Hey, this is Jason from BehindTheSpeakers.com,
and if you're struggling to craft a powerful,
punchy low end, then this video will definitely
help.
Super excited to share this with you.
It's a clip from an interview I recently did
with Grammy-winning mixer Bob Power.
Bob's a mentor of mine, and also an incredible
engineer.
He's taught me so much about the mixing process,
but if there's one thing I can say that Bob
really has a handle on, more so than just
about any other mixer out there, it's the
low end.
Now, Bob cut his teeth mixing iconic hip-hop
records from artists like Tribe Called Quest,
De La Soul, D'Angelo, and a lot of the sound
of the second wave of hip-hop—those hard
hitting drums, the clear, defined separation
between the kick and the bass, where you can
really hear everything down there clearly—a
lot that sound was really started by Bob.
I mean, he really defined the sound of the
second wave of hip-hop.
Now this clip is from a full interview I did
with Bob.
It's almost an hour of material, and you can
only get it inside my Mixing Low End course.
So, if you want more details about this course
and how you can enroll, go ahead and sign
up for the waiting list by clicking the link
in the description below or up there in the
video, and I'll let you know when another
class opens.
Anyways, hope you enjoy this clip from the
interview.
So, I've kind of given you a little bit of
an intro on the course, but for those who
don't know Bob, probably, one of my favorite
mixers of all time, D'Angelo, De La Soul,
Tribe Called Quest, I mean nobody knows low
end like Bob, and he's an absolutely incredible
mixer, and also a wonderful teacher.
He teaches at NYU's Clive Davis Institute
of Recorded Music, where I went to school.
So, thank you so much for taking the time
to be here, Bob, and talking with me.
I really appreciate it.
Of course man, of course, my pleasure.
So, before we get started, I just wanna say
thank you really, for everything you've done
for me, I mean, I really consider you a true
mentor.
I really appreciate all the time you’ve
spent sharing your knowledge with me.
Thank you.
You were really good before that too.
Aww, thanks, I'll pay you later.
Yeah.
So, I've heard you say a lot of times that
for many mixers, low end is kind of the final
frontier, but what's interesting about you
is that it's kind of one of the first things
that you had to master.
So, can you talk about your background in
hip-hop, and how it has informed the way that
you hear and approach the low end?
Sure.
Ya know, I didn't start engineering, for other
people ‘till I was in my, well into my 30’s.
I had scored television.
I was a working musician.
I was making a living playing every lousy
gig you can, some good ones, you can imagine,
TV scoring, and I was producing independent
records for people, which at that time was
a real unusual thing, and we're talking like
the late 70's, early 80's, I always asked
a lot of questions of people.
Ya know, I worked with some really great,
like super-pro engineers, and I was always
asking questions, like why you doing that,
or what is it, ya know, I knew what the things
did.
And in the mid 80's I started filling in for
a guy who went on vacation, at the studio,
that I worked at, in New York, a place called
Calliope.
And in fact, the gentleman who engineered
for me all the time, because I didn't do my
own engineering then, went away for a couple
of weeks, and the owner asked to me fill in.
So, I said yeah, sure, I know how to do that,
ya know, and I learned quickly.
Just as a brief history, that was about couple
years before the whole Native Tongues movement,
and Tribe, and De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest,
De La Soul came to the studio, Latifa, Black
Sheep, all these people.
I worked with Big Daddy Kane a lot.
So, it was just another gig.
It wasn't that I loved hip-hop or I hated
it.
It was like okay, these are nice people, and
they're doing something interesting that I'd
never heard before.
Mmmm.
When I got deeper into mixing, and I started
understanding what was really going on with
the music, and the frequency content, obviously,
the first big records I mixed were hip-hop
records, and because it was hip-hop, the low
end was very, very important, and in fact,
sometimes kind of messy, because you were
dealing mostly with samples.
Usually the kick drum was by itself, but often
the bass line came from a sample, with a lot
of errant frequencies in it and stuff.
So, pretty quickly, I had to learn how to
apportion different levels of the low end
at different frequencies for different instruments.
Yeah.
And it was good, cause that's usually the
last thing that people get.
It's funny, early on in my career I was was
trying to get the high end right.
So, ya know, I wanted my recordings in a lousy,
not in a lousy, but in an inexpensive studio,
I wanted it to sound like the stuff that I
heard, that had that crystal and open 251
top end.
Yeah.
And then, because of hip-hop, I had to get
a handle on the low end, and it's very funny,
but just in the last 10, 12 years, I feel
like I'm really delving into the midrange
more.
Mmm.
And again, the idea with low end was it was
a necessity.
I had to have records not that just had different
apportions of different levels of low frequency
in areas, but they also had to shake the room
apart, but not in a bad way, in a good way.
Ya know, they had to be Jeep kind of bumping
tracks.
So, whatever was going on there below 90 had
to really be huge in those days.
Yeah.
So, whether it was 808 or a bass.
Sure.
So, yeah, so that's, that's really why I had
to address the issues of low end early on.
Yeah, as a necessity of the genre, and the
music that you're working with.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
And I think ya know, everybody kind of agrees,
that that's the hardest thing to get right,
usually.
Absolutely.
Well, it's why I'm doing this.
I mean, when I sent out this survey initially,
to kind of learn about what people wanted
to learn about, that was overwhelmingly the
number one thing that people said they struggle
with.
So what's the goal really?
I mean, what do you…
The goal…
What are some the things you're thinking about
when you're mixing the low end?
It's not even, ya know, I mean, to be honest,
the low end is just a component.
Sure.
Of all the other stuff.
Ya know, and even the rock records I mixed,
tend to be a little bit muscular in the low
end anyway.
You have to be careful, because depending
on the genre, too much low end will detract
from other areas, that should be at the forefront.
For example, rock lives in the midrange.
Mmhm.
So, if you have either a kick drum or bass
that's really honking, it's putting the music
out of proportion, that that genre.
Sure.
Really needs to be.
Sure.
And if I have to break it down to very simple
terms, mixing is about two things.
It’s about musical balances, and that's
pretty obvious, that's genre-based, that's
music-based, and I think that anybody who
has a background as a musician, which pretty
much all of us do, has a leg up there, because
it's about musical balances first, and then
tonal balances.
Both are very important, and in a perfect
world, you get the musical balances, so, they're
really nice, and then tonal balances, the
different frequency areas of the different
instruments, and how complementary they are
to each other, and to themselves.
Yeah.
When you get both those things happening,
the listening experience becomes magical at
that point.
Mmhmm.
And you can enjoy the music for what the artist
put into it, and you enjoy the music from
a purely sonic perspective as well, if you
get that right.
Yeah.
So, how does composition and arrangement play
into that thinking?
If you're producing a record, I mean, cause
a lot of people, they wanna hear about mixing
tips and techniques, but we can take it all
the way back to the notes that people are
playing, and where they're playing it on the
guitar neck, and so, can you talk a little
bit about that, how that plays into the kind
of thought process here?
Anybody who's done this for any period of
time knows that a great arrangement will make
a great mix, and we spend half of our life
fighting arrangements that could have been
apportioned better.
Mmm.
In terms of who was playing what, when they
were playing it, where they were playing it,
what the part was, and ya know, in the modern
world, arranging even goes down to the very
important choice of instruments that you use
for different parts—why you would play a
Strat on a certain part rather than double-coil
pick up, why you would have a P-Bass rather
than a jazz bass.
So, if the arrangement is together, much of
the work is already done for you, because
the instruments are staying out of each other's
way, both musically and tonally.
Ya know, good arrangers have a timbral, have
a handle on the timbral content, as much as
they do the quote unquote purely musical content.
Mmhm.
In fact, ya know arguably, this gets into
that class I teach at NYU, arguably, if you're
an arranger, you could approach things from
a purely timbral point of view and do quite
well.
Ya know, I have a couple of music degrees,
and I was taught the old school, ya know,
musical way of arranging, where you have thematic
development, you have harmonic development,
you have relative weight of different sections,
and how different instrumental sections sound
against each other, and what's gonna take
up the weight on the bottom of the voice,
and what's gonna give you the high stuff,
on the top of the voice.
That’s very traditional, but if you think
about things purely from—I’m legislating
how I want people to perceive this from the
brightest bright to the darkest dark—you
can do pretty well.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
And, and anybody who's been working knows
if the arrangement's great, ya kind of throw
up the faders, and of course, we do what we
do.
So, we get crazy about it, anyway, but it's
a lot different than sort of trying to pull
apart something where people were playing
in the same frequency range, the parts aren't
as complementary musically to each other as
they should be.
So, the arrangement has a huge amount to do
with how well that works.
Interestingly, the, some of the people I've
worked with, over the years, of all people,
JD, the Detroit hip-hop producer, who left
us recently.
Mmhm.
He had a, that was a match made in heaven,
we worked a lot together.
I mixed a lot of his stuff, and…
You’re talking about J Dilla?
J Dilla, I'm sorry.
Yeah, uh huh.
He had an immaculate sense, as many DJ track
makers do, had an immaculate sense of frequency
content, and in fact, he never really used
sounds, or did any programming, that all those
complementary relationships between the different
frequency areas, and the different instruments
wasn't pretty spot on to being with.
Mmm.
It was very interesting.
He had a really great sense of what's midrange,
what's supposed to be there, what's the bottom
here, what's supposed to be there, and what's
the high end, and what's supposed to be where.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
That's awesome.
So, thinking about some of the records, that
you've ya know, worked on, I mean, a lot of
them feature really complex low-end arrangements,
where you have multiple kicks, and ya know,
things that are, I think a lot of people would
really struggle with.
So, can you talk about kind of the process,
that goes into sorting that out, when you're
dealing with an arrangement like that, that
that has so may layers down in the bottom
end?
You sort of do triage, you just ya know, you
have to listen to the different parts, and
pretty quickly put a picture together, in
your head of saying well, this is gonna fit
here.
I mean, I see the range of human hearing,
I see as a bunch of little, like drawers,
or plateaus.
Yeah.
And, I have to many times pre-determine what
I think is gonna work best where.
Now, we know that once you get in the trenches,
and once you start moving stuff around, you
say, oh, you know what, this isn't gonna work
in that spot I thought it would.
So, let me go at this a different way.
And ya know what, high-frequency presence
is a perfect example of that.
I have started to understand that there's
only so many things that want a certain amount
of high frequency presence.
For example, if you have too much tap on the
kick drum, ya know, like 4 K, the little tick,
tick part, that's actually going to be fighting
against that place in the snare.
Yeah.
So, and not that they're gonna play simultaneously,
and you'll get any masking going on, but it's
like well, oh wow, wait a second, I guess
the kick drum's made to be low frequency.
Well yeah, that's why the kick evolved as
it did.
Mmm.
So, ya know, you listen to the track, you
hear the parts, and then you open up another
fader, and you go oh my god, how am I gonna
deal with this?
Ya know, a lot of it has to do also, with
compression, which can really help tighten
up areas in the low end, but keep the fundamental
frequency character of what you're dealing
with.
I’ve always worked with compression as a
low-frequency tonal shaping tool, and I do
actually now, more than ever.
Yeah.
You can retain the fundamental character of
the instrument in the low frequency, but it's
funny, many times, my dog is here hassling
me.
That's okay.
So, I keep looking.
Honey.
Hey, honey.
Leave me alone, leave me alone.
Aww.
She's got her favorite toy in here mouth so,
anyway, it's odd, but I'm finding that compression
on low frequency stuff, or on elements that
have certain frequency anomalies that pop
out on different…sorry, I'm gonna plug in
here.
That's okay.
Certain frequency anomalies that come forward
on certain pitches.
Yeah.
Or Certain dynamic levels, I'm finding that
regular old compression can actually work
like a multiband.
Totally.
Where, and I only, I think, and this is just
my sort of uniformed way of looking at it,
is that that compressor is acting on that
frequency spike, at that moment, it may be
compressing the whole signal, but along with
the whole signal, if that frequency spike
is three to five to six to eight dB ahead
of the signal, it's gonna grab that first,
and tug that back into the body of the signal.
Yeah, it's very interesting, I've noticed
that a lot too, and I tend to like using low-ratio
compression for that reason, where you don't,
you're not really looking so much for the
dynamic control, so much, as just that solidity,
that kind of makes it feel like it all packs
together.
Yeah, tightening it up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Totally.
It's funny, this is really weird, but I've
been recording music, as a musician or an
engineer, for so long, I can't believe it's
been 40 years, longer than 40 years actually,
and I feel like I'm just starting to get a
handle on compression.
Mmm.
I've used it forever, I've used it successfully
forever, but I feel like I'm just really starting
to get to a place with it now, where I'm able
to use it for a lot more things, and in fact,
what you say is true, if you compress stuff
properly, if it's the right part, being played
with the right instrument, you end up having
to do a lot less fancy EQ work to carve things
out, because it's in the track already, you're
just controlling it a little bit more.
Absolutely.
Are there any rules of thumb, or advice that
you can give to people who are really looking
to get a better handle on using compression,
specifically in the low end?
I hope you enjoyed that clip from my interview
with Bob.
Now, the full interview, which is almost an
hour long, is only available inside my course
Mixing Low End.
So, if you want more details about this course,
you can go ahead and sign up for the waiting
list by clicking the link in the description
below or in the video, and I'll let you know
when another class opens.
Anyways, thanks so much for watching.
You can check out more mixing tips at BehindTheSpeakers.com.
Take care.
