ d in stereo with a low bass track as well . I created an aux and internally panned the pair , leaving the bass in the middle and brought them up on two channels on the console . Aside from the Neve 88R EQ , I added the Waves Vitamin plug-in to give some sparkle to the upper mids . I also sent the signal to the Roland Dimension D because why not ! I added some Aux 3 ( Music Club ) as well as a stereo Abbey Road Reverb Plates plug-in .
When mixing this record , I found the hardest part was figuring out how to make the vocals clear and present without adding a ton of live bleed into the mix . After all , Neil ’ s voice is such a distinctive part of 54-40 ’ s sound . That voice is how you know it ’ s them when they come on the radio . I found I could get the vocals to sound quite good ; however , everything I added to them would just accentuate the cymbal bleed and completely change the mix of the band that I had going . I wanted the record to sound hi-fi and clear , but the bleed was absolutely killing me !
My solution was to purchase iZotope ’ s RX 8 suite of post-production restoration plug-ins , which , thankfully , completely changed the game for me regarding the vocals . I was able to use a plug-in , Rebalance , that essentially allows you to remove different sections of a band from a track . With it , I was able to find the right combination of removing instruments , drums , and bass from the lead vocal without negatively affecting the performance . Once I did this , I could mix the vocal loud and clear with my usual compression , EQ , and reverbs . Money well spent !
The vocals ’ main EQ was a Vintage Neve 1073 adding some top end , 7.6 , and 220 . I used the console ’ s HPF to roll off at 80Hz . From there , it went into an Empirical Labs Lil FrEQ where I rolled off at 30 , and added 30 , which oddly sounded great . For mids , I added 3.3 , high-end 16K , and used its analog de-esser to take out some sibilance . I also sent a copy of the raw vocal to another channel on the console for a parallel signal .
I slammed it with the Empirical Labs Mike-E , which has a distressor-style compressor and a high frequency accentuation feature .
The main vocal went into a Urei 1176 Rev E then into a silver Teletronix LA2A for compression . The plug-ins used for the lead vocal consisted of the Avid EQ 7 rolling off at 74 , three Waves de-essers gently hitting around 3K , 7K , and 11K , as well as the Oeksound Soothe2 plug-in removing some overall harshness .
For the lead vocal ambience and reverbs , I started with a Lexicon PCM 42 doing a short 15IPS slap that was panned just outside the centre . I used a Lexicon 480L set to “ Large + Stage ” with a pre-delay of 24 milliseconds and rolled off some high end . This was in stereo Aux 5 on the console . I also went back and added a bit of this to the main snare , guitars , toms , Hammond organ , as well as some extra instruments that were sparsely used , like the harmonica in “ Nice to Love you ” and the sax solo in the song “ Since When .”
From Aux 3 I added “ Music Club ” yet again for some additional live ambiance . Of course , I couldn ’ t stop there because I had some more reverbs available , so from Aux 6 I added a small amount of “ Studio B Far ,” which sounded great to me . I like to use a mono reverb or spring reverb on the vocal fairly often and ended up with the UAD Capitol Chambers plug-in . It was quite low but gave a great vintage sound , with focused mono ambiance to complement the others that were in stereo . Again , everything was doing very little and it could obviously get messy fast if too much was added .
Lastly , for effects I needed a long cavernous sound for certain words that Neil sang , which I wanted to highlight with a long tail . This was achieved with an Eventide H8000 set to the famous “ Canyon ” setting from the original H3000 unit . This sound can be heard on “ Love You All ,” in the breakdown of “ Baby Ran ,” as well as the harmonica solo in “ Nice to Love You .” It ’ s a strange-sounding reverb that has just enough unpredictability that I can ’ t find a plug-in that approximates it .
The background vocals and harmonies consisted of three tracks with the main parts sung by Dave Genn . I again used iZotope Rebalance to remove some bleed and cleaned them up with the Waves Q6 and HPF on the console set to 80Hz . I was looking for a way to give the background vocals some ambiance that would cut through and also add some length to them . I went with the Waves CLA Effects plug-in set to “ Filter Vox 2 .” I had all three vocals sent to it and automated the delays on a pair of faders . The sound is a crunchy , grainy distortion that , when isolated , could almost approximate a megaphone . When in context , it sounded very cool and gave the background vocals
42 PROFESSIONAL SOUND