To quote Adrian Monk, one of my favorite TV characters, "Here's the thing." Horns are cool. They add excitement, movement, color and personality to arrangements. But horns can be loud. Horns can take over mixes in seconds. Horns need to be respected, but horns need to be respectfully controlled. It's necessary to compress horns, but dynamic control has to be implemented without repressing their timbre, vitality and energy.
Sax, Trumpet and More
On this current James Taylor tour, we have Lou Marini playing sax and Walt Fowler playing trumpet. Both musicians are playing into Shure SM98s mounted on horn clips. Lou's rig is wireless and mounted on the bell, because he comes downstage for solos. Walt also needs to have his mic affixed to his horn, because he often sits and performs the remarkable feat of simultaneously playing trumpet and keyboard, creating a remarkably full brass section. Both Lou and Walt are legendary players, and their sound and arrangements are a joy to mix.
There are also two undercover horn sources in the band – the top rotor of the Leslie cabinet that is connected to the organ. Hammond organ parts through the Leslie exhibit many of the characteristics of reeds and brass. Additionally, the wide dynamic range from the volume pedal and the almost infinite variety of sounds from the drawbars present their own challenges. I have been using a pair of Shure KSM 313 ribbon mics on the rotor horns, and the results have been excellent. The warm ribbon sound takes away much of the bite that is often present in brighter patches and generally fattens up the Leslie output.
Within my Avid D-Show mixing environment, the trumpet, saxophone and Leslie top share a common software tool. The Waves Hybrid Compressor (H-Comp) has proved to be an excellent solution for achieving dynamic control over horn sources. H-Comp responds beautifully to the frequency content, and seems to impart a more forward sound to the instruments without adding volume. Horns sit better in the mix, with quieter parts not getting lost and louder parts not dominating or becoming strident.
Punch Control
Aside from the audio contours designed into this plugin, there are unique features on this compressor that make this unit an ideal choice for the designated applications. The first is the Punch control. This allows an engineer to use relatively fast attack times, but allows transients to pass through the device uncompressed. This is a parameter that needs to be set by ear to allow the tongue-ing on a sax or percussive bursts on a trumpet or organ to remain essentially unchanged. Correctly set, it definitely helps in retaining the natural characteristics of each instrument and the musician's chosen style.
Analog Control
The second extremely valuable parameter is the Analog control. This five-position switch allows the user to dial in a desired amount of unspecified signature sounds from analog devices. Waves describes the control as adding elements that "correspond to sound qualities which are usually associated with, and perceived as, analog hardware sound." This description may seem amorphous, but the differences between the four sounds are very apparent as one dials through them during setup. I ended up with "1" for both sax and Leslie and "2" on the trumpet. Earlier this year, I did use the "3" setting on Glenn Erwin's solo sax with Cher when we wanted a grittier and more growl-y sound.
Peak Limiter, Mix Control
H-Comp also allows the user to engage a peak limiter on the output of the device. I am employing this feature only on the Leslie top stereo pair mics. Sometimes the range of the volume pedal is too great to anticipate, and this component helps to assure that things stay where they need to be within the mix.
A fourth parameter available on the H-Comp would be of great value if I were dealing with a larger horn section and wanted to use parallel processing on an audio group output. The Mix control would allow me to create a balance between compressed and uncompressed signal to achieve even greater overall balance of the horn mix. Because of this parameter, I am looking forward to trying the H-Comp out on the tom mix subgroup for my next project.
I am very impressed with this newest addition to the Waves lineup of compressors, and I am looking forward to experimenting with more products as they are added to the Hybrid family. In the user guide, Waves states that the engineers "took everything we learned when we modeled classic hardware for our award-winning SSL 4000 Collection, V-Series, and The API Collection. Then, we imagined a series of plugins that would blend the best of yesterday's sound with today's technology. Finally, we brought these elements together and created the plugins that would realize our vision. The result is the new Waves Hybrid Line."
So far, it works well for me.
