Engineer Dave Pensado
Interview Excerpt
Of all the genres of music, mIxing R&B may be the toughest thanks to the almost constant change in the state-of-the-art and the penchant by the participants to experiment with new sounds. Mixer Dave Pensado, with projects by Bel Biv Devoe, Coolio, Take 6, Brian McKnight, Diana Ross, Tony Toni Tone, Atlantic Starr and many more, has consistently supplied mixes that have not only filled the airwaves, but rank among the most artful as well. In thIs Dave Pensado interview excerpt, Dave gives us a look into his bag of mixing tricks.
QUESTION: What’s harder to mix; an R&B or a Rock track?
DAVE PENSADO: I mix both and R&B is infinitely harder to mix than Rock. Think of it this way. Let’s say you’re painting a portrait. Rock is like having the person you’re painting sitting in front of you and you look at them and paint, you look at them and paint. So you have a reference. In R&B, there is no reference. It’s like trying to do a portrait from memory, but because you don’t have the person there, you can paint something that transcends what he is. You can make him prettier, you can make him uglier, or you can make him abstract if you want. Doing R&B you’ve got less limitation and a lot more freedom. We don’t have to have the snare drum sound a particular way. It can sound like anything from an 808 to a hand clap to a little spitty sound to a rock sound. But you put certain snare sounds in a rock song and it’s just not a rock song anymore.
Do you hear the finished product in your head before you start?
Yeah. I really can. I might not have 100% of the final product in my mind when I start, but I pretty much have it outlined. Then as I start filling in the outline, sometimes things change a little bit. Every once in awhile, maybe out of two or three hundred, I might just pull the faders down and say, “I don’t like any of this” and start again from scratch.
What’s your approach to using EQ?
Well, I think of EQ as an effect much the same way you would add chorus or reverb to a particular instrument or vocal. Like, I might have a vocal where I think it’s really EQed nicely and then I’ll add a little more 3K just to get it to bite a little more. Then it just makes me feel like the singer was trying harder and it brings out a little bit of passion in his or her voice. So I tend to be most effective when I do the standard equalizing, then take it to the next level, thinking of it as an effect. Some of my favorites for this are the NTI EQ3, API 550 and 560’s, the old “Motown EQ’s” at Larrabee, and the Avalons.
How about panning?
I think that there’s three sacred territories in a mix that if you put something there, you’ve got to have an incredibly good reason. That’s extreme left, center and right. I’ve noticed that some mixers will get stereo tracks from synthesizers and effects and they just instinctively pan them hard left and hard right. What they end up with is these big train wrecks out on the ends of the stereo spectrum. Then they pan their kick, snare, bass and vocals center and you’ve got all this stuff stacked on top of each other. If it were a visual, you wouldn’t be able to see the things behind the things in front. So what I do is take a stereo synthesizer track and I’ll just toss one side because I don’t need it. I’ll create my own stereo by either adding a delay or a chorus or a pre-delayed reverb or something like that to give it a stereo image. I’ll pan maybe the dry signal to 10:00 and then I’ll pan the effects just inside the extreme left side. I would never put it hard left because then there’s too many things on top of it. I would pan it at 9:00, and then pan the dry signal to say 10:30, something like that.
Do you use a lot of compression?
There again, I look at compression as having two functions. One as an effect and when you want to keep a particular sound right up front in your face in the mix. I use quite an array of compressors because each one seems to give a little different characteristic as a result.
Do you compress individually or on the stereo buss, or both?
Well, I do both. There’s a trick that some of my favorite New York mixers do to get the drums really fat and in your face. They would feed a couple of busses to a compressor and EQ the compressor output, then they feed kicks and snares and things like that to that compressor and just squeeze the heck out of the sound source. It literally is thought of and treated just as if it were a reverb or a chorus. In other words, just treat it as an effect that’s mixed in with the original signal. More often than not, you’re compressing the individual sounds as well.
I recently read an interview with a well known engineer where he was praising a particular compressor for its ability to take the dynamics out of a drum performance because the drummer would get happy on the first downbeat of every chorus and play a little louder. I thought, “I spent my whole career trying to add those dynamics and trying to make the drummer sound like he got happy going into the chorus.” I very rarely use a compressor to even out dynamics. Dynamics are something that I just can’t get enough of. The compressors I like the most tend to be the ones that actually help me get dynamics. That might be a contradictory statement, but if you’re careful with the attack and release times, you can actually get a compressor to help you with it.
Most mixers I’ve talked to don’t think of their compressors that way. What do you use in particular to do that?
Well, for kick and snare I’ll use a 160X and I’ll set the ratio at 2 or 3 to 1, depending on how much transient response is already there. The Over Easy button will not be in. It ends up where I’m knocking off sometimes 20 dB and no less than 15. There’s a point at which you get an amazing attack in the range from about 400 to 3K. Then I’ll take the output of that compressor and I’ll feed it to a Pultec or a Lang or an API 550 and I’ll add back sometimes 15, 20 dB of 100-200Hz and a little 10K, and sometimes even 3-5K. Then I’ll get my original sound where I like it and I’ll add in that compressed sound. Man, it just puts the drum right in your face and makes it huge and fat. Basically what I’m doing is trying to take the frequencies that I want and add those back into the original sound in such a way that I can’t do with EQ.
A lot of times what I’ll do is put the effects only on the compressed sound. In other words, an effect I use a lot would be “Locker Room” or “Tile Room” on a PCM70 and I’ll add that effect only to the compressed sound. As a result, the reverb actually has a snap and aggressiveness to it. Every once in a while I’ll make it stereo where I’ll take two 160’s and I’ll set them up identically, but on the insert of one I’ll put like anywhere from a 9 to 15 millisecond delay so the tight compressed sound is out on the edges of my stereo spectrum, but the original sound’s in the center. That creates an incredibly nice image, particularly for ballads and slow tunes where you have a lot of space between the downbeats. That setup works great for snares, kicks, and high-hat. Every once in awhile it’ll make a guitar come alive too.
So what you’re doing is you’re controlling the dynamics but you’re actually increasing the dynamics. It’s the strangest thing because psycho-acoustically, it’s not getting louder but your mind is thinking it is. On the radio, it just jumps out of the speakers.
Do you have a philosophy about adding effects?
The way I think of it is the pan knob places you left to right while the effects tend to you place you front to rear. That’s a general statement, but it’s a good starting point. In other words, if you want the singer to sound like she’s standing behind the snare drum, leave the snare drum dry and wet down the singer and it’ll sound like the singer is standing that far behind the snare drum. If you want the singer in front of the snare drum, leave him dry and wet down the snare drum.
That said, I like a vocal mostly dry, but then it usually doesn’t sound big enough. You want the vocalist to sound like they’re really powerful and dynamic and just giving it everything, so I’ll put an 1/8th note delay on the vocal but subtract a 1/16th, a 32nd or 64th note value from that 1/8th note. What it does is gives a movement to the delay and makes the singer have an urgency that’s kind of neat. So put the 1/8th minus 1/64th on the left side, and put the 1/8th note straight on the right side. You can experiment with putting the pitch up a little bit on one side and down on another. If your singer’s a little pitchy, that usually makes them sound a little more in tune. Sometimes putting the 1/8th note triplet on one side and the 1/8th note straight on the other, if you’ve got any kind of swing elements of the track, will make the vocal big, but it doesn’t make the singer sound like he’s taken a step back.
Another thing I like to do is to take the output of my effects and run them straight into another effect. I’ll take an exciter and just dump the output straight to a chorus so it’s only chorusing the high frequencies. I think that’s more pleasing than having low notes chorusing all over the place. Another thing I’ll do is set up an SPX1000, or SPX90 both on chorus. I’ll put one where I’ll pan it hard left and then I’ll pan the right return at 2:00. Then I’ll take another SPX90 and I’ll pan it hard right, and then the left return from that one I’ll pan at 10:00, so now the left and rights are kind of overlapping. On one I’ll have the chorus depth just a little less than the other and I’ll have the other modulating a third faster. When you add a vocal to that, you get this real nice spectrum that just widens because you’re sending the both of them an equal amount but yet one of them is chorusing deeper and slower than the other one. If that’s not wide enough for you, add a delay in front of both of them that’s different on each side and then add that to your background vocals. They don’t take any steps back in the mix, but they just get fat.
A lot of times I’ll take two PCM70’s and instead of running them stereo, I’ll run them mono in and mono out and pan one just inside the left and one just inside the right. I’ll use the same program on both but I’ll slightly alter the values. Even if you don’t use two PCM70’s, just return the darn thing mono and you’ll be surprised at how much better it sounds.
What monitors do you like to work on?
For the main monitors I like the Augsburgers with TAD components and for small monitors I use NS10’s with the old tweeters. I also use Auratones, but in an odd way. A lot of times I’ll start EQing my kick drum on the Auratones, which is kinda strange because you’re adding a lot of frequencies that you can’t hear, but you can see your meters going up. It forces you to EQ higher because if you’re sitting there listening to dual 15” speakers and you’re adding 20dB of 40 Hz, you think you’re killing the world. You go to the Auratones, you can’t hear any of it so it’s useless. So a lot of times I’ll use the Auratones to EQ my extreme low and top end. You think you’re adding high end when you’re adding 10, 12, 14K but really what you need to be adding is 5K, and you’ll put it on the Auratones and then it’ll make it more honest and work within what is the real range. Then I’ll go up to the big ones and I’ll watch my meters and make sure that I’m not getting too crazy, and then I’ll add the super low stuff and the super high stuff.
What level do you usually listen at?
I usually listen to NS10’s kind of medium and Auratones I listen at the same volume you would listen to TV. I found that on the NS10’s, in order for them to really work, it’s best to have them stay at one level for most of the mix. Then near the end of the mix, check your levels and your EQ with the NS10’s about 20% lower and again about 20% higher and you’ll make adjustments that you’ll really be pleased with when you hear it on the radio. The big speakers I use mostly to show off for clients and to just have fun. I like to turn it up and if my body is vibrating properly, then I’m happy with the low end. A lot of engineers use them to hype the client, but I also use them to hype myself! If I’m cranking and I’m not getting excited, then I just keep on working.
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