'Uprise' is written by Matt Bellamy, and produced by Muse, with the famous Engineer, Mark 'Spike' Stent.
This song has used over than eighty audio tracks - including 35 drum tracks, five bass tracks, and 20 special vocal tracks - plus a number of effect, subgroup and volume tracks. It is special that this song uses no fewer than 14 mics in total, but there are only nine tracks.
According to Spike Stent, He did not added any samples. Although it is a big Session, but all the drums were brilliantly recorded. For him, 'Uprising' is very typical, with four kick drums being subgrouped to one track, and same thing applied to the snare, etc... He is working in the box, using sub-compression on these groups. In addition, he also has individual plug-ins on each individual drum track.
He normally start with the drums, and then the bass. He let the rhythm section rock to catch a good feel, then he will get the vocals in and other key hook elements. There is one thing interesting, after he puts in everything, he will take the vocal out again and start dialing in all the other parts, adjusting the guitar and so on. It is a hard balance between the power of the rhythm track with the right emotion, and the audible vocal. Instead of make the vocal stand out alone, he also needs to seek the right balance to keep the power in the track.
The following lists are the tracks break-down:
"I had the Waves SSL Channel on the first kick, which was recorded with a Shure SM7. Why did I use a plug‑in and not the desk? Good question. No idea. It's what I do. I don't think about it too much. Does the SSL Channel sound like the real thing? Let's say that I like what it does and I have used them for years. I had the SSL Channel on three of the four kick-drum mics, and the 'D' on the other one [indicating the use of a plug‑in on that channel] is something dynamic. I will have used tons more EQ and compression on the SSL, all to get it to colour and punch right. I'm EQ'ing for accuracy and getting that bottom end tight. I hate flappy, untight bottom end. I like subby low, but I don't want it to sound like chaos. On this track it was tricky, because there's a lot of rumbling going on, so I had to manage the bottom end really precisely.
"What I often do is have my main drum sound under the main drum faders at the left of the console, and then I'll send stuff out via the small faders to a pair of groups and then to outboard EQ and compression, and it will come back up on separate channels. With the more powerful and punchy things like kick and snare I'll probably EQ this very toppy and subby, and will then mix that in underneath the main sound. Different section of the songs may have more or less of that submixed compression and EQ. You try to find the right thing for each section of the song. I have done this process for years. I also have the SSL Channel on the snare top and snare bottom mics, and the greyed out plug‑in 'C' is probably the [Metric Halo] Channel Strip [see screen on previous page]. I will also have added lots of board EQ and compression to the snare, and nothing else, because all the space comes from the room sound mics. I did the same with the claps, the toms, and the overheads: Waves SSL plug‑in on the subgroup and EQ and compression on the board. I don't compress things to death, but I do use heavy compression.
"I blended the six room mics together and automated them in the box for different sections of the song. On the console I will then have ridden them a lot for the major sections. All these different room mics are the result of the way Adrian tracks, which was brilliant, because it gave me a lot of options. I had a Chandler EMI TG12413 limiter on one of the room mics, because I'm hyping the room, making it pump a bit. Over the inserts on the channels on the console I would have had a TG1 outboard as well. Underneath the rooms subgroup track are the toms overdubs, in total nine tracks. Seven of them are the same part but with different room sounds, so it gave me a lot of colours to work with. They're subgrouped and go to tracks 13‑14 on the console. The SSL Channel helps to make the toms more accurate. The band also rehearsed and recorded in a house in Devon, and five tracks of overdubs from that are in this session; 'ETSO' is the subgroup that went to the board.
"Dom [Dominic Howard] is very particular about his drums, and wants to ascertain that every drum fill comes through. So I spent quite a bit of time making sure all his toms tonally were correct and fills were exaggerated. Dom is an incredible drummer and he knows exactly what he wants. In fact, Muse are an extremely tight band and incredible musicians, and everyone was very clear on where they were going. By the way, I would have checked every single one of these drums and room tracks for phase and then I would have checked the groups against the kick and the snare. I'll check whether the kick and snare tracks all line up, and so on. I'm flipping phase all the time. I'm anal about that, because it is essential for getting a really tight mix which sounds big on radio, cars, laptop, and so on.”
"I would have added a delay plug‑in, probably Echoboy or Waves H‑Delay. It's rare that I use reverb. I prefer to use plug‑in delays these days, because you can really automate them, and I love the way you can be very creative with them and yet the sound always comes back the same. I'll now only use an outboard delay if I want a certain sound from a delay, like the AMS, or the [Eventide] H3000, or the [Roland] Space Echo or any of the tape delays I still have lying around. But I use them less and less for mixing. They only tend to come out while I'm tracking a band. On the desk I sent the guitars to a subgroup and that would have gone through outboard compression and EQ and then mixed back in. What outboard? Probably some Distressors.”
"At the bottom of the Session I had a number of effect tracks, to which I sent the lead vocals via busses 51‑56. Several aux tracks with different effect chains were created for the vocals. On this one, a Sansamp distortion feeds Sound Toys' Echoboy delay.On 51‑52 was the Sansamp, with a bit of distortion, probably only for certain sections. The Sansamp was going into an Echoboy, which was again automated for sections. Then 53‑54 and 55‑56 also had the Echoboy, with eighth‑note and quarter‑note delays. All these vocal effects are coming up on channels 39‑40 on the console, where they probably had some compression and gating.
"There are quite a lot of backing vocals, on which I again used the Waves De‑esser, and had compression and EQ on the desk. The de‑essers would have been individually tweaked for each track. I don't just slap on a de‑esser and hope, even if it is the same vocalist. His performance and/or the microphone may be different. You can see that one de‑esser on the backing vocals affects 4326Hz [see left]; the other [is set to] 4362, which is a minimal difference, but it's there.”
End Mix
"Matt really wanted me to mix to half‑inch, so I mixed to that and back into Pro Tools. The band has an ATR100 tape machine which I used for this. I don't normally mix to tape any more, because tape batches are so unreliable these days. I'd also brought my Lavry Gold A‑D converters for going back into Pro Tools. For going to the desk we used the regular 192 D‑A converters, but I'm very particular about what I mix through, and I love that Lavry. Muse also have one of them, I can't remember which one we used, theirs or mine. They're fantastic musicians and I really enjoyed working on this album.”
I got all the information from this web-site:
http://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-mark-spike-stent
This song has used over than eighty audio tracks - including 35 drum tracks, five bass tracks, and 20 special vocal tracks - plus a number of effect, subgroup and volume tracks. It is special that this song uses no fewer than 14 mics in total, but there are only nine tracks.
According to Spike Stent, He did not added any samples. Although it is a big Session, but all the drums were brilliantly recorded. For him, 'Uprising' is very typical, with four kick drums being subgrouped to one track, and same thing applied to the snare, etc... He is working in the box, using sub-compression on these groups. In addition, he also has individual plug-ins on each individual drum track.
He normally start with the drums, and then the bass. He let the rhythm section rock to catch a good feel, then he will get the vocals in and other key hook elements. There is one thing interesting, after he puts in everything, he will take the vocal out again and start dialing in all the other parts, adjusting the guitar and so on. It is a hard balance between the power of the rhythm track with the right emotion, and the audible vocal. Instead of make the vocal stand out alone, he also needs to seek the right balance to keep the power in the track.
The following lists are the tracks break-down:
- Drums: Waves SSL Channel, desk EQ & dynamics, Metric Halo Channel Strip, Chandler EMI TG12413 (plug‑in) & TG1 (hardware). The entire 'Uprising' Session is far too big to print or even view on a single screen! Here are some of the drum tracks, including tom overdubs (lower half of screen) added by the band in Devon. As well as mixing on his favoured SSL G‑series desk, Stent also made extensive use of Waves' SSL E and G Channel plug‑ins. These are the settings he used on the SM7 bass drum mic.The Chandler/EMI TG12413 limiter was used to get the room mics to pump.
"I had the Waves SSL Channel on the first kick, which was recorded with a Shure SM7. Why did I use a plug‑in and not the desk? Good question. No idea. It's what I do. I don't think about it too much. Does the SSL Channel sound like the real thing? Let's say that I like what it does and I have used them for years. I had the SSL Channel on three of the four kick-drum mics, and the 'D' on the other one [indicating the use of a plug‑in on that channel] is something dynamic. I will have used tons more EQ and compression on the SSL, all to get it to colour and punch right. I'm EQ'ing for accuracy and getting that bottom end tight. I hate flappy, untight bottom end. I like subby low, but I don't want it to sound like chaos. On this track it was tricky, because there's a lot of rumbling going on, so I had to manage the bottom end really precisely.
"What I often do is have my main drum sound under the main drum faders at the left of the console, and then I'll send stuff out via the small faders to a pair of groups and then to outboard EQ and compression, and it will come back up on separate channels. With the more powerful and punchy things like kick and snare I'll probably EQ this very toppy and subby, and will then mix that in underneath the main sound. Different section of the songs may have more or less of that submixed compression and EQ. You try to find the right thing for each section of the song. I have done this process for years. I also have the SSL Channel on the snare top and snare bottom mics, and the greyed out plug‑in 'C' is probably the [Metric Halo] Channel Strip [see screen on previous page]. I will also have added lots of board EQ and compression to the snare, and nothing else, because all the space comes from the room sound mics. I did the same with the claps, the toms, and the overheads: Waves SSL plug‑in on the subgroup and EQ and compression on the board. I don't compress things to death, but I do use heavy compression.
"I blended the six room mics together and automated them in the box for different sections of the song. On the console I will then have ridden them a lot for the major sections. All these different room mics are the result of the way Adrian tracks, which was brilliant, because it gave me a lot of options. I had a Chandler EMI TG12413 limiter on one of the room mics, because I'm hyping the room, making it pump a bit. Over the inserts on the channels on the console I would have had a TG1 outboard as well. Underneath the rooms subgroup track are the toms overdubs, in total nine tracks. Seven of them are the same part but with different room sounds, so it gave me a lot of colours to work with. They're subgrouped and go to tracks 13‑14 on the console. The SSL Channel helps to make the toms more accurate. The band also rehearsed and recorded in a house in Devon, and five tracks of overdubs from that are in this session; 'ETSO' is the subgroup that went to the board.
"Dom [Dominic Howard] is very particular about his drums, and wants to ascertain that every drum fill comes through. So I spent quite a bit of time making sure all his toms tonally were correct and fills were exaggerated. Dom is an incredible drummer and he knows exactly what he wants. In fact, Muse are an extremely tight band and incredible musicians, and everyone was very clear on where they were going. By the way, I would have checked every single one of these drums and room tracks for phase and then I would have checked the groups against the kick and the snare. I'll check whether the kick and snare tracks all line up, and so on. I'm flipping phase all the time. I'm anal about that, because it is essential for getting a really tight mix which sounds big on radio, cars, laptop, and so on.”
- Bass: Waves SSL Channel, Tech 21 Sansamp, Purple Audio MC77, Sound Toys Filter Freak. Much plug‑in processing was applied to the 'top end bass' track, from Waves' SSL G Channel, Tech 21's Sansamp distortion and Purple Audio's MC77 compressor.
- Guitars: Sound Toys Filter Freak & Echoboy, Empirical Labs Distressor.Given the number of tracks in the Session, it's perhaps surprising that there are only five guitar tracks: the three highlighted in the centre of the screen, plus 'HIGT' and 'GTR1' (the solo) further down.
"I would have added a delay plug‑in, probably Echoboy or Waves H‑Delay. It's rare that I use reverb. I prefer to use plug‑in delays these days, because you can really automate them, and I love the way you can be very creative with them and yet the sound always comes back the same. I'll now only use an outboard delay if I want a certain sound from a delay, like the AMS, or the [Eventide] H3000, or the [Roland] Space Echo or any of the tape delays I still have lying around. But I use them less and less for mixing. They only tend to come out while I'm tracking a band. On the desk I sent the guitars to a subgroup and that would have gone through outboard compression and EQ and then mixed back in. What outboard? Probably some Distressors.”
- Synths: Waves SSL Channel & Mondo Mod, Digidesign Revibe.A rare example of a reverb in a 'Spike' Stent mix! Here, Digidesign's Revibe is being used as an insert on one of the synth parts.
- Vocals: Waves De‑esser & SSL Channel, Dbx 902, Teletronix LA2A, Universal Audio 1176, Standard Audio Leveler, desk EQ & dynamics, Tech 21 Sansamp, Sound Toys Echo Boy.
"At the bottom of the Session I had a number of effect tracks, to which I sent the lead vocals via busses 51‑56. Several aux tracks with different effect chains were created for the vocals. On this one, a Sansamp distortion feeds Sound Toys' Echoboy delay.On 51‑52 was the Sansamp, with a bit of distortion, probably only for certain sections. The Sansamp was going into an Echoboy, which was again automated for sections. Then 53‑54 and 55‑56 also had the Echoboy, with eighth‑note and quarter‑note delays. All these vocal effects are coming up on channels 39‑40 on the console, where they probably had some compression and gating.
"There are quite a lot of backing vocals, on which I again used the Waves De‑esser, and had compression and EQ on the desk. The de‑essers would have been individually tweaked for each track. I don't just slap on a de‑esser and hope, even if it is the same vocalist. His performance and/or the microphone may be different. You can see that one de‑esser on the backing vocals affects 4326Hz [see left]; the other [is set to] 4362, which is a minimal difference, but it's there.”
End Mix
"Matt really wanted me to mix to half‑inch, so I mixed to that and back into Pro Tools. The band has an ATR100 tape machine which I used for this. I don't normally mix to tape any more, because tape batches are so unreliable these days. I'd also brought my Lavry Gold A‑D converters for going back into Pro Tools. For going to the desk we used the regular 192 D‑A converters, but I'm very particular about what I mix through, and I love that Lavry. Muse also have one of them, I can't remember which one we used, theirs or mine. They're fantastic musicians and I really enjoyed working on this album.”
I got all the information from this web-site:
http://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-mark-spike-stent
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