navigate site menu

Start learning with our library of video tutorials taught by experts. Get started

Remixing a Song in Logic Pro
Richard Downs

Remixing a Song in Logic Pro

with Josh Harris

 


In this course, author Josh Harris demonstrates constructing a remix using only a pre-existing vocal track as a starting point. The course shows how to time-stretch vocals, offers suggestions for establishing a musical direction, and explains how to audition and layer Apple loops. The course also covers programming beats using synths, generating vocal samples, arranging the remix, and creating master-quality final mixes.
Topics include:
  • Using Logic Pro as a remixing environment
  • Setting up a session
  • Lining up vocals over a kick drum
  • Analyzing chord changes and harmonic structure
  • Programming synth parts
  • Arranging a track
  • Demonstrating advanced vocal editing techniques
  • Mixing the drums, bass, synths, and vocals
  • Mastering the final mix

show more

author
Josh Harris
subject
Audio, Audio Plug-Ins, Music Composition, Remixing
software
Logic Pro 8, 9
level
Intermediate
duration
3h 19m
released
Dec 01, 2011

Share this course

Ready to join? get started


Keep up with news, tips, and latest courses.

submit Course details submit clicked more info

Please wait...

Search the closed captioning text for this course by entering the keyword you’d like to search, or browse the closed captioning text by selecting the chapter name below and choosing the video title you’d like to review.



Introduction
Welcome
00:04Hi, I am Josh Harris and welcome to remixing a song in Logic Pro.
00:08In this course we will look at how to construct a remix from start to finish
00:12using only a pre-existing vocal track as a starting place.
00:14(Music playing)
00:21I will start by giving you some suggestions about establishing a musical
00:24direction and showing you how to time such a vocal by using Logic's Flex mode.
00:29Then we'll explore the Apple loops library, look at how to import external audio
00:34files into your session, and see how to program your own feeds using Logic's
00:38powerful Virtual Synths and compose baselines that complement your drum parts.
00:42I'll show you some of my preferred methods for creating compelling musical
00:46arrangements and master-quality final mixes.
00:49(Music playing)
00:54We will be covering all these techniques plus plenty of other tools and features
00:58along the way to help you get the most out of using Logic Pro to create
01:01infectious and memorable remixes.
01:04Now let's get started with remixing a song in Logic Pro.
Collapse this transcript
Using Logic Pro as a remixing environment
00:00With all the digital audio workstations available to music makers today,
00:04why choose Logic Pro?
00:06Well for me first and foremost, I love the way it looks.
00:09I'm actually able to stare at this arrange window for hours and my eyes don't get tired.
00:14What we are looking at right now is a snap shot of the arrange window of
00:18our finished remix.
00:19I have been using Logic for over 13 years now and I find it to be a wonderful
00:23musical platform for capturing my ideas in an immediate manner.
00:28Just a quick tour of the arrange window.
00:29What we have up here on the left are audio files, you can see the blue audio
00:34files icon and I'll actually expand this by holding down Ctrl+Option and the
00:40Down Arrow that blows up the screen or shrinks the screen and Ctrl+Option Right
00:47and Left arrow expands and contracts.
00:50So we can see as we expand here, this is an audio waveform and the green track
00:55here is MIDI data, we double-click on that, we see our Piano Roll, and there is
01:00our MIDI data right here.
01:02I click Piano Roll again, that closes the window, and I will shrink the
01:07arrange window back down.
01:09I spend most of my time in this window. Recording the MIDI data arranging the track.
01:15You can see that I've actually color coded some different tracks here.
01:18Visually color coding different sections of the arrangement helps me identify
01:22where I am in the track.
01:24If I hit X, it pulls up the mixer window, and the mixer window has all of the
01:29tracks that are on the arrange window, set up in a mixing console fashion.
01:33I hit X again, and I can also get back to the mixer by hitting Command+2, which
01:38gives me a slightly different view.
01:40Here you can see your plug-ins, your Sends and Returns to your Reverbs and
01:45Delays and all these different effects, there are also Channel Strip settings.
01:49If I click and hold Setting, a menu pops down, giving me access to different
01:52presets for different effects.
01:54I simply close the mixer window, by hitting Command+W, and as you dive deeper
01:59into working with Logic, you'll see that you're able to customize the program to
02:03fit the way your mind works.
02:05If you would like to import key commands or change key commands, you simply go
02:09to Preferences and you go to Key Commands here, and all these different
02:13functions in Logic are set up with certain key commands, which you are able to
02:18change them over here on the right side.
02:20Simply close this window to get back to the Arrange window.
02:23And I need to point out, when it comes to bouncing down your finished mixes,
02:29one of the huge pluses for me with Logic is the fact that it has the ability to
02:33do off-line bouncing, versus real time bouncing.
02:37Real time bouncing means that you need to actually sit through listening to your
02:41track from start to finish in real time, and then when it's finished a stereo
02:46wave file of the finished mix is produced.
02:49Off-line bouncing, if I click the bounce window here, it bounces a file
02:54off-line, so I won't hear anything and you can see right here you can choose
02:58which mode, real time or off-line.
03:00As a remixer, doing tracks that are usually six, seven or eight minutes long,
03:05Not having to deal with real time bouncing has saved me hours upon hours
03:09over the last 10 years.
03:11That's a huge plus for me.
03:13Also, with logic being an Apple product, the software maker is also the
03:18creator of the computer.
03:20So the stability for logic on a Mac is extremely high, I very rarely have
03:24encountered any problems with logic.
03:27Every piece of software may crash now and again, but I have had very few
03:30instances where logic has crashed on me.
03:33And you're able to put it on a laptop of any size, a desktop of any size
03:38whether it's an iMac, a MacBook, a MacBook Pro, and essentially you're able to
03:43set up with a pair of headphones, and you can start making music. And if you
03:48even don't have a MIDI controller, you can hit the Caps lock key and a little keyboard pops up.
03:54And all you have to do is
03:56(Music playing)
04:01These keys correspond to different keys on the keyboard, I have actually
04:04programmed a baseline using this little keyboard by hitting Caps lock and this
04:08virtual keyboard comes up.
04:09Hit Caps lock again and it closes.
04:12These are just a few of the functions that I feel make Logic a standout
04:16program for remixing.
04:18Electronic music composition can be a very solitary pursuit, and for me Logic
04:22Pro really appeals to that side of my musicianship.
04:26So much of the electronic music world is a mobile world, somebody might be at
04:31a DJ gig in Brussels, and then they're working on their remix that night on
04:35the plane home, that's how this works, that's that world, it's very much a
04:39boot up the computer and work on the track anywhere any time, and that's what
04:43Logic provides its users.
Collapse this transcript
Optimizing Logic's performance and monitoring system usage
00:00Before we get started working on the remix, it's important to tweak some
00:03parameters within Logic and optimize its performance.
00:07First and foremost, you want to check your Sample Rate and underneath Settings,
00:12we go to Audio, and we see that our project has a Sample Rate of 44.1.
00:19This is very important, because when you're receiving vocals for a remix, some
00:23times the vocals might not be a 44.1.
00:26I've certainly received vocals that are at 48K.
00:29It's important to make sure that your logic sessions' Sample Rate matches the
00:33Sample Rate of the vocals that you've received for your remix.
00:38Next, under the Preferences, there is a pull-down menu and I go to the Audio menu.
00:43Here I will find my Buffer Size, otherwise known as Latency.
00:47Latency is essentially a delay, the default is 256 samples, which results in a 13.6 ms delay.
00:55You can see, as I pulled on this menu that there are different choices, if I
00:59click on 1024, it results in a 48.4 ms delay.
01:04So how is this setting affect our remixing work?
01:07Well, when it comes to using some of Logic's virtual synthesizers that may
01:11require more CPU load than the others, the I/O Buffer is very important, because
01:16if the I/O Buffer is set too low, you'll actually sure what sounds like
01:20distortion, which is the audio I/O Buffer getting clogged with information and
01:25it can't process it all in time.
01:27You can certainly change this setting throughout the process of working on your
01:31remix, it really depends on what you're doing and if you're noticing delays and
01:35they become distracting, then all you have to do after you change the setting is
01:39click Apply Changes, and the change will take effect.
01:43Next is the Recording Path. Generally when you open up a blank session in Logic,
01:48it creates what's called an Audio Files folder.
01:50But I like to double check and make sure that the audio files are path to the
01:55correct folder and the way to check is to click and hold the Record button and
02:00this menu pops up and you go to Record Settings.
02:03And as you can see, No Recording folder has been set.
02:07So I choose Set, and I go into our exercise files and I path it to Audio Files
02:13and I click Choose.
02:15Now any external audio that's recorded, any file merging, anything that
02:20results in the creation of a new audio file will place the new audio file in this folder.
02:25Why is this important?
02:27When it comes to working on computers, file organization is of the utmost importance.
02:32If you happen to share a session with another producer and you take your session
02:37off your hard drive and you put it on his hard drive or you are sending files
02:40back and forth over the Internet, and your exercise files or audio files are
02:44scattered in multiple folders, when your partner opens up the session, there
02:48will be missing audio, and this is a nightmare.
02:51I've been through it many, many, many times, and I cannot stress enough that
02:55file organization is key.
02:58So double-check the recording path and make sure that it is indeed path to the
03:02audio files folder of your desired session.
03:05In the lower right-hand corner of the Transport window you'll see a CPU meter
03:10and hard drive meter.
03:12The CPU meter lets you know how much work the computer is doing,
03:16it's a System Performance meter.
03:18The hard drive meter let's you monitor disk activity, as in hard disk activity.
03:23So I'm going to open Sculpture, which is one of Logic's Virtual Synths,
03:28and you'll see as I play the notes that the CPU meter will start to rise a little bit.
03:33(Music playing)
03:40So as you can see, just playing five notes on the Virtual Synths causes the CPU
03:44meter to move probably about 1/8 to 1/10 of its limit.
03:49So you can imagine, as you're building up your remix and you have 7, 8, 9,
03:5310 maybe 12 or 14 Virtual Synths going at the same time, this CPU meter can get pretty high.
04:00So this is something that you want to pay attention to, because it can result
04:03in the computer actually not being able to perform all the tasks that you are asking it to do.
04:08So if you are experiencing odd computer behavior, check the system usage window
04:12first. It's easy to lose track of CPU usage as you are working on your mix.
04:17Be aware that some Virtual Synths, like I just showed you with Sculpture, can
04:21really tax a CPU and it might make sense to convert those parts to audio files,
04:26which we will cover later in the course.
Collapse this transcript
Working with software synths
00:00As I mentioned earlier Logic Pro is loaded with some fantastic sounding software synths.
00:06As I pull down the menu here, I can see that there's a whole list here, the EFM1
00:10all the way down to the EXS24, to Sculpture.
00:14For the purposes of this remix, I am going to focus on the ES1 the ES2 and EXS24.
00:21So let's go ahead and open up the ES1 and this was one of Logic's early software
00:26synths that came with I believe Logic 4 or 5.
00:30And I generally gravitate towards this plug-in for synth bass or lead sounds
00:36and sometimes supplemental ear candy sounds.
00:39And if we pull down the menu here we see all the presets categorized,
00:43Leads, Pads, Bass Strings, Keyboards, Sequence Elements and Warp Synth sounds.
00:48So let's just pull up a Lead sound
00:50(Music playing)
00:53And we can access presets by pointing down this menu and selecting this way or
00:57simply by using these arrows here.
00:59(Music playing)
01:15Close this out and we will add another software synth.
01:21And let's check out the ES2.
01:25The ES2 is actually an extremely deep, deep software synth, it has many, many,
01:32many more sounds in the ES1, and actually I think that some of the sounds are
01:37wider and bigger sounding.
01:38(Music playing)
01:41And I will find a synth Lead sound here.
01:44(Music playing)
01:47The sounds are a little sharper sounding, edgier sounding.
01:50(Music playing)
02:02And the next software synth is the EXS24.
02:09And this is Logic Sampler, so it comes out of the box with a huge library of sounds.
02:14You can see acoustic pianos, all the way down to guitars and textures as well as
02:19sounds from the GarageBand library.
02:22You're also able to import your own samples and import third-party samples as well.
02:27So I will pull up a synth lead sound, this is one of my favorite sounds.
02:32(Music playing)
02:36And you scroll through your patches using the plus and minus signs right here.
02:41(Music playing)
02:52So this gives you an overview of the three software synths that we will be using
02:56during our course on remixing a song in Logic Pro.
03:00For more on Logic Pro, please check out Virtual Instruments in Logic Pro with
03:06Brian Trifon and Logic Pro 9 Essential Training with Scott Hirsch. Both are
03:11available on the lynda. com Online Training Library.
Collapse this transcript
Using the exercise files
00:00If you are a premium member of the Lynda.com Online Training Library or if
00:04you're watching this tutorial on a DVD-ROM, you have access to the exercise
00:09files used throughout this title.
00:11I will open up the Exercise Files folder, and inside the Audio Files folder are
00:16all of the external audio files necessary for this course.
00:21Right below the Audio Files folder are the Chapter folders that correspond to
00:24the Table of Contents for this course.
00:26I will open up Chapter 2 and show you that there is one session for each
00:30movie in the chapter.
00:32I've also taken the time to print a wave file of the finished remix.
00:37All of the sampler instruments and samples needed for this course are
00:40contained in these folders,
00:42and this is the final Logic session for the finished remix.
00:46If you're a monthly member or annual member over lynda.com, you don't have
00:50access to the exercise files, but you can follow along from scratch with your own assets.
00:56Let's get started.
Collapse this transcript
Relinking audio files
00:00Occasionally, Logic Pro will have trouble finding audio files that were
00:03previously used within the project.
00:06Several reasons may cause this;
00:08you are not connected to a relevant hard drive, or you actually renamed your
00:12hard drive, you have stored the files in a different volume, or folder, or
00:17possibly moved them to another volume, you have actually renamed the files in the Finder.
00:23Or perhaps you renamed them in the audio bin of another project.
00:28Or maybe you deleted the files by accident.
00:31In any of these situations, Logic Pro will prompt you with a dialog box similar
00:36to this one, Audio files not found, and it will give you the name of the audio
00:41files that are missing, starting with the first one, and a description of where
00:45it believes the audio file lives.
00:48You have several ways to respond to this dialog box.
00:52Click the Skip All button if you know that one or more audio files no longer
00:56exists or was renamed.
00:58Otherwise click the Skip button to individually manage each missing or renamed file.
01:04Click the Search button to prompt a search in the current volume, and if that
01:08search is unsuccessful, Logic Pro will provide a File Not Found dialog.
01:14And finally, Locate, which is the choice we are going to choose in this movie.
01:18Click the Locate button to manually define where to search for each file.
01:23A dialog box containing the name of the audio file being searched for in the
01:26Title bar will appear on screen.
01:29Generally, when you locate the first audio file that's missing, it will
01:34automatically find the others if all the missing audio files are living in
01:38the same folder.
Collapse this transcript
1. Session Setup and Time-Stretching
Setting up your session
00:00One of the most important areas of production work is organization.
00:04So let's take a few minutes to set up our session for optimum workflow.
00:09I've already launched the Logic application and underneath the File menu, I'm
00:12going to select New.
00:14It presents three options for me;
00:16Empty Project, Guitar Tones, or Instruments.
00:18I'll choose Empty Project for this movie, and it will immediately ask me if I
00:23like to choose an Audio, Software Instrument, or External MIDI track.
00:27I'll select Audio tracks. I'm going to choose 2 Stereo, and then I'll actually
00:35add several software instrument tracks and I will choose which specific virtual
00:41software synths I use in a little while.
00:43We'll choose 3 and I'll close the bin.
00:48Now I will move on to the Mixer window and I will use the X key for that and
00:53underneath Sends, I'll choose Bus 1 and you'll notice an auxiliary channel pops
00:59up and I will choose Bus 2.
01:01I'll do the same on the second audio track. And the reason that I'm doing this is
01:07I like to put some of my audio tracks in context.
01:11What I mean by that is, if I bring in an audio file that saves the lead vocal,
01:16it's dry, has no effects on it, I don't like to listen to that while I'm working
01:20as I'm building up the mix.
01:22I prefer to put some reverb and delay on things as placeholders and then I will
01:26adjust and dial in the final settings when I get into the mixing stages.
01:30So I'm going to name this reverb 1 and I'll move over here to Auxiliary Channel
01:362 and call this delays 1.
01:38Now I'll scroll up and choose PlatinumVerb and then over on the Delay channel, I
01:45will choose the Stereo Delay setting and I'll close the mixer and this gives you
01:52a little bit of a head start on setting up a session.
01:55As you bring in your audio files, you already have instruments 1, instruments 2;
01:59as you bring in additional audio files, you are able to do a duplicate of an
02:04audio file by clicking on this plus sign right here with these squares
02:08and you can just click and add audio files as you need to, but this will help you get started.
02:13You'll hear me saying that many times throughout this course good workflow is key.
02:17Without it, it can take twice as long to get your mix done.
02:20While that may be fine for working on your friends remix, when it comes time
02:24to work on projects for labels and indie artists, you may not have the luxury of time.
02:28In other words, there is no upside to working on a remix with a
02:32disorganized session.
Collapse this transcript
Determining and verifying source BPM
00:00It's extremely important at this stage of the remixing process to determine the
00:05tempo, otherwise known as BPM or beats per minute, of the original version.
00:10So I'm going to show you how to import the original version into the session
00:14and determine its BPM.
00:16I open up the Audio Bin by pressing B and underneath Audio File, I choose Add
00:21Audio File and from the Audio Files folder, I choose Simply Falling. I add it
00:27to the Audio Bin, drag it out onto the Arrange window, close the Audio Bin by pressing B again.
00:37Underneath the Metering section of the Plug-ins menu, I choose BPM Counter.
00:43I'll drag that out here. Play the track.
00:46(Music playing)
00:53Logic has determined that 112 beats per minute is the tempo of the original
00:57version of Simply Falling.
00:59The reason that it's important to tackle this at this stage of the process is
01:03that if you don't know what the beats per minute of the original track is, when
01:07you go to bring your vocals into the session to time stretch them, how can you
01:12time stretch a vocal track if you don't know its source BPM?
01:18Sometimes a source BPM is provided for you with the vocal stems and you can
01:22eliminate this process.
01:23But now you know how to verify the BPM of the original track by using the BPM
01:27Counter if you're uncertain of it.
Collapse this transcript
Lining up vocals over a kick drum
00:00When receiving vocals for a remix, it's extremely important to check and see if
00:04the vocals actually line up properly against the grid and when I speak of the
00:08grid, I'm simply referring to bars and beats.
00:11Measures 1, 2, 3, 4. You see the actual grid on the screen here, these lines and the screen.
00:17I know for this remix of the vocals were sent to me properly and that all I
00:21needed to do was import them onto the Arrange window when they lined up.
00:24But for the purposes of this lesson, I misaligned the vocals.
00:28In other words, when I drag the vocal out on to the Arrange window, it will not
00:31line up against the grid.
00:33So, in order to get into the Audio bin, I hit B. Underneath Audio File, I choose
00:40Add Audio File, and I choose the misaligned vocal file.
00:48Drag that onto the Arrange window, close the Audio bin by hitting B. And I will
00:53use Logic's metronome at this point which is not the click track I prefer to
00:58listen to, but just to listen to the vocals against a tempo reference point, I'm
01:03going to use Logic's metronome.
01:05You simply press the button here and you'll hear its metronome going while
01:10the vocal track plays.
01:11(Music playing)
01:19So it's easy to hear that those vocals are not in time.
01:22Let's go back to the original for a moment just so we can double check and here
01:26where that vocal phrase actually comes in, what beat it comes in on.
01:30I am going to play the original now.
01:32(Music playing)
01:41Essentially, it enters on the end of Beat 3.
01:44So I mute the original, go back to the vocals and at this point I'm going to add
01:50a 909 kick drum with the EXS 24.
01:53I've gone ahead and opened up the EXS24, I have chosen a 909 Kit, and I will
02:01simply draw in the quarter notes on the Piano Roll here.
02:08Most kick drums in the drum kits that are set up in Logic have C1 as the first
02:14kick drum of the kit.
02:16I access my pencil, which is a secondary tool, so I hit Command and I just
02:24placed my kick drums on each downbeat or quarter note of the measure.
02:30I close the Piano Roll, I hit L which creates a loop and now you'll hear a
02:36looping kick drum against the vocals.
02:38(Music playing)
02:45So it's pretty obvious that these are not lined up.
02:48How do we line them up?
02:49Well, we simply expand this audio file, the vocal audio file, and we're going to
02:55find a section of the file that actually lands on a downbeat. And when I say
02:59downbeat, I mean either Beat 1, Beat 2, Beat 3, or 4.
03:03Some part of the audio file that I can zoom in on, cut it, and in order to get to
03:10the scissors, I choose the Scissors as my secondary tool,
03:15I zoom in, I hear that snare drum right here and I cut it.
03:21I delete the left side of the file, but it's non-destructive editing, so we
03:25can get that file back.
03:27And now I need to take this snare drum and line it up on Beat 2, because I know
03:36the snare drum actually lands on Beat 2.
03:39Expand the screen to make sure that I'm actually on Beat 2. And I'm using the
03:43Command key after I click and hold the audio file to really get in on the
03:48fine increments there.
03:51So now when we play it against the kick drum--
03:53(Music playing)
04:05--we can hear that it's lined up a little bit better, but let's be certain.
04:08So let's go into the song where the actual first verse starts.
04:11(Music playing)
04:25Now I can hear from this that the downbeat is actually falling on Beat 4 and
04:28that's not what I want.
04:30So I need to slide this over another beat.
04:33So let's zoom out and we click and hold the Audio Region and you can see
04:382121. Let's try that.
04:42Slid it one quarter note to the right.
04:43(Music playing)
04:55That's much better.
04:57Now, let's bring back the left side of the audio file that we deleted.
05:02All I do is drag it to the left and it opens up.
05:05So as you can see, this is a bit of a process, and I can't stress enough how
05:09important it is to find that downbeat within the vocal file.
05:12Once you have that and you line up against the grid, it's off to the races, and
05:17you really can't make any progress on your remix until the vocals are sitting
05:21nicely over a kick drum.
05:23You'll find as you build your track and add more drums that some slide shifting
05:27and massaging a vocal timeing it needs to occur.
05:29But if you're able to have the vocals locked in at around 95%, you'll be in
05:34great shape to move forward.
Collapse this transcript
Choosing destination BPM and time-stretching in Flex mode
00:00While the last movie dealt with placing a misaligned vocal over a kick drum, I'm
00:04actually going to import the proper vocals that were sent to me that I know line
00:09up over the kick drum.
00:10I open up the Audio Bin by hitting the B key, underneath Audio File, I choose
00:15Add Audio File, and I'm going to choose this vocal which I know is at 112 beats per minute.
00:24Drag it onto the Arrange window, close the Audio Bin by hitting B again and just
00:29to double check, we will play this audio file over our kick drum.
00:34(Music playing)
00:34And actually, let's scan up into the song a little bit further.
00:41(Music playing)
00:49I'll even go to the very end to make sure that nothing's drifted.
00:52(Music playing)
01:03Okay, so we're in excellent shape here.
01:05We know that this vocal is actually at 112 beats per minute.
01:08It is lining up over our kick drum at 112 beats per minute, and now I will set
01:13up Flex Mode which will actually analyze the audio file and allow us to change
01:18the session's BPM on the fly.
01:20In other words, once Flex Mode has analyzed this Audio File, I can pick a new
01:25tempo and the file will change and be exactly on beat with the kick drum at the
01:30new tempo like it is right now at 112 beats per minute.
01:33So, in the Inspector window, I'm going to click on the second arrow and you can
01:39see the Flex Mode is off.
01:41I will choose Polyphonic.
01:43I highly recommend choosing polyphonic for all vocals.
01:46Rhythmic deals with more drum loops, Monophonic might be something like a
01:51baseline, but for vocals, I always choose Polyphonic.
01:55Flex Mode has analyzed the file and all I need to do now is experiment with a
02:00couple of different BPMs.
02:02So we are at 112, let's just choose 120 just to hear what that's starting to
02:07sound like, and again, I'll go into the meat of the song here.
02:11(Music playing)
02:19Okay, so the vocal is still locked up over the kick drum.
02:23I prefer the BPMs of my remixes to be in the 125 to 132 range.
02:27The reason that I prefer the 125 to 132 BPM range is that I generally work on
02:33full vocal remixes that are geared towards mix show and radio.
02:38They're also played in the clubs, but generally these are the types of
02:41remixes that I work on.
02:43Now by no means are you forced to use the same BPMs that I'm using.
02:47But I do think it's important to think about your audience here.
02:50If you're looking to do a club remix and you know that the DJs who will be
02:55playing your remix play records that are in this BPM range then it doesn't
03:00really make sense to do a remix that's at 98 BPM.
03:03So I'll actually go ahead and bump this up to 125 and again, I want to listen to
03:09the meat of the song.
03:10(Music playing)
03:20And again, just to be thorough, I'm going to fast forward up to the end of the
03:24song to make sure that nothing has drifted.
03:26(Music playing)
03:37Excellent. So every theme sounds fantastic.
03:41The vocal sounds good at this tempo.
03:44I wouldn't push it too much further, it's important to sit with the vocals at
03:48different BPMs and listen to them, just a vocal over a kick drum, and find any
03:53areas of the song where you might hear what we call artifacts.
03:57The voice starts to sound a little unnatural.
04:00I think it's extremely important to spend time during this part of the process.
04:04Once you commit to a BPM and you bring in audio files and you start to build
04:09your track, it's not impossible to change the BPM later on down the road, but
04:13it certainly is a lot easier if you're able to commit to a BPM at this stage of
04:18the game and I highly recommend taking the time to listen to the entire song
04:23all the way through to make sure that you are 100% certain that this BPM will
04:28work for you.
Collapse this transcript
Exporting time-stretched vocals and importing into a session
00:00So I've chosen the BPM for the remix and since I'm a huge believer in saving CPU
00:04or computer processing power, I prefer to export the vocals and then import them
00:09back into the session.
00:11This way I can turn off Flex Mode and avoid taxing the computer unnecessarily.
00:15The reason that I like to do this is because I've been working on laptops for so
00:18many years and I worked on laptops when they actually weren't that powerful.
00:22So I learned to conserve CPU power wherever I could.
00:26It's just a habitual thing.
00:28Okay, so again, our vocal is locked up at 125 beats per minute, I'm going to
00:34mute everything else but the vocal that I'm going to bounce and my Reverb and
00:38Delays are not engaged and this is a good thing because I do not want to
00:42actually bounce this vocal down with effects on it.
00:45We'll get into the effects later as we build the track and then eventually build the Mix.
00:49So it's important to make sure that if you have applied any effect such as
00:53Reverbs or Delays that you actually turn them off, otherwise they will be
00:57bounced with your file.
00:58I defined my bounce region up here at the top by dragging this over to the end.
01:03I will double check and make sure that the vocal is the only thing playing.
01:07(Music playing)
01:14Excellent. I choose Bounce up here at the top right-hand corner.
01:18I'll name my file and I will actually put it in the Audio Files folder.
01:23I know Logic likes to default to the Bounces folder.
01:26I'd like to save the Bounces folder for finished mixes.
01:30So I will choose the Audio Files folder and I'm okay with 24-bit AIFF, the
01:35Sample Rate is correct.
01:37Now Normalize is on, I actually don't want Normalize on.
01:40What normalize will do is actually boost the level of your file so that the
01:44highest point of the audio file is actually at 0 dB.
01:48We don't want that,
01:49I am not interested in affecting the audio file like that.
01:52So we have Add to Audio Bin checked which means that it will add the audio file
01:56to the Audio Bin automatically, and all I do after I name my file.
02:02Actually, I'm not going to name my file so I can show you how to name my file
02:05from the Audio Bin in the event that you forget to do this.
02:08I do sometimes have this happen and it's important for me to show you how to
02:11rename your audio file from within the Audio Bin.
02:14So I'm going to hit Bounce.
02:17Logic is calculating the new file, and when I open up the Audio Bin the
02:21new file will be there.
02:22As you can see, it's creating an overview for it, and because I didn't name it,
02:26it default it to Output 1-2.
02:29So in the Audio Bin, there is my new file.
02:32I'm interested in renaming it now and when I rename it here, it will rename it on the disc.
02:38I don't need to overwrite the .AIF file.
02:40I will simply call this iyeoka_simply falling_125 bpm.
02:47It changes it in the Audio Bin and it will also change it in the Audio Files folder.
02:52Now I drag out on the window and as you can see, it literally is an identical
02:57looking waveform to what is one track above it.
03:00Now we can turn off Flex Mode, and you can see that that file now that Flex Mode
03:09is turned off went back to its original waveform overview at 112 beats per
03:13minute, which is why it's longer.
03:15I delete it from the Arrange window;
03:17I'll double-check to make sure the new file is lined up over the kick drum just
03:21like the old file was.
03:22(Music playing)
03:29And again, scanning up to the end of the song.
03:32(Music playing)
03:41It sounds like everything is intact.
03:44So as you can see, taking a few minutes now to export these vocals and importing
03:48them back into the session will absolutely help you down the road as you start
03:51to build your track and ask more of your computer.
03:55If we're 80 or 95% down the road on a remix, we have Plug-ins, Reverbs, Delays,
04:00EQs, Compressors, Specialty plug-ins on certain tracks and that's creating a CPU
04:06load and then you have all these vocals that are in Flex Mode, your computer may
04:10hit the ceiling, especially if you're on a laptop.
04:13So this is one area of the process where you can do yourself a favor, spend
04:17three or four minutes and save a lot of CPU power as well as headaches down
04:21the road.
Collapse this transcript
Thinking about your direction
00:00Establishing a musical direction. I find this to be actually one of the most
00:05important parts of the process.
00:07Some of my favorite remixes over the last 10 years are the ones where I stepped
00:11back, sat down, and took time to figure out my musical direction prior to
00:17starting my actual remix.
00:20I love to sit back and just listen to the vocals.
00:23It's actually a very, very inspiring process to just listen to nothing but the vocals.
00:29Hopefully, the vocals for your remix will inspire you.
00:33I like to sit back and listen to the song maybe two or three times from start to finish.
00:39This way you can make sure that there's no key changes, nothing that happens
00:44two and a half, three minutes into the song that catches you off guard.
00:48It's always good to think ahead.
00:50That's really the important part of listening to these vocals.
00:54In addition to just the pure enjoyment of listening to well recorded vocals by
00:58themselves, I usually find my creative inspiration at this part of the process.
01:03It's very exciting to me to sit back and actually forget about the music that
01:09was underneath these vocals in the original version.
01:12That's something that you have to be careful of.
01:14I actually don't like to listen to the original versions of songs too many times
01:19and there have been times where I've actually not heard the original version and
01:22just been sent the vocals and I purposefully did not seek out the original
01:27version because I didn't want it to steer me in any sort of direction.
01:32I don't like to listen to the vocals too many times,
01:35it burns my ears out and clouds my perspective.
01:38This is a theme that we will cover in upcoming movies as well.
01:42Keeping perspective on your creative work is extremely important.
01:46If you're just listening to 8 bars or 16 bars are just Verse 1 and Chorus 1 over
01:52and over and over, you will absolutely lose creative perspective and it will be
01:56very difficult to sort of pull yourself back and imagine sum of all parts as a
02:02whole as opposed to just a section here or a section there.
02:06I love to listen to other people's remixes.
02:09That's actually something I do even when I'm not working on remixes
02:13just to get a vibe, a direction,
02:15it's very exciting to seek out what other remixers and producers are doing
02:19because sometimes I'll hear a base sound or a baseline or a set of chord changes
02:23and go that's really cool.
02:25I think I'd like to implement that into a track sometime.
02:29That being said, I make it a point not to copy or knock off another person's work.
02:33There is a fine line between hearing a musical idea, a musical riff, a
02:38baseline, a track, a set of chord changes and then actually completely copying
02:43it and ripping them off.
02:44That's not what I mean.
02:46I like to get inspiration from hearing the way that someone arranged a song, the
02:51base sound they chose, the baseline they played, the drums, the vocal editing,
02:56all these things play a part in my mind and help me establish a creative
03:01direction prior to programming any drums or playing any keyboard parts.
03:05I'd like to think of my studio as an extension of my brain.
03:10When I get an idea, whether it's a drum loop, a baseline, a keyboard part
03:14or even a melody, I'd like to be able to sit down and immediately capture that idea.
03:19It's really important to think of the studio this way.
03:22It's also very easy to get tripped up and hung up in the electronics, the software.
03:29So I encourage you to think about music away from the computer, prior to
03:34actually starting your remix.
03:37It's important for you to find your voice, be original.
03:40There's nothing wrong with inspiration and paying tribute to your inspirations
03:44within a track but it's very important for you to establish your own sound.
03:49If you hear ten other guys that are doing the same thing that you are doing,
03:53it's going to be very difficult to stand out and separate yourself.
03:57So all of these things play a very important part in establishing a musical
04:01direction prior to sitting down and even listening to the first drum loop.
04:06I hope these tips and suggestions help you.
04:08The more you work, you'll come up with your own list and hopefully, these five
04:13suggestions will get you going in a direction sooner than later.
Collapse this transcript
2. Working with Loops
Using Apple Loops
00:00For those of you who may not be familiar with Apple Loops, let's spend a few
00:04minutes examining how they work and gain an understanding of how important they
00:07can be to the remixing process.
00:10I hit the B key, that opens up the Audio Bin, and you'll see that there are three
00:15other menu tabs, Loops, Library and Browser.
00:18I click on the Loops tab and basically this is where the Apple Loops live.
00:24All I need to do is choose the characteristics of the loops that I am looking for.
00:28This is the filter section of the Apple Loops search area.
00:31I'm looking for Beats and up pops a huge list of drum loops.
00:36I'll sort them from highest BPM to lowest.
00:40And you can see just how much content comes with Logic right out of the box.
00:44These are all drum loops, and I will explain the difference between the blue and
00:49the green loops in a moment, all the way down to 80 BPM all the way up to 160.
00:55Over here in the Beats column, 16 beats basically means it's four measures.
01:00There is four beats per measure, times 4 measures is 16.
01:04The Blue Apple Loops are audio files, and you can hear as I audition one and
01:11I'll audition one whose original BPM is not the same BPM as our remix.
01:15(Music playing)
01:21As you can hear, that's not 110 beats per minute, it's quite a bit faster.
01:25It's actually 125 BPM, the BPM of our remix.
01:29So all of the Apple Loops automatically sync to the BPM of your session, which is a
01:34wonderful, wonderful feature.
01:37Think of it like the lead vocal that we time stretched in Flex mode.
01:41It's a very instantaneous process.
01:43You can audition these loops at any BPM and unless you are doing something very
01:48extreme like 40 or 50 BPM difference between the source tempo and the
01:53destination tempo, generally things sound really good.
01:58All I have to do is simply drag a beat out on to the Arrange window and there
02:03it is. And I'll close the Bin for a moment, and as we expand the waveform we see the one bar loop.
02:09And this little icon right up here shows us that it's an Apple Loop.
02:13It has different characteristics than an audio file, which I'll get to in a moment.
02:17I am going to mute out the other tracks just so we can listen to the Apple loop.
02:23(Music playing)
02:28And if I wanted to loop that I would simply hit L and boom, there is an Apple Loop.
02:33We can even listen to it against the lead vocal.
02:35(Music playing) There it is.
02:49Everything is locked to the grid.
02:51So, I'll mute this Apple loop out and let's go back to the Loops tab and I will
02:57pull out a Green Apple Loop which is basically a MIDI file.
03:01I drag it onto the Instrument window, close the Bin.
03:05I expand it and you can see the MIDI data right here.
03:08I'm going to highlight two bars because that's the length of this loop.
03:14Let's zoom in on the Piano Roll and we can take a look at the MIDI notes.
03:17(Music playing)
03:24Let's close the Piano Roll for a moment and take a look at our Drum Kits and see
03:30what it shows: Hip Hop Drum Kit.
03:32Let's say I'm not crazy about that Hip Hop Drum Kit and I'd like to find another Drum Kit.
03:39Well, all I have to do is go down here and choose a different Drum Kit.
03:43I will choose Rock Drum Kit.
03:44You may occasionally run into a window such as this, that's just letting you
03:47know there are multiple locations of the samples that you've chosen.
03:51I've chosen Rock Kit and it's pathing to the Cavern Kit samples, so I will click
03:56OK and click OK again and we have changed Drum Kits.
04:02So let's take a listen.
04:04(Music playing)
04:08Close this window, open up the MIDI files and we can lasso the MIDI data.
04:15(Music playing)
04:23And move the notes around. (Music playing)
04:38So as you can see, this gives you unlimited options for editing MIDI data.
04:43choosing drum sounds, reassigning samples and so on and so forth.
04:47So let's close the Piano Roll and go back here to the Apple Loops Library, and
04:56I'm going to take it off Beats and actually we are going to do the same
05:00process with a Bass line.
05:02Now I don't use this generally because I'm a keyboard player, so I almost always
05:08play my own parts in.
05:10But it's kind of cool sometimes, if you know your song is the Key of B.
05:13(Music playing)
05:21I have dragged that onto the window and I will just play this Bass line along
05:25with the drums that I have chosen.
05:26Now I will mute out the MIDI drums and go back to the Drum Loop.
05:29(Music playing)
05:38So you can see that not only we have options with drum sounds but we also have
05:42them with musical loops as well.
05:44And over here in this Key column, are the keys that these loops belong to.
05:49For example, this is in the Key of B, this in the Key of E and again, four bars,
05:54two bars, one bar, remember there are four beats to a measure.
05:59So I hope this helps give you an overview of how Apple Loops work, and you can
06:03see how important they will become as we start to build our musical track.
Collapse this transcript
Auditioning drum loops
00:00I like to start building my remixes with drums first, and now that I've shown
00:04how Apple Loops work, let's take some time to listen to some non-Apple Loops
00:09mixed with Apple Loops.
00:10So I open up the Audio Bin using the B key and I will browse Audio Files that
00:17are in the Audio Files folder in this fashion.
00:20Anything that's already been added to the Audio Bin and is part of our current
00:24session is grayed out.
00:26And you can see as I scroll up and down, that there are quite a few files at
00:30the bottom that are not grayed out, which means they have not yet been added to the session.
00:35The vocals have been along with the original version.
00:39So, I have taken the time to include some loops from my own personal library in
00:43the Audio Files folder.
00:45And I will now show you how to import them.
00:48Before we import them, let's preview them.
00:51You see over here as a loop is highlighted, I can move over to the Play button.
00:55(Music playing)
01:03So that's a 4 bar drum loop playing from start to finish.
01:06This was already set up at the tempo of our remix of 125 prior to putting it
01:12into the Audio Files folder.
01:14So I have several different kick drums.
01:15(Music playing)
01:25And you can see that I don't have to wait for a file to stop playing before I
01:28can use the Up and Down arrows to play the next file.
01:32I actually like to scroll through sounds pretty quickly so I do it in this fashion.
01:36(Music playing)
01:48So now that we have previewed them, let's actually add them to the Audio Bin.
01:54We highlight which loop we would like to choose, click Add and go down to the next one.
02:00We are able to import all of these loops in one shot by selecting the top loop
02:06here, kick loop 2, and I will scroll down to the bottom, hold the Shift key and
02:11there you see that all of the files are selected.
02:14I click Add and Done and all the files pop up in the Audio Bin.
02:20Now we can actually continue to preview them from within the Audio Bin.
02:24If I would like to audition these loops because I can't remember what they
02:28sounded like, prior to importing them into the Audio Bin, all I have to do
02:32is select the loop.
02:33(Music playing)
02:36And hit the Spacebar.
02:37(Music playing)
02:46So, I like kick loop 2, and all I need to do is drag it out onto the Arrange
02:51window and there we go.
02:54And I will close the Audio Bin and I will loop this using the L key and I will
02:59listen to this against the vocal to make sure that I like the way the kick drum
03:01sounds with the vocal.
03:03(Music playing)
03:15I like the way that sounds.
03:16I will duplicate the track, open up the Audio Bin and now add some more drums.
03:22(Music playing)
03:35I like that loop, it has a little bit of a breakbeat feel, a little bit
03:37different than your average house loop.
03:39I will drag that out onto the window, close the Audio Bin by hitting B, hit the
03:43L key and now I have two loops that are locked at a 125 beats per minute, looped
03:49underneath the vocal.
03:51Let's move further into the song and take a listen to how the kick drum and this
03:54top loop sound underneath the vocal.
03:56(Music playing)
04:08Those sound good together.
04:10Let's see I am interested in adding an Apple Loop on top of these two loops.
04:14I simply go back to the Loops tab, click on Beats and I'll choose Electric and here we go.
04:21I have got my huge list of Apple Loops that I will simply just select a
04:25couple, just for the purposes of showing you how to marry Apple Loops and non-Apple Loops.
04:30(Music playing)
04:46Okay, this is not a loop that I would use for the actual remix itself, but for the
04:51purposes of this movie, I'd like to show you how to bring an Apple Loop into the
04:55session and layer it with non-Apple Loop.
04:58I will hit the L key and I will mute the vocal just so we can only listen
05:03to drums right now.
05:05(Music playing)
05:14So you see it's that easy.
05:16There are plenty of third-party Loop libraries out there and most of them have
05:20Apple Loops as an available format.
05:22To instantly audition drum loops is paramount.
05:25It allows you to hear what works and does not work with the
05:29vocals instantaneously.
05:31Now that we have chosen a main drum loop and for this movie I'm going to keep
05:36the kick loop 2 and top loop 4 and I will disregard Club Beat 2.
05:41It is time to start layering additional drum loops, which we will move onto
05:45in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Layering drum loops
00:00Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of this movie, Layering Drum Loops, I
00:04took the time to clean up the session a little bit and actually put the vocals
00:08in a little bit of context and I'll show you what I did very quickly.
00:11Command+2 is also another way to get to the Mixer window.
00:16I went ahead and added reverb and delay to the vocals and all you have to do is
00:23if a Bus is at 0 all the way down like this, if you hold down Option and Click
00:31it automatically sets it at 0dB and I'll show you the same thing on Bus 2 which
00:36is our delay, there we go.
00:39So the Sends are actually at zero, and over here our corresponding returns this
00:45is send to Bus 1, here is the return on Bus 1.
00:48This is send to Bus 2, here is the return on Bus 2.
00:50I went ahead and just pulled the levels down, so that they weren't overbearing.
00:53I also lowered the Output of the Master Fader down to -8dB, because as we add
01:00elements to the mix right now, that Master Fader will overload and live in the
01:05red and we don't want that.
01:06So I went ahead and pulled the Output down.
01:09Let's close the Mixer and move on to Layering Drum Loops.
01:13Drums can make or break a remix, so let's continue on by building up the track
01:17and layering some additional drum loops.
01:19Now for the purposes of this movie I'm actually going to choose a couple of drum
01:24loops that will not be the loops that we use in the final mix, but this is a
01:27very important concept.
01:29We've chosen the kick drum.
01:31(Music playing)
01:35Let's say that we would like to add a loop, but the loop has a kick drum in it.
01:39We have to reconcile that.
01:41Open up the Audio Bin window, choose the Loops tab, I'm going to bring this
01:45Club Dance Beats 006 in.
01:47(Music playing)
01:50And as you can hear, it does have a kick drum in it.
01:53I'll drag this onto the Arrange Window, close the Audio Bin, hit L to Loop the
01:58audio file, and now, what's going to happen is the kick drum that we chose is
02:03going to play on top of the kick drum that's in this loop.
02:06Let's take a listen. (Music playing)
02:12That's a little too much kick drum. How do we reconcile this?
02:15Well, we simply roll off the low end of the loop we just brought in.
02:21Up here in the Plug-in section I will choose EQ>Channel EQ and I will select
02:29a high-pass filter which simply means that all frequencies to the left of
02:35this curve are removed.
02:37I'll slide this over.
02:38I know that the meat of the kick drum lives around 80 or 90 Hz.
02:44So I'm actually going to roll off more than that, because I don't want any of
02:49this loops kick drum to clash with the kick drum that we've already chosen.
02:53So I'll go as high as maybe 300-400 Hz on a High-pass filter, and now we can take a listen.
03:01I'm going to play this loop in AB, the EQ in and out, so you can hear the
03:05difference between leading the kick drum in the loop and having two kick drums
03:09fighting each other and high-pass filtering it out.
03:12All I do to bypass a plug-in is hold the Option key and click on the plug-in and
03:18you can see that it bypasses it in this fashion.
03:21(Music playing)
03:33So as you can hear, the kick drums almost flam. They're playing on top of each
03:37other, and it doesn't sound tight; it's sounds a little bit woofy.
03:41So this is a huge, huge, huge part of layering drum loops.
03:45You have to examine the frequencies that are being combined as you combine the loops.
03:51Before we exit this movie, I would like to open up the EQ Plug-in and show you
03:55how you can visually look at the frequencies that are occurring in your mix.
04:00Here is an Analyzer button right here, I click it and when I play the track --
04:04(Music playing)
04:11As you can see, you get a visualization of the frequencies that make up your track.
04:15Now bear in mind that these frequencies are after I've engaged the High-pass
04:19Filter, what we call Post-EQ.
04:21A few things to keep in mind when layering the drum loops; Are the percussive
04:27elements working together?
04:28For example, do the rhythms of the hi-hats work with the shaker or
04:32tambourine patterns?
04:34Also, what is your reasoning for choosing this loop, what is it bringing to the
04:39table in terms of making the drums better and most importantly, does it work
04:43well with the vocals?
Collapse this transcript
Drum loops and drum programming
00:00It's important to spend some time programming drums in addition to
00:03using third-party loops.
00:06I've gone ahead and chosen the kick loop 2 and top loop 4 and I'm going to open
00:11up the Audio Bin and add one more loop at the top, and all I need to do close
00:16this window here so that all these regions don't appear is hold down the Option
00:21key and click the Arrow and that closes everything up, so that the window is not
00:26quite as messy looking.
00:29So I'm going to grab top loop 3.
00:31(Music playing)
00:36I like that, I know that that will add something to the chorus, but for now I'm
00:40going to drag it out on the Arrange Window.
00:43Close the Audio Bin by pressing B. I'll highlight top loop 3 and hit L and now
00:49all three of these loops are looping.
00:52I'll move up into the song.
00:53I've gone ahead and actually shifted the vocals over to the right, so that they
00:58actually enter at measure 41.
01:00I did this because I know that I'm going to build an intro.
01:04This is a remix, we need to create a DJ intro and a DJ outro.
01:08So I generally at this stage of the game move the vocals over, so that they're
01:13starting at somewhere around measure 41, measure 49, measure 57, it's an
01:17arbitrary decision, but for now I'm using measure 41.
01:21So that's why the vocals are in a different place as we begin this movie
01:25than the previous movie.
01:27So just to listen to all three loops together with the vocal.
01:30(Music playing)
01:38Okay, so in addition to using these drum loops I'd like to add a little bit
01:42of drum programming on top. I'm going to go ahead and grab an 8 bar region
01:47here that will cycle. (Music playing)
01:58I think I would like to add an open hi-hat on the ends of each beat.
02:01So I've gone ahead and set up two drum kits in the EXS24 and these are included
02:07in your Exercise Files, Electro Kit and Big Beat Remix.
02:15So I'm going to go ahead and just play a few notes on the keyboard just so
02:19that we can audition some of the drum sounds that we have available to us for the programming.
02:24(Music playing)
02:28I like this sound. It's a light open hi-hat, it will sound good on the ands of
02:33each beat and it will help the chorus pulse a little bit, so I'm going to
02:37Record the MIDI data in.
02:39(Music playing)
02:41So I simply played the hi-hat for four measures, and what I'll do now to put it
02:55in exact time is called Quantizing.
02:59Up in the upper left-hand corner in the Inspector window the top arrow as you
03:04open it down, you have a list of Quantizations and I'm going to choose 8A Swing.
03:12Basically quantizing to eighth notes with a little bit of a swing.
03:16I click and hold this MIDI region here, I can see this is an exact four bars which I like.
03:21It will help me in the copying and pasting portion and let's take a listen, I'm
03:25actually going to mute the vocal, so we can really just focus on the drums.
03:28(Music playing)
03:35And I'll copy that for eight bars.
03:36All we do to copy a region is hold down Option and drag and there we go.
03:41Now the four bar section is an 8-bar section. And I'm going to play this for 8
03:46bars and mute it and unmute it, so that you get a sense of what this one little
03:49part adds to the drums.
03:51(Music playing) Excellent.
04:01So now what I'll do is I would like the hi-hats to be a little bigger
04:06sounding, so I will copy this MIDI data much like I copied and draged this four
04:12bar MIDI region over here, I will Option+Drag both MIDI regions down to the track below it.
04:19Now the hi-hats are layered.
04:21Most of the drum kits are set up in the general MIDI fashion which means that
04:25from drum kit to drum kit samples are assigned to the same keys.
04:29By that I mean kick drums are generally C1, snare drums are generally D1,
04:35hi-hats are usually F#, G# or A#.
04:42So now we have a hi-hat pattern on one drum kit and a hi-hat pattern on another.
04:48So let's go ahead and solo these out and listen to them together.
04:51(Music playing) That's nice.
04:59The second hi-hat actually gives the hi-hat pattern a wider image.
05:04So let's listen to them in the context with the rest of the drums, and all I do
05:09to undo two tracks being soloed is I hold down Option and click Solo.
05:15(Music playing)
05:20And now with the vocal --
05:21(Music playing)
05:32To me the chorus comes alive.
05:33Now I know that we are actually not in the chorus section of the song, but I'm
05:37again thinking in my mind that when I get to certain portions of the song where
05:43I'd like the drums to pop a little more I will have these hi-hat patterns in.
05:48We're not at the arranging stages yet, we're simply auditioning sounds and
05:51listening to them with the vocals and making sure that everything is working together.
05:56Great drum programming can make a track standout and I feel that it's a bit of a
06:00copout to have my drum tracks consist of simply drum loops.
06:04So I always take the time to program some of my own drums and layer them in with
06:08any loops that I'm using.
Collapse this transcript
3. Programming Bass Lines
Chord changes and harmonic structure
00:00Now that we've pulled in our drum loops and we have a sense of what the backbeat
00:03of the track is going to be, it's time to get into the musical changes.
00:07This is the point of the remixing process where I will mute out everything
00:12except for the original song. And I will also create a piano track so that I
00:19am able to play with the original version and get a handle on what the chord changes are.
00:25So I will create a software instrument and I will choose a Steinway Studio Piano.
00:33Hit B to close the Audio Bin and let's take a listen to the original and
00:39here's my piano sound.
00:40(Music playing)
00:45Okay, and we're going to listen to the original and I'm not going to worry about
00:48the chords just yet, I'm going to worry about single notes, I like to listen for
00:52the baseline of the original and get a handle on what that baseline is doing
00:56before I get into programming my own baseline for remix.
01:00So here's the original.
01:01(Music playing)
01:36So as I'm listening to the chord changes of the original, I hear that the
01:40baseline is basically playing B to G to E. And I'll expand upon that and
01:54actually play full chords with it to make sure that I actually have the right chords.
01:58Chords are essentially two or more notes being played simultaneously, so
02:03these are just octaves.
02:05B and a B but I'm actually going to expand it and play full chords where play a
02:14B minor chord, and you can see down in the Transport Window that as I play
02:19those notes right above the No Out in the lower right corner of the Transport
02:25next to the CPU Meter there is a B m. The lowercase m next to the letter B stands for minor.
02:31So let's roll back and listen to the chords again.
02:34(Music playing)
02:42Second chord is G major, third chord is E minor, fourth chord is F# major.
02:57Now I've listened to the original enough to know that basically the same four
03:01chords are used for the entire song.
03:04So I actually don't need to scan up further into the song to check to see if
03:08there are some chord changes that I might want to be aware of prior to
03:12programming the baseline and the keyboards, but I do encourage you to listen
03:17all the way through the song and make sure that you're not missing any chord changes.
03:21This is a very important part of the process.
03:24I have heard many, many, many people actually put the music in a different key
03:29than the original song, and you're not doing yourself or the artist any favors
03:34by creating a musical track that's in the wrong key.
03:37So prior to programming the baseline it's essential that you spend a few
03:43minutes and get a handle on what the chord structure is of the original and
03:48then you can start with the original chords as a base set of cord changes to
03:53put underneath a vocal.
03:55I actually very rarely use the original cord changes in a remix.
03:58I will search for different harmonic solutions that will work underneath the
04:03vocal that very rarely are the exact same changes as the original.
04:07But for this song they feel good, they feel like the right chord changes to my
04:12ears, and so I'm going to go ahead and go with those cord changes as the chord
04:16changes for the remix.
Collapse this transcript
Getting bass sounds and programming bass lines
00:00Now we've come to my favorite part of the remixing process,
00:03programming basslines.
00:05Let's briefly discuss the role of a bassline and how important a role it plays
00:10in dictating the groove.
00:12I feel that basslines are equally as important as vocals and I generally
00:16spend the most amount of time working with them until the bass drum vocal
00:20groove is just right.
00:22So let's go ahead and open up the EXS24 and I'll just point out briefly that
00:27every time you select a software instrument from the menu here you have a box
00:31here that says Open Library and what that will do is pull-open a library of
00:36presets for the virtual instruments.
00:38I'm going to go ahead and uncheck this because I already know which software
00:41synth and which preset bank I'd like to work from.
00:45So underneath Virtual Instruments I select the EXS24.
00:50I am going to choose Stereo, I pull down the menu to Bass and I'm going
00:55to choose Synth Bass.
00:57I'm pretty familiar with these sounds as I've used the EXS24 many, many times
01:02on many, many remixes.
01:04So I'm going to go ahead and select this Hard Pluck Drive.
01:07It's actually a synth-based sound that I really gravitate towards and let's you
01:11hear what it sounds like.
01:13(Music playing) It's a little bit of a SH101 type sound.
01:20So let's just go ahead and play the track from the verse and I've got it looped
01:25right now verse 1 chorus 1.
01:27It's basically a 24 bar loop and I'm going to play several different bassline
01:32scenarios and I'll actually record a couple of them and this is a very important
01:36part of the process here.
01:37Sometimes what I'll do is record 4 or 8 bars of one bassline idea, 4 or 8 bars
01:42of another bassline idea and have them side-by-side and listen to them.
01:46So let's go ahead and record one bassline idea in this 8 bar section.
01:50(Music playing)
02:10That's a pretty standard dance bassline.
02:12It's what we call in on the end bassline,
02:14it's on the 8th note of each beat.
02:17So I will go ahead and in the Inspector Window click my Down Arrow and quantize
02:21to 16th, actually I quantize to 8th notes because that is the proper duration of
02:27the note that I am playing. (Music playing)
02:35So let's move over to the next 8 bar section.
02:39I click and hold in my Cycle Points region and I slide the Cycle Points Marker
02:44over to the next 8 bars.
02:46So I'll try a slightly different pattern in this next 8 bar section.
02:49(Music playing)
03:08Okay. Let's quantize that to 16th notes and as you can see I started a little bit
03:16before the downbeat, so there is a little bit of a MIDI region hangover here.
03:21All I need to do is grab the Edit Tool here and slide it over to the right and
03:26now it's a perfect 8 bar region.
03:27And all you need to do to double-check that is click and hold in the region and you
03:30can see on the lower right-hand corner here 8 0 0 0; 8 measures or 8 bars.
03:38So let's take a listen to these two back-to-back.
03:42(Music playing) I'd like to try one more idea.
04:15I think both of those will definitely work, but I'm going to move over here to
04:19the chorus section and try a third bassline idea, a little more syncopated.
04:23(Music playing)
04:43Quantize it, and I will drag the MIDI region over so it's at perfect 8 bars and
04:51take a listen to it. (Music playing)
05:08I actually prefer that the best out of the three and here's why.
05:12I think it pulses the groove a little bit better than the other two options and
05:16I think it sits well with the vocal.
05:17There is space around the bass notes being played allowing the vocal to breathe.
05:21So I'm going to go ahead and delete these other two basslines and I will copy and paste.
05:27Click on my MIDI region, hold down the option key, drag to the left and
05:32repeat the process.
05:34So now I have a 24 bar section here, which is verse 1 and chorus 1.
05:39And you're certainly welcome to change the bassline from section to section, but
05:44for this remix I think this 8 bar phrase works perfectly,
05:48so I'm going to go ahead and have this be the bassline.
05:51I'd like to take a moment to talk about how important choosing bass sounds is to
05:55the remixing process.
05:57It's always a good idea to audition bass sounds to make sure they sonically
06:01blend well with the drums and vocals.
06:04In most remixes the kick drum is going to occupy the deepest set of frequencies,
06:09the lowest set of frequencies,
06:10so I generally like my bass sound to sit a little bit above that, in other words
06:16I'm not necessarily looking for a real stubby kind of a bass sound that can
06:20muddy up the low end and get in the way of the kick drum.
06:22That just happens to be the style of remixing that I'm working on.
06:26If you're working on drum and bass or dub step or another style of remixing you
06:32may want to have the bass be the lowest set of frequencies.
06:35So here's how we quickly can audition bass sounds.
06:39I will go ahead and solo out just by highlighting the three MIDI regions and
06:44hitting the S key, that's one way to solo or hit the S key again and the solo is
06:50disengaged, or I can simply hit solo here, and that will play the bass track.
06:58So even though I know this is the sound I'm ultimately going to use, let's open
07:03up to EXS24 and just go through the bass sound auditioning process.
07:08(Music playing)
07:22So I'll go ahead and select the bass sound that I initially chose, which is I
07:27feel the keeper bass sound Hard Pluck Drive, and we'll close out of the EXS24
07:33and undo the solo button.
07:35But this just gives you a little bit of an insight as to how to program the
07:38basslines and then once the MIDI data is in I think this is actually the best
07:43way of auditioning sounds.
07:45Play your part in, make sure that you're happy with the part and then take a
07:49moment to scroll through presets and decide what sound you ultimately would like to use.
07:54Before we move on to adding secondary and supportive basslines let's go ahead
07:58and listen to all of the elements together.
08:00(Music playing)
Collapse this transcript
Layering bass sounds and side chaining
00:00Now that I've chosen my bass sound and my bassline, it's time to pulse the track
00:04a bit more by adding a secondary or supporting bassline.
00:08This might be a few extra notes with a different sound that plays off the main
00:12bassline or it might be an actual literal doubling of the main bassline.
00:17It all depends on how it flows with the primary bassline,
00:20the drums and the vocals.
00:22So let's go ahead and open up the ES1 and I will select Software Instrument and
00:30underneath the pull-down menu, I will select ES1 Stereo.
00:34Now I know the presets within the ES1 pretty well.
00:38So I am going to pull down the menu here and choose a lead sound.
00:46But I'm actually going to play it in the lower register, so it functions as a
00:49supporting bass sound.
00:51This is something that I actually enjoy doing.
00:54Just because a synth preset is categorized as a lead sound doesn't mean you
00:58can't use it in its lower register as a bass sound or vice-versa.
01:02A bass sound could be used as a lead sound.
01:05So this is called Super Fat Moog.
01:08(Music playing)
01:10And I'm going to go ahead and play the looped 24 bar section and experiment with
01:16some supporting bass, riffs or lines or even just notes here and notes there to
01:21see how it sits in the groove.
01:23(Music playing)
01:42That seems to work well with the vocals, it's not stepping on it, it's filling
01:45in a little bit of a hole in and around the main bassline, and adding something
01:50to the groove in my opinion, it's filling it out a bit.
01:53So let's go ahead and record that end.
01:54(Music playing)
02:15We click down here on the inspector and our 16A quantization.
02:20We can actually choose 8A Swing because it's an eighth note part, and I will go
02:25ahead and copy that and copy it again and so now we have a secondary bassline.
02:30(Music playing)
02:48Now that's definitely working.
02:50I'm going to go ahead and show you a very exciting production trick that has
02:54actually been used for quite a few years now in remixing but it's the sound
02:58that I'm sure you've heard in tracks before, but might not know how to dial it
03:03up in your own studio.
03:04So what I'm going to do is close the Quantization window in the Inspector, and
03:10I'm going to choose compressor here.
03:13What we're essentially going to do at this stage is called side-chaining the
03:17compressor with a kick drum.
03:19So this is several steps.
03:20First I am going to choose the compressor on the synth bass track right here.
03:26But before I dial in the compressor, I'm going to go up to the drums, and I'm
03:30going to duplicate the track.
03:34I'm going to click-and-hold and copy down the kick drum but I am going to move
03:39this track up and I will rename this kick trigger.
03:46I will turn off the output,
03:47the physical output will be No Output.
03:51I go back to my secondary bassline track, double click on the Compressor plug-in
03:57and underneath side chain, I choose kick trigger.
04:00What is essentially happening here is that the kick drum, which is playing on
04:05every quarter note 1, 2, 3, 4, is going to trigger the compressor, and the
04:11compressor will then affect the bass sound.
04:14So let's go ahead and play the track with this setup now on the secondary bass track.
04:19(Music playing)
04:27All I did here is lower the threshold on a compressor which means that the
04:31compressor is actually kicking in and doing what it's supposed to do at a lower volume rate.
04:37So in order to make sure that the compressor is triggering and affecting the
04:42bassline in time with our groove, what I like to do is mute out the other drum
04:47elements and the vocals as well, and just listen to the basslines together.
04:54(Music playing)
05:01You can hear that the compressor is starting to sort of pump a little bit, but
05:04I'd like it to be a more drastic pump.
05:06So I open up the compressor plug-in and essentially, what I'm going to do here
05:12is tweak the Compressor settings and use my ears to make sure that the muaah of
05:18the bass sound is in time with the groove.
05:21(Music playing)
05:32So you have to play with the Ratio, you have to play with the Compressor
05:36Threshold, and you may have to play with the Attack which represents how quickly
05:41the compressor grabs the sound and actually compresses it.
05:45Let's close this out, take a listen to all of our elements together with the vocal.
05:50(Music playing)
06:09So now we have a nice swell that comes in and around the main bassline and
06:14supports the vocal in a nice fashion.
06:16As you experiment with layering bass sounds or programming a secondary bassline,
06:21always ask yourself if the new part is making the track better.
06:25Don't add parts for the sake of adding parts.
06:28It's easy to fall into that trap and then you wind up with a crowded track with
06:31elements fighting one another.
06:33If the bassline does not do the job, then move on to programming your synth parts.
06:38There's nothing wrong with having one bassline but this just gives you a little
06:42bit of insight into how to add a little more in the low end, a little more
06:45flavor and pulse your track a bit more.
Collapse this transcript
4. Programming Synth Parts
Choosing foundational synth parts and sounds
00:00Now that we have our bassline programmed in, it's time to move on to choosing
00:04our foundational synth parts and those particular sounds.
00:08As I start to add what I refer to as foundational synth parts, the remix will
00:12really start to take shape.
00:13I generally start with the chorus sections first since those areas of the
00:17remix typically have the densest amount of production and require the most synth parts.
00:22Let's go ahead and open up the ES2.
00:27I will choose the ES2 from my list of virtual synths and I generally like to
00:34start with a synth pad or some sort of sound and part that helps to find the
00:40chord structure of the remix.
00:43So I will choose Dark Pad 03, and this is what it sounds like.
00:47(Music playing)
00:52Okay, so this is an important tip.
00:56The first chord is B minor and the notes that are in the chord B minor are B, D, F#.
01:00I'd like to take the third of the chord out removing the D, and just play B, F#
01:11and then the octave B.
01:14This helps give the remix a slightly darker sound.
01:18I am not putting the third of the chord in which basically will make a chord
01:23either major or minor and will really affect the color of the musical changes.
01:28Let's go ahead and program in this pad sound.
01:30(Music playing)
01:52Let's go ahead and quantize this part.
01:54Even though it will quantize at 16A Swing, when I am holding down notes for a
01:58whole measure, I like to just quantize them to quarter notes.
02:02Let's trim up this extra space at the beginning that we don't need making our
02:05section 8 bars and let's just take a listen to it.
02:08(Music playing)
02:25Now, here's something that's fun to do.
02:28Let's play around with transposing this part up or down an octave.
02:32In the Inspector Window we have all of our MIDI parameters.
02:35You can double-click here and type in 12, there are 12 notes that will take it
02:40up in octave or I will put it back to 0 and I can choose -12 or +12.
02:46So here's what it sounds like an octave down.
02:47(Music playing) It's a little muddy.
03:01Let's go ahead and try it an octave higher.
03:02(Music playing)
03:20I like it, but I'd actually like the first chord to be an octave lower.
03:24So I am going to go to my Scissors Tool, which is a secondary tool, and we
03:28access the secondary tool by hitting Command and there's the scissors, and I am
03:33going to cut it right there.
03:35I will single-click and highlight the MIDI region that is just the first chord
03:41which is the B minor chord without the D and I will turn off the Transposition
03:46and let's take a listen now.
03:47(Music playing)
04:05So, I like that better.
04:06Now, we're looking at a MIDI region that has two measures of an 8 bar phrase as
04:12its own MIDI region.
04:13Visually, this can become distracting as you start to copy and paste and build
04:17the arrangement later on.
04:18So I simply hit the Escape key, select the Glue Tool, highlight the MIDI
04:24region and boom, they merge.
04:27Double-click Escape which will return me to my main tool, which is right
04:31here, the arrow and let's take a listen.
04:33(Music playing) It's all there.
04:49Let's go ahead and copy and paste.
04:52The reason that we're working with just this 24 bar chunk here is that I've
04:57listened to the song, I know what the chord changes are, there are no surprises
05:01musically later on in the song and I generally like to take a 24 or 32 bar
05:05section, usually the first verse and the first chorus and if there's something
05:09after the first chorus, I like to loop that which generally is 24 or 32 bars
05:14and work within that framework.
05:15I'd like to play all of my synth parts in within this section of the remix to
05:20make sure that everything works in a verse chorus fashion.
05:25I don't worry about the other sections of the song just yet.
05:28We'll cover that when we get to the arranging section of the course.
05:31We have our pad in, I am going to close that window, and I'd like to have the pad
05:36pump similarly to the secondary bassline.
05:40So here's a neat trick.
05:41Instead of having to set up the compressor with a side chain all over again,
05:45let's streamline the process and we will copy the compressor settings from our bass track.
05:54So all we need to do to do that is we go to the plug-in, hold down Option, hold
06:00down Command, and a little hand pops up when you click on the plug-in. Drag it
06:06over to the next track and release and there we go.
06:10One thing you do have to check, double- click the Compressor and make sure that
06:15the side chain is actually there.
06:17Sometimes the side chain won't appear here and it will be on None.
06:20So if you're not hearing the compressor work, you need to check that
06:24parameter, close out of the Mixer Window by hitting X and let's take a listen
06:29and see how this pad sounds.
06:30(Music playing) It's sitting nicely in the pocket.
06:46Before we move on to adding another foundational synth part, I want to make
06:50mention of our main Output Meter here.
06:52It is going into the red, this is nothing to worry about at this time, this is
06:57something we will address when we are in the mixing section of the course.
07:00So as you add elements and there are more sounds traveling through this Master
07:04Fader, you will see it hit the red a few times.
07:07This is why I've backed it down to -8db and I may back it down a little bit more
07:12as we add more parts, But it's nothing to be concerned about. If this was the
07:16final mix down, then it would be a problem.
07:18So let's go ahead and add what I like to call a Synth Comp part.
07:23I will choose the EXS24, and Stereo, and underneath, Synth Leads, going to
07:35choose Basic Velo, close the window, and there's our sound.
07:45(Music playing)
07:46So let's go ahead and experiment with some rhythms.
07:49What I mean by rhythms is I'd like to think of these parts almost as if
07:53they're drum parts;
07:54very rhythmic, very syncopated.
07:56Yes, I am playing the keyboard part but I could just as easily by playing a
08:00shaker part or a hi-hat part.
08:02Let's go ahead and play the track and I will experiment with some different rhythms.
08:05(Music playing)
08:24Let me give you an example of a non-syncopated part. (Music playing)
08:43That's not very exciting.
08:44I am going to actually go ahead and loop the chorus for this part because
08:48this part may only appear on the choruses, it most likely will not appear on the versus.
08:52So I am going to just loop the chorus sections right now and I will experiment
08:56with some different patterns and you'll hear that as I play these keyboard
09:00parts, they really do feel almost like drum parts.
09:02They just happened to be played with synth sounds.
09:05(Music playing)
09:22Okay. So I more or less have an idea of the part I'd like to play and rhythmically
09:26how it's going to go.
09:28Let's go ahead and record this in.
09:29(Music playing)
09:48I wasn't crazy about that performance, so I am actually going to delete it and
09:51do it again, and just before I hit Record, double-check. This particular
10:02sound, the harder I hit it, it opens up the filter, that's the velocity part of the patch.
10:10So I have to be careful that I don't play the part too hard.
10:19Okay, let's try it again. (Music playing)
10:40And we'll quantize it.
10:41I have an extra section of the MIDI region that I don't need.
10:45We trim it back, we have a perfect 8 bars and let's take a listen and let's
10:48actually mute out the vocal at this moment, just to listen to all the instrument parts.
10:52(Music playing)
11:10That part is working. It actually is really the bassline, it's the same rhythm as the bassline.
11:15So we're supporting a rhythm that we already have in the track.
11:19This gives you an idea of how to build up the song after you have the bassline
11:23in. Define your chord structures, begin to put rhythmic elements in, that we
11:29call foundational synth parts.
11:31I hope this offer some ideas for creating your foundational synth parts, always
11:35think about the rhythm of the parts as well as the textures.
11:39Choosing sounds at this stage of the remix is critical because it will really
11:43determine which direction your track is heading.
Collapse this transcript
Layering synth parts
00:00As we move into adding additional synth parts, or what I like to refer to as
00:04synth layers, I'd like to encourage all of you to take the time to build up the
00:09track, experiment, add a lot of parts, it's okay in the stages of the remix
00:14process if you add too many parts.
00:16A lot of the remixing process is constructing to then deconstruct.
00:21What you have to be aware of is when you cross that threshold and the track
00:26is just too crowded.
00:27What we're going to do in this movie, is add some additional parts. And I am
00:33going to take a listen to what I have so far and you may notice as I play
00:38the track right now that the foundational synth parts from the last movie
00:42are slightly different.
00:43I took some time to massage them, make some adjustments and just dial them in a
00:49little bit more to where I was extremely happy with them and felt that they were keeper parts.
00:55Let's take a quick listen and I will actually just loop the chorus section
00:58again, we don't need to listen to the verse right now.
01:00(Music playing)
01:09Okay, so at this stage of the remix, I'd like to think about frequency holes.
01:17and what I mean by frequency holes are; what frequencies are available right now?
01:22When I am listening to the track, there is a bass, there is a secondary bass
01:26part, but I still like a little more meat in the low end.
01:29The first thing I am going to do is add a synth layer, which is basically going
01:33to outline the chords, the B, G, E, F# chord changes, just a single note part in
01:39the lower register of an EXS24 sound.
01:43So I select EXS24 from my list of virtual instruments and I really like this
01:51sound under synth leads called Dance Basic.
01:54I have used this on dozens and dozens of remixes, it sounds like this--
02:00(Music playing)
02:02--nice fat saw wave, and what I am going to do is just basically play whole
02:07notes, outlining the chords. So let's go ahead and lay that in.
02:11(Music playing)
02:31And I will go ahead and quantize that to quarter notes, trim the extra MIDI region.
02:37It doesn't sound good to my ears to just leave this sound as is.
02:41So much like we did in the last movie, I am going to go ahead and copy the
02:45compressor from the synth pad track and move it over to this track.
02:50So we hold down Option and Command and drag, close the Mixer Window with X and
02:55let's take a listen.
02:56(Music playing)
03:09It sounds a little fuller to my ears, and I like that.
03:11So I am going to un-mute the vocal and let's take a listen with the vocal briefly.
03:16(Music playing)
03:26Sounding really good with the vocal.
03:28The next thing I am going to do is add a piano. And I will choose it from the
03:35EXS24, in the pull-down menu, under Acoustic Pianos, Steinway Piano.
03:43(Music playing)
03:51Let's go ahead and record in octave parts. Here we go.
04:01(Music playing)
04:20And I will quantize them to a quarter note.
04:24The purpose of this part is to add a punctuation on the downbeat of the chorus
04:31and actually throughout the chord changes of the chorus.
04:34I like the tambour of the piano, it has a nice attack and it really helps the
04:38chorus feel like a chorus when we hit the downbeat.
04:42So the grand piano is in.
04:44The next track I am going to add is an apple loop.
04:47So I open up the Audio Bin by hitting B and I will drag this on to the Arrange Window.
04:54I will put it right where verse 1 starts.
04:57Now you see I accidentally drag this on to a MIDI track.
05:01So I'm going to create a new audio track which is Stereo.
05:06I do not need to open the Library, and I will simply drag this down and move it
05:13over to the chorus because we're working with just the chorus section.
05:17Let's take a listen to this part.
05:19(Music playing)
05:24Clearly, it's not in the same key as our track.
05:28So what I'm going to do, and this is one way to get the most mileage out of
05:33instrumental apple loops.
05:35Let's figure out what key this is in.
05:37I am going to mute everything else out except for this part and the piano.
05:44I don't want to hear the piano track playing, so I am going to mute the MIDI
05:47region, by just highlighting the MIDI region and hitting M. That mutes it.
05:52The piano is still accessible to me as a virtual synth.
05:56Let's listen to this apple loop.
05:57(Music playing)
06:03This apple loop is in the key of C, our track is in the key of B; B minor to be specific.
06:09So here's what we're going to do.
06:11I'm going to take the Scissors Tool.
06:13I am actually going to put the piano part back in, because what I'm going to
06:18essentially do is take this apple loop that's in the key of C, and cut it up and
06:22have it follow our chord changes.
06:24We know as we expand the screen that we have one chord change for two measures.
06:31I am going to use the Scissors Tool and cut up this 4 bar apple loop and just
06:37paste the back half to cover 8 bars.
06:41So every two measures, we have a new chord.
06:44We know it's in the key of C. As we play with the Transposition, we know that
06:49there are 12 notes in the scale.
06:52So let's double-click and enter our own data, and since it's in the key of C,
06:56I'd like to go one-half step down for B. So the first two bars now is
07:01transposed down to B. The next chord change is G. So if we're working from C
07:06and we count backwards on the keyboard, C to B to B flat to A to A flat to G,
07:12that's actually five half steps.
07:15So we'll double-click and enter -5.
07:18Now, we're moving onto our third chord change which is E. I'd like the E to be
07:23higher than the B. So I'm going to enter a value of +4. If we start at C and go
07:30up to E, it's four half steps;
07:32C# D, D# E. And finally, F# which I'd like to be above E. So I will
07:41double-click and enter 6.
07:44Let's listen to this track against the piano track and the piano track will keep
07:48us honest and make sure that we have the correct transpositions.
07:51(Music playing)
08:08Everything sounds great.
08:10Now, let's listen to everything in a little bit of context.
08:14I shrink the tracks on the Arrange Window, and I will un-mute everything, and
08:20I'd actually like to name this track.
08:22This is part of good housekeeping.
08:24We double-click on the track, and I will call this -- well let's call it what
08:29it's actually called in the apple loop.
08:30So I will expand the screen, it's called trance travel synth.
08:33I will double-click here and call it trance travel synth and let's take a
08:40listen to what we have.
08:40I will mute the vocal out right now, I'll pop it back in, in a moment.
08:44(Music playing) I love it.
09:02I think it sounds great, there is a lot of texture there, there is a little bit of edge to it.
09:07I am going to un-mute the vocal.
09:09You'll find throughout this course at different stages I am constantly muting
09:13and un-muting parts to make sure that everything is working together.
09:16This is a very important lesson not just in remixing but in production overall.
09:20The elements of your track have to work together, and they really have to work
09:24with the vocal when you're working on a full vocal remix.
09:27So let's take a listen to the track so far with the vocal in it.
09:30(Music playing) Sounds fantastic.
09:49Think about what it is you're looking to accomplish by layering synth parts.
09:53It's very easy to get carried away and add too many layers, resulting in a track
09:57that is way too dense.
09:59As mentioned earlier, I prefer to work on this part of the process in the chorus
10:03section, which is these 8 bars.
10:06This is the part of the mix that will most likely have the most amount of parts in it.
10:11My suggestion is that as you build up your synth layers, build up a section
10:15of the song that is actually going to have a lot of parts in it when the mix
10:19is actually finished.
Collapse this transcript
Lead line hooks
00:00One of my signature production traits is Lead-line Synth Hooks.
00:04Many songs are made up by instrumental hooks that are in the intros,
00:07choruses, and outros.
00:09You can even look at old Motown songs and some of the guitar or piano hooks are
00:13as important as the chorus looks themselves.
00:16So I apply the same philosophy to remixing.
00:19Generally I will come up with a synth hook that is either woven into the
00:22choruses or comes in an 8 bar section that follows the chorus, what I like to
00:27refer to as a post-chorus.
00:29So, I will open up the EXS24, close the MIDI parameters window here, choose the
00:38EXS24>Stereo, and I'm actually going to take a string sound, a Solina string.
00:47The Solina is an old vintage keyboard and I think I'm going to use that, even
00:52though it's considered a Synth Lead Line or a Lead-line Hook,
00:56I'm going to play with a string sound, and--
00:58(Music playing)
01:02--that's what the Solina sounds like, a very classic old vintage synth sound.
01:06And I will actually go ahead and move the attack of the sound down a little bit,
01:13which means that the sound will come out sounding a little bit punchier, more
01:18appropriate for a synth-lead sound.
01:20(Music playing)
01:23Let's loop the chorus, I'm going to experiment with some lead-line hooks
01:27underneath the lead-vocal in the chorus and let's see how it sounds.
01:31(Music playing)
02:04Okay, so that gives me an idea where I want to head with the part, so I'm
02:07going to go ahead and record it in. Again, I'm looking for a synth-line hook that's memorable.
02:12Something that you might even sing after you've heard it one or two times, so
02:15I'm going to record this part in.
02:17(Music playing)
02:38And I'll quantize it, 16A Swing, and I'll trim back the extra MIDI region that
02:44I don't need and let's take a listen to it.
02:46(Music playing)
03:03I really like the part, I'm not 100% sure that it works well in that section of the song.
03:11I will actually move the vocals over a little bit creating that post-chorus
03:17section that I mentioned in the early part of the movie, and what I mean by
03:20moving the vocals over 8 bars, is that I'm moving verse 2 over, I'm not actually
03:25moving the chorus section over.
03:27I click and hold where it's 66, 8 bars over will put this at 74, and Logic is
03:34prompting me with a question of do I want to move the automation data?
03:38I'm going to select Don't Move, there was some previous automation data on the
03:41track that I was playing around with and I actually don't need it to move.
03:45Let's shrink the tracks down in the Arrange window and I'm going to move
03:52this over 8 bars and then lasso everything else and copy it. Option+Drag, Option+Drag.
04:03So let's listen to the chorus section and the post-chorus section.
04:08(Music playing)
04:40That feels a bit more natural to me to have the Lead-Line Hook come after the vocal ends.
04:45It's introducing a new section of the song and I'm opening up myself with the
04:50ability to build the track up even more after the chorus section, which is
04:55really what we'd like to cal the Hype.
04:57Here's a new 8 bar section, a very exciting 8 bar section that's been introduced
05:02as a result of the fact that the Lead- Line Hook didn't quite work underneath the
05:06lead-vocal for the choruses.
05:08While lead-line hooks might not make sense in every remix that you work on,
05:12they can certainly bring energy to a track.
05:14You may find yourself working on a remix of the song that doesn't have a strong
05:18chorus, and you may need to come up with a section of the song like we did here,
05:22called the Post-Chorus.
05:23This also sets us up nicely for what I like to call Synth Candy which is coming
05:28up in the next movie.
05:29Where we fill in the holes with production Ear Candy and the track really starts to
05:34take on a finished sound at that point.
Collapse this transcript
Synth candy
00:00For those of you who may not be familiar with the term Ear Candy, it refers to
00:04the flourishes and supplemental parts that are found within a musical track.
00:09I like to think of them as the parts that make the track feel finished or complete.
00:13As we think about Ear Candy for the synth parts of this remix, I'd like to call
00:17these parts Synth Candy.
00:19They might be one or two note high parts on a chorus that gives the chorus a
00:23lift or a part that floats around the lead vocal on a verse.
00:27I'm going to add two synth parts throughout the course of this movie, and I will
00:31start by bringing an Apple Loop onto the arrange window, this part right here,
00:37Electro Emotion Synth.
00:41I drag this part out onto the Arrange window, and close the Audio Bin by hitting
00:47B. Let's take a listen to this part before we dive into editing it.
00:54(Music playing)
01:03Okay, as you can hear, it's just one four-bar keyboard part that repeats.
01:08It's actually in the same key as our trance travel synth part was when we
01:14originally brought it on to the Arrange window, and that is the key of C. I'm
01:17going to move this track down so that these two Apple Loops are right next to
01:23each other, and much like editing the trance travel synth part I will use the
01:29scissors and cut this Apple Loop and paste it over, so that we have a full eight bars.
01:35Now since this is in the key of C, I'll go ahead and enter in my
01:39transposition numbers.
01:40We want to bring it down to B, which is the first chord, so -1, and we can
01:45double check it against the Trance Travel synth, that's -1.
01:48The second value is -5, so let's go ahead and change this to -5, and the third
01:55value on the Trance Travel synth is +4, I'm actually going to leave this at -1.
02:01So essentially, the first and the third set of chord changes are the same notes
02:07on this keyboard part, after it's transposed.
02:10And then on the last part I will go ahead and enter in +6, because that is the
02:17same value that we have up here.
02:19So let's take a listen to this 8 bar phrase with just these two parts playing together.
02:27(Music playing)
02:44So as you can hear, what we basically did was take a two bar repetitive keyboard
02:50arpeggio, transpose it to follow the chord changes of our remix, and now we
02:54actually have a very interesting keyboard line that adds a lot of tension,
03:00especially on the second chord, when we put everything in the Mix,
03:03the second set of chord changes right here measures 67 to 69.
03:06There is a nice bit of tension that enters.
03:09(Music playing)
03:33I'll also back down the Master Fader another dB or so, because we're starting to
03:37get into the two to three dB range of the red right now.
03:42And although, there is no audible distortion, as we add more parts, we'll
03:46find ourselves pulling the Master Fader down so that we are not maxing out at 6 dB in the red.
03:52I'm going to add one more part, it will be from the ES2, and I will close the
03:59Parameters window here in the Inspector window, add Software Instrument, select
04:05ES2, and I'm going to choose Analog Bass clean.
04:13This is a situation where I'm going to use a bass sound and actually play some
04:17notes higher up in the register.
04:18(Music playing) This is our sound.
04:22I'll move it up a couple of dB so we can really hear it as I'm playing against the track.
04:26(Music playing) And I know going into this part
04:29I'm looking for something that's a little bouncy, something to help pulse the
04:33track along a little bit more.
04:34So let's play around for a minute before I actually record the part.
04:38(Music playing)
04:55I think that's going to work really well, It's a little bit bouncy, which is nice, and I
04:59will record it right now, so I don't forget it.
05:01(Music playing)
05:21Let's quantize it, and let's take a quick listen.
05:25(Music playing)
05:42So we've added two more keyboard parts to our track in this movie, and both of
05:47these parts have quite a bit of movement, but not too much movement, and the
05:50track is not feeling crowded, it's actually feeling just right.
05:53There is a lot of motion in the track, but you do have to take caution that as
05:58you add parts, and add parts, and add parts, the amount of space that each part
06:03lives in become smaller, and it's very easy for things to sound crowded and
06:08cluttered, and we haven't even begun to add reverbs and delays to our synth parts.
06:12At this stage of the remixing process you will most likely need to do a little
06:17bit of self editing.
06:18It's very important that you keep the parts that enhance the mix.
06:22Don't marry yourself to parts, even if you come up with a really cooler part,
06:26and it's not working and it's not working, don't be attached to your ideas, make
06:31sure that they are adding to the sum of all parts and complementing the vocal.
Collapse this transcript
5. Building the Arrangement
The importance of arranging
00:00Now it's time to talk about arranging.
00:02This is one of the most critical parts of the remixing process.
00:06If you don't have a great arrangement, your track will most likely fall flat,
00:10especially if it's being played in the club by DJs.
00:14So I will disengage the loop setting here.
00:18I highlighted all these tracks.
00:19They are just looping till the end of the song right now.
00:22I will hit the L key and turn them off.
00:25I will click-and-drag, copy-and-paste, and I'm just copying-and-pasting, and
00:33copying-and-pasting, because the way I like to start building my arrangement
00:38is to actually copy-and-paste sections and then mute arrange or deconstruct on the fly.
00:45So I am pasting drums all the way across here, all the way across.
00:52I know that this remix is going to wind up being between 5 and 6 minutes long.
00:57So that's why several movies ago, I went ahead and moved the vocals to start at measure 41.
01:03That gives us 40 measures of intro, DJ intros I like to call it for someone to
01:08mix the record in from the previous record that they are mixing out of.
01:12So I always like to start with drums, and I don't want to play all of the drum
01:17loops at the very beginning.
01:19So what I'll do is maybe delete the first 8 bars of the top drum loop and just
01:26start the mix like this.
01:28(Music playing) I'm not sure yet.
01:40I like to play around with these ideas before I actually start really
01:43building up the arrangement.
01:45As we think of the arrangement, and how important it really is, you want to have
01:49ebbs and flows in your track.
01:51It needs to breathe.
01:52Ideally, I like to have elements coming in and out every 8 bars, so that the ear
01:56picks up on things happening.
01:58I generally break the track down in the similar fashion as I build it up.
02:02There might be a 32 bar or a 40 bar intro and subsequently a 32 or 40 bar outro
02:09with the body of the song happening generally from here to about here, that's
02:15about measure 41 to maybe a measure 161.
02:18All these arrangement principles will make more sense as we start to build up
02:22our remix and the song takes on a more definitive form.
Collapse this transcript
Arranging your track
00:00Now we're at the stage where we need to start arranging our mix.
00:04And I think that this is probably the most time-consuming part of the remixing
00:09process especially when you're just starting out.
00:12I struggled with this quite a bit when I began remixing 10 years ago and it
00:16took me probably a good five or six remixes in before I really started to get a
00:21handle on why some of these mixes are arranged the way they are for the dance floor.
00:27So picking up where we left off in the last movie, I had already started to
00:32construct a drum intro and I'm actually going to save this top loop, this loop
00:38that I think really belongs in the choruses for a little bit later.
00:43I'm going to bring in some keyboard elements around Measure 17.
00:50And this is also the part of the process where I may move some tracks around
00:55and group them on the arrange window so that visually it makes a little more sense for me.
00:58We'll get into a little bit more of this when we get into the mixing part of the course.
01:03But as I start to build the arrangement, I do move tracks around so it visually helps me.
01:08You're also able to color code if you so desire.
01:11You'll notice that these are obviously different colors and if I wanted to
01:14change the color of one of these regions, all I would have to do is hold down
01:19Option+C and a Color palette window pops up and I can assign any color that I
01:23want to any of the regions on the window.
01:26This comes into play and it's very helpful when you're actually color coding
01:30sections, maybe we like the whole chorus or post-chorus section to be this color
01:38and visually as we start to copy and paste and map out the arrangement, these
01:42types of tools really, really help make the process easier.
01:45I'm actually going to undo that. All right.
01:48So let's continue on.
01:49We have an eight-bar drum intro that's kick in our first loop.
01:53(Music playing)
01:57And then I'll actually copy and paste these hi-hats that I added and I'll
02:01paste them over and over.
02:05I think it's easier to actually copy and paste and then remove what I referred
02:09to several movies back as mute arranging.
02:11This is sort of a different way of arranging.
02:14It's a subtractive way of arranging and I find that it's easier to approach this
02:18in a subtractive fashion whereby I'm removing parts as opposed to adding parts.
02:24So we have our eight bars of drums and I'm actually going to bring these in even
02:28eight bars earlier, not at Measure 17 but at Measure 9.
02:31So picking it up right before Measure 9.
02:33(Music playing)
02:50And I actually like to arrange as the track is playing too.
02:55Almost like a live type of arranging. (Music playing)
03:41This type of approach to arranging; things are happening in real-time, I'm
03:45copying and pasting parts, I'm getting ideas, I'll also sometimes just loop
03:49sections and just see if I get an inspiration from just looping even just a
03:54two-bar section, maybe this will be part of an intro.
03:57(Music playing)
04:07Or even reduce it down to one bar.
04:08(Music playing)
04:14Or shrink it down even more.
04:15(Music playing) Or even more.
04:21(Music playing)
04:25All these types of tricks can bring tension into your mix.
04:29And remember, as we continue on arranging the mix, we want to have periods of
04:34tension and release.
04:35The track builds up, there's tension, everything comes in, and there's a release.
04:38We want to break things down, I like to actually deconstruct typically for verse
04:431, so I might just have the pad and the bass and take out these additional
04:51drums for the verse.
04:52So it sounds like this.
04:53(Music playing)
05:41So I'll work my way through the entire track in this fashion, breaking things
05:46down in the verses, adding elements and taking them out every eight bars,
05:50sometimes I'll run a 16-bar phrase where nothing changes, but it's very rare.
05:54And we are actually going to add more elements into the mix in our upcoming
05:58movies by way of transitional sounds and vocal samples.
06:02One trick that I usually implement somewhere in every mix is I drop out the kick
06:08drum, or sometimes all the drums one beat before the chorus maybe comes in.
06:14(Music playing)
06:16Or one beat before, or the post-chorus, it really depends.
06:21I'll just give you an example here so you can hear what it sounds like when
06:24all the drums are removed for one bar and then they all come back into the next section.
06:29You can hear that it creates a moment.
06:31(Music playing)
06:47So removing frequencies to then bring them back is really what this trick is all about.
06:52It creates a moment of tension when the low-end drops out and then comes back in.
06:56It actually gives the chorus more of a hype, more of a powerful feel to have the
07:01drums drop and then come back in for a bar, two beats, one beat.
07:05Again, you have to feel these things out.
07:07Arranging your track is a very internal thing.
07:10You have to sit and listen and feel it out.
07:13I actually listen a lot with my eyes closed or looking away from the screen when
07:17I'm working as to not be distracted by what's happening on the computer monitor.
07:21Sometimes if you know something's about to happen, it takes away the surprise element.
07:25So I absolutely look away from the computer screen at different stages of
07:30the arranging process.
07:32But you can see we've gone ahead and started to shape the arrangement here up
07:36through basically what we're calling the post-chorus and then I would copy and
07:39paste these elements and actually what I'll even do is delete these drums.
07:44This is again, good housekeeping to keep things visually clean and then I can
07:48take this whole section here which is our verse one, copy it over here to
07:54Measure 73, and let's take a listen and see how this lines up.
07:58(Music playing) Okay.
08:03So that's not quite right.
08:06I need to go up to the vocal track and drag it over a couple of bars so that it
08:16actually starts, verse two that is, at Measure 73.
08:21And again, I don't want to move the old automation data.
08:24(Music playing) That's correct.
08:41One approach I like to take in differentiating verse one and verse two is maybe
08:46drop the drums out for the first two measures of verse two and I will simply
08:52use the Scissors Tool.
08:53And instead of deleting these regions like this, I'm actually going to mute them.
08:58In case I change my mind, all I have to do is unmute them and I just hit the M key to do that.
09:04So let's take a listen right before verse two enters with the drums out.
09:07(Music playing)
09:19Again, this is just a suggestion.
09:21You could do this with a drum roll, some sort of a bass slide, you decide.
09:26But these are all things to think about to challenge yourself to implement
09:30subtle changes between the sections of the song.
09:33All these nuances in production tricks really are what give a track a finished quality.
09:38So I will basically carry on with this process until the track is fully
09:43arranged and then I will move into adding what I call transitional sounds as
09:47well as choosing vocal samples that I like the cut up and distribute throughout
09:52the track.
Collapse this transcript
6. Enhancing the Arrangement with Vocal Samples and Transitional Sounds
Creating vocal samples and transitional sounds
00:00Now it's time to glue the different sections of the remix together with some
00:05vocal samples and transitional sounds.
00:07I'll begin with choosing a vocal sample and what I mean by vocal sample is
00:12maybe a word, the title of the song something along those lines, something just
00:17a couple of words that I can play with delay, effect and pepper through out the
00:21remix once I've made my decision to help fill in the holes and add a little bit of flavor.
00:27We'll go up here to where the lead vocal is and we will go to the area where the
00:34first chorus ends, right before the post-chorus.
00:36(Music playing)
00:46I'm going to use the Ctrl, Option, and arrow keys to zoom in and make my edit on this vocal.
00:52So here we are, right here, just a couple of beats before the part.
00:55(Music playing)
00:58Right there, right on simply falling, that's the title of the song.
01:02I'm going to use that vocal bit.
01:04I hold down Command and my scissors. My secondary tool becomes available to me,
01:10and I will also hold down Ctrl so that I can get right in here, a fine edit point.
01:16And you can see as I click and hold that the location, measures 63 beat 4 3 173,
01:22is exactly where I'm making my edit, and I'll explain why I'm telling you this in
01:26a minute as I copy and paste it.
01:29Let's solo this out. And we will solo it out by just highlighting the audio
01:33region and hitting S.
01:34(Music playing)
01:40Okay, that's our edit and we will shrink the screen back down. And it's very
01:47important when you are making edits that are not actually on beat 1 beat 2 on
01:53the grid per say you click and hold and you'll see where I made my edit point
01:58and measures 63 beat 4 3 173.
02:02When I actually go to paste this, you'll notice that all that's happening is
02:07I'm just moving back complete measures and when I go to drop this, it will be locked in time.
02:15For example if I were to -- and I don't want to move the automation data -- if I was
02:21to not pay attention to that I could accidentally paste my vocal this way and
02:28it won't be in beat.
02:29Let's take a listen. (Music playing)
02:35That could work but I'd like the vocals to actually sit the way it sits in the chorus.
02:39So I will move it back to beat 4 of the measure before.
02:44We'll shut this off so it doesn't keep asking us.
02:48This is a nice vocal sample to segway into the next 8 bar section.
02:52I'm going to apply an echo on this and when I say echo Tape Delay is the
02:58plug-in I'm going to use.
02:59I've already setup a delay on Bus 7. In other words as I crank up the nobe here
03:05on Bus 7 it will send the vocal to this Tape Delay, which is on Bus 7.
03:11I'm going to zoom into the automation window, and we will spend more time in the
03:15automation window when we are in the mixing stages of the course, but I'm going
03:18to show you how to apply a delay to this vocal sample. I hit the H?
03:28Which blows up the track and down here, I'll shrink this so we can see
03:34it, automation data.
03:40All we need to do draw on the automation data is single click on the line here
03:44and it creates a bullet point and we create a second one so that we can move
03:49this up and down without moving the whole line up and down.
03:54I'm going to undo that.
03:59I'm slowly bringing up Bus 7 which will send this vocal to that echo and I'm
04:05actually going to solo this out while I do this just so I can hear how much
04:09delay it's throwing.
04:10(Music playing) It's pretty cool.
04:18That's sort of a high pass filter.
04:19We can look at the delay plug-in for a moment.
04:22It's set to half notes and I've set it up so that there's a little bit of a high
04:27pass filter, so everything below 360 Hertz is rolled off, so it has a little bit
04:31of an AM radio effect.
04:33But I don't want the whole phrase.
04:35I just want the "for you" part.
04:37So let's listen and I'll actually set this up so that only the "for you" of the
04:43'simply falling for you' phrase echoes.
04:45(Music playing)
04:52And I'll just move this bullet point over here.
04:54Don't want to do that.
04:56You can see as I'm editing I'm using the Command+Z key to undo some edits.
05:00When you're this close in on the screen it's very easy to accidentally grab a
05:05region a track below, a track above and move something that you didn't want to
05:09move resulting in misplaced audio regions, and if you're not paying attention you
05:14can actually cause yourself a lot more work.
05:17So let's take a listen to this.
05:18Now I'll just loop this here in the Cycle points.
05:21(Music playing) And there we go.
05:28Let's unsolo this and we'll hit A to take ourselves out of the automation window.
05:33I'll just take a moment to point out if you actually heard some delay prior to
05:37me applying this Tape Delay, it's because I had taken the time to set up the
05:42vocals with a reverb and delay on Bus 1 and 2.
05:44Bus 1 has a reverb, Bus 2 also has a delay but it's a different delay than the Tape Delay.
05:51This is actually a quarter note on the left side and an eighth note on the right side.
05:56You do have to make sure that your delays don't fight with each other, but one
06:00is a 1/4 note, one is an 8th note, one is a 1/2 note they all work together okay
06:05as long as one of them doesn't dominate the other.
06:08So let's take a listen to this vocal sample right here.
06:12(Music playing)
06:20As you can hear that's a nice segway into that new part coming in and we haven't
06:23even added the transitional sounds.
06:26So this is an example of how to take a vocal sample out of the lead vocal, cut
06:30it with the scissors,
06:32pay attention to where it sits in the bars beat, so that when you copy and move
06:35it you're able to place it in time, and, I went ahead and set up a new track and
06:40called it vox sample.
06:41Now let's move on to transitional sounds.
06:45The first thing I like to add with transitional sounds is a crash cymbal.
06:50I just pulled up the EXS909 and the C# key is a crash cymbal.
06:56Let me zoom-in and I will go ahead and record the crash cymbal.
07:01(Music playing)
07:11We'll quantize that up here to a quarter note, and I will trim back the MIDI
07:18region that is silence.
07:21I will copy and paste this crash cymbal almost every 8 bars.
07:24I might leave it out in the verses, but in the intros and the choruses and
07:29definitely the post choruses I will use it.
07:31Now I'll move on to add what I call transitional sounds.
07:36We can consider the crush cymbal the transitional sound but it's really more of
07:39an accent piece to highlight the downbeat of a new phrase.
07:43Right here I've pulled up the Cavern Kit which is a--
07:46(Music playing)
07:50A drum kit in the EXS and I'm actually going to use the drum fill as a
07:54transitional tool. That's something I like to do is program a drum fill, almost
07:59feels like it was sampled or lifted from another record.
08:03That's one thing that I like to do in the remixes is create these parts that
08:06sound like they were sampled from other records but actually were not, I played them in.
08:11It gives a remix of flavor.
08:13Let's go ahead and record this part in.
08:14I know I want to do a fill that's probably something like,
08:18Or something along those lines.
08:20(Music playing)
08:28And I will quantize that.
08:31Let's take a listen. (Music playing)
08:35So that fill acts as a transitional sound of sorts.
08:38Now let's move on and layer the crash cymbal with another crash cymbal.
08:44I'm going to go and play this in. The reason that I'm doing this is I like
08:47to have a splash of high frequencies in on the downbeats of the choruses or the post courses.
08:55So it really feels like you've arrived at the section.
08:58Let's record this in.
08:59(Music playing)
09:05That's a nice splash.
09:07So I will quantize that, trim back the unneeded MIDI region.
09:13(Music playing)
09:17And now let's move on to another transitional sound.
09:20(Music playing)
09:24This is a pitch transitional sound.
09:28Let's move onto another transitional sound and I'll actually use this
09:33transitional sound one bar before as a lead up to the downbeat, so it will work
09:39in conjunction with the drum fill.
09:41(Music playing) I like this note.
09:45This is a nice low note.
09:46It will complement the drum fill.
09:49(Music playing)
09:57And let's quantize that.
09:58So what we're really doing here is setting up moments in the mix, a one bar
10:03moment that than is part of the tension and release process.
10:07Let's trim back the unneeded MIDI region and let's go ahead and add
10:12another transitional sound.
10:14(Music playing)
10:19These are all part of the EXS 24 standard library and you can find them under Textures.
10:26These are different presets in Cinematic Textures. And I'm actually going to
10:33increase the release a little bit and I'd like this sound to echo a little bit.
10:39So I went ahead and set up another Tape Delay that has a quarter note as its
10:44duration and like the other Tape Delay I applied a high pass filter and in this
10:48case I rolled off all the frequencies below 490 Hertz.
10:52So let's go ahead and record this in and you'll hear, as I bring the Bus up,
10:59there's a little bit of an echo.
11:03Creates a nice slight bit of white noise to go underneath the rest of the track,
11:07it adds a little bit of edge, a little bit of dimension.
11:10(Music playing)
11:21And let's quantize, trim back the unneeded MIDI region.
11:27So you see what we've done here is we've created what I like to call the third
11:30dimension of the remix, the front to back.
11:32We think of listening in stereo left to right.
11:35These moments, these sounds, these sweeps and effects and transitional sounds
11:39really give the mix some depth, the front to back part and I will, as we move
11:45on in the next movie copy and paste them throughout the mix as I begin to build
11:51up the rest of the arrangement and actually finish the arrangement and move on
11:55to the mixing process.
Collapse this transcript
Advanced vocal editing techniques
00:00Let's take a few minutes to dive a bit deeper into Vocal Editing.
00:05I will expand the screen using the Ctrl+Option+Arrow keys.
00:11And I will hone in on this vocal sample that I grabbed, which was basically
00:16the title of the song.
00:17Let's just take a listen to it.
00:19(Music playing)
00:27I'm going to turn the Delay off that I added for the purposes of showing you how
00:34to do some advanced vocal editing tricks.
00:37There's certainly a plug-ins you can experiment with, like Ring Modulators, I
00:42will pull one of those up just as an example.
00:45So Ringshifter, and we will solo out the vocal.
00:52(Music playing)
00:57Let's pull down a Preset Menu and we can experiment with a couple of different presets.
01:00We will go to Warped, Crazy LFO. (Music playing)
01:09And let's try Moving Pad. (Music playing)
01:16So as you can see, these are some pretty crazy-sounding effects, but I'm going to
01:21take off the Ringshifter and show you some vocal editing techniques, because
01:26that's not really vocal editing.
01:27That's actually just apply a plug-in.
01:29Let's take this Scissors Tool, and we will expand the screen a little bit, and
01:35let's cut the vocal.
01:37We will very finally cut it up.
01:44I am making my cuts to coincide with the beats of the measure.
01:54So now that I've made all the cuts, we can actually experiment with muting out
01:58different parts of the audio region.
02:03I'm just clicking and pressing M on the different edit points of the audio
02:07region to mute them out.
02:08(Music playing)
02:13That's almost a tremolo effect sort of a fade in/fadeout type of effect.
02:18It's pretty cool. Let's listen to it against the drums.
02:21(Music playing)
02:28Okay, we can even take this idea a little bit further.
02:31So let me take one part of the phrase here.
02:35(Music playing)
02:38And I'm going to just delete out the rest of this.
02:40I can always undo by Command+Z, remember this is nondestructive editing.
02:45And I will take these two edited regions and I'm going to just arbitrarily place
02:52them along the grid and just see what it sounds like.
02:55(Music playing) That's pretty cool.
02:59That's almost a dotted 8th note syncopated, da, da, da, da feel.
03:04So let's take a listen to that again.
03:06(Music playing)
03:18I think that's pretty cool.
03:19Now let's add some Delay to it.
03:21There is already some Delay on it, on Bus 2 actually.
03:25But let's add the Tape Delay and let's actually change the duration of the
03:31Tape Delay to match.
03:32So in here this Groove slider, this is basically the duration of the notes straight.
03:38If you slide this over to 75%, it actually treats it as if it's a dot.
03:42For example, a dotted eighth note, a dotted quarter note, a dotted half note.
03:47So let's try a dotted eighth note, because that's really the rhythm that, that
03:50vocal sample is playing.
03:52(Music playing)
03:55And let's bring the Bus up.
03:57(Music playing)
04:00Let's really bring it up, so we can hear it.
04:06Oh, the Automation data is still on, so this is a good thing.
04:09I'm going to actually turn the Automation Off.
04:14What was happening was this automation data was pulling it back down.
04:17So it is a good housekeeping rule.
04:19Always check Automation data.
04:21If something is not performing the way that you are intending it to perform,
04:26it's possible that maybe there's some Automation data left on the track from an
04:29edit that you did, several steps ago that you forgot about.
04:33So I've turned the Automation Off.
04:35We have the Read, Touch, Latch, Write selector here, I am turning it to Off, so
04:39now, when I bring this up, we will definitely hear the Delay this time.
04:42(Music playing) It's actually a little too much Delay,
04:49so I will bring the Send, which is the Bus, down a little bit.
04:54(Music playing)
05:06So this gives you an idea of how you can use the editing tools within Logic to
05:10create some exciting and tension building vocal effects.
05:15I highly recommend taking the time to do this.
05:17This is the type of edit where I might want to use it 4 and a half minutes into the
05:22track when everything is broken down and I am building a backup to slam into the
05:25hype, the apex of the song before breaking it down.
05:29This can be a very tedious process, but very rewarding, once you've gotten on
05:33the other side of the actual editing
05:35because you will come up with very new and exciting and creative vocal tricks,
05:40and this really will help your productions come up a level.
Collapse this transcript
Filling holes in the arrangement
00:00For the purposes of this movie, I have muted the lead vocal, leaving only the
00:04vocal samples and the rest of the track.
00:07And as you can see, the arrangement is built up quite a bit from where we last left of.
00:12One of the things that I like to do prior to the mixing stages is to actually
00:17sit and listen to the track as almost an instrumental.
00:20I generally will leave the vocal samples in, because I do consider them to be
00:24transitional sounds.
00:25And I like to listen to the track from start to finish, and make sure that the
00:29track as an instrumental has the energy that I'm looking for, Ebbs and Flows;
00:34in the arrangement is paste well.
00:35The only way to really feel out the arrangement and decide if it makes sense
00:40from start to finish, is to actually sit and listen to it several times through
00:44and make sure that there is not pockets of unnecessary 8 bar or 16 bar sections,
00:49you really only want to have in your arrangement, what you need.
00:53You don't need to make it an eight minute mix, if it doesn't need to be an eight-minute mix.
00:58So let me take you on a brief tour of what I've done as I have finished out the arrangement.
01:02I've copied and pasted the vocal samples in the various parts of the
01:05arrangement, mostly in the intro and the outro here.
01:08And I've copied and pasted the crash cymbal pretty much every eight bars
01:13throughout the entire song.
01:16And I've added a second drum fill which is colored in red and a third drum fill
01:20which is colored in green.
01:22So I have used the color palette tool so that it will help me differentiate between
01:26which drum fill is which, as I went ahead and copied and pasted.
01:30So what we have here is essentially a finished arrangement; a DJ drum intro, the
01:36body of the song, verse 1 here, chorus 1, the post-chorus verse 2, chorus 2,
01:43post chorus 2 and a section that I like to refer to as the drop.
01:48And essentially what I've done is dropped out everything, but a couple of elements.
01:53And I will just play this instrumental section and you can hear when the track
01:57kicks back in, how the energy picks up.
01:59(Music playing)
02:25You'll also notice that on the master fader, I applied a channel strip setting
02:29simulating mastering.
02:30I will explain this further as we get into the mixing portion of the course.
02:34So let's just play the outro, because we did spend a few minutes several movies
02:39ago listening to the intro, or the intro under construction.
02:42So I've got the post-chorus happening here in the vocal samples filling in the
02:47holes and then the arrangement breaks down and ends basically off of 16 bars of drums.
02:54(Music playing)
03:52And it ends at the end of that phrase with a crash cymbal on the downbeat.
03:56So I also added one more transitional sound which you heard here as we were
04:00playing through measure 152 into 153.
04:02And I actually switched the Piano sounds.
04:06So you will notice that there's a different Piano preset under the EXS24 Piano.
04:11And that is an overview of what a finished arrangement looks like.
04:15You should have an intro and outro that builds in the intro, builds into may
04:20an 8 bar hype section, full instrumentation and then it breaks down into verse
04:261, the body of the song, some sort of an 8 bar or maybe even the 16 bar drop,
04:31which is what this section is over here, where everything breaks down, except
04:34for a few keyboard parts.
04:36We slam back into the track for a strong chorus and post-chorus and outro,
04:41and the track deconstructs at the end, ending on a crash cymbal.
04:44So I hope this tour of the final arrangement gives you insight, into how to
04:48finish off the arrangement that you're working on.
04:51Fill in the holes, and come up with a very solid five and a half minute to six and a half minute mix that makes sense.
04:58There is no extra fluff in this arrangement.
05:00There are no 8 bar sections that don't need to be here.
05:04It's very important that you listen to the track all the way through to make
05:07these final decisions as to whether a section should stay or go or if it needs
05:11to be extended or shortened.
05:13These are all things that you can't really make decisions on until you sit and
05:18listen to something in an almost finished state.
Collapse this transcript
7. Completing the Arrangement and Creating a Final Mix
Mixing philosophies
00:00We've come to a very exciting portion of the course, the mix, but before we dive
00:05in and actually mix I would like to discuss my mixing philosophies and
00:08approaches for a few moments.
00:10What we're looking at here is the Arrange window of the final mix.
00:14I have all my tracks in the order that I like them to be in and if we take a
00:18moment to look at that I prefer to put the vocals up top, I like to group the
00:24instruments in sections.
00:25So we have vocals, vocal samples, drums from low frequency on up starting with
00:33the kick drum, the top loops and the year candy to the crash cymbal, the
00:38transitional sounds and then the bass followed by the keyboards and if I were to
00:44have guitars in a mix I would put them after the keyboards, but I like to think
00:49of my mix like a house, you built the foundation first and then you construct
00:54the rest of the house.
00:55Another way to think of a mix is if you're in the Goodyear blimp and you were
00:58staring down on a baseball field and the vocal is the pitcher's mound and home
01:02plate is the kick drum.
01:04All of this imagery helps me while I'm sitting down to dial in vocal, dial in
01:08the low end and a cymbal of mix;
01:10this is a very critical part of the process.
01:13If you're able to make your mixes sound finished people will respond in a
01:17completely different manner than if your mixes sound unfinished.
01:21As you can see I actually have a track that I don't need this was a placeholder
01:25a duplicate track of the vocal sample box samples track.
01:29So I'm actually going to delete this and I'll delete the automation data.
01:34So one thing that will help you when you're actually sitting down to begin the
01:38mix, is to really make sure that this Arrange window was organized.
01:42Color coat different sections if that's what helps you, make sure that your
01:46tracks are named the way that you would like them to be named and allow
01:50yourself to have a streamlined set up, so that you're not getting lost in your own arrangement.
01:55Let's take a look at the mixer window. I hit Command+2 and I'll pops the mixer window.
02:00The track order on the arrange window corresponds to the left right track order
02:05on the mixer window.
02:06If I wanted to rename something on the mixer window it would rename on
02:09the Arrange window.
02:11So as we take a look at the mixer window from left to right, again, vocals,
02:15drums, bass and the rest of the keyboards, I've gone ahead and set up reverbs
02:21and delays and some extra effects that I'll get to as we dive deeper into the mixing process.
02:28Now you'll notice on the master fader I do have what I call a mastering chain.
02:34Some of my colleagues feel that it's not a great idea to actually assemble your
02:38final mix with mastering plug-ins on the master fader, I feel that for remixing,
02:44and my history in remixing, that it is a good idea, you just have to be very
02:49careful with how you set up your mastering chain.
02:51This is a very conservative mastering chain composed of all logic plug-ins and
02:56once you begin to understand what each plug-in does, it's very easy to set them
03:01in a conservative fashion.
03:03Some of the mastering plug-in presets for the channel strip,
03:06if I click down here, you see a whole list of different mastering scenarios and a
03:12lot of these mastering channels strip presets are little bit heavy-handed and if
03:16you just slap them on your mix they may not flatter your mix.
03:19What I've done is setup my own mastering chain that allows me to build my final
03:23mix and because these settings are so conservative, it's not really an issue. And
03:29I will tell a brief story in my second remix for major-label years ago.
03:34I turned in a mixed down of the final mix and I had nothing on the master fader
03:39and the volume was very low.
03:41The A&R person who is A&R in the remix didn't like the way the mix sounded and
03:45almost rejected it, but it was nice enough to give me a chance to resubmit it
03:50and I applied what I would call mastering simulation on the track which
03:54basically made it louder and punchier and it sounded finished.
03:57This is the sheen that a finished track has, and once I resubmitted the track he
04:02was very happy with the way it sounded and the mix was accepted.
04:05So you have to take it case by case. If you're able to have a professional
04:09mastering engineer master your mix then all you would need to do would be to
04:13disengage these plug-ins bypass them by holding down the Option key and clicking
04:19and simply pull down this master fader, so that there is several DB of headroom
04:24up here and send the mastering engineer a stereo wave file bounce of your mix.
04:29But in this day and age our budgets are tight, most of us don't have the luxury
04:34of a mastering engineer taking our mix at the final stages.
04:37So I learned early on to simulate my own mastering and there have been many
04:42scenarios where I've actually had my mastered mix, this mastering setup here be
04:49the final-final that winds up being played on the radio or goes to club DJs.
04:53So take the time to play with this it will help your mix sound finished.
04:58As we move back to the arrange window again as we scroll up and down and look at
05:03the different tracks.
05:04The channel strip settings for each track do appear in the Inspector window and
05:09I also use this window during the mixing process.
05:13To access automation we just simply hit A and that brings us to the automation
05:18window and all of the plug-ins including the volume and pan are accessible here
05:24we click and hold and whatever plug- ins are actually on the channel strip, and
05:28we'll use the vocal as an example, you see the tape delay send three and all of
05:34these parameters for each plug-in are available to you in the automation window.
05:39So you can do some very interesting things with filtering, volume, swells,
05:42panning, filter cut off, things of that nature.
05:46We just click A and it takes us back to the Arrange window.
05:49So I hope that this gives you a nice tour of logic arrange in mixing window with
05:54a mix that's in its final stages.
05:56Again use caution with the mastering plug-ins. I actually put them on at the
06:00very beginning and I build my mix with them on, but it will take a moment for
06:04you to get a handle on what the limiter does, what the compressor does, and in
06:09this session in the exercise files I have provided you with my channel strips
06:14setup which you're welcome to use as a jumping off point for your own mixes.
06:18If you would like to understand on a deeper level just what these plug-ins do,
06:22please check out Logic Pro 9 Essential Training with Scott Hirsch, available on
06:27the Lynda.com Online Training Library.
Collapse this transcript
Mixing drums and bass
00:00The first step that I like to take when I sit down and construct to final mix is
00:04to mute all of the channels.
00:06Then I will highlight the eight bar section that contains the most amount
00:09of instrumentation.
00:11I unmute the kick drum, and I'll also unmute the kick trigger that will trigger
00:15the compressors because as I bring the bass in, the secondary bass sound, it is
00:19side chained by the kick drum.
00:21So let's listen to the kick drum by itself.
00:24(Music playing)
00:28It's a nice healthy kick sound. I don't feel the need to add any additional EQ.
00:33My EQ setting on my mastering channel strip is taking care of some additional
00:37low-end boosting and I'll show you right there 2db at 61 Hertz to really pull a
00:43little bit extra low-end out.
00:47The next step is to bring the bass in, the main bass part.
00:50(Music playing)
01:02You'll notice I have two plug-ins on the bass, one is an EQ, and I'm rolling off
01:07the low end because I don't want any sub bass frequencies to fight with the
01:10low-end frequencies in my kick drum.
01:12In other words you're going to run into problems with the low-end sonics of your
01:16mix, if you have a base pushing low frequencies of 60 Hertz on down and a kick
01:22drum pushing 60 Hertz on down.
01:23The two cannot live in that same sonic space. So I roll off with a high pass
01:29filter here everything below 61 Hertz and I bump it a little bit at 95, 4db at
01:3695 Hertz with a Q. A Q refers to how narrow or wide the EQ curve is and I'll put
01:43this back where it was at 130, 1.3 and close it then I added a compressor and
01:51it's a conservative compression, not a lot 1.5db to one ratio and the threshold
01:57is at -16.5dB with a makeup gain of 1.5dB.
02:02(Music playing)
02:07So you see that as the base is being compressed it's only been compressed
02:11about two to three dB.
02:13I'll close the compressor and as the base in drums or looping I'll add the
02:17other drum elements.
02:18(Music playing)
02:53So that grove is sounding really good. The blend is nice there is not too much
02:56going on a high end of the drums.
02:58The high-end frequencies of the high hats and the crash cymbals and the
03:01transitional sounds are coming to the mix nicely.
03:04I like a little bit of a punch in the high end not too much, because things can
03:08get a little bit brittle and shrill sounding if there's too much high-end.
03:11Now I'll bring in the secondary base sound, our ES1 base sound that has the kick
03:17side changed into the compressor.
03:19(Music playing)
03:29You'll notice that this is poking into the red just a little bit 0.3dB, I'm not
03:34worried about it there's no audible distortion and most importantly we're not
03:37hitting the red on our Master fader and that's where you would really hear the
03:41distortion if there was any.
03:43A slight portion to the one or two dB in the red is not a huge deal and I've
03:48never been able to pick up any sonic distortion when some of the metering goes
03:521, 2, 3 dB into the red on the actual independent tracks themselves.
03:57In addition to the side change compressor I've added distortion.
04:01Now I put that on Bus 6 and my Send on Bus 6 corresponds to my return on Bus 6
04:07and let's just take a listen to what the distortion does in terms of adding a
04:10little bit of bite to this bass sound.
04:12I will solo out the bass and then I'll actually just solo out the plug-ins, so
04:16you can hear what the plug-in brings to the table in terms of adding a little
04:20bit of bite on the high-end.
04:21(Music playing)
04:25Now let's listen to just the plug-in.
04:28Notice when I click on Bus 6 it brings up a corresponding return, Bus 6.
04:32(Music playing)
04:37So that set of frequencies is being added to this base and I've gone ahead and
04:43rolled off low-end in this bass as well. Because I have two bass sounds now and
04:46they need to coexist in terms of the low-end frequencies.
04:50(Music playing)
05:05So as you can hear, both bass sounds are sitting very nicely in the drum grove.
05:09I start every mix this way the bass and the drums are the foundation.
05:13A word of caution when mixing drums and bass is very easy to muddy the mix with
05:18too much low end. I mentioned it with rolling off the low-end using a high pass
05:22filter with both bass sounds.
05:25I happen to like a healthy amount of lowland in my mixes, but there is a fine
05:28line and you do need to be aware of it.
05:31Compression and EQ are wonderful tools to dial these frequencies in and really
05:35listen to make sure that the low-end elements are not fighting one another.
Collapse this transcript
Mixing synths and transitional sounds
00:00Now that the drums and bass are in good shape it's time to start adding in the
00:03synths and the transitional sounds.
00:06Now you'll notice from the last movie I actually did unmute the
00:09transitional sounds.
00:10But we'll actually zoom in on them in different sections of the remix where all
00:14of them are playing.
00:15Let's begin with the foundational synth parts and make sure that those are
00:19sitting nicely in the mix.
00:20So what I consider to be the foundational synth parts are the Pad, Dark Pad 03
00:25as well as the Basic Velo Patch.
00:30And what I've done with the Basic Velo Patch is added reverb as well as an EQ.
00:36So if I click on Bus 3, we see I added in AVerb right here under the Reverb
00:40menu, pulled down AVerb, and I actually just went for a Logic preset, the
00:45default is what I used and I brought the return down so that there was not too
00:49much of a wash on the reverb.
00:51I will solo that out so you can take a listen.
00:53(Music playing)
01:01You'll notice that I had Bus 4 set up and then I took it off.
01:05The reason I did that is because I felt that adding in delay made the track messy.
01:09There were one, too many rhythms with the delays, echoing, and bouncing around
01:13within the drum and bass track.
01:15But just for the purposes of letting you A-B, what it sounds like with delay and
01:19without, I'll Option+click and turn it back on.
01:22(Music playing)
01:33So you can hear the echo, and that definitely adds another rhythmic element to
01:36the part but it wasn't quite the right rhythmic element for the mix.
01:39So I Option+click and turn it off.
01:42Now I'll unmute the Basic Velo track and we'll go ahead and listen to the Dark
01:47Pad and the Basic Velo along with the bass and drums.
01:49(Music playing)
02:09In addition to the Side Chain Compressor on the Dark Pad 03 track, I went
02:14ahead and added EQ.
02:16I rolled off 150 Hertz on down because generally with textural synths, or like
02:23synth pads, most keyboard sounds actually, I like to roll off around 150 Hertz
02:28on down with a high-pass filter because that gives the bass more room to live.
02:33And I pop the high end a little bit with 6.5 dB at 5200 Hertz or 5.2K.
02:40I'll close this, I added reverb and some delay, and because the part is a
02:45held-stained part, the delays really don't factor in, in terms of getting in the
02:49way of the other elements.
02:50It just adds a little bit of a dimension to the part.
02:53So we can take a listen to this part soloed out.
02:56(Music playing)
03:11It's not a drastic difference between listening to it dry and with effects,
03:15but it's just enough to add a little bit of sheen and give the sound a
03:18slightly different timbre.
03:20So again, let's take a quick listen to these two elements in with the rest of
03:23the drums and bass and transitional sounds.
03:26(Music playing)
03:36So now I'll bring in the Grand Piano and the low saw wave synth that we call
03:40Dance Basic from the EXS24, and let's take listen to the track bringing
03:44these two elements in.
03:45(Music playing)
04:04As I go to the Grand Piano track, you'll notice I added reverb and we can take a
04:08listen to the reverb on the Grand Piano track.
04:11(Music playing)
04:14And here it is without any reverb.
04:15(Music playing)
04:19It's much more of a two- dimensional sound without reverb.
04:22So I add the reverb, it gives us a nice front-to-back a three-dimensional sound.
04:27(Music playing)
04:29Little bit of the decay there on the reverb, and then let's take a listen to the
04:33Dance Basic track which I also added an EQ after the compressor which is side
04:37chain by the kick drum.
04:39And I rolled off at 86 Hertz here as opposed to 150 because I'm actually looking
04:44to have this sound support the bass just a little bit.
04:47It's not meant to be a bass layer per se,
04:50it's just a low synth part that happens to have enough low-end that when
04:54you layer it in with the two bass parts, it adds a little bit more meat in
04:57that frequency range.
04:59So let's take a listen.
05:00(Music playing)
05:08And we'll put everything back in.
05:10(Music playing)
05:29Now we'll add the last of our keyboard parts.
05:31We have our Trance Travel Synth, we have our Electro Emotion Synth, and these
05:36are our two Apple Loops.
05:38We'll add these two in first before we add the high-end keyboard parts.
05:42(Music playing)
06:02So you'll notice with the Travel Synth, I added a plug-in from the Pedalboard
06:06and all we need to do to access the Pedalboard is to click and pull down the
06:10menu to Amps and Pedals and there is the Pedalboard plug-in.
06:14I double-click and here's a PHAZE plug-in that I put on the Pedalboard.
06:18Basically simulates a stomp box, a guitar stomp box phase pedal.
06:22And all you need to do to bring a pedal onto the Pedalboard is double-click it.
06:27If you leave the cursor on the Pedalboard for a few seconds, a description of
06:30what the pedal is pops up.
06:32All we need to do to remove a pedal from the Pedalboard is to highlight it and delete it.
06:37So here's the Travel Synth soloed and we'll listen to it first with the Phaser
06:41off, and I just simply press the silver button here and I will pop the Phaser in
06:46and out as we listen through the chord cycle.
06:48(Music playing)
07:05So now you have an idea of what it sounds like what the Phaser on and off.
07:09Let's explore a couple of the parameters within the Phase Pedal and I'll push
07:12them around to an extreme setting so you really can hear what's going on.
07:16The Sweep has to do with how drastic the actual whew of the Phaser sound is.
07:22(Music playing)
07:48You'll notice as I selected the rate, it was giving me Half Note, Quarter Note
07:52with a Dot, Half Note Triplet, Quarter Note.
07:55Because I've chosen the Phaser to be in sync with the BPM of the song, it allows
07:59me to choose different note values.
08:01I've restored the settings pretty close to where they were before I took you
08:04through sort of the Phase Pedal.
08:06So let's go ahead and close this out and I actually added a little bit of
08:10compression because the Phaser sweeps and there are peaks and valleys in the
08:14sound, it's a little bit dynamic and I wanted to make sure that the compressor
08:18grabs some of those peaks.
08:20(Music playing)
08:27You can see the compressor working a little bit.
08:28It's not just a steady grab, it's pulsing a little bit and parts of it are half
08:32a dB all the way up to three dB of compression.
08:35So let's unsolo this and take a listen to the other Apple Loop which is the
08:40Electro Emotion Synth.
08:42All I did here is simply add an EQ boost, really just a gain.
08:47I like to put these EQ plug-ins on in the event that I want to do an EQ cut or a boost.
08:52I also have a Master Gain if I'd like something to be boosted 2 or 3 dB.
08:56You're certainly welcome to boost your volumes over here with the Master Fader.
09:00I just happen to do it over here with this Master Gain, and I've slightly panned
09:05these off to the left and right.
09:06So the Trance Travel Synth is at about 10 o'clock and the Electro Emotion Synth
09:11is at maybe 1 o'clock.
09:13Let's move on to listen to the last two keyboard sounds and the Analog Bass from
09:17the ES2 which is being played in a higher register as well as the Solina Strings
09:21sound which is really our lead line hook.
09:23(Music playing)
09:42With both of these sounds, all I did is add reverb and delay, Bus 3 and 4, just
09:47to give them a little more space and dimension much like with the other sounds
09:50that I've added reverb and delay to.
09:52I added a little bit of gain with Solina part, boosted it a few dB, and with the
09:59Analog Bass sound, I actually rolled off at 220 Hertz so that it really has a
10:04smaller sound to it.
10:05Let's solo it out and take a listen.
10:07(Music playing)
10:20You can hear as I was disengaging and engaging the high-pass filter on those low
10:24notes, it really makes a difference.
10:26I wanted this sound to be a little bit smaller so that it wouldn't step on the
10:29other elements of the mix.
10:31Let's take a moment to explore the transitional sounds, I'll move to the Measure
10:3432 area where several sounds are coming in at the same time.
10:38At Measure 33, this is where all of instrumentation comes in, in full force.
10:43So several transitional sounds are happening here leading up to the downbeat of
10:46Measure 33 and we'll just take a listen to those.
10:48(Music playing)
11:00And you can hear as I stop the playback that there is some delay that's
11:03continuing to carry on with this sound, TransitionFX1.
11:07Remember, I applied the Tape Delay setting several movies ago, and we have a 51%
11:14feedback, but it's a high -pass filtered feedback.
11:17So it carries on for a while, it just adds a little bit of a white noise type
11:21sound underneath the whole mix, something that's not very audible but if I were
11:25to mute it, you would notice that something was missing from the main mix.
11:29This should give you a good overview of how to blend your synth sounds after
11:33you've already set up your drums and bass, and think about reverbs and delays,
11:37EQs and compression. Panning as well, left to right, front to back as far as
11:43adding effects, adding depth.
11:44It's very easy to go a little crazy with delays and reverb so you may find
11:48yourself washing your mix out at first but then having to scale things back, and that's okay.
11:54There's nothing wrong with putting up the volume knob a little bit high at first
11:57to make sure that something is poking out the way you want it to poke out.
12:01But remember, all of the decisions that I've made during the mixing process up
12:04until this point are made in support of the vocal.
12:08So as we move into the next movie, which is mixing vocals, we'll see how all of
12:12these elements tie together.
Collapse this transcript
Mixing vocals
00:00Hands down, mixing vocals is the most time consuming part of the mixing process,
00:05because it will require the most amount of automation, and on some level, the
00:09most amount of critical listening.
00:12We've touched upon automation a little bit in previous movies, but we will
00:15really dive into it full force when I show you what's involved with automating a lead vocal.
00:21But, before we dive into the automation process, let's take a look at the
00:25Channel Strip setting that I've set up for this vocal.
00:28Earlier on, I added reverb and delay, because I didn't want to work on the mix,
00:32with just a drive vocal.
00:33But, now I've dialed it in a little bit more, and I pulled the returns down on
00:38both the reverb and delay as well as added a Phaser to the delay. And let's go
00:43ahead and take a listen to that.
00:44Now, I'm going to solo out the lead vocal and highlight our 24-bar section which
00:49is verse 1 and chorus 1 and I will solo both vocals.
00:53Down here is the Vocal Sample.
00:54(Music playing)
01:11You can hear that when I took the Phaser off the delay, it did change the way
01:15that the delay sounds.
01:16I like to have shimmer on the delays.
01:18The Phaser rounds them off a little bit and they sort of have a sweeping sound
01:24as they are echoing.
01:25So that's a trademark of my vocal setup.
01:28I almost always put Phasers on delays, and the delays are at quarter notes on
01:34the left and quarter notes on the right.
01:36Now you'll notice that I slightly adjusted the groove on the right side.
01:41I purposefully did not, let the right side of the Stereo Delay be exactly the
01:46same as the left side, they are offset.
01:47Here is what it sounds like if they're not offset.
01:50(Music playing)
02:06What's happening here is when the delays are ever so slightly offset, the delay
02:10is actually spread wider, and the difference between these two is so negligible
02:14that the right delay is not going to sound out of time.
02:17When I put this back to 50%, the echo was very centered, and I actually prefer
02:23to have the delay spread a little bit.
02:25So that's why I pull it down to 49.666%.
02:29I've added an EQ and I've reduced 5.5 dB at a 156 Hz, which was giving me a
02:36little bit of a low sound in the voice that wasn't too crazy about.
02:41I'll put it back in so you can hear.
02:42(Music playing)
03:00Again, this is very subtle.
03:02It might not catch your ears at first the difference between having this EQ in
03:06and out, but what's going on is that on some of her low notes throughout the
03:10song, if there is too much low mid, and I consider this to be a low mid
03:14frequency, 150 Hz, it starts to get woofy sounding, and it gets in the way and
03:19it sounds muddy and the lyrics are not audible.
03:22So that's the way I've set the EQ.
03:24I didn't feel the need to pop anything on the high end, and I've left it flat,
03:28and just only reduced some of the low mid frequencies.
03:32The Compressor is set very conservatively.
03:34Let's take a look at it.
03:35(Music playing)
03:42It's only compressing several dB.
03:44This vocal was actually sent to me with some EQ and compression already on it.
03:49So I don't want to over- compress by adding my own compressor.
03:52So I just want a little bit here to grab some of the higher transients.
03:57Now, let's move on to the automation process.
04:00I will unsolo the vocals, and they will be in with the rest of the track and I
04:04hit the A key and that brings us back to the Automation screen and we're going
04:08to look at the Volume Parameters.
04:09Again, you can choose Pan and all of the parameters for all of your plugins are automatable.
04:16But, for now, let's focus on volume.
04:19You can see, as I shrink the screen and show you the whole song, that there are
04:24quite a few bumps and ducks.
04:27I pop some words a few dB louder, and I pulled some things down a couple of dB here and there.
04:32When I am in the process of mixing vocals, it's very important to marry the
04:37vocals to the music.
04:39I've been told by many people over the years that the way that my remixes sound,
04:43it almost sounds as if the singer recorded their vocals to my mix.
04:47So you really want to go after having your vocals sound like they belong with
04:52the music that's underneath them.
04:54So let's take a listen and I will go ahead and run this from Verse 1 and you can
04:59hear that even though these are just subtle moves, a push here, a duck here, it
05:05allows the vocal to sit very level.
05:08It's not too loud, it's not too soft, there is not a word or a syllable of
05:12a word that's jumping out too loud or there is not a syllable of a word that's buried.
05:16So let's take a listen to it from Verse 1.
05:18(Music playing)
05:36I'll highlight this moment right here on the word you keep.
05:39I've raised this 1.7 dB on just this one word because I felt that it was getting lost.
05:45(Music playing)
05:50I'll Command+Z to bring it back.
05:52Actually, I'll loop this section, so we can listen to this with the
05:56Automation off and on.
05:58(Music playing)
06:19Just the part on the word ya, it's brought up a little bit, and I'm not losing the lyric.
06:24When I listen to the vocals in the mix, I don't want to struggle to hear the lyrics.
06:28It's very important.
06:29Vocals are actually the first thing I believe that people gravitate towards when
06:34they are listening to a full vocal record.
06:36If they can't hear the words, that's the first comments out of their mouth.
06:39No matter how great the rest of the track sounds, if you're struggling to
06:43understand what the singer is saying, then you've got problems, and you will be
06:47back at the drawing board revising your mix.
06:49So let's move on to later in the song where I've really had to push several
06:54dB of automation here.
06:55(Music playing)
07:12Let me roll this section again, turning the Automation off, so that no
07:16automation data will be read, and you can hear what it sounds like without
07:21automation, and just how buried this section is. (Music playing)
07:43Let's take a listen to this passage again with the automation data being read.
07:47(Music playing)
08:04So this is the part of the song where Iyeoka is singing at the top of her range.
08:08It's a very special moment in the vocal performance, and I certainly want to
08:11make sure that it's highlighted.
08:13That gives you an idea of sometimes how much automation need to apply.
08:173 dB may not sound like a lot, but it's definitely the difference between a
08:22vocal sounding buried and a vocal sounding upfront.
08:25Now we're fortunate enough in this mix that we're only dealing with one lead vocal.
08:29But, think about if you had a lead and maybe some stereo background vocals and
08:36some harmonies on the verses.
08:38You really have to create a sonic space for your vocals, and it takes the most
08:43amount of time of the mixing process because you're dealing with a human
08:46performance, and I don't think I've ever worked on a remix where I haven't had
08:50to do some amount of automation on the vocals.
08:54You can see how involved automating the vocals are, and it's important to take
08:57frequent breaks to keep your ears fresh.
09:00It's very easy to fatigue your ears resulting in vocals that are too loud or not loud enough.
09:05I find that I actually put the vocals up too loud the more that I listen to
09:10something over and over.
09:11So I frequently take breaks every 20 minutes to walk around the room and clear my head.
09:16Remember, this is the part of the process where you really have to keep your perspective.
09:21It's very easy to think that after I've listened to something 25-30 times, oh
09:25I can hear it, I know the song, I know the lyrics, and you have to remember
09:30that when someone has heard your mix for the first time, they are not going to
09:33have that advantage.
09:34So it's important that all the elements of the mix whether you are listening to
09:38it at a loud volume or a soft volume come through.
09:41We don't want to have any one element popping out or being buried when listening
09:46to the mix at different volumes.
09:49I hope this gives you some insight as to how to approach mixing a lead vocal.
09:53For those of you who are doing this for the first time, I encourage you to
09:56be extremely patient.
09:57This is not a skill that happens overnight.
10:01You will need to do many, many, many mixes to really dial this in, and I'm not
10:05saying that to be discouraging, this is really the part of the mixing process
10:09that requires the most amount of hours log.
10:13It took me years before I felt like I really, really had a handle on how to mix vocals.
10:18It's a craft and you need to approach it as such.
10:21So do not get frustrated.
10:23Make sure to step away from the computer, make sure to not burn out your ears,
10:27because this part of the process will fatigue your ears much faster than all the
10:32other parts of the remixing process.
Collapse this transcript
Final touches, referencing, and mastering your final mix
00:00Okay, we're in the final stages of the mixing process and before we bounce
00:04down our final mix, let's take a moment to give everything an overview, Final
00:09Touches as I'd like to say.
00:11Take a look at your Arrange window and make sure that everything is in
00:14order from your vocal samples to your drums to your base to all of your keyboard parts.
00:20Make sure that nothing has been miss-copied or miss-pasted,
00:24make sure that nothing has been left out of your arrangement.
00:27And also this is a good time to talk about referencing your mix.
00:31I like to listen to my final mixes on my studio monitors,
00:35I actually have two different sets to A, B back and forth.
00:38I also listen in headphones but I don't mix in headphones, I simply use
00:42headphones as the reference tool.
00:44Then I'll burn CDs and take them out to my car or if you have an iPod or MP3
00:49player take that out to your car, plug that into the auxiliary in jack and take
00:54a listen in your car.
00:55Take your mix over to where your friend might be DJing and get a sense of
00:59what your mix sounds like in different listening environments, this is very important.
01:03The vocals may sound a little bit louder at your friend's place and sound a
01:07little bit quieter in the car, it just depends.
01:10What we're looking to achieve in the final mix is a mix that will translate
01:13onto different systems.
01:15So I'd like to sit and listen to the remix from start to finish multiple times
01:19before bouncing down.
01:20Let's also take a moment to look at the mastering chain.
01:24Command+2 and here we have our mastering chain.
01:28We have a Multi Meter,
01:29these are visual displays of the frequencies within the Mix.
01:32(Music playing)
01:40And then we have our EQ which is an EQ that affects the overall mix.
01:44Next we have a compressor and this is set very conservatively to only compress a few dB.
01:49(Music playing)
01:55Then we have the Adaptive Limiter, and I make sure that when I put this on,
02:00because this is a plug-in you have to be very careful with,
02:03you do not want the margin here over on the left side to slam into the red.
02:07I'd like to set the Input Scale low enough and the Gain low enough so
02:10that nothing slamming into the red, I also make sure that there is no
02:14audible distortion.
02:15Limiting is a very delicate process so you have to use it conservatively.
02:20Finally we have the Multi Meter which gives us a graphic EQ type of an
02:26analysis of our mix.
02:28As we look at the Multi Meter I'd like to see an even spread of frequencies
02:32throughout the entire frequencies scale, but since this is a dance mix we look
02:36for little bit of a hump in the low-end.
02:38I'll play the track again and you'll see that there is a little bit of a hump
02:40around 60 to 80 to 100 hertz area.
02:43(Music playing)
02:50As we close this out, I will actually bypass all these plug-ins and let you here
02:54what the mix sounds like without any plug-ins on the Master Fader.
02:57And I'll actually pull the Master Fader down because we know from previous
03:01movies that as we have all these elements in, the Master Fader will tend to hit the red.
03:06(Music playing)
03:33So you can hear what a difference it makes as I reengage the plug-ins and put
03:36the Master Fader back up at zero. This is simulated mastering.
03:40If we were going to send our mix to a professional mastering engineer, I would
03:44simply bypass these plug-ins and pull this down to probably about -10 dB and
03:51bounce at 24-bit stereo Wave file of the mix in that fashion.
03:56Let's go ahead and reengage the plug- ins, and go back to our Arrange window.
04:03It's important to define your Bounce region prior to bouncing down your mix.
04:07I select the Bounce menu here and I have the ability to choose 24, 16, 8 Bit.
04:14If I'm bouncing down to eventually burn to CD for myself, I'll choose 24-bit
04:19and typically I choose Wave file but you have a choice of Sound Designer ll,
04:22AIFF, Wave, or CAF.
04:25I usually leave this box Add to Audio Bin unchecked and Normalize is always off
04:30and I always bounce offline.
04:32I make sure that I'm naming my file, just like this.
04:37Call this simply falling_final 1 and I'll put it in the Bounces folder as
04:42Logic has prompted me to.
04:44You simply click Bounce and Logic will write the file offline.
04:48If you have incorporated some 16-bit elements into your mix and you're bouncing
04:53down the mix for mastering the 24-bit, it's okay to bounce down at 24-bit.
04:57All of Logic's virtual synths, plug-ins, and reverbs are 24-bit, so I encourage
05:02you to bounce your files down at 24-bit.
05:05As you can see Logic is bouncing down the file, and in our next movie we'll
05:09import our final mix and place it side- by-side with the original version so we
05:14can take a listen to where we started and where we ended up.
Collapse this transcript
Listening to the final mix
00:00We've made it to the end of the line.
00:02We've remixed an entire song in Logic Pro.
00:05Let's go ahead and pull the original version out onto the Arrange window and
00:10right next to it we'll place our finished remix.
00:14I'll shrink the screen.
00:15I will mute out our remix for the moment, and play about 30 seconds of the
00:20original just to remind you where we started before we listen to our entire
00:24remix start to finish and enjoy where we wound up.
00:27(Music playing)
01:10Now, let's take a listen to our remix, all the way from the start until the very end.
01:14(Music playing)
06:55It's always exciting to listen to the finished remix next to the original.
06:59Essentially, what we've done is produced an entirely new musical track
07:03underneath a solitary vocal.
07:05It's not an easy task but it's both challenging and very rewarding, and I hope
07:09you have found this process as fun as I do.
Collapse this transcript
Conclusion
Final thoughts
00:00Congratulations on finishing up remixing a song in Logic Pro, and thank you for
00:05taking the time to watch the course.
00:07I know that this is a lot of information to process, but keep in mind that the
00:11only way to get really good is to log the hours.
00:14Your workflow should improve with each track and you will develop your own
00:18philosophies and approaches to the different modules of building a remix.
00:22I hope that all of you come away from this course with a better handle on how to
00:25construct a remix in Logic Pro.
00:27Take the time to find your voice as a remixer, you do not want to sound like ten
00:32another remixers remixing in the same style as you.
00:35As you spend more time working on your craft you will begin to find your
00:39signature tricks and sounds as a remixer.
00:41Feel free to search for more of my work on YouTube by searching Josh Harris
00:46and remixer.
Collapse this transcript


Suggested courses to watch next:

Logic Pro 9 Essential Training (5h 25m)
Scott Hirsch

Virtual Instruments in Logic Pro (13h 10m)
Brian Trifon


Audio Mixing Bootcamp (8h 53m)
Bobby Owsinski


Are you sure you want to delete this bookmark?

cancel

Bookmark this Tutorial

Name

Description

{0} characters left

Tags

Separate tags with a space. Use quotes around multi-word tags. Suggested Tags:
loading
cancel

bookmark this course

{0} characters left Separate tags with a space. Use quotes around multi-word tags. Suggested Tags:
loading

Error:

go to playlists »

Create new playlist

name:
description:
save cancel

You must be a lynda.com member to watch this video.

Every course in the lynda.com library contains free videos that let you assess the quality of our tutorials before you subscribe—just click on the blue links to watch them. Become a member to access all 104,069 instructional videos.

get started learn more

If you are already an active lynda.com member, please log in to access the lynda.com library.

Get access to all lynda.com videos

You are currently signed into your admin account, which doesn't let you view lynda.com videos. For full access to the lynda.com library, log in through iplogin.lynda.com, or sign in through your organization's portal. You may also request a user account by calling 1 1 (888) 335-9632 or emailing us at cs@lynda.com.

Get access to all lynda.com videos

You are currently signed into your admin account, which doesn't let you view lynda.com videos. For full access to the lynda.com library, log in through iplogin.lynda.com, or sign in through your organization's portal. You may also request a user account by calling 1 1 (888) 335-9632 or emailing us at cs@lynda.com.

Access to lynda.com videos

Your organization has a limited access membership to the lynda.com library that allows access to only a specific, limited selection of courses.

You don't have access to this video.

You're logged in as an account administrator, but your membership is not active.

Contact a Training Solutions Advisor at 1 (888) 335-9632.

How to access this video.

If this course is one of your five classes, then your class currently isn't in session.

If you want to watch this video and it is not part of your class, upgrade your membership for unlimited access to the full library of 2,025 courses anytime, anywhere.

learn more upgrade

You can always watch the free content included in every course.

Questions? Call Customer Service at 1 1 (888) 335-9632 or email cs@lynda.com.

You don't have access to this video.

You're logged in as an account administrator, but your membership is no longer active. You can still access reports and account information.

To reactivate your account, contact a Training Solutions Advisor at 1 1 (888) 335-9632.

Need help accessing this video?

You can't access this video from your master administrator account.

Call Customer Service at 1 1 (888) 335-9632 or email cs@lynda.com for help accessing this video.

preview image of new course page

Try our new course pages

Explore our redesigned course pages, and tell us about your experience.

If you want to switch back to the old view, change your site preferences from the my account menu.

Try the new pages No, thanks

site feedback

Thanks for signing up.

We’ll send you a confirmation email shortly.


By signing up, you’ll receive about four emails per month, including

We’ll only use your email address to send you these mailings.

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.

Keep up with news, tips, and latest courses with emails from lynda.com.

By signing up, you’ll receive about four emails per month, including

We’ll only use your email address to send you these mailings.

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.

   
submit Lightbox submit clicked