My own (all-digital) Sonic Varnish

I read a terrific essay last week by Allen Farmelo, a New York-based engineer and contributor to Tape Op, about Sonic Varnish.  I highly recommend reading the entire thing if you’re at all into recording, but I’ll offer a brief synopsis here.

Allen describes the process by which old recordings developed a unique and often elusive character as they passed through numerous pieces of analog gear.  Each piece of equipment imparted its own sonic signature to the recorded material that was often too subtle to make any difference on its own, but over the course of overdubbing, bouncing, mixing, and mastering, these individual signatures added up create a distinct “sonic varnish.”  This is part of why many people believe old recordings to sound so good.  Many modern recordings (and nearly all songs produced in home studios) are processed almost entirely within the digital realm, and so don’t have the chance to pick up as many sonic signatures.  As a result, they lack the varnish that many find so desirable.

Varnish For The Rest Of Us

This idea of incremental layers gradually adding depth, liveliness, or warmth to a sound is not new, but the clear manner in which Allen described it got me thinking.  As an engineer without a “professional” level gear collection, I am always looking for ways to maximize the resources I do have, and sonic varnish seemed like it could be a huge asset.  Allen describes a few ways budget-minded  engineers can make use of the concept of sonic varnish, and they’re definitely great starting points.  It can sometimes be difficult to actually start using a new technique like this, so I thought I would share my recent experience in which subtle layering produced concretely produced the best results I’ve gotten using the tools I have.

This particular project was like nothing I had ever worked on before; it was a sort of hybrid between an orchestral composition and a post-rock jam.  Cool stuff for sure, but the lead guitar line in the finale was causing some trouble for the client and me.  The part in question was a steady, fast-picked tremolo high up on the neck, and was just not sitting right.  After a few back and forth revisions, the client sent me an Explosions in the Sky tune (“The Birth and Death of the Day”) that had guitar sounds similar to what he was hearing in his head.  This helped a lot in terms of knowing what to shoot for, but now I was faced with the task of getting the recorded guitar sound, which was thin and dry, to sound rich, dense, and shimmery.  That’s where the varnish came in.

Less is More

The first clear step was to add some sort of distortion.  I reached for the Blue Tubes Analog Trackbox plugin (a gift from Peter Malick), which has a tube simulation section.  I’ve gotten good results with this plugin in the past, but when I increased the amount of “tube” coloration on this track, it immediately sounded like a fizzy mess.  Same thing with the AIR Fuzz-Wah plugin.  Before I reached the desired amount of breakup, the hissy nature of the distortion made the sound unusable.  Clearly I needed another approach.

I knew from Allen’s post that layering was the key to a nice sonic varnish job, so I decided to spread the task of thickening up the guitar over multiple plugins.  My new chain was the Blue Tubes into the AIR Fuzz into Massey’s (free!) TapeHead into another instance of the Blue Tubes and ending with Soundhack’s +delay.  Instead of cranking any single plugin, I used each one to slightly dirty up the guitar, with the hopes that the cumulative effect would be rich and natural.

But how to accomplish this?  I knew that I liked the high end in the Blue Tubes’s distortion more, so I set the Color on the first instance to accentuate that a bit, while turning the Tone on the AIR Fuzz-Wah towards the lower end.  I left the TapeHead’s tone switch on Normal (as opposed to Bright), and set the Color on the second Blue Tubes instance towards the high end, though slightly lower than the first one.  The idea was to have each plugin work in its own frequency range, which would avoid buildup of harsh overtones.  All of the plugs have some sort of “Amount” control, and I left all of them in the lowest 10% of their range, so they were only slightly affecting the signal.

At this point I had no idea how it would sound, since I dialed in all the settings using just the idea of sonic varnish as a guide.  Excited to hear the results, I pressed play…and was immediately rewarded.  Not with a totally killer guitar tone necessarily, but with a sound that was head and shoulders above anything else I’d ever gotten using these plugins.  Instead of harsh, crackly tone that is often the hallmark of digital distortion plugins, the guitar had a deep, complex grit that was much more interesting and compelling at the front of the mix.  I was impressed; this sonic varnish stuff really did work.

Of course, the new tone needed some adjusting to fully fit into the mix.  I tweaked some settings and ended up swapping out the TapeHead for another AIR Fuzz instance because I needed more tonal control.  After a few minutes of changes, I was done.  I bounced the track and sent it to the client, who completely loved it.  After almost a dozen revisions going back and forth on the tone, all it took was a few coats of varnish and everything was exactly as he wanted it.

My Favorite New Technique

Since then, I’ve experimented with the concept of sonic varnish on a number of different projects, and each time I’ve been impressed with how effective it is.  None of the plug-ins I have on my home setup are all that remarkable.  But when I use them to subtly add a hint of color, they open up countless new possibilities in my sonic palette.  Like many young engineers, I aim towards building a collection of high end musical tools, both digital and analog.  But in the meantime, sonic varnish is a technique that allows me to make the most of what I have right now, and it’s a concept that I will always be thinking about as I approach any new project.

What about you? I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on the idea of sonic varnish, and if you’ve read Allen’s article, what you thought of it.  Please share your thoughts in the comment section.