Chris Lord-Alge

Two more albums that have come out this year that i think sound really good are My Chemical Romance's Danger Days and Stone Sour's Audio Secrecy. It was only until i looked at the mixer of Audio Secrecy that i realize that it was the broth of Tom Lord-Alge, Chris Lord-Alge. That i looked up My Chemical Romances and it was the same guy as well. What a coinkydink!

Chris Lord-Alge is a mixer who is known for his use of dynamic range compression in both hardware and software plug-in versions. He says one of his ways he gets the sound he ways is he listens to things quietly. "Listening at low volumes prevents fatigue and you can hear better what's going on," he said. "When you turn things up, after a while all your moves become a smear. So when you're doing really critical moves, do them at a low level." He also says that when you listen to things at a low volume, you have to work that much harder to make things really pop out at you.

It seems to be working for him seeing as Waves Audio released a Chris Lord-Alge Artist Signature Collection of audio plug-ins, which is a collection of 6 application-specific audio plug-ins for Bass, Drums, Effects, Vocals, Guitars, and Unplugged.

Chuck

Following the non-metal trend, another album i owe a lot to is Sum 41's Chuck. Before i was into metal i was big into punk, and the heaviest bands i would listen to were The Offspring and Bad Religion. Chuck is Sum 41's not by any means a metal album, but it's their heaviest album and was one of the albums that provided a gateway to heavier things for me.

Chuck was mixed by Tom Lord-Alge, one of the most famous mixers around. He is a three-time Grammy-Award winning record producer and mixer and helped pioneer a method of digital tape editing known as "flying" vocals, which is using a piece of the chorus to accent a different part of the song. Other bands he's worked with include Blink-182, Hoobastank, Avril Lavigne, and Weezer.

One of the things i've learned from listening to Chuck is that Tom Lord-Alge is really good at layering vocals. At the end of the song No Reason there's at one point like 4 different vocal lines going on at the same time, yet he layered them so well that you can tell each one apart quite easily. Another thing i like is the sound of the guitar and bass together. They fit together perfectly and create a really meaty, crunchy sound.

All of these things together made a really good album that I keep listening to regularly.

Lady Gaga

Moving away from metal bands, one of my favorite albums of late is Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster. Aside from Lady Gaga being one of the most talented singer/songwriters out today, The Fame Monster sounds really good.

The Fame Monster was mixed by Mark Stent, who is a british mixing engineer. Stent is one of the most sought after in the business and has worked with oher bands and artists such as U2, Maroon 5, Linkin Park, and Muse.

Normally you don't expect pop songs or albums to sound really good sonically, but there's an exception here. Everything is crisp and you can tell everything apart from each other. The lows are bassy, which it should be considering the tracks are geared more towards dance songs.

The only thing i didn't like about the mixing is on the song "Dance in the Dark" the bass drum sound is too bassy and over powers the speakers i listen to it on. I don't know if it's the song itself or the EQ settings i have on my iPod but it's slightly annoying. Besides that everything else sounds great.

Tips and Tricks

Just for fun i searched "sound mixing tricks" into google and a few websites showed up. Some of the things that were said i already knew about, and some i didn't. The ones i didn't know were pretty interesting.

One trick that is really simple, but very important is to listen to your mixes on a bunch of different speakers. The speaker that you do most of your mixing on might sound really good, but they definitely don't sound the same as iPod earbuds, so trying to get the best possible sound for every set of speakers is ideal.

Another tip would be to always back everything up. It should be common knowledge but it sucks when you forget to do so and the worst happens. It's happened to me before.

Tweakheadz has a really good article on their website on how you should record, place, and edit every part of a band. It also talks about what you should do when mixing and mastering.

Here's the website: http://www.tweakheadz.com/perfect_mix.html

...And Justice For All

One of the more famous and funny stories that has to do with mixing i think is the album "...And Justice For All" by Metallica.

Why is it funny? Firstly, it's one of, if not the album Metallica is most know for for having a very bad mixing/production job on. Secondly, it's the record that bassist Jason Newsted first appeared on after Cliff Burton died (that isn't a funny part) and apparently because of it being his first, one of the hazings on him James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich did was make the bass on the album inaudible. Thirdly, and last of all, no one knows if that is the right reason, and if it isn't, what the real reason is. Apparently when recording it James and Lars would argue over wanting the guitars and drums being louder than the other.

I actually don't think it sounds that bad. It could definitely sound better than it does, but it's one of those albums where the sound of it fits perfectly with the music being played which makes it that much better. And Justice For All was mixed by Steve Thompson, who also did Guns N Roses's Appetite for Destruction, and that is one good sounding record, so i doubt it's his fault for having And Justice for all sound like it does.

Andy Sneap

Another famous mixer that has done numerous jobs for big bands is Andy Sneap. Sneap has received a Swedish Grammy for his work on Opeth's Deliverance album, as well as US Grammy nominations for his work on Killswitch Engage's The End of Heartache, Megadeth's Endgame and Megadeth's Sudden Death. Other bands he's mixed include Arch Enemy, As I Lay Dying, Killswitch Engage, and Trivium.

Andy Sneap got his start by first doing live sound for bands and then wound up working with Colin Richardson. One of the big things i read in an interview with Andy Sneap on maelstrom.nu, is that he believes that even though having all these tool to be able to "cheat" your way around the recording process is nice to have, but at the end of the day if you can't play what you record, then there really isn't any point to recording it. He also talked about using triggers for just the kick drum with samples which was pretty interesting.

Out of all of Sneap's works, i think what he did on Trivium's Ascendancy is the best. It was one of the very first metal CD's i listened to and i remember thinking that the drums sounded amazing and i've never heard anything like it. One of Sneaps more recent projects, Megadeth's Endgame, has similar drum sounds.

Andy Wallace

When it comes to albums that have come out this year, i think Alter Bridge's newest, AB III, sounds the best.

AB III was mixed by Grammy award winning Andy Wallace. Andy Wallace is a very well known mixer who got his big break after his work on the Aerosmith/Run DMC "Walk This Way collaboration. He's worked with bands such as Slayer, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Avenged Sevenfold, System of a Down, and many more.

The thing i like about AB III is that's it's a heavy album, but it doesn't really sound like it. What i mean is that it has the bass to be heavy, but doesn't overpower anything. In an interview on mixonline.com with Wallace, they describe him as having a "very present, crisp drum sound; part of it is that the guitars are brutal and outragious; and part of it is a dynamic sense that comes from your own musicality." That describes him perfectly after looking through his catalogue of cd's he's mixed.

Another thing i like is how he places little things perfectly. For example, in the beginning of Isolation there's this riff/fill of the guitar that he pushed away from the rhythm guitars to make it sound good. Of he didn't it would have blended into the mix easily.