Pro Techniques from Mark Dobson

By Randy Alberts

	Mark Dobson in action

One need only look at producer Matt Serletic's credits since 1998 to know what engineer, mixer, and Pro Tools|HD user extraordinaire Mark Dobson has been up to since then. He's been the Grammy-winning producer's Pro Tools go-to guy for Aerosmith, Armageddon, Willie Nelson, Celine Dion, Santana's multi-award winning Smooth, Matchbox Twenty's Mad Season and the band's just-released new record, More Than You Think You Are. An active "counselor-in-training" this summer at Camp Serletic recording the band's new release, Dobson reflects on the studio where the new tracks were recorded.

"There's a definite vibe to Bearsville Studios and all of its history," says Dobson, a five-year Pro Tools veteran based in Studio City, California. He has a realistic take on upstate New York weather: "All those cabins are still there after years of recording and the place still has its charm, but it was also very, very hot and the bugs were flying everywhere. At least that way no one stayed inside their cabins much and we had more fun and got more done!"

Less Than You Think is More
According to Dobson, More Than You Think You Are was definitely not a typical Serletic production. Track counts on Matchbox Twenty's Mad Season ran from 120 to 140 per song, so recording the band's new tunes at 192 kHz with 24 tracks per Pro Tools|HD machine became an interesting and intentional creative governor, so to speak, for Serletic's camp on the band's new project.

Mark Dobson and Jim Scott

Pro Technique 1 —
Templating takes for smoother comp sessions
"Both of my tips are taken from the way Matt and I have worked for almost six years now," Dobson continues. "When we're tracking drums and getting takes, we'll record those to a click track and place that click at every 100 bars. For instance, Take 1 would be at bar 100, Take 2 at bar 200 and so on. With our take markers in place, we can then jump back and forth quickly between four, five or more takes of a part or entire song. This way Matt can audition things much faster than ever before."

Dobson supplied the indicated screenshot to illustrate Serletic's drum comping technique. "Here you see four takes on the screen: Take 1 starts at bar 101, Take 2 starts at bar 201, Take 3 starts at bar 301, and so forth. The next step is to go ahead and map out the song — for instance with the intro occurring at bar 3, the first verse at bar 7 and the first chorus at bar 14. Once the song is mapped out, you can quickly go between takes by hitting the = key and entering the bar number you want to go to and hitting enter."

He goes on to explain that, for example, to compare the first verse of Take 1 with the first verse of Take 3, he hits "= 107" on the numeric keypad and then "enter." He then hits the space bar and while the first verse of Take 1 is playing and Serletic is auditioning, Dobson might type "= 307" and when they're done with Take 1 he hits the enter key during playback and immediately jumps to and hears the first verse of Take 3.

"We do this in every session with as many as 10 full takes of a song," says Dobson. "Matt will say, 'Let me hear the first verse on Take 9,' and I'll just hit '= 905' and we're right there. This move is such a timesaver for us."

Pro Technique 2 —
Using voice sharing for faster vocal comping
With this tip, Dobson offers up an interesting way to make the most of voice sharing when recording everything at 192 kHz. The Serletic production team uses this technique on every vocal comping session they do. From Celine to Carlos and beyond, they comp some heavyweight voices for a living.

"This tip is cool because it takes voice sharing and instead of looking at it as a limitation, turns it into something really useful," Dobson explains. "On a Pro Tools|HD rig recording at 192 kHz you get six voices per channel. So I first set up a vocal comp track at the top of my window with something like five takes of vocals below it that Matt and I want to comp between. Then I assign all six tracks to the same voice."

For example, if Serletic asks Dobson to go to where Take 4 moves into Take 3 entering the middle of the verse, he grabs the first half of Take 4 and places it up into the vocal comp track and un-mutes the two tracks. This way he can quickly go back and forth between any combination of takes for Serletic to compare and make on-the-fly vital decisions about the vocals. Better still, here's Mark's own words on how the Serletic production team works:

"In the screenshot you see the vocal comp track on top with eight vocal takes underneath," Dobson says during a 2-minute cell phone break in the middle of his current Crash Radio mix sessions. "All the tracks are assigned to the same voice. In this scenario on the screen I wanted to hear the vocal comp for the first line of the song, Vocal OD 6 for the next line and then back to the vocal comp track for Matt to compare the two. When the spacebar is pressed Pro Tools plays the Vocal Comp track then jumps down to Take 6 then jumps back to the Vocal Comp track. This is a very quick way to audition your comps without having to do edits."

Pro Technique 3 —
Using Beat Detective to avoid a buzz kill
You've just finished a great vocal tracking session and are already working on the comps with the leftover buzz when you hit the crossfade command and everyone groans at the interrupted playback they were just digging on the couch in the same state of creative bliss.

"It's a major buzz kill when you've got a good playback going in a room and you start working on some edits and forget it's going and have to halt playback to create the fade." This used to happen to Dobson's Matchbox Twenty camp mate Greg Collins until he happened to take a different look at Beat Detective. Now everyone at Camp Serletic knows all about this tip.

"I wouldn't normally think about using Beat Detective for a guitar or vocal part," muses Collins. "I've had people look over my shoulder and see Beat Detective open while I'm comping vocals and practically shout, 'What are you doing?!' If you do the key command to do a fade in Pro Tools during playback [Command/Ctrl + Control/Start + S] it stops and says 'Calculating fade.' I've discovered that the Edit Smoothing panel in Beat Detective is a great way to get around those playback interruptions."

Greg explains that Beat Detective does the same kinds of fills and crossfades during playback without stopping the loop. If others in the control room and studio want to hear what he's comping and enjoy a bit of what they've just recorded, Collins opens up the Fill and Crossfade feature in Beat Detective to take care of the literally hundreds of music snippets sometimes used for comping without stopping playback.

"Just hit Command/Ctrl + 8 on the keypad to open Beat Detective's window," Collins adds. "Then select the audio region that you want to do the audio crossfades between and across the whole length of a track if you need. Even if there's 100 edits to crossfade, no problem. Then click on the 'Edit Smoothing' button near the bottom of the interface and that takes you to the Edit Smoothing page. There you just select 'Fill and Crossfade' and set your crossfade length which is usually around four or five milliseconds for most things. Then hit the 'go' button and it starts and shows your progress without stopping playback. I love it. It's my favorite trick!"

You can email Mark Dobson at dirtmachine@mac.com