what do producers use to make tracks sound clean + clear

br8 is a boss 8track daw. sorry you said d8b not br8. br8 is a really product and not a typo though. so what songs are you credited as engineering freq? im still waiting.

I think the fact that grandma's might know snoop has more to do with him being a media whore as of late. Not knockin' him, kids gotta eat, but RunDMC just aren't on tv every day and hiphop wasn't the flavor of the month when they were kickin' in doors so that people like snoop could have a career. There may have never been a Snoop with out the Kings from Queens. Respect the originators. I'll stop here since this is way off topic.

dang Freq. I cant figure it out, PM me and gimmie a clue, he he.
oh yeah, and shut up (to the other dude cant remember his name, thats how important he is!) jesus, why do you care if he is or is not a producer for big stars? he knows what he is talking about (thanks for the Eq tip Freq) so why do you care? it seems to me that you may be jelous of him/ mad that you aint using a boss multitracker to make mixes for major cats.
Like I said, maaaaddddd superstars hang with peeps who aint the top of the game (the rick rubin's and Neptunes being the superstars and peeps like Us the ones not at the top), that's the rap game, the Music of the streets, its not like rock or any other genre for that alone, you got superstar, mulit-million dolllar artists and who do they kick it with? some dude like me or you off of the block cuz that was their homie or so and so could make beats back in the day. from these peeps come the "oh yeah, little ricky played this beat when I was at my mommas house, it was hot!"

how do you think Just Blaze got put on? someone basically said, "oh yeah! this guy who used to kick it in the studio made this beat with this girl saying "oh boy" it was tight, call him up"

do you think the neptunes pump out all those beats w/ 2 guys? HELL NO. they got a fleet of cats just like our boy freq, who make mad beats, do mad work on stuff so the neptunes get the credit.
lets do some math, the neptunes had no less then 10 singles out last month, with a lead time of say 3 months on each one, do you think they dropped 10 full, done complete beats and then went into the studio with the artist in that time? 2 guys? of course not, they have an idea, then get it down, then pass it off to some dude to mix and eq, then master then they go back over it and tweak what they want then have the dude re do all that then bam! all done.

beat making IS the ONE aspect of the rap game where a "nobody' can become a star overnight cuz someone likes a beat, then someone asks snoop "where'd you get that beat? it was hot!" and then you're on.

i just dont like cats frontin, droppin names left and right when they are lying. don't confuse his claim either, he said he is engineering on this stuff (mixing), not making beats. sure, you might have alot of people collabing on the music, but on the final mixdown that makes the album there is an engineer, with maybe an assistant really doin it. they boy in the back pouring everyone's coffee might say pump the kickdrum, but they aint really engineering shit. and on automated boards like ssl's you dont need everyone and they mama helping turn knobs like you do on a cheap mackie 48track mixer, so you dont have people 'engineering' that way.

true, true, but my point is that there are maaaadddd heads besides the pharell and his buddy making those beats. and yeah, they got more then one engineer in house at the star trak, just like I'm sure rocafella's studio has 5-6 cats who engineer, the thing I found is that as a producer, if the engineer dont make the track the way you want it, you gotta keep doing it until A) you do it yourself or B) he gets it right.

by that token, I'm 100% certain that Just Blaze has an engineer who he "clicks" with, who gets how he wants a track to sound for whatever reason, these guys get used by them and when thety recommend someone to a homie, who is Just Blaze gonna think of first? the guy he clicked with.
so each studio prolly has a ton of engineers, say look at diddy's studio back in the day with derek-d dot and amen ra and all those cats, 93-97 the golden age of bad boy, Id bet that each of those cats had their own group of guys they worked with, multiply these 4 guys times the 3-4 they worked with and you get 12-16 guys, just at diddy's spot alone. now think about the guys who arent in house guys, liek Timbo, Premiere, neptunes, etc. they have a larger roster of guys they work with since the work they do isnt confined to in house at one studio, they gotta go where the artist is and stay mobile, add their entourage of engineers to the entourage that the artist brings (IE Justin timberlake and Timbo, cry me a river, I bet timbo rolled out with his 3 lackeys and the studio where timeberlake recorded at has their own lackey's allready there, thats like 10 guys just rolling to help with the beat. these dudes add up. hell, these "hanger oner" engineers are likely a couple hundred guys cross the country and many of them are peeps just like us, they can make a beat and click with a producer so they got a job.

right but if you had your own personal engineer who's rough mixes where better than everyone else's final mixes, you would use him on every track, everytime. he wouldnt be one of 30 or 40 cats, he would be the cat. when someone boasts on the internet that the are the 'personal engineer' for that 'most famous rapper in the world', for the last 4 years, they are full of ish and runnin they mouth, period. i'm not sayin snoop doesnt have a 'personal engineer'. he might, i am saying that phone calls to doggystyle records to get ahold of a number to call up snoop's 'personal' engineer and say you know who the **** freq is?, would result in him sayin no, what the hell you talkin bout. i could say i am george martin and used to work on the beatles records, but that does not make it true, just because the name would verify.

man. you can definetly make a d8b bang. i had one and man I had my drums sounding so nice on it. i really loved that thing. too bad I had to sell it and go back to my mackie 24/8 which is a dope mixer for a good price. but the d8b's automation was so nice. and the compression/limiting built in actually wasn't that bad.

but on another note, i have heard some kids mixes done on computers with nothing more than logic or cubase that sound better than mixes done on million dollar equipment.


i think hiphop heads need to start taking cues from drum n bass producers....

man that is going to start a fight.

true but no, snoop's personal engineer just may mean the dude who engineers at snoops home studio u seen mtv cribs snoop? he has a nice home studio, and alot of artists claim they do album tracks in home studio's (outkast comes to mind) and I'm sure that they got a dude that dont really get studio credit but does alot of the work.

its like this, snoop makes a cut, he has the homie in his studio mix it down and snoop likes it, he takes it to his no limit recoding session in Lousisana and gives them the mix, they then re-assemble it and do it over again, this coudl be him, the dude who mixed the idea that became the song. he wouldnt get love on the album credit since he technically isnt the engineer of the song, he's the guy who made the blueprint for the engineer to follow.

although I dont know freq and you may be right, freq just tell me who you are and I wont tell anyone...... he he

OK - this has gotta end now before the Tutor gets pissed about using up his bandwidth.

My name is Tracey Brown. I built three studios in Snoop's big house here in Claremont, CA. The same house that Death Row gave directions to on that wackass video. About a year and a half ago, construction to build a whole new level on that house began. We stayed there as long as we could, but that noise got to be a bit much. I loved that place. Tupac even autographed the wall there. That studio is now a home theater. We moved one of the studios to his house in Diamond Bar and cut "Dogghouse America" (first song on the Doggystyle All-Stars) and "I Believe In You" (which is like the third song or something on "Paid tha Cost...") there. These songs, like the majority of his music that I put my touch on, were never mixed beyond the day that we cut them. As a matter of fact, they were recorded in his sons' bedroom with a AKG C-12VR and that's it. If you listen closely to "I Believe..." you can here ****** talkin and doors closing in the background. The other 2 studios I put into a house that Dogg rented down the street from his Diamond Bar crib. That place is called the "Chuuuch" a name conceived by The Archbishop Don Magic Juan. For his eastcoast collabs, Snoop likes to have those guys out there handle the mixing just to have a variance in sound for his records. Occasionally, Snoop's live engineer Dave Aaron will mix a track or two for each project. Other than that, I do it all. I get soooo pissed at Snoop when he comes back from the East with songs that don't sound good at all. Stuff that's mixed on a SSL, too. Snoop has a very tough voice handle in the studio. It's so delicate that you can't do the normal "compress the hell out of it" thing that's normally associated with rap vocals. There's only two guys in the world that can make Snoop's vocals sound smooth as silk - one is the greatest rap producer of all time, and the other is ME. Ask him yourself if you don't believe it cuz.

I get full credit for everything that I work on, except "I Can't Swim" from Tha Last Meal. Dre tried to match what Snoop and I came up with at 4am stoned out of our minds one day, and the vibe wasn't there. They didn't want to tell Dre that, so they left his name on the song and never told him that we didn't use it. I'm sure he noticed if he listened to it... I also have a credit for that No Limit song on there, but I didn't do it. "Brake Fluid" was done by me on a Soundcraft Ghost (that's what we had before the D8B's) with no automation and just a stereo compressor on the mix. That's right. Just quick hands.

Snoop doesn't do anything in Louisiana with No Limit studios. Not since "The Game..." anyway.

My website is down right now, but it'll be back up in a couple of weeks with a new look. www.tdbproductions.com Like I said before, you can link to it through the Doggystyle Records website. The old website I had my nickname listed as "The Frequalizer", hence "freq" for this forum.

Yo washcloth, you're about the biggest moron I've run into online. That's coming from a PROFESSIONAL. I think that you need glasses badly if you didn't see my name on those records.

p.s. The first record that I ever bought was "Hard Times/Jam Master Jay" by RUN-DMC. My second record was "Cause for Alarm" by Agnostic Front. I also have in my wallet, the ticket from the first Freshfest. You old skoolaz know what I'm talking about.

like i said i am george martin and i worked on the Beatles records.
Prove me wrong.

yeah, I know exactly what your talkin' about.

R.I.P Ray Beez

brainwashcloth wrote:like i said i am george martin and i worked on the Beatles records.
Prove me wrong.

you are silly.......remember when he was talking about the mackie d8b...well he is inside someone's album cover working on a mackie d8b...even if he wasn't anybody in the business that does not give you any right to disrespect him or anybody else on this forum.....most come here to learn or share their experience with the mpc or the studio....and he was just sharing his..

On the strength...I didn't see much useful info given as to what is best used to get a crispy mixdown and do some decent mastering. Some of us don't have access or the budget to use SSL's or Kneve boards or even Mackie D8B boards. I've f*cked with the D8B a few times and loved it. Just thinking about working with an SSL gets my d*ck hard. But the reality is that I'm not on that level yet.

So for the home studio what is best to get the job done (mastering) without having to sacrifice food for equipment?

Pro tools 001 or 002/Logic/Cubase/Soundforge with Cd Architect/Nuendo?

I'm lookin' to get something decent for mastering tracks and plan on stickin' with My Audiophile 24/96 and my Dps16 for the time being. Obviously it won't compare to an SSL for mixing and a fully pimped out Pro Tools HD system for mastering but coming close to that qualithy is good enough for me right now. Not here to bicker/take sides or none of that...just here to share/learn and take my sh*t to the next level. Thanx in advance to those who give input.



1

get t-racks or izotope and read up all you can on limiting/compression and multi-band compression. getting the best mix you can going into 'mastering' helps a ton. if you search the forums at www.vsplanet.com for topics like mixing and eq you will find tons and tons of links and well written articles explaining these. i found soo much info on that site a few years ago, there are some really knowledgable, helpful people on there, that understand not all of us have an ssl. an parametric eq setting is an eq setting wether its on a console or in cubase. you can also find some good eq tips at www.reasonstation.net/board

brainwashcloth wrote:like i said i am george martin and i worked on the Beatles records.
Prove me wrong.

A question for George Martin...

How did you lock up the two four-track machines before there was SMPTE? Also, how did you automate the board with the multitrackers before the advent of VCA's or motors? You should know.

This thread didn't start with "how to get a decent mix". It started by asking how do TOP PRODUCERS get their stuff to sound so good. That information was given to the topic starter and he has thanked me via personal message for the info. The access and budget is all the difference...

You can read all you want about compression and eq. That's not gonna do anything since in the music world, we rely on our ears not our eyes. I never really heard compression or knew frequencies for YEARS AFTER I was already engineering. It comes with time - which I already stated before. Once you fully understand and hear compression and eq frequencies, then you can maximize any gear, regardless of name or price, to work for you. Although, by the time you get to that point you'll be in position to charge $50/hour or more for your services! So what I'm really trying to say is don't worry about making pro-quality records, just always try to make your stuff sound as good as possible. If you keep doing that, the quality will come eventually.

ProTools LE is the way to go if your on a budget - hands down. It sounds ok, is flexible and affordable. ProTools is the standard for multi-tracking at all the studios now. All of the Studers are collecting dust here in LA. Nuendo is also a good program, also one to consider if you're gonna be doing a lot of sequencing. ProTools rules, though.

Why are so many people concerned with mastering, anywayz? Unless you really know what you're doing, you're probably gonna destroy your music with a homemade mastering job. If it's for apparent loundness, MAXIMIZE YOUR SIGNAL LEVELS. If you are not selling your music in a competitive environment, mastering is pointless... Mastering is truly it's own art form, and when done CORRECTLY, is very, very subtle. Mastering houses don't normally master with ProTools, either. It can be done though. I usually put the album together in ProTools and send the session file to them, with the segue's and time in between songs already there, so they (mastering cats) don't have any creative control over my or my client's work. I think that most of the people on this forum really don't even need to bother with mastering. Get your mixes to sound good.

Just FYI, multi-band compression is mainly a mastering tool, not usually associated with mixing.

www.artistpro.com

This is an incredible site for engineers. You can actually interact with engineering legends like Joe Chicarelli, and Al Schmitt!!! I'd go there for mixing tips before the vs or reason sites. Those guys are millionaires from engineering, so if you think that they are full of crap, you got a lead plate in your head.

p.s. Sacrificing food for equipment shows where your heart really is.