| Bob Olhsson wrote on Mon, 02 August 2004 11:07 |
I may be wrong but I strongly suspect not all that much is being done to Dr. Dre's mixes in mastering.
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One of the most important factors in hip hop is the arrangement. If you notice, the "biggest" sounding records are often the ones with somewhat sparse arrangements. The more stuff you pack in there, the more difficult it will be to create the impact typically desired from the style. It ends up sounding smaller and quieter when it's packed full, but when each part has a place to breathe and the sounds are well chosen, you can make it jump out of the speakers.
Often, an up and coming producer wants a "huge" bass so they pack a bunch of low on everything, but actually, some well chosen low end on certain things, some mid bass on others, some mid range for clarity, definition, and "snap", and not so much bass on some things that blend with the bassier elements will actually create the impression of a big, powerful bass more than choosing very bassy sounds or adding lots of low EQ. Once you have a mix stuffed full of extraneous arrangement ideas and loaded with low end EQ, it's harder to make it pop in mastering, and the limiter is spending all its time coping with that low end.
This is where multiband dynamics actually can be of service. It's not for every mix as some advertisements would have you believe, but this kind of lopsided mix is where it actually is worth trying. Also, in mastering when a producer says "bass", sometimes he means "impact" and if you add some mid bass and definition and get the bass drum pounding you in the chest, they are much happier than the soup you create by adding more low bass to an already messy low end. Doing this and being able to pull out the crack of the snare (and sometimes some more impact from a full bodied sound) usually puts a smile on their faces.
Somebody like Dre knows all of this, and the mixes he presents already sound great. A little nip and tuck, some color if necessary, and a few dB on the pekas and you have a slammin' record. I recently did a record for Johnny "J", a writer and producer who is best know for several records of work with Tupac, and his punchy drum sounds and well spaced arrangements helped mastering go very smoothly. It was nice that both he and the mixer realized that too much limiting purely for level would negatively impact that punch. We leaned to the conservative side on several tracks to preserve the punch in the chest that the bass drum and snare created.
