Tutorial: Jack Nigro

OVERHEADS

This is a trick I picked up from a Steve Albini tutorial with the overhead placement behind the drummer. It’s not suitable if you need precise placement of the cymbals (say, pop or metal production) but I’m often working with Indie artists and I’m aiming for a drum sound that is more organic and ‘together’. This is where this technique comes into its own. That said, I did set up a hi-hat mic (god forbid we actually need a hi-hat turned up!).

The mics are placed equally distanced from the snare centre (as per normal) and I make an equilateral triangle between the two AKG 214s and the snare. I’m trying to recreate the triangle we aim for in our listening mix position.

The green tea towel you can see on the right, is in position to quieten the hi-hat mic into the overhead mic. It actually works quite well!

A few advantages I have found from this set up were:

• Having the overhead mics at the same height as the cymbals creates quite a nice even cymbal decay, and completely minimises any Doppler effect (or ‘whooshing’).
• Having the mics further away means the cymbals don’t have too much build up in the lower mids, so I don’t need to cut these frequencies and it allows me to preserver more of the bottom end of my toms and snare – a component I love in the sound of overheads.
• It also allows me to pick up plenty of snare and toms in the overheads, again, a sound I favour.

You can then also see a Coles 4038 placed right in the middle at the front of the kit. The Coles has a beautifully-even rolloff in the top end and a warm round bottom end. I keep the mic in the centre of the mix and it’s also the exact same distance to the snare centre as the rear overhead mics.

I love using mono close kit and room mics in my mix to help support my kick and snare close mics. Often engineers only use stereo ambient mics (stereo OHs, stereo rooms, for example) and this means the only centre mics in your mix are your close mics. Having these mono ambient mics can help create a great sense of depth to your drum tone.

ROOM MICS

I use a stereo pair of Neumann KM184s for room mics. As you can see from the picture, I keep them quite close to the ground. I love picking up low-end energy from my room mics, keeping them lower to the floor allows the kick and toms to compete against cymbal wash.

You can also see from this picture they are in an X/Y position angled slightly to the left of front of the kick. 

There are a few reasons I do this:

• This position draws a direct line between the kick and snare. I see this angle as the centre of the kick, not directly in front of the kick skin. This can significantly help you avoid your room mics having the kick sounding louder in one ear and the snare in the other. You want your kick and snare to feel balanced, powerful and in the dead centre of these mics. This was a technique I learnt from renowned Australian engineer/producer Paul McKercher.
• I often use the X/Y position as it allows for better mono compatibility and phase relationship. As the capsules are right next to each other, they are picking up the same air compression/rarefactions in the room. I don’t often like my room mics sounding ultra-wide, I leave this space for guitars in a lot of my productions and if I need to gain extra width I can still do this through artificial reverbs. If I have access to 2x Coles 4038s I may do a similar technique in Blumlein.

In another photo you can also see there is a Neumann TLM149 in the far corner acting as a mono room mic. This mic is further back and picking up a larger room ambient tone. You can see it is also angled more towards the ground, setting the mic slightly off axis tames the high end of the cymbals, again creating a better cymbal/shells balance, something I am always aiming for with my ambient mics. 

It is always better to get this relationship captured through microphones instead of later through EQ. Obviously I will almost always apply EQ, but the less we need to do the less we may face potential phase issues, which can be introduced through EQ.

TOMS

I sometimes tape a tea towel onto the floor tom, to gently rest over the top of the tom. You will notice that no tape is actually touching the skin of the tom, it is attached to the shell. I don’t want to kill the resonance of the tom too much, by lightly placing the towel over the tom like this, it is essentially flapping on and off the skin when it is struck, acting as a very light dampener.

Hopefully you can also see that inside the tom I have some cotton balls freely resting on the bottom skin. This is doing a similar job as the tea towel. When the drummer strikes the tom the cotton balls bounce up, allowing some decay before landing and gently absorbing the energy. I highly recommend this technique!

You can also see in some of the other pictures I have placed a towel over the top of the kick drum next to the rack tom, this can help the floor tom and kick drum not set off resonance in the rack tom when they are struck.

GREEN BULLET MIC

Here’s a final mic technique easter egg for you: place some kind of fun toy mic, I’ll often use this green bullet mic, under the snare near the kick batter. This gives me some snare snap and kick attack. This mic is great because of its midrange focus and its unique, artificial sound. I then use the level control on the mic to drive into a Sansamp pedal that I sit on my desk in front of me and use as an EQ/distortion.

If you ever watch any Tchad Blake videos you will see he often recreates things like this when he mixes — subtly different types of distortion sitting within your drum tones can create unique and incredibly interesting sounds. They don’t even have to be obvious but they can make such a nice textural difference.

Sonora Studio: www.sonorastudios.au

STRAIGHT TO THE LAB

This is my experience. I often use Analog Lab when playing live and V Collection accounts for at least half of my synth sounds when I’m in the studio. So Keylab Essential should really be up my alley.

I eagerly connected it to my laptop using the supplied USB cable, fully expecting every Analog Lab virtual fader and pot to be automatically mapped to the controller, and feeling just a bit miffed when they weren’t! 

Rookie error. I discovered I’d not updated Analog Lab in a year. After that download and a restart, Keylab Essential and Analog Lab instantly shook hands, with everything nicely mapped.

The nine pots and nine faders of the controller match the pots and faders in the Controls section of Analog Lab. The top row of pots offer broadbrush control of the tone and the effects levels. The parameters allocated to the row of faders depend on the synth engine. The DX7 synth, for example, will have Operator levels and Algorithm adjustments; the Piano instrument has a bunch of keyboard-relevant adjustments to make; while Prophet VS has joystick adjustments and Wave Osc levels… you get the idea.

Being able to audition presets and mess with them without recourse to your computer or a mouse is a big deal. You are guaranteed to go places you wouldn’t normally go if you’re forced to mouse-click and adjust every time.

If you own any or all of the V Collection instruments then Keylab Essential will, of course, happily converse with those. You don’t have the neat array of corresponding nine pots and sliders but Keylab’s controls dive into the most useful parameters of that instrument. I found it best to use the expanded Editor view of the virtual synths to get a better understanding of what I was messing with.

Using Keylab’s big, central encoder to scroll through the presets is another luxury. You can use the display to get an at-a-glance view of your favourite sounds (with the Heart icon) and riffle the deck using Genre and Categories.

The touch-sensitive pads might be expected but they’re also very valuable for bashing out drum parts and/or triggering samples.

To me, all this is a ‘shut up and take my money’ moment. I was already having more fun and digging deeper for more individualised sounds.

ARP’ING ON

But wait, there’s more. Mk3 has an improved Arp section. Press and hold the Arp button to access a number of customisable parameters. Similar deal with the Chord function. Press and hold to select your one-finger chord or build your own. Similarly, the Scale function will switch up your keyboard to only play notes in the selected scale, allowing you to play like Rick Wakeman without even trying. These are handy, creative features.

DISPLAY

The Mk3 display is larger and more informative than before and has four ‘contextual’ keys. For starters, you’ll want to use it to select the Program mode. Performance mode describes what we were doing with Analog Lab and V Collection. The DAW mode is an interesting and powerful feature that opens up deeper integration with five of the top production DAWs on the market: Live, Logic Pro, FL Studio, Cubase, and Bitwig. I’d heartily recommend you investigate how Keylab Essential integrates with your particular DAW, as there are too many differences platform-to-platform to list here. But I can assure you there’s a lot more on offer than transport control.

Unfortunately, my DAW of choice, Reason, isn’t supported… probably because most pundits are seeing Reason more as a VST plug-in these days, unfortunately.

BUNDLE

If you’re coming in cold, without any DAW or virtual instrument baggage, then Keylab Essential ships with a nifty bundle of goodies that will get you making music in no time, including Analog Lab V, Ableton Live Lite, a two-month subscription to Loopcloud, and a couple of superior piano instruments.

CONSUMER CHOICE

If you rely on Arturia sounds and perform live, then the more expensive Keylab Mk2 range is worthy of your consideration. Keylab Essential will, of course, perform just fine on stage but its very lightweight and more likely be your second controller rather than a master.

In the studio, Keylab Essential, is a well-priced match for your Arturia sound sources and a worthy partner for your DAW of choice.

If you’re currently putting up with a generic MIDI keyboard then you’ll be amazed how much more fun you’ll have working with Arturia’s sounds using Keylab Essential. The ability to scroll through sounds, mess with sounds, then create more interesting performances using the Chord, Arp and Scale functions, all without recourse to your mouse or keyboard, is an eye-opener, and an experience I’d heartily recommend.

SOUND ADVICE SOUNDS GOOD

Andrew Sheps became a mentor, and offered his advice and feedback over Zoom calls and chats. While Nathan was caught in a moment of analysis-paralysis, he offered a helpful perspective — a kind of mantra, if you will — to help remove some of that doubt. Nathan says, “I was the kind of person who’d worry that if I was needing to, say, boost 5kHz by more than 4-5dB, then there must be a problem with my mix. But Andrew told me, ‘If you’ve got to boost it all the way up, like, whatever… If it sounds good, it sounds good!”

News flash: it sounds good. From stylistic- and production-based standpoints ‘Miracles’ covers an impressive amount of ground. Opening with some sure-footed coastal/dolewave swagger, the album winds it way effortlessly through classic rock, yacht-rock, and delta/southern blues — and perhaps there’s even a nod to Dennis Waterman’s bawdy ‘Minder Theme’ too.

All of this genre-hopping is supported by convincing production elements that seem simultaneously able to accentuate the differences, while cohesively tying it all back together again. As far as common factors or devices go, the album feels cohesively bound by a variety of elements. Nathan shares, “I did start to form little patterns around how I was going to create things. The drums took some experimenting, but the fundamental drum sounds across a lot of the tracks are quite similar. Then throughout the mix process they really began to sit in different worlds.”

FAST TWITCH MIXES

As a source of productivity it seems rather counterintuitive, but another interesting motivational tool has seen Nathan taking to Twitch to live stream his studio sessions. “The first couple of months were hard because I was still in ‘performance mode’, and focussed on the audience. This was pulling me away from creating, but eventually I sank into it,” Nathan shared.

Much like having a client in the studio, relying on you to turn up on time and get work done, Nathan shares that, “Going live on Twitch ended up creating an incredible focus because I knew I had to commit.” He continues, “If I was ever feeling a bit unmotivated or distracted, like, ‘Oh, I think I want to go for a walk, or check my emails’ or whatever, I’d know that they were expecting me to be online and mixing,” he said. “It’s just having another presence in there with you, with expectations, you know?”

This novel approach to motivation was also found to be creatively beneficial in that it that helped him to push through a fear of judgement. “I actually learnt a lot from the chat. I learnt how to better handle my insecurities because when somebody was being an arse and it bothered me, I could pause and think, ‘Oh, I’ve got that belief in there that I should probably work on’.”

Nathan found that the live chat also allowed him to make quicker decisions because some of his audience were offering him valuable suggestions and constructive criticism. “Every now and then I’d have somebody make a comment. They’d make suggestions that informed me that they knew what they were on about — you don’t make those kinds suggestions unless you’re a big-dog. And they wouldn’t say who they were either, they’d just comment and piss off, and I’d never hear from them again.”

When preparing himself for the project, Nathan had a clear vision of how he needed to approach the mix, stating that, “You can mix creatively, or you can mix from a place of fear. With my insecurities I had a tendency to default to mixing with fear. When you mix from this place you can end up with really safe, boring mixes.”

GO WITH THE FLOW

So, what does Nathan Cavaleri’s workflow look like? Is he a hardware-tragic, or does he prefer the convenience and immediacy of working ’in the box’? Well, a bit of A, a bit of B. Naturally, growing up in the 90s — in studios, on big-label budgets — he was well acquainted with high-end analogue studios. “As you know, I grew up on blues,” he says. “I’m a purist — I love hardware and amps, and I was probably a snob for a long time when it came to guitars, amps and simulators. This is the first album that I’ve actually used a lot of software amps.”

Nathan explains that, “Compared to the previous album, the main thing about this one is that it had to be about capturing the energy of the moment, and I so wanted to remove any blocks that got in the way. Perfectionism is a real thing, and obviously this is a distraction. So when I have to use an amp and I have to get that sound I generally find that I fall short — there’s something that pisses me off about it, so I’m never happy.”

He felt that having the option to re-amp between the production and mix process would give him more flexibility, but quickly realised that it was an option that could also smother his creative flow. “I got to the point where I’d be about to re-amp and realised that there were a lot of tracks on there and started to think, ‘Why? Why would I bother when this already sounds great?!’ The only reason why I would have tried to amp it up was the worry that maybe it could sound better. But then I thought, ‘I’m not going to do that to myself’. I did that last time and really struggled with needing to over-process things, then finding they’d lost their energy.”

He continues, “So as part of my process this time, I recorded in the box because I didn’t want to mix those two parts of the brain — engineering and performance.” As Nathan adjusts to this shift away from hardware he says, “I always feared having to confess it, to be honest, because I can imagine all my peers thinking, ‘Ohh, that doesn’t sound like a real amp’. And that’s why I won’t get specific on which songs because I don’t want to skew the experience for people.”

As far as plugins go, Nathan lists a few of the favourites he used on the album. “I heavily relied on Waves ‘Scheps Omni Channel’. That thing is just great. Really tasteful, and I love that low-mid cabinet-type sound it has. Then there’s Newfangled Audio’s Elevate suite. The Saturator is just so good, I like to use that on a mastering or drum buss.

“As far as the guitar side of things, I’d have to say Helix Native. I was using this for a lot of different things, but mainly for the delays and mods. I’ve also been going through a massive psychedelic verb-y phase and I have two favourite verbs. There’s the Spring Reverb in Guitar Rig, which is killer. It just sits in the mix beautifully. Then, like everybody else, there’s the Valhalla VintageVerb. I feel like this is going to be one of those reverbs that you look back and think, ‘Oh, that was such a 2020s sound’, because it’s on everything.”

ON STUDIO TIME

Most of the recording and mixing phase of the album took place in his suite at Massive Music (formerly Song Zu), and having worked there for 15 years, it was a space that Nathan had become more than familiar with. “That was the first professional room I’d had to engineer and create my own stuff in, and to me that was a ‘live’ room,” he shared. In the suite Nathan ran Protools with his UA Apollo interface, the studio’s rack of 4110 preamps and Neve 1073OPX, as well as his own 1176 compressor and Vintech X73 pre.

But after building his new studio he was surprised by how he was now capturing sounds that required less post-processing than before, and went on to say, “To be honest, I always thought that it was just me — all the work that I’d normally have to do just to pull a drum sound and get it sounding how I wanted. But then I moved here and realised that it was the room!”

The new studio space was designed by Rick O’Neill and is still a work in progress, but that suits Nathan just fine. “I’m not a massive gear-head, I just make do with what I’ve got. In my first rig I just had an SM58, and so that got me learning how to use ‘space’ in general. I was always fascinated by what you can do with just one mic. Then I got a second mic, another 58. So I built things up slowly, and along the way I just learnt how to be as purposeful as possible. And I feel like that’s never left me.”

Nathan continued, “I grew up on the schooling that you don’t have to have the best gear in the world to create something that moves people. This got me really focussed on what actually matters when you’re creating a song, and what really matters when you’re producing — the songwriting process obviously, and then the mix itself.”

GEAR NO EVIL

Even though Nathan has adopted many facets of software-based recording, there is still some hardware in the studio that he can’t do without. In pole position, the Shure SM7 features prominently on the album and was used widely on snare and hats, as well as doubling as a vocal mic. This is also the mic used in his Twitch broadcasts.

While the Shure was generally Nathan’s go-to he also had a handful of other microphones at his disposal — including some clones built in Melbourne by Open Plan Recording. He would sometimes track vocals with a Sennheiser MD 441, but the O.P.R 251 — a clone of Telefunken’s ELA M 251 — was chosen when he wanted to capture his voice in a more open, polished way.

O.P.R’s Rocket, a Coles 4038 ribbon mic clone, was used on overheads and room mic’ing, however a pair of Neumann M149s were also given room mic duties too. While the SM7 was generally favoured on snares Nathan would occasionally swap in a Sennheiser MD 421 there as well — so all in all, quite a range of different flavours on hand.

Nathan has some plans for outboard gear too: “There was an old Chandler preamp that I was running my SM7 into at a studio I was working at and just loved  the sound of it”, but after discovering the asking price thought, ‘I need one of those for my studio, but ohh — maybe after a few hit albums I’ll be able to buy one’.” And his preferred guitar/amp combo? “That would have to be a Fender Telecaster with a PAF up the front, single coil in the back, with my old Fender Princeton. Although maybe not mine. I always get the shits that mine doesn’t have reverb.”

Defying discomfort and analysis-paralysis thanks to a healthy dose of self-reflection, Nathan has ridden a continuation of growth between ‘Demons’ and ‘Miracles’. Comfortably grounded in genres outside the wheelhouse usually associated with his name, he’s managed to create an album that feels like an awakening and a rebirth.

Nathan concludes by saying, “Even with the internal and external doubts associated with making an album that’s not rooted in traditional blues, the overall theme has always been about doing what aligns with my truth. Since my late teens I just wanted to be able to create songs with my guitar that moved people, so that was the aim throughout this whole process — create an album that does something to me, and if it makes others feel something too, then that’s a bonus. And if they get inspired, then it’s done its job.”

In a distinct, coherent fashion the variety of song-writing and production chops on ‘Miracles’ prove that blues isn’t the only string to Nathan’s guitar.

EVOLUTION OF A DYNASTY

The M4 is a worthy addition to Zoom’s Handy Recorder family — a category it invented. A unit with built-in stereo mics, and inputs for two external microphones is exactly what I purchased about 15 years ago. The H4 was revolutionary at the time and mine got an incredible amount of use. The inclusion of the timecode generator shifts the focus (or at least the broadness of the appeal) of the M4 into film and TV production, and the 32-bit capability ensures its usefulness in a wider range of environments than the H4. My work is focussed on sound effects creation and game audio, so timecode is not something I need to concern myself with. But the standards have existed for years and the ability to use timecode with this device is sure to be attractive to many users.

Several generations of evolution of Zoom’s mic preamp technology; the inclusion of timecode; and a familiar design allows the M4 to compete in the modern digital recorder market, and continue to enjoy great success.

SOUND & VISION

While its easy to get carried away with all the digital add-ons, one fundamental fact needs to be stated: the ADAM A7V is a great-sounding, high quality monitor. Perhaps the most glowing recommendation I can offer is that I had the use of the ADAM A7Vs for about a month and, despite being a dyed-in-the-wool Quested user, once I plugged the A7Vs in, I didn’t once consider switching back over to my tried and trusted midfields. I found the A7Vs immediately sat well with me in Pure mode and I mixed several albums worth of material on them without any qualms. I really liked their tonal presentation which has a lovely even feel through the frequency range. They didn’t fatigue me, they didn’t feel exaggerated in any tonal area, and they presented my mixes in a pleasing but still detailed and forensic way that allowed for accurate EQ and effect placement.

The bottom end is pleasingly solid for a pair of nearfield speakers and the sound certainly isn’t ‘small’.They translated well on a range of different media and also delivered a big sound that lacked nothing in weight down low.

The A7Vs can get quite loud and their imaging and tonal coherence easily reaches the back of my 8m-deep room, filling the space beautifully.

These speakers are worth every cent of their asking price just in Pure mode, but of course I very much enjoyed seeing and hearing what else the ADAMs could do. UNR mode is a good second option with a generous dollop of bass bloom and lower midrange thickness immediately apparent. I found this setting more useful for general musical enjoyment and a second opinion on low-end sources but I preferred Pure for day-to-day mix work.

The onboard EQ is also useful and offers well-judged stepped settings to address bass, midrange and high frequency issues. When I’m working on my Quested V2108s I prefer a slight top-end roll off for long mixing sessions. I didn’t feel that need with the ADAMs and left the Room Adaptation EQ flat. This is, of course, very much a room by room, user by user proposition, but the options cover a good range of tonal tweaking where required.

CALIBRATION ASSIGNATION

I reviewed the Sonarworks Sound ID room measurement and calibration software last year for AT so, being familiar with the process, it was a fairly straightforward exercise to update the software and test out the ADAMs using the Sound ID Reference microphone. The response curve for the A7Vs in my room at a listening position of around a meter and a half from each speaker showed several prominent peaks in the low end and lower midrange with a steep roll off below 60Hz. From 700Hz to 1.5kHz there was a less pronounced dip and the top end response gently descended from 7kHz on up. Having captured my listening point’s frequency portrait, the next step was to name and save this as an Adam Audio supported preset and export the corrective calibration EQ into the speakers’ onboard memory. To do this I ensured my speakers were networked to my computer and opened the A Control software, using the drop down menu in the upper left corner of the control panel to import the file. This brings the calibration curve into play via the Sonarworks logo button in A Control, but in order to save the setting into the speakers themselves its necessary to do a secondary save on shutdown of the software. This instances a short reboot of the monitors whereupon the setting is physically saved in each speaker and can be selected on the back panel independently of the software (and ethernet cables). Once this was all in place it was a satisfying experience to toggle through the various voicings and hear the A7Vs respond with quite different sonic presentations.

Room correction is a curious and complex business. There are many ways to use the SoundID program but at its heart is a corrective EQ that seeks to produce a completely flat response. When this EQ is engaged it becomes immediately apparent that ‘flat’ does not necessarily equal ‘right’ in terms of monitoring. In my case the resulting sound through the ADAMs lost a lot of bottom end information and the top end became overly bright to my ears. Overall the sound coming out of the speakers suddenly felt unsatisfying and thin. While this setting might be useful for short periods of forensic listening (particularly for issues in the upper frequencies), I would not want to do long hours of mixing with it. As when I previously reviewed this software, I found it most useful when backed off to around 40% using SoundID’s wet/dry control. I found these settings to be particularly useful for checking my mixes in shorter forensic listening sessions, and this was a great adjunct to the Pure setting that I favoured for general tracking and mixing. Sonarworks offers several other ways to modify the raw correction curves as well as simulations of car, laptop and headphone presets and these are also well worth exploring.

DEVILISHLY DETAILED

If the back panel Room Adaptation EQ with its mirrored A Control software doesn’t quite have your tweak freak needs covered then the Advanced Adaptation option surely will. This six-band parametric EQ allows for more dramatic and surgical cuts and boosts and, while the digital control layout feels a little cramped and no-frills compared to the other features of the A Control software, there’s no doubting it allows for finer tuning and more nuanced EQ shaping than the other options. It must be said that all this tonal shaping comes on top of what are beautifully natural-sounding speakers, so inexperienced engineers in particular should proceed with a degree of caution where there’s so many tone-shaping tools up for grabs.

Ultimately, customising the voicing of your speakers should be about helping you make the right mix decisions that, in turn, lead to great translation across a range of listening devices. This takes time, a bit of experimentation, and the experience of working on a number of different projects and types of material, to fully dial in. With the A7V’s great starting-point sounds and flexible tools, combined with Sound ID software’s room measurement information, this goal should be achievable even in the most problematic spaces. In a good-sounding space the Pure mode is a joy to work with and I’d happily recommend the ADAM A7Vs to anyone looking for a quality set of nearfield monitors that won’t break the bank.