The definition of Glue

[dnafe]

Dwoz brought up an interesting point in the critique forum that I thought deserved its own thread.

When you say the mix lacks glue, just what do you mean?

Where do you find the glue?

How do you apply the glue?

Is the glue inherently there or can it be created?


Don
__________________

[Senap]

ok... I'll move this to the RMP too...



I define it as this.

That the songs sounds like the musicians played at the same time, in the same room, with the same intensity and with good balance.

I find it really hard to get this "glue" when it's a project with programmed drums/loops, synth bass and sampled piano sounds etc etc..

When I record a whole band that plays well together it's a lot easier to get it to glue.

And of course, as always, it depends on the song. If a song is played sloppy there's no compressor or eq in the world that will "glue" it together.

[dwoz]

Of course, its a lot easier to describe what glue ISN'T, than what it IS, but here's a little go...


1) Its sympathetic vibrations between instruments...the drum transients "playing" the top of the acoustic guitar...

2) its FEELING the intervals between the instruments...feeling the vibration and beating of the other bgvox against your part.

3) its the buildup of interference tones between separate parts.

4) its the sensation that everything is occurring in the same air space.

5) its the facilitating of the ability to move between acutely sensing the individual instruments, or perceiving the whole.

6) as Slipperman says, its manufacturing a "suspension of disbelief"...making it hard for you to imagine that what you're hearing is a fake construct pretending to be something organic and real.

That's a good start.

dwoz

[chrisj]

On a lot of my favorite records, including stuff that doesn't groove in a traditional way (like Yes's very angular 'Fragile') stuff hits in a way where sounds combine. They make up a composite thing that feels like a whole distinct entity of sound, an event that happens where you can't entirely make out the individual components, it's more like a musical idea rears up and grabs you with a force greater than just going 'oh, there's a guitar, oh there's the drum etc'

That's glue- in a 'sound' sense. I figure there must be different kinds but I mostly get into the sonic glue. The funny thing is, stuff can glue in all different ways. Just going muddy and squished together is no use, because then it's just unclear. "Fragile" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" glue together at all different frequencies all over the midrange. Robert Palmer's "Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley" tends to glue up top in the treble. Dr. John's "Gris-Gris" sometimes glues real nice in the bass (as does great reggae). It's not about stuff being dull, it's about stuff merging into a composite sound, where you clearly hear the composite sound as much or more than the distinct tracks.

This is why digital can be so un-gluey: it's real good at separating out the distinct parts. It's the anti-murky and it makes it much harder to hear the composite shape because your attention is drawn to hearing the discrete tracks.

:D

[Grapestomper]

This is interesting,

Senap and Dwoz's answers seem to have to do mostly with vibe and technique at the tracking stage, which makes perfect sence...

So, why is it that, at least on audio gear fora, the term "glue" is so often asociated with master-buss compression?

M

[malice]

I would tend to follow ChrisJ into defining glue throug its sonic standpoint. I would extend in what he says about digital being "ungluy". It always floors me how a kit drum seems to be heard as a whole only because it is recorded on a tape recorder.
When you listen to it with the same setup but recorded on Protools, it sounds like a collection of separate percussions and you do have to find "tricks" to make it sound right: mostly bus compression.

I don't think compression explain it all, but it is a good way of gluing a mix together.

Incidently, there are rather few compressors that can do the trick on the 2buss, and unfortunatly, no pluggin , to my knowledge, is fully satisfactory.( although I haven't tested the Waves SSL and Duende yet)

malice

[dnafe]

I realise this is a mix specific question but (and here's the dumb Q coming)

Would you use compression across the mix (2 buss) first

or

look first at applying compression to the drums or rhythm section

or

compress stems of the mix so you would have more control of how much glue you're applying.


:D

Don

[dwoz]

This is interesting,

Senap and Dwoz's answers seem to have to do mostly with vibe and technique at the tracking stage, which makes perfect sence...

So, why is it that, at least on audio gear fora, the term "glue" is so often asociated with master-buss compression?

M

I don't quite agree with that characterization of my post. Those are certainly key places to achieve cohesion, but certainly not the whole place.

I am trying to get an understanding of the features that we're interested in preserving/enhancing/creating, THEN move on to describing how one might apply tools to the problem.

The overarching theme of all my "points" is that there is a sense that there exists some kind of interaction or commonality between the instruments, and I mean in the sonic sense, (having commonality and interaction in the musical sense, would of course, be a key value as well!) .

Think about what a compressor does, if you feed "composite" information into it...for example, a sub buss that has 3 instruments on it. In order to trigger, the compressor is going to sense the SUM of the dynamic signature of the buss, not the individual instruments...Let's say that the dynamic characteristics of the three instruments are rather different from each other...where one is quiet, the other is loud, such that the sum of the three together ends up being a much "smoother" dynamic curve than each instrument taken individually. The comp is only going to 'fire' when they all converge together on a big dynamic hit, or if the threshold is low enough, on individual instruments, but whatever corrections that the compressor does as a result of the single instrument triggering it will be applied across all three.

Thus, when the three instruments are milling around in the dynamic range area that the comp isn't listening for, they tend to be easily differentiable, but when the comp triggers, the dynamic ranges of the three input instruments are coordinated, giving them some "commonality".

Not to mention, of course, that the comp's own sonic signature is spread across the three input signals as well...further imparting a sense of commonality.

So, one common method of adding glue...slapping a 2-buss compressor across the mix...tends to increase the amount of sonic commonality, increasing the perception that the instruments are "glued" together.

dwoz

[Grapestomper]

Ok, I think I get the distinction...

There are lots of things (like recording good, well practiced musicians together live in the same room) which can contribute to "sonic cohesion" at the tracking stage...

But buss compression is one way of trying to create the same impression after the fact?



Another might be using common reverb sends?

Printing to tape?


Am I understanding correctly?
I am only an egg,
Mike

[EyreSpace]

I like bussing my drums and guitars, sometimes bgv's and using a dual mono compressor, real or plug-in, rather than a stereo version. Subtle saturations and compression on one side or the other help to preserve the imaging. Shared room sounds seem to help immensely. YMMV

[nobby]

I realise this is a mix specific question but (and here's the dumb Q coming)

Would you use compression across the mix (2 buss) first

or

look first at applying compression to the drums or rhythm section

or

compress stems of the mix so you would have more control of how much glue you're applying.


Good question.

As Dwoz said, The comp is only going to 'fire' when they all converge together on a big dynamic hit, or if the threshold is low enough, on individual instruments, but whatever corrections that the compressor does as a result of the single instrument triggering it will be applied across all three.


What that means is that if you just use the 2 bus compression the drums, which tend to have a big spike of transient attack will cause the compression to react and compress the whole 2 bus mix. If the release time isn't quick enough, it will sound weird.

You may want to compress the drums first before compressing the 2 bus. Some folks here keep 2 bus compression on the entire time they're mixing, but IMO that is tricky and easy to screw up (it would be for me, I think.)

What I've been doing is compressing the kik and snare, then compressing the drums mix, then the 2 bus slightly.

I'm compressing the vox medium attack and release time, drums very quick attack and pretty quick release time.

2 bus pretty quick attack and medium release.

I'm still experementing and I suggest you do also. The point I'm making is that there's a reason that some compressors have adjustable attack and release times; different sound sources have different characteristics and benefit from different compression treatments.

[Bob Olhsson]

Slow-attack/fast-release buss compression can distort the bass and kick turning them into one "thing."

I think a key to making things sound live is giving each element an appropriate position in front to back perspective using a combination of eq, delays and delayed reverb.

[chrisj]

The interesting question is, under what circumstances do UNcompressed tracks 'glue' together, or not?

Malice considers digital to be more 'not' glue-y, and I agree. For the opposite extreme, stuff that's VERY glued but not necessarily compressed in an exaggerated way, I think of Creedence Clearwater Revival- specifically, the rhythm bed.

I've felt for a long time that CCR had something special going on glue-wise, and it seems to me that it's down to similarities in the sounds of hihat, snare, and rhythm guitar strum. They'll get going in their patented grooving CCR thing (also note how often the rhythm section or the entire mix is mono!) and the rhythm guitar will be putting out a particular kind of midrange attack that completely mimics what the snare is doing, plus the pick sound tends to mimic the rather middy hat.

From lossy encoding theory we know that sounds tend to mask adjacent sounds. I think this has a hell of a lot to do with it- things 'glue' when sounds are masking each other, specifically the attacks. They have to be really tight with each other and occupy the same ranges.

Or you can just obliterate and distort the attack with compression and let that mask everything :D of course, compression is one way to completely change where the attack is happening, tonally...

[Mixerman]

Dwoz brought up an interesting point in the critique forum that I thought deserved its own thread.

When you say the mix lacks glue, just what do you mean?

Where do you find the glue?

How do you apply the glue?

Is the glue inherently there or can it be created?


Don
__________________

What's the definition of pornography? I don't know but I know it when I see it.

And I likes it!

Ahem.

Mixerman

[nobby]

Slow-attack/fast-release buss compression can distort the bass and kick turning them into one "thing."

Now I'm going to have to try that.

[Skwaidu]

Gotta agree with Mixerman. It's not that simple to define good mix "glue", but you definitely know when you hear it...

Basically we're talking about a good, musical and pleasing mix that feels cohesive, like a mix...

[eagan]

This is interesting reading, if only because of the thoughts on some different (but interrelated!) stuff from some serious people. But could this be any more subjective?

But then, maybe that was the main point of the original post, methinks. Just dumping a little catalyst in here to feed some thoughts.

To me, the idea of "glue" tends to just suggest a pretty broad idea of the thing having some sort of overall coherence to it, an overall character; but what actually comprises that could be a number of things (as already spelled out by people).

Could be in the basic tune and performance by a particular collection of people playing together in a room. (Like the Motown stuff Bob could elaborate on, or the CCR example, maybe, or people going and doing albums by going to cut basic tracks with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, etc., etc....).

Maybe it's just a more general overall sonic thing where, to put it really broadly, you listen and just get a sense that sonically, "everything is in its proper place", whatever that might specifically mean for that particular piece of work.

(yeah, I know.... how do you nail THAT down and define it?)

Maybe it comes down to some sort of common intent and understanding among the people involved in a particular recording.

[Understanding that, in turn, this can open up another can 'o worms of discussion about how this might suggest that the common practice of hiring Big Name Mixer Guns for Hire to come in at the end and do their magic Brand X Supermix might not actually be the way to achieve this!]

It might be a matter of not being able to come up with some common all purpose formula for this for all things, no matter how much people might wish for such a thing ("Magic Fairy Dust in a Can..... be sure to stock up on a few cases for your studio today!"), but maybe, even if it's tough to define, there might be some sort of overall formula for a particular project.

For me, I think the best answer for this question is probably a blend of what dwoz and Chris said above.

One item that comes to mind is going back to the mid seventies and Todd Rundgren's "Initiation". Now there is an album that, going from start to finish, wildly varies over the course of the album, musically, sonically. Yet it all hangs together as one solid body of work. Why?


Another thought creeps into my tiny little brain and hooks this thread into the ongoing "Loudness Thread". I suspect that a lot of the current fashion of "take a finished recording and then mash the shit out of the whole thing" is a feeble, thoughtless, Easy Answers attempt to "glue" it all together, regardless of what's actually there. It's an all purpose standard "finishing process" that people think has to be applied, that doesn't necessarily give any thought and effort to getting a sense of what the character of the recording is, what it's about.


JLE

[Mixerpuppet]

What's the definition of pornography? I don't know but I know it when I see it.

And I likes it!

Ahem.

Mixerman


See it?

Mixin with your eyes again?

It's known fact that using "Uptown Automation" and hairy palms simultaneously are a violation of the term and conditions of the Uptown Warranty...

But maybe once you've finally gone blind you mixing might improve in the box.... :Wink:



GLUE..

Gross Linear Unification Equalization....

LAYMANS TERMS: When the overall frequency balance from 20to20 is distributed in such a way that the independence of individuality disappears in a time based continuum. Spectral Homogenization maybe assisted by compression by slurring masked areas. EQ is also a nice tool for moving content around...

But it is not just because of adding some 2bus preset. I know... I tried them all. Even T-Racks :Twisted:

Most know it when they hear it...

but you cannot see it...

Don't sell arrangement short either...

[GeeWhoLeeo]

cool thread!
in my experience (not huge, i admit) glue and separation are different things.
when dealing with rock music, with distorted and aggressive sounds,i hear actually MORE separation recording directly into 2" tape and out to a desk.
pro tools make my life much harder when dealing with 'controlled distorsion', i think controlling distorsion in the digital domain is a pain in the arse
and i'm not talking only about obvious guitar distorsion, but also about that more subtle kind of 'distortion', generated by compression
on the other hand, when dealing with less aggressive music where the power is way more controlled (jazz,folk whatever) i feel working in digital is faster, and good separation can be achieved without big effort
this maybe a converter issue, since i'm using Swissonic converters not Apogee or other top notch brands... still i don't think upgraded converters would make such a big difference

i think 80% of the glue is in the performance and 20% can be added in the recording/mixing/mastering time, using god knows what tool
if a song is well arranged and played there's not that much anyone can do to screw it.. the song will stand and resist every torture
the producer role(or the band role, if there's no producer) should be to reach that 80%, THEN the audio engineers should take it to 100%, if possible, during recording/mixing/mastering
so i think the glue should be there from the beginning, and it's almost impossible to add it later to replace what's not there like the right interplay between musicians.

the idea of glue comes also from the set of albums i'm used used to listen, the records i grew up with... for example to my ears many of the nu-metal records are totally un-glued, because of the H-U-G-E and unreal kick sounds, that drag the attention.

[dwoz]

GeeWhoolio (the CORRECT spelling!!!!) has given me a pause.


glue is CODEPENDENT DISTORTION.


its a COMMONLY APPLIED TRANSFER FUNCTION.


and I mean that in the MUSICAL sense, as well as the sonic.


dwoz

[eagan]

OK, that's interesting.

Any relation to intermodulation distortion?


dwoz there may be on to something, and it also nudges another thought loose from out of the random brain noise. The word "synergy" has not come up yet here.

I might be going out on a limb here, but maybe the answer is in there somewhere in that concept. The whole ends up greater than the simple sum of its parts, somehow.

Maybe there is our definition of "glue", right in there.

"glue"=(final aural result)-(part A + part B + part C.......)


JLE

[Bryson]

It's more of a gel.......a conductive gel (conducting vibration, emotion, id, whatever...) in which all of the [sound] waves wallow together.

Of course, pornography can involve a similar gel as well.




Jeez, maybe I should have another drink, huh?

[mattian]

Slow-attack/fast-release buss compression can distort the bass and kick turning them into one "thing."

I think a key to making things sound live is giving each element an appropriate position in front to back perspective using a combination of eq, delays and delayed reverb.

great thing, but can i make a stupid question? how you do that? i mean, usually in mix i've a group of bass (if i mult it or have bass synths etc) and a group of drums. how can i do what you say? i have to group bass and kick, but after that i have to put the bass and kick group in a drum group.

or you don't make the drum group? if you talk about buss compression is not parallel compression.. so i intend that you make a bass/kick group and maybe not a drum group. is that?

what do you think about do that between drums bus and bass bus?

[otek]

if you talk about buss compression is not parallel compression.. so i intend that you make a bass/kick group and maybe not a drum group. is that?

I think Bob was referring to 2-bus compression.

(damn, this is becoming an ugly habit.) :lol:


otek

[mattian]

what ugly habit?

ok if it's 2 bus comp i know what it mean, i've do that in the last mix, it works amazing.

[Bob Olhsson]

I think photographic filters is a great analogy. The way I think of glue is something that reduces the contrast between different elements of a mix. A little distortion is one method. It can work in parallel or strapped across something.

[Strat+AC30]

Doesn't Jack Ortmann sell 2-Buss Audio Glue (TM)?

Sorry, nothing better to contribute. Enjoyed reading this thread though.

[danbee]

i think 80% of the glue is in the performance and 20% can be added in the recording/mixing/mastering time, using god knows what tool

Totally agree with this. If a group don't play well together no amount of mixing glue will make it gel properly.