------------------------------------ OCTOBER 2, 2001 ------------------------------------ Source: Pro Tools User Forum http://www.protools.com/users/user_story.cfm?story_id=1162&lang=1 YES: Creating Surround Mixes with Tim Weidner By Jim Batcho Legendary progressive rock band Yes, never a group to shy away from uncharted technological frontiers in recording, is again heading into new realms with its upcoming release Magnification. It will reportedly be the first album released simultaneously on standard CD, and the new DVD-Audio format. This meant, of course, that two different mixes had to be created for the release -- one in stereo, and one in 5.1 surround. Thankfully, producer/engineer Tim Weidner had convinced the band members early on to adopt Pro Tools for all mixing chores. "The idea of a surround mix was suggested just as we were finishing the stereo mixes," Weidner says. "With the mixed multitracks in Pro Tools, it was fairly straightforward to adapt them to a surround environment keeping most of the automation intact." Managing the Orchestra What wasn't so straightforward was managing the sheer volume of tracks generated by a 100-piece orchestra. Since the band chose to go without a keyboard player this time, and instead use an orchestra, there were a lot of elements to keep track of. "Arrangements and lyrics would change daily," Weidner laughs. "By the end of the project, we had 300 gigabytes of recorded audio. The orchestra was across 40 tracks, so we had to submix before we even started a mix. And then we'd start mixing and get a feel for how it was working and then maybe go back and remix the orchestra." For the 5.1 surround mix, the extra speakers gave Weidner much more real estate with which to work. In stereo, he says the challenge was to keep Steve Howe's guitar from fighting with the orchestra. In surround, it was much easier to pull the orchestra more or less to the rear speakers and pull the band itself more to the front. "It was great being able to mix in surround because suddenly we had so much more literal space to play with," Weidner says. "The overdubs that were fighting for space, we could experiment by panning them in different speakers just to clear things out. The surround mix is quite exciting. We delegated the orchestra to the rear speakers in a lot of instances just to give the band more breathing space and that worked out really well." With surround mixing being such a young art form, there are many ways to approach the use of six speakers. Weidner says the members in Yes were up for making bold uses of placement, panning and automation. "It's a relatively new idea adapting an artist's album to a format that was originally designed for sound effects in theaters," Weidner says. "Talk to 10 different people about bass management and you'll get 10 different answers. But band members were up for doing something quite drastic. They didn't want to just put ambiences there, they really wanted to use all of the speakers." Weidner mixed both stereo and surround versions of the album with ProControl. One aspect he particularly enjoyed about working in Pro Tools was not having to constantly re-balance each song every time he put one up to work on. He says it gave him the ability to be much more spontaneous when deciding what to do next. "It was great was just being able to dart around between songs," he says. "You can start to burn out on one thing fairly quickly, especially if the artist just isn't in the mood at that moment. So it was great to be able to flick to another tune, clear your head, and concentrate on something else. We used two Pro Tools systems throughout the project, one to record, and the other to compile and process what had been recorded." Switching from Analog to Digital The band members originally intended to track to 48-track analog. But they were still in the writing process as recording began, so analog became a difficult medium with all of the arrangement changes that needed to be made. "Because the songs were basically being written as we were recording them, it just became impossible to do all the edits on tape that were necessary to make them work," Weidner says. "So by about the fourth day of recording, we gave the analog machine the elbow and recorded strait to Pro Tools, which worked out great. They were a little bit skeptical at first, but once they saw how flexible it could be, they got completely into it." Weidner says singer Jon Anderson particularly enjoyed working with Pro Tools, and its ability to quickly layer takes together. Anderson, who always has a very distinct combination of clarity and "effect" to his voice, had minimal outboard gear applied to his tracks. The vast majority of vocal effects processing was done with Reverb One and Echo Farm TDM plug-ins. "Pro Tools is great for vocals," Weidner says. "Jon loved how quickly we could get through things. Because he's such an incredible singer, he could layer 12 tracks of vocals very quickly. Chris was the same, he was really into recording his stacked vocals in loop record mode. We would loop 2- or 4-bar phrases and by about the third time round the loop, he would have learnt all the nuances and inflections. Steve would like to experiment and record four or five spontaneous guitar ideas. We would then listen through and pick the best bits." Weidner says Chris Squire's bass was mixed fairly clean, without much plug-in processing. Similarly, Howe's guitar sound was for the most part contained within his rig. But Weidner says he did get into more plug-in processing during the editing and mixing stages. "I really like the Bomb Factory plug-ins, these combined with Filterbank took care of most of the guitar sounds," Weidner says about Howe's guitar tracks. With Chris' bass, he makes such a great sound anyway, you don't really have to do a lot with it, except compress it a little. He just plays and that's the sound. Occasionally we'd phase or flange stuff, but it's fairly clean otherwise." Making Magnification had it's fair share of challenges, Weidner says. But it was more to do with four band members often having different ideas as to what they wanted the album to sound like than any technological or sonic issues. "Being a big Yes fan myself, the challenge was how to incorporate the orchestra without masking the identity of the band," he says. "I can't imagine how we would have made this record without Pro Tools." Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com