10-10-2022, 05:18 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-11-2022, 08:17 AM by Ben@Harrison.)
Nashville is a fun place to live if you are into music. And it’s a great place to find inspiration if you develop software tools like Mixbus.
In 2000, I moved to Nashville to fill a software position at Harrison. I had a bass, but I wasn't a bass player. Nevertheless, I had a bass, and it didn't take long to get propositioned into playing in a church praise band, and I was hooked. I had the opportunity to play with people far above my level, which was very inspiring, and I had a regular gig which required me to get up-to-speed pretty quickly.
That's Nashville for you! I've been in perhaps a dozen bands since then, and I'm currently playing in 2 rock&roll bands. One of the bands is Halo/Horns, an original rock band that channels the sound of 70s rock. Yeah, I know, “don’t quit your day job”... but we’re in it for the music, not the money, man.
After hibernating thru the pandemic, Halo/Horns felt it was time to do something new. We wanted to record 10 original songs for a potential album. But the question was: how to record them? and where? We're too old and jaded to think we can compete with full-time Nashville stars, so this would largely be about making a historical document for our little group. Overdubs and auto-tune would go against the ethos entirely.
We wanted to capture the sound of 70s rock by recording directly to tape with little or no punch-ins. We needed space to spread out and get comfortable. And while I expected to mix the tracks in Mixbus, we also wanted to capture a full-on analog mix as a reference.
After a few studio visits, we chose Welcome to 1979, a studio that can only be described as a labor of love by Chris Mara and his wife Yoli. With 13,000 square feet available, the former record-pressing plant is home to a studio with a 2-story playground slide, multiple recording and relaxing spaces, and Chris's renowned Mara Machines business as well as digital mastering, vinyl mastering, and lacquer cutting services.
Welcome to 1979 fit the bill perfectly: we could spread out, take some pictures for our instagram, and have a rockstar studio experience while recording to analog tape:
![[Image: 1979-tape.png]](https://rsrc.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/blog_images/1979-tape.png)
1979 is built to serve the needs of live bands, and the staff have perfected their workflow around that service. In addition to their skilled chief recording engineer Jeremy, we had a fantastic assistant engineer (Ryan) and an intern who kept things moving smoothly. An analog studio is a complicated beast with lots of moving parts (literally!). The staff has to work like a well-oiled machine to cover the technical details while keeping the artists in a creative mood. Our session gave me the opportunity to study their workflow and see how it might be applied in Mixbus. Our goal with Mixbus has always been to provide an analog-like creative workflow, with the convenience of modern digital tools, so you can get the best of both worlds!
![[Image: 1979-jeremy.png]](https://rsrc.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/blog_images/1979-jeremy.png)
Unfortunately they didn't have a Harrison console, but they had a 1979-vintage MCI ... a console that was heavily influenced by Dave Harrison, the designer at MCI before he left to make his own console company. That was enough of a connection for me to feel comfortable recording there.
We wanted to get at least 10 tracks recorded to tape, and we only booked 2 days at the studio. So we couldn’t take time to do full mixes. After we recorded each song, Jeremy would rewind the tape and make a quick 2-track mixdown, in realtime, while he bounced the tracks to digital. That gave me a reference mix for later review, and also a quick mix that we could play in the car each night, on our way home.
For the quick mix, Jeremy had an impressive collection of analog compressors and eq's wired into the signal path, and he'd occasionally tweak the threshold of a compressor that was working too hard. Otherwise, each of those rackmount devices stayed 'preset' with specific knob settings. Each unit had a task, whether it was kick-drum, vocal, or master-bus ... and the settings didn't get changed much, if at all. I think this is a good reminder for anyone: it's so easy to get lost in the settings of unlimited plugins, when you really only need to master a couple of good tools and use them appropriately.
For artistic effects, Jeremy only had 2 analog mixing tools at his disposal: a tape-delay echo, and a plate reverberator. Here’s the tape machine used for echo:
![[Image: 1979-echo.png]](https://rsrc.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/blog_images/1979-echo.png)
I found it very interesting that the 'tape speed' knob was remotely wired into an empty console strip:
![[Image: 1979-knob.png]](https://rsrc.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/blog_images/1979-knob.png)
Jeremy would give it a quick 'spin' to get just the right slapback time for each song. Combined with the console send&return levels for reverb and delay, he had everything he needed directly under his fingertips ... wow, that sounds familiar!!
Remember, Jeremy only had the length of the song .... about 3 minutes ... to get the mix under control. He rode the faders 'live' and you can hear the mix progress from "raw" to "finished" in the course of those 3 minutes. Here’s a video showing Jeremy playing the console like a musical instrument:
(video link) https://photos.app.goo.gl/EhMFPVUb1px1eCB39
After recording our original material, we recorded a few covers for fun. Here is an excerpt of a Doors cover tune, using Jeremy’s "on the fly" mixdown, including all the analog compression and EQs: https://rsrc.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus...979-2x.mp3
And here is my re-mix in Mixbus, using only the built-in Mixbus channelstrip and mastering tools:
http://rsrc.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/...bus-2x.mp3
Given the same time and tools, Jeremy will mix circles around me. But I'm OK with that; I can probably out-program him
Anyway, after watching him do our live mixes, I don't feel there's anything in Mixbus holding me back. It's all there; it just comes down to the skill of the person doing the mixes.
Here are some more images and video from our trip: https://photos.app.goo.gl/9bvtHvw5CuafQGg79
Let me know if you have any questions about our studio visit, or how you think it should influence Mixbus going forward!
====
Ben Loftis is a product developer and partner at Harrison Consoles
In 2000, I moved to Nashville to fill a software position at Harrison. I had a bass, but I wasn't a bass player. Nevertheless, I had a bass, and it didn't take long to get propositioned into playing in a church praise band, and I was hooked. I had the opportunity to play with people far above my level, which was very inspiring, and I had a regular gig which required me to get up-to-speed pretty quickly.
That's Nashville for you! I've been in perhaps a dozen bands since then, and I'm currently playing in 2 rock&roll bands. One of the bands is Halo/Horns, an original rock band that channels the sound of 70s rock. Yeah, I know, “don’t quit your day job”... but we’re in it for the music, not the money, man.
After hibernating thru the pandemic, Halo/Horns felt it was time to do something new. We wanted to record 10 original songs for a potential album. But the question was: how to record them? and where? We're too old and jaded to think we can compete with full-time Nashville stars, so this would largely be about making a historical document for our little group. Overdubs and auto-tune would go against the ethos entirely.
We wanted to capture the sound of 70s rock by recording directly to tape with little or no punch-ins. We needed space to spread out and get comfortable. And while I expected to mix the tracks in Mixbus, we also wanted to capture a full-on analog mix as a reference.
After a few studio visits, we chose Welcome to 1979, a studio that can only be described as a labor of love by Chris Mara and his wife Yoli. With 13,000 square feet available, the former record-pressing plant is home to a studio with a 2-story playground slide, multiple recording and relaxing spaces, and Chris's renowned Mara Machines business as well as digital mastering, vinyl mastering, and lacquer cutting services.
Welcome to 1979 fit the bill perfectly: we could spread out, take some pictures for our instagram, and have a rockstar studio experience while recording to analog tape:
1979 is built to serve the needs of live bands, and the staff have perfected their workflow around that service. In addition to their skilled chief recording engineer Jeremy, we had a fantastic assistant engineer (Ryan) and an intern who kept things moving smoothly. An analog studio is a complicated beast with lots of moving parts (literally!). The staff has to work like a well-oiled machine to cover the technical details while keeping the artists in a creative mood. Our session gave me the opportunity to study their workflow and see how it might be applied in Mixbus. Our goal with Mixbus has always been to provide an analog-like creative workflow, with the convenience of modern digital tools, so you can get the best of both worlds!
Unfortunately they didn't have a Harrison console, but they had a 1979-vintage MCI ... a console that was heavily influenced by Dave Harrison, the designer at MCI before he left to make his own console company. That was enough of a connection for me to feel comfortable recording there.
We wanted to get at least 10 tracks recorded to tape, and we only booked 2 days at the studio. So we couldn’t take time to do full mixes. After we recorded each song, Jeremy would rewind the tape and make a quick 2-track mixdown, in realtime, while he bounced the tracks to digital. That gave me a reference mix for later review, and also a quick mix that we could play in the car each night, on our way home.
For the quick mix, Jeremy had an impressive collection of analog compressors and eq's wired into the signal path, and he'd occasionally tweak the threshold of a compressor that was working too hard. Otherwise, each of those rackmount devices stayed 'preset' with specific knob settings. Each unit had a task, whether it was kick-drum, vocal, or master-bus ... and the settings didn't get changed much, if at all. I think this is a good reminder for anyone: it's so easy to get lost in the settings of unlimited plugins, when you really only need to master a couple of good tools and use them appropriately.
For artistic effects, Jeremy only had 2 analog mixing tools at his disposal: a tape-delay echo, and a plate reverberator. Here’s the tape machine used for echo:
I found it very interesting that the 'tape speed' knob was remotely wired into an empty console strip:
Jeremy would give it a quick 'spin' to get just the right slapback time for each song. Combined with the console send&return levels for reverb and delay, he had everything he needed directly under his fingertips ... wow, that sounds familiar!!
Remember, Jeremy only had the length of the song .... about 3 minutes ... to get the mix under control. He rode the faders 'live' and you can hear the mix progress from "raw" to "finished" in the course of those 3 minutes. Here’s a video showing Jeremy playing the console like a musical instrument:
(video link) https://photos.app.goo.gl/EhMFPVUb1px1eCB39
After recording our original material, we recorded a few covers for fun. Here is an excerpt of a Doors cover tune, using Jeremy’s "on the fly" mixdown, including all the analog compression and EQs: https://rsrc.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus...979-2x.mp3
And here is my re-mix in Mixbus, using only the built-in Mixbus channelstrip and mastering tools:
http://rsrc.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/...bus-2x.mp3
Given the same time and tools, Jeremy will mix circles around me. But I'm OK with that; I can probably out-program him
Anyway, after watching him do our live mixes, I don't feel there's anything in Mixbus holding me back. It's all there; it just comes down to the skill of the person doing the mixes.Here are some more images and video from our trip: https://photos.app.goo.gl/9bvtHvw5CuafQGg79
Let me know if you have any questions about our studio visit, or how you think it should influence Mixbus going forward!
====
Ben Loftis is a product developer and partner at Harrison Consoles
), Otari MTR90 24 track, Studer A80 1/2" 2-track, nice outboard racks. Aaah, the good ol' days. 
![[Image: The-Rack-BIG-FX-GUI-Presets-on-the-left.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/5tGNTPFS/The-Rack-BIG-FX-GUI-Presets-on-the-left.jpg)