IntroductionWelcome| 00:05 | Hi, I am Brian Lee White, and welcome to
Mixing a Hip-hop and R&B Song in Pro Tools.
| | 00:10 | In this advanced course, we'll work
our way through a mix from scratch.
| | 00:14 | Starting with the RAW tracks, I'll walk you
through getting Basic Level and Pan Settings.
| | 00:19 | Next, I move on to the Drums and
Percussive Elements to set up a powerful foundation.
| | 00:26 | After that, I'll add in the Rap and Hook vocals
and get the artist sounding super fresh before
| | 00:31 | layering in the backing
instruments and samples to fill out the track.
| | 00:37 | Using Track and Plug-In Automation, I will
optimize levels, add drama, and build excitement
| | 00:42 | from section to section.
| | 00:44 | Finally, I'll touch up any loose ends,
fine tune my Master Bus Effects, and balance out
| | 00:49 | the finished mix to a Stereo Master.
| | 00:52 | So if you are ready, I am ready.
Let's get started.
| | 00:57 |
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| What you need to know| 00:00 | The core goal of this course is to give
you a first-hand look at the real-time thought
| | 00:06 | process that takes place during mixing.
| | 00:08 | Well, I will describe many of the
steps I take to achieve the final mix.
| | 00:13 | This course is not intended to be a primer
on Pro Tools or the Basic Signal Processing
| | 00:19 | used during the Mix process.
| | 00:22 | If you're still confused about topics such
as Equalization, Dynamics, Processors, or the
| | 00:28 | Pro Tools Mixer, I highly encourage you
to watch the following courses on the online
| | 00:33 | training library, before watching this course.
| | 00:36 | I will be mixing the session in real time using
headphones, so I can narrate the process step by step.
| | 00:44 | So what you see in here throughout the
course is what we end up with in the final balance.
| | 00:50 | While watching the course, keep in mind that
the end goal is not so much the specific set
| | 00:56 | of steps I take, the brands of plug-ins I
use, or even the finish mix I end up with.
| | 01:03 | Every mix is different and
requires a unique approach.
| | 01:07 | My ultimate goal is to spark your creativity,
inspire you to craft your own original mix
| | 01:14 | and find your own unique voice as a mixer.
| | 01:19 |
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| Exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a Premium Member of the lynda.com
online training library, or if you're watching
| | 00:06 | this tutorial on a DVD-ROM, you also have access
to the full Pro Tool session used in this course.
| | 00:13 | From the exercise files folder,
you'll find a folder called Cant Stop-Clean.
| | 00:18 | Inside that you will find the Cant Stop-Clean_ptx
session file that is a clean mix with no plug-ins,
| | 00:26 | all faders zeroed out.
| | 00:28 | You also have the Pro Tool's
version 7-9.ptf file of Cant Stop.
| | 00:34 | So if you're using an older version of
Pro Tools, you want to open the .pdf version.
| | 00:42 | If you're a Monthly Member or an Annual Member of lynda.com,
you don't have access to the Pro Tools session file,
| | 00:50 | but you can easily apply and use the techniques outlined
in this course on your own material. Let's get started.
| | 00:59 |
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1. Getting Started/DrumsSetting up the mixer and getting initial levels| 00:00 | All right, so I have opened a
cleaned session of the Cant Stop song.
| | 00:06 | All of the faders have been zeroed out, all
of the inserts and sends removed, so we can
| | 00:11 | start the mix from scratch.
| | 00:15 | Before we start getting some basic levels
and pan settings and doing some routing I
| | 00:19 | just want to talk a little bit about this song
and the organization of this specific session.
| | 00:26 | First of all, this is a hip-hop kind of R&B
song that I wrote with a couple friends of
| | 00:30 | mine, it's called Can't Stop, it's got K-I-D
on the rap vocals and Jonathan President on
| | 00:37 | the Hook doing the R&B vocals.
| | 00:40 | How we have it organized here, you see the
drums on the left side of this session going
| | 00:46 | through the Percussion, Hi-Hat, cymbals.
| | 00:50 | Then I start with my instruments the bass,
Choir, Organ, all the keyboard parts. And then
| | 00:58 | I get into the vocals the Rap Lead, Rap
Double, and the Stabs, and the Hook vocals, Adlibs,
| | 01:08 | and extra Bridge vocals, Intro vocals here.
| | 01:12 | This is a way I like to organize most of
my sessions, you don't have to organize your
| | 01:16 | sessions this way, this
is just a way that I prefer.
| | 01:19 | It's a good idea to organize sessions in a
consistent way so that when you're scrolling
| | 01:23 | around the mix or the edit window in Pro Tools,
you can easily find what you're looking for.
| | 01:29 | So if I know I want to work on the kick
drums for me, I know I'm always going to put those
| | 01:33 | at the left most side of my session.
| | 01:36 | And if I need to work with my vocals I know they're
going to be somewhere towards the right-hand side.
| | 01:43 | What I like to do before I start a mix, before
I even start getting levels is create a Master
| | 01:49 | Fader in Pro Tools, and I'll do that by going to
Track > New, I'm going to create a Stereo Master Fader.
| | 01:57 | And the reason I want to have a Master
Fader in every session I mix is this is going to
| | 02:01 | allow me to protect my final output to the D
to A converters to ensure that I'm not clipping
| | 02:08 | the output of my
converters and distorting the mix.
| | 02:14 | Now, with all of these Faders zeroed out,
I'm almost 100% certain that this mix would
| | 02:19 | clip if I just hit Play.
| | 02:21 | And so I want to build a little headroom
into my mix, and I can do that either by pulling
| | 02:26 | the Master Fader down to avoid clipping or
what I can do is I can grab my ALL group and
| | 02:32 | pull all the faders down, and I'll switch
that off, and I can push my Master Fader back up.
| | 02:38 | Now the Master Fader, I'm always going to
want to monitor this as I'm working to ensure
| | 02:43 | that I'm not clipping the output.
| | 02:44 | Now a lot of people just go ahead and they
worry about the Master Fader after they mix,
| | 02:50 | they want to do insert processing here on
the Master Fader, compression limiting, kind
| | 02:55 | of your mastering steps.
And they do that sort of towards the end.
| | 03:00 | However, the problem with that is if you're
distorting the output of your mix as you're
| | 03:05 | mixing, this is going to
change your decision process.
| | 03:08 | You're actually hearing distortion as you're trying
to apply your processing plug-ins and set your levels.
| | 03:15 | And that's not a great thing to do.
| | 03:17 | So I like to make sure that from the get
go I'm not clipping the output of my mixer.
| | 03:22 | So I've brought that down, I built a
little headroom in here, and I'm just going to go
| | 03:26 | ahead and playback a loud section just to
check and see that everything is good to go,
| | 03:31 | so I'll playback from a chorus.
(music playing)
| | 03:42 | Awesome. That looks like a really nice
amount of headroom to start my mix.
| | 03:46 | Of course I'm going to be bringing Faders up.
| | 03:49 | Some people like to kind of pull things down
into the mix while other people like to kind
| | 03:53 | of build things up into the mix and
sort of push them louder into place.
| | 03:58 | Either way it's fine just be aware of the
headroom in the mixer and make sure that you
| | 04:03 | check out that Master Fader every once in a
while to make sure the mix is not distorting.
| | 04:08 | Now the other reason I like to create a Master Fader
from the get go is I like to mix into certain plug-ins.
| | 04:15 | So from the very beginning of setting my
level and pan I like to hear my mix through certain
| | 04:22 | plug-ins, and that's going to influence my
decisions as I pick things like EQs and Compressors.
| | 04:27 | And the one plug-in that I always start my
mix with is the Slate Virtual MixBuss, and
| | 04:33 | this is going to simulate an analog console.
| | 04:36 | And I particularly like
the USA that's the API model.
| | 04:41 | Now I'm just going to leave the drive alone
for now, I might play with that a little bit
| | 04:45 | later to get a little more crunch.
| | 04:47 | But the reason I'm putting this on to begin
with is this is going to make subtle changes
| | 04:52 | to the way that I'm hearing the mix.
| | 04:54 | And if I thought about how mixers would mix
through a traditional analog console, they're
| | 04:59 | not able to play the mix through the
console and turn off what the console is adding in
| | 05:05 | terms of saturation, distortion, and
then put it on at the end of the mix.
| | 05:08 | No, they're hearing how the mix
sounds through that console from stage one.
| | 05:14 | So all their decisions are made through the
veil of that console, and I'm going to simulate
| | 05:20 | that here in my mix by starting
out with this plug-in on the MixBuss.
| | 05:25 | Now what I'm going to do to complement
that is there's a channel insert plug-in, which
| | 05:30 | is the Slate Digital channel, that's
going to match my Master Fader plug-in.
| | 05:37 | And I've got this actually set up to be
grouped so that I can switch all these to API.
| | 05:42 | Now they don't have to be the same as the
Master, and you don't have to use this specific
| | 05:46 | plug-in, there are lots of great console
simulation or saturation simulation plug-ins out there.
| | 05:53 | I just personally like this one, I've been
using it since it came out, and I think it
| | 05:57 | makes my mixes sound better.
| | 05:58 | So, instead of applying this to every channel let me
show you a little trick that you can do in Pro Tools.
| | 06:04 | If you go ahead and select your tracks--
I'm going to select all of them--what I can do
| | 06:11 | is hold down the modifier Option+Shift-click
to add a plug-in that's Option+Shift on the
| | 06:16 | Mac or Alt+Shift on the PC.
| | 06:19 | And when I click, and I choose that plug-in, it's
going to apply it to all of the selected tracks.
| | 06:27 | And this is a fairly large session so
it's going to take a little bit of time here.
| | 06:32 | And because I had those grouped they're all
going to follow this group setting here, so
| | 06:36 | I have a Group Drive and a Group Input control.
| | 06:39 | And I put this as the first insert to kind of
simulate driving that channel insert of a console.
| | 06:45 | Again, this isn't something that you have
to do, you don't have to run out and buy a
| | 06:48 | console simulation plug-in, this
is just something that I like to do.
| | 06:52 | So now that I have my mixer setup here, I
might do other routing and changes as I move
| | 06:58 | through the mix, but I've got a really
good basis to start getting my basic levels.
| | 07:05 | And generally I might start out with a
template or something that quickly gets me here, you
| | 07:09 | know I've been explaining every step of the way
so we didn't really get into the mix immediately.
| | 07:14 | But now what I want to do is I just want to
go ahead and playback this session and start
| | 07:19 | getting some basic level and
pan settings for these tracks.
| | 07:23 | At this point I'm not looking for final levels
of anything, because the level or pan of tracks
| | 07:30 | will significantly change as I add processing
like EQ, Compression, delay, Reverb, et cetera,
| | 07:36 | so I'm going to update
these as I go through the mix.
| | 07:40 | Now the important thing to understand about
mixing is it's a very iterative process, you're
| | 07:45 | not going to do one thing
and just leave that forever.
| | 07:48 | You're going to do one thing, do another thing,
do another thing, and then come back to that
| | 07:52 | first thing and make some adjustments.
| | 07:55 | So understand as I move through this mix
that everything relates to everything else, and
| | 08:00 | I might make a change or even change my
mind on something when I come back to it later.
| | 08:06 | All right, so I'm going to
start the session from the beginning.
| | 08:10 | I'm going to pull up my Memory
Locations, Window > Memory Locations.
| | 08:13 | I've already laid this song out, organized this,
so we have Intro, Verse, Chorus, et cetera.
| | 08:18 | So I'm going to start from the intro.
| | 08:20 | Now I'm just going to play through this song one time,
and as I do that I'm going to quickly get some levels.
| | 08:26 | (music playing)
| | 11:55 | So that's a good starting point here.
| | 11:57 | Obviously, I haven't used any Compression or
any EQ or any Reverb or any other processing
| | 12:03 | so it's still going to sound like a rough mix.
| | 12:07 | And to tell you the truth, generally I
wouldn't start out most mixes zeroed out like this.
| | 12:14 | Most mixes have some basic level, pan, and
even plug-ins from the production stage.
| | 12:20 | So a lot of times when it comes to mix down,
it's not like you're starting from scratch.
| | 12:25 | A lot of the level decisions, at least
the rough level decisions, EQ and Compression
| | 12:30 | decisions have been made during the
production stage, especially with music that's produced
| | 12:35 | electronically, music that's produced with
virtual instruments and samples because we
| | 12:40 | want this to sound fun
as we're working with it.
| | 12:43 | I'm not just going to leave things dry and
boring, otherwise I'm not going to be inspired
| | 12:48 | to add that next part, or the artist is not
going to be inspired to give their best performance.
| | 12:54 | Now I stripped everything away for this tutorial
specifically so I can show you every step along the way.
| | 13:02 | However, I want to point out that some of
the things I'm going to show you, some of
| | 13:06 | the plug-ins I'm going to add, some of the
processing I'm going to do actually came from
| | 13:11 | the production stage,
and I just stripped that off.
| | 13:14 | But I felt that it was important to share
with you some of the mixing tricks that I
| | 13:18 | use during the writing and producing of
this song, because those are great insights that
| | 13:24 | you can use when you're producing your tracks.
| | 13:27 | So, now that I have a nice rough mix of my
session I can move along to process each individual
| | 13:35 | instrument and start
bringing the mix together as a whole.
| | 13:40 |
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| Building the kick drum layer| 00:01 | All right, so now that I have a basic mix of levels, I can
really dig into the session and start my processing.
| | 00:08 | So what I like to do with the most songs is
start with the drum tracks and build a solid
| | 00:13 | foundation, the kick, the Snares, and the
cymbals, and then immediately moved to my
| | 00:18 | vocals to get a really great Vocal Sound
and then come back to the Instrument so that I
| | 00:24 | can place those around the vocals.
| | 00:26 | Now you don't have to do it this way exactly,
and I don't do it that way in every song,
| | 00:31 | but it's a really great strategy to make sure
that your vocals stay up front, and you have
| | 00:37 | room for them. Rather than adding them at
the last point of the mix and risk blurring
| | 00:44 | or having contrast issues with
other instruments that you placed.
| | 00:48 | So again, I'm going to start here with the
drums and the first thing I want to do with
| | 00:52 | my drums is submix them into an Aux Track.
| | 00:56 | So I am just going to select my drum Tracks,
all the way over here to the Tambourine, and
| | 01:04 | I am going to get rid of my Memory Locations
real quick, and I am going to hold Option+Shift
| | 01:09 | or Alt+Shift on the PC, and
I am going to say New Track.
| | 01:14 | I am going to use a Stereo Aux Track,
and I am going to call that Drums.
| | 01:18 | And the Pro Tools is automatically going to
do the routing for me, it's going to create
| | 01:21 | a Bus, and it's going to
router into an Aux Track.
| | 01:24 | Now anytime I create an Aux Track or Return,
I want to solo safe that, so Command-click
| | 01:29 | on the Solo button, that means when I solo other
things, I don't have to go in and solo that Aux Track.
| | 01:37 | It's been solo safe or solo defeated.
| | 01:40 | So, to start on my drums I
want to start with my kick stack.
| | 01:45 | Now something that's very common these days
in music that's produced electronically is
| | 01:50 | layering your percussive
sounds to get exactly what you want.
| | 01:54 | So as opposed to let say working with an
acoustic kick drum you have to get all your punch,
| | 02:01 | all your energy, all your snap, out of that
one recorded drum using EQ or Compression,
| | 02:08 | or a combination of processing.
| | 02:11 | Because I'm just layering samples, and I
have total control over the sounds, what I like
| | 02:16 | to do instead and what many producers like
to do in Urban or Electronic music is actually
| | 02:22 | layer their kicks so that no
one kick is doing all the work.
| | 02:27 | So in this case, let's just go ahead and
listen to some of my kicks here, I have this Medium
| | 02:31 | kick that I am going to use for Texture and
pull up the Memory Locations and go to Verse 1.
| | 02:38 | (music playing)
| | 02:44 | I have an 808 kick that's going to
give me that nice low boomy sound.
| | 02:50 | (music playing)
It's very clean.
| | 02:55 | Then I have a high 808 that plays on the
accents just the same as this 808, it just plays on
| | 03:01 | an accent an octave above.
| | 03:03 | Then I have a snap kick that's going to
give me my nice snap or brightness that's going
| | 03:09 | to allow to punch through
all of the dense instruments.
| | 03:13 | (music playing)
| | 03:19 | So, combined.
(music playing)
| | 03:23 | So I get my texture and my
dirtiness from that Medium kick.
| | 03:27 | That's all the character.
| | 03:28 | because this song is really kind of that
vinyl sampled sound, kind of mixed with a track
| | 03:33 | beat with a 808 and hi-hat sixteenth note
kind of vibe, and I really wanted to add some
| | 03:39 | kind of character kick that kind of really dirtied it
up a little bit and gave it some really nice texture.
| | 03:46 | So a lot of times I am using these drums not
for necessarily more low-end or more high-end,
| | 03:52 | but a texture, and you will see producers
layering drums to get different textures or
| | 03:58 | spread the energy in
different ways across the spectrum.
| | 04:02 | Now one thing that I'm hearing immediately
with this Medium kick, and this is something
| | 04:06 | that is very common with drum samples or even
loops that you get in loop packages is they've
| | 04:12 | been heavily normalized.
| | 04:14 | So I can even just see on my meter that just
a Raw sample there is actually clipping the
| | 04:21 | output and what I hear that doing is it's
actually taking the saturation plug in the
| | 04:26 | VCC, and it is just driving it a little too
hard just like it would, a console input and
| | 04:32 | a little bit of that's cool, but I'm
hearing a little too much from the get go.
| | 04:37 | And so what I am going to do
is I can do one of two things.
| | 04:41 | I can go into the Edit window, and this is
how I prefer to deal with this and use Clip
| | 04:47 | Gain to just lower the input
level coming into the mixer.
| | 04:52 | Let's listen again.
(music playing)
| | 04:57 | And it's already cleaning up.
Hear that, that's just no good.
| | 05:03 | That's just clipping out VCC.
(music playing)
| | 05:10 | And that's nice, and I can actually just
return the Volume there, post that plug-in, that
| | 05:15 | VCC plug-in because the Mixer in
Pro Tools itself is not going to clip.
| | 05:20 | Now I can clip my Output, I want to make sure
that I am not clipping my Output as I am processing
| | 05:25 | the Master Fader here, as I am
doing any EQ or Compression on my kick.
| | 05:29 | So I could just check that whole stack right
now on my Master Fader because those are most
| | 05:36 | likely going to be some of
the loudest things in my mix.
| | 05:39 | (music playing)
| | 05:40 | And I'm still good there.
(music playing)
| | 05:42 | Where that distortion was actually coming from,
was always hitting that saturation processor
| | 05:48 | just a little too hard.
| | 05:50 | You can see it's still pinning it, and I'm
still getting some character, but I'm not
| | 05:59 | getting as much distortion out of
that drum, and that's a good thing.
| | 06:03 | So Clip Gain is one way to deal with it.
| | 06:05 | I said there was another way, what you could do is
simply just put a Gain plug-in before that insert.
| | 06:11 | Remember all inserts in
Pro Tools are pre-faders.
| | 06:15 | So just lowering this fader is not actually
going to change the way the insert sees that signal.
| | 06:22 | So we will kick that back up.
| | 06:26 | All right, for this kick stack, like I said
I have got layers of samples, so I have got
| | 06:31 | my ultra low, my texture, and my snap.
| | 06:35 | What I am going to want to do is process this
even further to get it to sound great in the
| | 06:39 | context of the mix.
| | 06:41 | And one thing I am hearing with this
Medium kick drum is that it's a little woofy and against
| | 06:46 | my Lead Vocal, I just know that that's just
going to have too much build up in the low mid.
| | 06:52 | So what I am going to do is add a little EQ,
get rid of some of that boxiness, it will
| | 07:03 | be a little bit more there.
| | 07:07 | (music playing)
I like that.
| | 07:12 | Now my Snap kick, I am going to
want to add a little EQ to also.
| | 07:16 | Now this sample has some low-end in it.
| | 07:22 | Now I am getting plenty of low-end
from the 808 and the Medium kick there.
| | 07:27 | So I am actually just going to go ahead and
cut out all the low-end from this Snap kick.
| | 07:32 | I am going to filter it right there about
100, and this Snap kick sample, I think it
| | 07:39 | came from some sort of
electronic music sample kit.
| | 07:43 | It's got a really nice snap to it, and I like it a lot,
but it's just too much snap for this hip-hop song.
| | 07:48 | And so I am actually going to go ahead and low
pass filter it, also just bring that in there.
| | 07:55 | So let's just listen to what we did.
(music playing)
| | 08:17 | Perfect. And again, I'm not looking to have this snap
kick super present, that's why I have ruled
| | 08:22 | off some of that top end.
| | 08:24 | All I'm looking for it to do is just add a
little bit of bite to my drum stack, because
| | 08:30 | there's not a whole lot of bite coming from
the 808 drum, which is a very low drum, very
| | 08:34 | low pitched sounding drum.
| | 08:37 | And even if I used EQ, a lot of compression
just really drops the high end of the 808,
| | 08:44 | it's never going to snap quite as hard as a
snap kick, because the envelope or the way
| | 08:50 | the transient is shaped in the high
frequencies just isn't there for me to do that.
| | 08:56 | Now another thing that I like to do with my
drum stacks is make sure that I can hear them
| | 09:01 | on smaller speaker systems.
| | 09:04 | Now specifically this 808, this 808
is my main bass element in the verses.
| | 09:09 | There is no bass instrument other than the 808,
and this kick layer during the rap verses.
| | 09:16 | A bass comes in at the hook during the chorus,
but I want to make sure during the verses
| | 09:21 | this stays nice and full, and that's fairly
common in a hip-hop song where you have an
| | 09:26 | 808 kick, maybe it's a pitched kick that's
actually playing the bass line or just staying
| | 09:32 | and peddling one specific note.
| | 09:34 | But it's a tuned kick with a lot of sustain
like I have here acting as your main bass element.
| | 09:41 | (music playing)
| | 09:44 | So what I want to do is I want to try to
draw out some of those harmonics so that we can
| | 09:48 | hear them on smaller speakers, because
right now, we are really just getting very, very
| | 09:53 | low frequencies coming through, which is great for
a large speaker system or really nice headphones.
| | 10:00 | But for people with iPod docks or ear buds
or things like that, you are just going to
| | 10:05 | totally miss the kick.
| | 10:07 | So a little trick I like to use is some
saturation on my 808, and I particularly like the Saturn
| | 10:15 | plug-in from fabfilter. And what this is
actually a multi-band harmonic or Distortion tool,
| | 10:23 | and I have got a little preset
that I use it so much on 808s.
| | 10:26 | It's got a nice little Preset that I made,
and what it does is it actually gives me three
| | 10:33 | bands, I have split up three saturation bands,
and I can have different types of Saturation
| | 10:39 | and Drive and mix levels in each band.
| | 10:42 | So I can use it like an EQ,
as well as a Saturation tool.
| | 10:47 | I can adjust the level of these bands.
So let's just listen to see what that does.
| | 10:51 | (music playing)
Oh yeah, really brings out those harmonics.
| | 11:08 | That almost acts like an exciter, right,
because I am distorting the top end, really just kind
| | 11:14 | of brining out some sparkle or
noise that's barely there in the sample.
| | 11:19 | So this is a really powerful tool, I don't
want to over do it, I don't want to create
| | 11:23 | too much distortion in the low end.
(music playing)
| | 11:29 | Just a little bit, I just want to pull that
forward a little bit so that it comes through
| | 11:35 | on smaller speaker systems.
| | 11:37 | It might be barely noticeable, if you are
listening to it on a large speaker system,
| | 11:41 | but I guarantee if you put on some ear buds or
some really small speakers, you are definitely
| | 11:46 | going to hear the difference adding some
sort of harmonic distortion to your kick drum,
| | 11:51 | especially your low kick Drums adds, and you
can really use any kind of distortion plug-in.
| | 11:56 | I could even use in the built in distortion in Pro
Tools, the Lo-Fi plug-in to achieve a similar result.
| | 12:02 | I particularly like this, because I have a
lot of control, I am kind of a control freak
| | 12:07 | when it comes to my distortion.
| | 12:09 | I like to know exactly what I'm getting,
where other engineers kind of just like that magic
| | 12:14 | button, that magic plug-in thing that just adds a
little saturation, but you don't have a lot of control.
| | 12:19 | Either it's fine once you
understand the goal of the processing.
| | 12:24 | I am not just adding distortion,
because I think distortion is cool.
| | 12:27 | I'm adding distortion because I want to draw
out those lower frequencies, so they're audible
| | 12:33 | on smaller sound systems.
| | 12:36 | Now the other thing that I'm noticing
about this 808 is that on certain hits, certain
| | 12:41 | accents it just gets a little too big, and
if I switch to the Edit window, we can clearly
| | 12:47 | see that on certain beats that kick drum
hits fairly hard, as compared to let's say the
| | 12:55 | Medium kick or my Snap kick,
those are fairly consistent.
| | 12:59 | Now one thing that we can take advantage of
in producing music electronically with samples
| | 13:04 | is that we can maintain
consistent velocities or dynamics.
| | 13:08 | Unlike an acoustic kick drum performed by
an actual drummer, there is going to be a
| | 13:13 | lot of variations in each kick hit, where
I would want to use a compressor to control
| | 13:18 | the hit to hit dynamics,
to sort of even them out.
| | 13:22 | In this case, I can just set all
the velocities to the same level.
| | 13:27 | Now, I actually wanted a little bit of down
beat push on certain hits, but what I'm finding
| | 13:35 | now that it's all stacked
together with the rest of the mix.
| | 13:38 | It's a little too much, and so what I am
going to do to solve this issue is I am going to
| | 13:43 | use a little bit of limiting, so I am going
to bring up my Inserts here, and I am going
| | 13:49 | to use a little bit of L1
just to tame those specific hits.
| | 13:53 | So I am going to go ahead and pull down
both the Threshold and the Out Ceiling, because
| | 13:58 | I don't want to actually add any volume.
| | 14:00 | If I just pull down that Threshold, I
would actually add volume to the signal.
| | 14:04 | I am going pull this down until I get
attenuation just on those louder hits.
| | 14:11 | (music playing)
And that's a good amount.
| | 14:19 | But what I am hearing now is a little bit
of distortion, and that's really common from
| | 14:23 | a fast brick wall limiter
on low frequency material.
| | 14:26 | Now this is a one millisecond Release time,
that's just too fast for low-frequency waveforms.
| | 14:31 | They are actually just going to trace the
threshold and they're going to grab and release
| | 14:37 | along with the cycle of the waveform which
creates distortion, and I can alleviate that
| | 14:42 | by pushing that Release up to,
let's just do 50 milliseconds.
| | 14:47 | (music playing)
And that's nice.
| | 15:00 | Just to demonstrate what I'm talking about,
if I really crank this down, and I had a really
| | 15:06 | fast Release time.
(music playing)
| | 15:09 | Hear all that distortion?
We don't want that.
| | 15:13 | So we are just going to go back just a little bit and
move any of that distortion by pushing up that Release.
| | 15:24 | (music playing)
| | 15:28 | Now I do hear a little bit of Drive coming
from my VCC on those hits, and that's cool.
| | 15:33 | That's just going to give me a little bit
of extra texture along with that Saturn kind
| | 15:37 | of digging into some of
those notes a little bit harder.
| | 15:41 | Now the final touch that I want to add to
my kick drum stack is actually a little bit
| | 15:48 | of ambience, and this is a trick that I
like to use on my kick drums, and I know a lot
| | 15:52 | of people say reverb on kick drums, I heard
that a total no no, and in most cases, super
| | 15:58 | long reverbs, really muddy reverbs, you don't
want to use on your low-frequency instruments
| | 16:04 | like kick drum, because it's
just going to make your mix muddy.
| | 16:07 | But the kind of reverb I am going to set up is
very short, and it's just going to be for some width.
| | 16:13 | So you just are going to get a
hint of space on the kick drum.
| | 16:16 | Now these are all Mono samples, the
MediumKick, 808 kick, and the snap kick are Mono.
| | 16:23 | The high kick I printed is Stereo, but
there's really no stereo information on that, and
| | 16:28 | I want to give a little bit of width to them,
so we get a little space out of our kicks.
| | 16:33 | Now some kick samples are already stereo and already
have some ambience or space built into them, these don't.
| | 16:40 | And how I am going to achieve that, I am actually
going to do that on my Texture kick, the MediumKick,
| | 16:44 | I am going to create Return on a Send,
that's where my Reverb is going to live.
| | 16:50 | I am going to make sure that Stereo Aux Track,
and we are just going to call this Wide, it's
| | 16:54 | that's what I am going to do.
| | 16:56 | Now, how I am going to achieve this effect is
I am going to use a Multi-mono D-Verb plug-in.
| | 17:03 | Now it's very important
that I choose Multi-mono.
| | 17:06 | This is where the trick lies.
| | 17:09 | Multi-mono plug-ins allows me to choose
separate left and right processing settings.
| | 17:14 | So I can actually unlink that two and have
separate settings on the left and the right-hand side.
| | 17:20 | And in this case this is
a Mono Algorithmic Reverb.
| | 17:24 | So I am going to be getting some randomness between
the left and right-hand sides of the Reverb Algorithm.
| | 17:31 | So I am going to start with something real
short, I am going to do a medium room, and
| | 17:36 | I am going to do something just around 300,
very short, like I said, this isn't reverbing
| | 17:43 | the traditional sense of really long echo.
I am going to boost that Gain up here.
| | 17:51 | Now here is the trick.
| | 17:52 | I am going to go ahead and unlink the left
and the right-hand sides, and I am going to
| | 17:58 | set the right side to have
a little bit of Pre-delay.
| | 18:03 | Right around 30 is good.
| | 18:05 | Now what this does is it actually Delays
just the right side of the Reverb Chain.
| | 18:11 | So let's listen to that.
Solo safe, Command-click.
| | 18:15 | (music playing)
So that's kind of cool.
| | 18:25 | I am actually hearing that width and what this
is it's a variation of the Haas Effect, H-A-A-S,
| | 18:32 | because I have delayed the right side, our
ear and our brain is hearing the left side
| | 18:38 | first, slightly earlier than the right side,
and it's creating a sense of direction or
| | 18:46 | location and widening the stereo field.
| | 18:50 | Now I can tighten that up for less
of an effect or increase it for more.
| | 18:54 | Now because this is a kick drum, I don't actually
want to get into such long delays that we
| | 18:59 | are actually screwing up
the rhythm of the track.
| | 19:02 | I just want to create a little
width or a little space for us.
| | 19:06 | Now one thing that I do with these hostile
processes is I like to reduce the volume a
| | 19:13 | bit of the early channel.
| | 19:15 | So in this case, the left channel I'm
hearing first, it has no Pre-delay.
| | 19:19 | I am going to reduce the volume so that I
hear the left and right-hand sides about the
| | 19:24 | same perceived level.
| | 19:26 | Now your meters will show differently, but
your ears are actually going to hear the left
| | 19:31 | side as being louder,
because you are hearing it first.
| | 19:33 | Now I like to kind of balance that out.
| | 19:35 | I do that when I do the
Haas Effect on Delays too.
| | 19:39 | Something you want to look up, do a
Wikipedia search on Haas--H-A-A-S--Effect in audio.
| | 19:45 | It's a pretty cool principle.
| | 19:47 | After this, I definitely need some EQ,
because whenever I add Reverb to a kick drum I know
| | 19:54 | I am going to run into issues
with low-frequency smearing.
| | 19:57 | So I am just going to get rid of all the mud
from the get go, pull down some of that 500,
| | 20:02 | and actually I want to kind of
emphasize the snap of the kick there.
| | 20:07 | So I am going to boost the high
frequencies a bit, because I want to really emphasize
| | 20:12 | any of that beater sound in the stereo field.
Now this is really just to taste.
| | 20:17 | Let's go ahead and listen to that.
(music playing)
| | 20:25 | So there is really no rule here, other than
that when you're adding any sort of Reverb
| | 20:30 | or delay to low-frequency elements, you do
want to aggressively tackle any residual resonance
| | 20:37 | with some sort of EQ.
| | 20:40 | Now the other cool check that I can do to
take this even more over the top is use some
| | 20:46 | sort of Stereo Width Enhancer.
| | 20:49 | So I could actually go in and use some sort
of Stereo Field processor, so I could just
| | 20:55 | even use the Air Stereo Width Plug-in here,
and what I cloud do is I could just take that
| | 21:00 | width and just really maximize it.
(music playing)
| | 21:15 | And this is just basically using a mid-side
process to increase the volume of the side
| | 21:20 | channels of the stereo information, while
reducing the center channel information.
| | 21:25 | Again, this is just going to give me a little
bit of extra width on that, and I am not going
| | 21:30 | to use so much of this effect.
| | 21:32 | Now I could increase, it depend on the
mood I want to set, I just want a little touch
| | 21:36 | of it for my kick stack just to give me some
texture and interest to all those kick Drums.
| | 21:44 | Let's listen to our stack.
(music playing)
| | 21:48 | And I will set this Reverb
level in the context of the mix.
| | 21:52 | (music playing)
| | 22:01 | And of course, I am going to need to come
back to this probably once I get the other
| | 22:04 | instruments EQd and set up.
| | 22:07 | Right now, I just really want to get that
strong kick drum playing, so it lays a strong
| | 22:12 | foundation for all my other drum elements
as well as my vocals and other instruments.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Layering the snares| 00:00 | So now I have a solid kick drum sound.
| | 00:03 | I want to move on to my other percussion,
my Snares, my Perc Hits, my Claps, and things
| | 00:08 | like that, and really add some nice
brightness to the low end that I got with my kick drums.
| | 00:15 | And what I first want to take a look at is
this 808 snare here, this actually matches
| | 00:20 | the same drum machine
that the kick drum came from.
| | 00:24 | So let's just go ahead and
listen to that here in our verse.
| | 00:27 | (music playing)
| | 00:32 | Cool. It's kind of doing that Dirty South, Trap
Beat kind of accent hits, where it's not really
| | 00:38 | acting like the main 2 & 4 snare or Clap Instrument, but
it's really giving us those accents and those little fills.
| | 00:48 | And so what I actually want to do with
this is really draw that out, because it's kind
| | 00:52 | of sounds plain right now, it doesn't have a
lot of texture, doesn't have a lot a brightness
| | 00:58 | or attitude in general. And so I could approach
it with traditional EQ and Compression, how
| | 01:05 | I might approach other snare drums.
| | 01:08 | But in this case, I'm going to go for my Saturn plug-in
again because I can really get a lot out of one plug-in.
| | 01:16 | I like any time that I can get a lot of
things done in one plug-in, I like that, because
| | 01:22 | it simplifies my life.
| | 01:24 | And I actually have a preset that
I made here for my top end of drums.
| | 01:29 | Let's just listen to that.
(music playing)
| | 01:35 | With the kick Drums.
(music playing)
| | 01:44 | And let's add it some volume, so we
might want to pull that snare down.
| | 01:47 | I don't want to fool myself in terms of,
oh I just made it louder. What I've actually
| | 01:52 | done here is I've got two bands of distortion.
| | 01:55 | I've got a little Gentle Saturation for the
top end, and I've got some Heavy Saturation
| | 02:00 | which is the bit of dry for the bottom
end, and that's going to give me some grit.
| | 02:04 | (music playing)
It's that sizzle.
| | 02:10 | (music playing)
I don't want too much.
| | 02:14 | (music playing)
| | 02:16 | I just want that that nice texture out of my
snare, before it was really just kind of plain.
| | 02:22 | (music playing)
| | 02:25 | Kind of just a boring sample, and now I have kind of...
(music playing)
| | 02:30 | ...really drawn it out.
| | 02:31 | And so I am getting a little bit compression,
that's the nature of the Saturation tools.
| | 02:36 | But I'm also kind of using this as an EQ
because it's been broken up into bands, I can actually
| | 02:42 | adjust those bands, and there is even Tone controls
on these bands that allow me to kind of shape that.
| | 02:48 | So I am not using it as an EQ in the traditional
sense where I have specific frequencies because
| | 02:54 | this snare, I am really just this kind of
looking for brightness, darkness, texture,
| | 02:58 | and in general adjectives like that.
| | 03:01 | I am not looking to go in and
surgically change any frequencies on it.
| | 03:07 | Now the other thing I like to do with a lot
of my snares is just to give them extra punch
| | 03:12 | is use some kind of Envelope Shaper on it.
| | 03:15 | In this case I am going to
use the SPL Transient Designer.
| | 03:19 | This allows me to give a little bit extra
attack and then play with the sustain, in
| | 03:23 | this case the snare has quite a bit of sustain to it,
and I just want to kind of tuck that back a bit.
| | 03:30 | (music playing)
Not that much. I like that.
| | 03:39 | We're overloading a bit, so I'm going to
let's just check our level in the mix.
| | 03:47 | (music playing)
Cool. I really like that.
| | 03:55 | It's really going to let those snare accents
punch through, and it gives it a nice texture
| | 04:00 | that's going to fit with
the aesthetic of the song.
| | 04:03 | And if you haven't already noticed we are
kind of going for that Dirty Vinyl samples
| | 04:08 | kind of sound, where it's not going to be
a super clean Pristine Mix, it's going to
| | 04:14 | have a lot of character and grit to it.
| | 04:16 | It's going to really drive the
emotion of the lyric home to the listener.
| | 04:21 | Now the two other Percussion elements I
want to focus on in this specific video are the
| | 04:29 | Perc Hits and my Cross Stick and
these three actually kind of go together.
| | 04:34 | Now my Perc Hits just go
ahead and listen to those.
| | 04:38 | (music playing)
| | 04:42 | Now you notice these are the exact same sound,
I have just split them onto separate tracks,
| | 04:48 | and the reason I did that as I want to be
able to process each alternate hits separately
| | 04:53 | to add a little bit of variation or color
so that the listener doesn't get bored with
| | 04:57 | hearing the same exact
sample over and over again.
| | 05:01 | Now what I am going to do to these,
actually something that I would have done during the
| | 05:05 | production stage, but I decided to go ahead
and pull that processing off so I could share
| | 05:10 | it with you in this tutorial, because it
really gives good insights into how a lot of the
| | 05:16 | decisions you make can actually happen while
you're picking samples and arranging the song.
| | 05:23 | So especially with electronically produced
music Urban, Hip-hop, Electronic, EDM, and
| | 05:30 | things like that, a lot of the production
mixing decisions will carry on through the final mix.
| | 05:37 | So a lot of the tones that I'm picking,
the EQ, the Compression, the Distortion, I am
| | 05:42 | picking during the production stage, and
I'm shaping the sound as I write so that really
| | 05:48 | gets me interested and invested in the song.
| | 05:52 | So mixing in a traditional sense of well we
are going to just record the song, we are
| | 05:56 | going to leave everything dry and then we are going
in later, when we are all done recording it, mix it.
| | 06:01 | That traditional idea of mixing has really
changed now with Digital Audio Workstations,
| | 06:07 | Virtual Instruments, and the way
that we can write and produce music.
| | 06:12 | The lines have blurred, and we are starting to do
things earlier on that carry through the end of the mix.
| | 06:17 | So that said, one thing I did with these is I
tamed them down with a plug-in called Decapitator,
| | 06:25 | and that's a saturation plug-in.
| | 06:27 | I am going to go ahead and just solo
up one of these Perc Hits and...
| | 06:32 | (music playing)
| | 06:37 | Yeah. That's a little too bright, so
I am going to carve that back.
| | 06:44 | Yeah with a little High Cut.
Get rid of the mud.
| | 06:51 | (music playing)
That's nice. I really like that.
| | 07:00 | Now most people and most mixers would say, hey,
that's kind of a really aggressive decision
| | 07:06 | you're making at the mix stage.
| | 07:08 | Again, this is something that I decided at the production
stage that I wanted to be the aesthetic for the song.
| | 07:14 | I might not make the same decision if
someone had given me their finished song to mix, I
| | 07:19 | wouldn't necessarily go, oh, I'm just going
to throw distortion on everything and make
| | 07:23 | it sound gritty unless
that's what they were going for.
| | 07:27 | Now like I said, these are both the same sound,
these two tracks here and so what I want to
| | 07:32 | do is I just Option-drag that plug-in, I am
just going to add a little variation in the
| | 07:36 | Dark Bright Control and the High cut so that
there's just a tiny amount of variation between
| | 07:43 | the two hits, kind of make sure
that they are match volume wise.
| | 07:49 | (music playing)
Cool. That sounds really good.
| | 08:01 | They are a little bit muddy
now that I added that distortion.
| | 08:04 | I really like that texture of that distortion, it
really kind of drives home that sampled overdriven sound.
| | 08:11 | They might get in the way of the vocals,
but since I have not gotten to the vocals yet, I
| | 08:16 | haven't found my vocal sound, I'm
not going to worry too much about that.
| | 08:20 | And again, Mixing is an iterative process,
so it's okay to come back to sounds after
| | 08:25 | you have worked on other things
and adjust them to fit in the context.
| | 08:30 | Now the last thing I want to address here
in this specific video is the Cross Stick,
| | 08:34 | and that's actually because the Cross Stick is
designed to be a response to these Perc Hits.
| | 08:41 | Again, another production decision that I
made, and the cross stick alone isn't that
| | 08:45 | interesting, so if we go, kind of
take a listen to what that's doing.
| | 08:53 | Here are some hits right here.
(music playing)
| | 08:59 | Kind of just a boring sound, so what I'm
going to do is I am going to copy that Decapitator.
| | 09:04 | (music playing)
| | 09:06 | Give it that kind of Saturation, that
little bit of texture, little bit of grit.
| | 09:10 | Now what I designed this to do is
actually be a response to those Perc Hits.
| | 09:16 | So I designed this to
have a delay that is 100% wet.
| | 09:20 | So you don't actually hear the dry rim
sound playing, you're actually just hearing the
| | 09:25 | taps of the delay.
| | 09:26 | So in this case, I am just going to set up
a Tempo tap delay, ping-pong style so that
| | 09:31 | it goes left and right.
It's going to extend that stereo field.
| | 09:35 | Again, anywhere where I can sneak in a little
extra stereo information to make the mix that
| | 09:40 | much wider, I like to do that.
| | 09:43 | And let's try a 16th
note, let's listen to that.
| | 09:48 | (music playing)
| | 09:49 | That's cool. We are going to need some feedback, and I
want to texture this delay, so this studio
| | 09:54 | tape is just a little too
clean, let's try that TelRay.
| | 09:58 | (music playing)
| | 10:00 | Yeah, that's really nice.
Let's hear that against one of these Perc Hits.
| | 10:06 | (music playing)
| | 10:11 | I like that. I'm going to remove a lot of the low frequencies,
I just don't need that, it's not really going
| | 10:16 | to help me by carrying all that
lower frequency later in the time.
| | 10:21 | (music playing)
Yeah.
| | 10:26 | (music playing)
| | 10:31 | Cool. So let's listen to that in context real quick.
(music playing)
| | 10:41 | Cool. And so that's just a little extra ear candy,
so I'm not actually using the Rim or the Cross
| | 10:48 | Stick as a direct sound, I'm actually
using it as a delay response to these Perc hits
| | 10:53 | which are my main kind of 2 & 4 snare hits.
| | 10:57 | And my snare is actually just kind of
giving me little accents and fills, and so in this
| | 11:03 | sense it's not like a traditional rock or
pop song where you have your kick on 1 and 3
| | 11:08 | and your snare on 2 and 4.
| | 11:09 | I've got different Percussion elements
playing different roles and how I layer them and how
| | 11:15 | I process them and how I choose to treat
each sound in terms of texture and contrast to
| | 11:21 | the rest of the mix is going to directly relate to
its place in the mix. Is it a main Percussive sound?
| | 11:27 | Is it more of a response sound or a fill sound?
Those things are going to tell me how I
| | 11:34 | need to place them overall
against the other Instruments.
| | 11:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding the drum reverbs| 00:00 | So now that I have a good
foundation with most of my percussion in the
| | 00:04 | mix, my kicks and my main snare and percussion
hits, I want to take this opportunity to start
| | 00:11 | adding some reverb returns that I can
use to mix in with my top end percussion.
| | 00:17 | I have already done a bit of reverb with
this special wide return here for the kick, but
| | 00:23 | I want to go ahead and add a short
ambience reverb and a longer hall reverb that I can
| | 00:29 | call upon as I'm working
through the rest of my mix.
| | 00:32 | Now, I'll go ahead and just on the snare
here add a new stereo Aux Track for my return,
| | 00:40 | I call this Short Verb.
| | 00:44 | And for this Short Verb I'm first going to solo
safe that like I do all my returns, Command-click
| | 00:49 | on the Mac or Ctrl-click on the Solo
button on the PC, and here I'm going to call up a
| | 00:57 | specific Reverb > ReVibe, and we're going to
hide this so we can see our presets, and I
| | 01:05 | like a preset under the Ambience
settings, it's called Mastering Ambience.
| | 01:12 | A lot of people think about reverb is this
really long washy echoes, but they can actually
| | 01:17 | be very, very short sparse spaces that just add a
little bit of sense of room or depth to a sound.
| | 01:26 | So in this case, with this reverb I'm not
looking to wash things out, I'm looking to just add
| | 01:31 | a little bit of space, a
sense of room space to them.
| | 01:35 | Now this sounds, let's go ahead and
solo that snare up, let's listen to it.
| | 01:42 | (music playing)
| | 01:48 | It's a nice tight reverb, it's just going
to give us a little hint of a space and in
| | 01:53 | this song there's going to be some dry
elements, and there is going to be some wet elements,
| | 01:58 | but the overall aesthetic of the
song is just kind of dark washy space.
| | 02:03 | So there's not a ton of things that are super,
super upfront and dry, but it's not necessarily
| | 02:10 | that everything is super
wet and against the back wall.
| | 02:13 | It's really important to use reverbs both
short and long on different elements of your
| | 02:18 | mix to create contrast. Because if everything
is pushed to the back it's just going to sound
| | 02:23 | like everything is at the back of the room.
And if everything is pushed to the front it's
| | 02:28 | going to sound like everything is very present.
And that's fine, but in this case, in this
| | 02:33 | mix, I want to create a sense of front to back or depth.
And I'm going to do that using different
| | 02:37 | amounts of short and long reverbs
on different tracks in the session.
| | 02:42 | So what I do with almost all of my reverb
returns is immediately throw an EQ on there.
| | 02:48 | This is just something I do, I've always done.
| | 02:51 | Many reverbs have built-in EQs,
even ReVibe has a built-in EQ.
| | 02:55 | I find that they're just not powerful enough,
or they don't give me enough flexibility in
| | 03:00 | terms of shaping the signal, and I just
find that having an EQ on your reverb return is
| | 03:05 | a lot easier to manipulate the
sound coming out of the reverb.
| | 03:09 | So in this case, I'm just going to go
ahead and get rid of any low-frequency mud that
| | 03:13 | could build up in there and maybe just dip
a little bit out, you know, around 500 that's
| | 03:21 | tends to be where some of the vocal intelligibility
could kind of get washed out if you're using
| | 03:26 | too much reverb on something, and
these aren't hard and fast rules.
| | 03:31 | Again, the only rule that I would say that
you generally want to look towards is EQing
| | 03:36 | reverb tails can be a great thing to increase mix
clarity, especially if they are long reverb tails.
| | 03:44 | The longer the reverb and the more of that
reverb you're using on instruments, the more
| | 03:49 | you're going to have to
think about EQing that tail.
| | 03:52 | And that's really the reason I like to
separate my reverbs onto send and returns, because
| | 03:57 | I can actually treat the return since
it's a parallel signal chain separately.
| | 04:01 | I don't have to apply this EQ to the dry signal, I can
apply it only to the wet signal, the reverb in this case.
| | 04:09 | So, I've got my Short Verb, and I also want
a longer verb to add to this Cross Stick and
| | 04:16 | some of the other instruments
that I'm going to work with later.
| | 04:20 | So I'm going to go here and create another
return called Long Verb, and usually I'd have
| | 04:27 | all this stuff setup in a template so that
I could just import all of my reverb returns.
| | 04:33 | That's why I kind of really
know the direction I want to go.
| | 04:36 | I would setup a template that had these
returns with the sends and the names of the buses
| | 04:42 | already intact, and then I could go ahead
and tweak them, that just saves me a little
| | 04:46 | bit of time when I'm starting to mix.
| | 04:48 | So for this one, I really like this
RandomHall here from Lexicon and the Lexicon reverbs
| | 04:58 | tend to be less realistic, hyperrealistic,
and kind of more of the character reverbs
| | 05:05 | if that's a way to describe a
reverb, they offer different texture.
| | 05:09 | The reason there are so many different
reverbs out there is they are not necessarily all
| | 05:13 | trying to be the same thing, they offer different
textures and different flavors some are hyperreal
| | 05:19 | and sound like being in the same room,
some are more fantasy oriented that really kind
| | 05:23 | of have let's say some modulation or
coarsing or different elements inside that are going
| | 05:30 | to take that signal and make it sound unique.
| | 05:33 | And in this case, I've just got a hall
two and half seconds, not super long, but not
| | 05:37 | super short with a little bit of Pre-delay,
that pre-delay is going to help set that initial
| | 05:42 | signal apart from the tail of the hall
which is going to be very important when we start
| | 05:48 | using this reverb on lead
instruments like vocals and things like that.
| | 05:54 | Now again, I'm going to want to EQ that.
| | 05:56 | I can just go ahead and copy Option-drag
or Alt-drag on the PC my EQ over.
| | 06:02 | Now I'm going to want a little bit more
aggressive of an EQ in this case, I'm actually going
| | 06:06 | to kind of carve that out fairly aggressively,
because I want to make sure that any of the
| | 06:10 | muddy tail when I put any low-frequency
elements through that send is not going to be propagated
| | 06:17 | even further by that long reverb.
So I'm kind of carving that up.
| | 06:22 | Let's listen to that here on our side stick.
| | 06:28 | Let's make sure we go somewhere
where there's some side stick.
| | 06:33 | (music playing)
| | 06:38 | And we'll solo safe that.
(music playing)
| | 06:42 | So it's got a really nice
texture, let's listen in context.
| | 06:48 | (music playing)
| | 06:50 | And how about just our percussion?
(music playing)
| | 07:07 | Cool. So that's really coming along.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the claps and hi-hats| 00:00 | So, I want to wrap up these drums here
with the claps and hi-hat track. Now this clap
| | 00:06 | track here only happens during the chorus.
Let's just take a listen.
| | 00:10 | (music playing)
| | 00:18 | And since I've added some distortions, some
texture, to some of the other percussion the
| | 00:23 | clap kind of is sitting out there on its own.
| | 00:26 | So what I want to do to kind of bring it into
the fold is take my Decapitator here and kind
| | 00:32 | of give it that same sampled vinyl
sound that I was using on my perc hits.
| | 00:37 | (music playing)
| | 00:41 | And what that's doing here is giving it a
nice saturation and even some compression
| | 00:46 | so it's kind of flattening out those claps,
giving me more sustain kind of taking away
| | 00:52 | some of the bite, kind of making
them slap just a little harder over time.
| | 00:58 | Now I want to add a little bit of EQ to that
to brighten it back up, and I really like
| | 01:04 | this EQ--I believe it's pronounced mage--but
either way I really like this EQ because it's
| | 01:10 | full of character, and it really lets
me bring the brightness out of element.
| | 01:14 | So, I use it quit a bit on percussion and
vocals and anything I want to kind of take
| | 01:19 | over the top in terms of sizzle and brightness.
| | 01:22 | And what I am going to do is I am just
going to give myself a little bit of 2.5 and add
| | 01:27 | a little of this Air Band
here, let's take a listen.
| | 01:33 | (music playing)
Yeah.
| | 01:34 | (music playing)
I am going to pull these down.
| | 01:41 | (music playing)
Really get it to sit in the mix.
| | 01:53 | Now I think I want to add a little bit of
that Long Verb that I created, that Long Haul
| | 01:57 | here, let's take a listen to that.
(music playing)
| | 02:08 | And maybe even a little of the Short Verb
just to kind of blend that in for good measure.
| | 02:13 | (music playing)
| | 02:18 | See that Short Verb
really plays up that sustain.
| | 02:25 | (music playing)
| | 02:35 | It's generally a good idea to check your
Send levels in the context of a mix. What tends
| | 02:40 | to happen is you will choose an amount of reverb
or delay and isolation, and it sounds really great.
| | 02:46 | But once you get things back into the mix
you'll find that you either have too much
| | 02:50 | or too little as the other
instruments tend to mask the tail.
| | 02:55 | So that clap sounds real good, I
want to move on now to the hi-hat.
| | 03:00 | Now this hi-hat here...
(music playing)
| | 03:05 | ...that's an 808 hi-hat, it's put in those
16th notes with those 32nd note accents, very
| | 03:10 | typical kind of that Trap, Urban, Dirty
South kind of thing that's going on here.
| | 03:15 | And like the snare it kind of sounds
boring as it is right now, and so what I'd like
| | 03:21 | to do is kind of spice it up a little bit,
add a little top into it, add a little texture
| | 03:26 | and some sizzle to kind of
really sit it in the track.
| | 03:29 | But at the same time allow the listener to
really hear the definition of those hi-hat beats.
| | 03:36 | So I am going to call upon again my Saturn
plug-in, which is kind of be my EQ and my
| | 03:42 | Compressor and my Saturators and just
kind of a multi-band saturation tool.
| | 03:48 | And actually I have a Preset that I may call Drums Top
Saturation, and it's basically kind a two bands here.
| | 03:55 | I've got a Gentle Saturation on the top
for a little sizzle, and a little bit heavier
| | 04:00 | Saturation on the bottom
end, let's take a listen.
| | 04:03 | (music playing)
| | 04:06 | So now in context I can kind of blend this in.
(music playing)
| | 04:24 | Cool. So that's already sounding like it has a lot
more character, it's already cutting through the mix more.
| | 04:29 | And in addition to, like I said, being sort
of like an EQ, allowing me to boost the top
| | 04:34 | in, I am also getting texture from it.
| | 04:36 | So it's not just boosting the high
frequencies here, which I am doing by quite a bit, I am
| | 04:42 | also getting some texture from the Saturation,
which is going to kind of liven up those hi-hat hits.
| | 04:49 | Now to take that even further, because these
hi-hats are from a sample, they don't change,
| | 04:55 | all they do is change rhythm.
| | 04:57 | What I want to do is add a little bit of modulation to
the mix so that there is a bit of movement in the hi-hats.
| | 05:03 | So they kind of ebb and flow over time possibly in the
Stereo field, maybe a little bit of Pitch Modulation.
| | 05:11 | And what I like to do a with a lot of 808 hi-hats
is blend in a little flanging to them
| | 05:18 | just to give them a little extra
character keep them interesting.
| | 05:21 | One of the big things with sampled sounds
is that they are the same every time, unlike
| | 05:27 | a real drummer playing a hi-hat, you are going to get
variations in each hit; with a sample there are no variations.
| | 05:34 | So I want to try to re-create
that using some Modulation.
| | 05:39 | So the Modulation plug-in that I want to
use is a Waves MetaFlanger, and I am going to
| | 05:46 | use the mono/stereo version
to stereolize this mono hat.
| | 05:50 | So it starts as mono, but the plug-in
is actually going to stereolize this.
| | 05:55 | So I am going to pull up a Preset called Soft
spread, I am going to bring the mix down just a bit.
| | 06:05 | (music playing)
| | 06:09 | And that's just going to give me a
nice subtle movement to those hi-hats.
| | 06:15 | (music playing)
| | 06:17 | Little bit of movement in the Stereo field
(music playing)
| | 06:22 | And let's listen in context.
(music playing)
| | 06:34 | Cool, so I could do more flange, if I
want it to be more pronounced effect, I could pull
| | 06:39 | it back a little bit, if I didn't
want to be such a pronounced effect.
| | 06:43 | It's really an aesthetic decision at that
point, but any time I can add a little bit
| | 06:47 | of movement or stereo width to static
sampled elements I like to take that opportunity.
| | 06:54 | Now moving along to finish off our cymbals
here, this reverse cymbal in these cymbals
| | 07:00 | here, what I generally want to do is just I
am going to add a little bit of Verb to them.
| | 07:08 | And this cymbal rush here that
happens, let's take a listen to that.
| | 07:22 | (music playing)
| | 07:25 | I think that's just going to be way, way,
way too clean for the kind of sampled sound
| | 07:30 | that we have going on, so, again you've
got to carry that theme of the Decapitator.
| | 07:36 | (music playing)
| | 07:42 | What I think I want to do now is just really
get rid of any mud, kind of do sort of a telephone
| | 07:51 | kind of thing which is really bracket that.
(music playing)
| | 07:56 | I think that's going to be cool.
(music playing)
| | 08:06 | So that sounds real good. All right.
| | 08:07 | Now last but not least the very important
Tambourine track that plays during the chorus,
| | 08:13 | and if you actually look at the Tambourine
here in the Edit window, what you'll notice
| | 08:22 | is that it does not sit 100% on the Grid.
| | 08:26 | So it's got a nice little swagger to it, there
are some nice offsets that very kind of pushes
| | 08:33 | and pulls the down beat
of the chorus if we listen.
| | 08:38 | (music playing)
| | 08:45 | Cool. So the really only thing I want to do
with that is I just want to take and get rid
| | 08:51 | of any low mud that might be in that recording,
and I am just going to go ahead and high-pass
| | 08:58 | filter that, right around 500,
shouldn't make too much difference in the sound.
| | 09:05 | (music playing)
| | 09:07 | Just takes out any potential
mud that could be there.
| | 09:10 | I like to do that with a lot of my percussion
tracks just to be sure that there is no extra
| | 09:15 | mud from the recording process.
| | 09:17 | You might not hear a lot a low frequencies
in a track, however, when things are recorded
| | 09:22 | they are naturally going to pick up any
low-frequency rumble that's in the room at the time.
| | 09:28 | And that stuff can eventually build up, so
you might not hear it in Isolation, but as
| | 09:32 | you add 10, 20, 30 tracks of that it can
actually kind of build up to a haziness that you can't
| | 09:39 | quite put your finger on, but it
definitely removes some of the clarity from your mix.
| | 09:44 | Since we are already kind of dirtying
things up on purpose in this mix, I want to make
| | 09:48 | sure to reclaim clarity wherever I can.
| | 09:51 | At this point I think we have a really
good mix of the percussion, and the drums, good
| | 09:56 | foundation, and I think it's a good time
to now move on to getting our vocal sound.
| | 10:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. VocalsBuilding the verse lead-vocal sound| 00:00 | So now that we have a good foundation with our percussion,
I want to move right along into our vocal sound.
| | 00:06 | A lot of people save the vocal sound for last,
but I like to get it in there as soon as possible.
| | 00:10 | So that I can build the sound that I want
for the lead vocal, which is going to be the
| | 00:15 | focal element from most of the mix. And then
I can add the other tracks of the mix around
| | 00:21 | it so that I'm not making the track too big
for the vocals. I want to get my vocals sounding
| | 00:25 | big, and then I can fit the rest of the track in
that leftover space so that the vocal stays the star.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to start here with
the Rap Lead and the Rap Double.
| | 00:38 | You may have noticed that I muted the
stabs and the adlibs in the first tutorial when
| | 00:44 | I was getting initial levels. Those are
just kind of peripheral things, they were kind
| | 00:48 | of muddy and they were just kind of out
there, and I have a very specific idea about how
| | 00:53 | I'm going to treat them. So I just wanted
to kind of get them out of the way, and that's
| | 00:57 | okay to just kind of mute stuff as you're
working, especially if you're going to come
| | 01:01 | back to it later, you
just don't want to hear it.
| | 01:04 | So, the way that this song is set up is
very much like any traditional hip-hop song with
| | 01:10 | a sung chorus what we have are the rap verses
or the hip-hop verses, and I have a lead track
| | 01:22 | along with a Double that mirrors that lead,
so this is fairly common to have a Double
| | 01:28 | or a triple just to thicken the sound.
| | 01:31 | And then I have these stabs and adlibs,
and those are just going to act as accents or
| | 01:37 | counterpoints to that vocal, so this is a very
typical hip-hop vocal recording production here.
| | 01:45 | Now with the lead vocals if I just
go ahead and just listen to these.
| | 01:50 | (music playing)
| | 01:56 | The first thing that I notice is that the
vocals are a little bit muddy, this has to
| | 02:02 | do a lot with the artist K-I-D, he has a deeper
voice and so it tends to be a little bit muddy
| | 02:09 | when it's recorded, I've recorded him a lot, so
I know the kind of EQ I need to treat him with.
| | 02:15 | Also these specific vocals he recorded at
his home studio, so in terms of mic selection
| | 02:21 | or preamp selection he kind of just
has what he has and so we work with that.
| | 02:26 | Nevertheless it's a really good representation
of a recording done in a home studio, and
| | 02:33 | what we can start with and where
we can go using EQ and compression.
| | 02:38 | So this is actually a really relevant
example to all of you out there that are recording
| | 02:43 | in a home studio, you might not have a huge
mic locker where you can select the absolute
| | 02:49 | perfect mic out of 10 vintage tube mics
for each vocalist that steps in the booth.
| | 02:55 | So what I want to do is start with a little EQ
after my VCC channel, and I'll bring up this Pro Q.
| | 03:02 | And this is nice because I can
actually see a spectrogram...
| | 03:07 | (music playing)
...of what's happening with the signal?
| | 03:15 | Now I don't necessarily need to use this
when I'm EQing, but it's nice for you to be able
| | 03:21 | to see exactly what the EQ is doing while I
work with it, and the first thing I usually
| | 03:25 | do with the vocal is I'm going to pull in
some kind of low cut or otherwise known as
| | 03:32 | a High Pass filter just to get
rid of any of that low-frequency mud.
| | 03:37 | (music playing)
| | 03:38 | So you could see that
before and the after there.
| | 03:42 | (music playing)
| | 03:45 | Now I also want to kind of un-cake some of
this low-frequency mud that's built up around him.
| | 03:52 | A lot of times when I'm working with vocals
I kind of think of myself as kind of a audio
| | 03:57 | archaeologist of sorts and the vocal is my
antiquity, and I want to kind of break away
| | 04:04 | the pieces of mud to
reveal that pristine artifact.
| | 04:07 | But I don't want to chop it or cut into it
too hard and actually remove some of the working
| | 04:14 | parts of the vocal.
| | 04:16 | So what I'm going to do is I'm just going
to kind of sweep around until I find some
| | 04:20 | of those offending frequencies, and then
just kind of pull them out a little bit.
| | 04:24 | And I'm also going to remember that I do
have a Double so that anything I do to this vocal
| | 04:30 | in terms of removing mud I'm also going to
have to treat the same way in the Double otherwise
| | 04:36 | those mud areas are going
to build up exponentially.
| | 04:40 | (music playing)
| | 05:00 | Maybe add a little presence.
(music playing)
| | 05:13 | And let's just immediately copy that to
the Double and see what we've got going on.
| | 05:17 | (music playing)
And that's a good starting point.
| | 05:33 | Now for the Double what I'd like to do is
just kind of pull a little bit more off of
| | 05:39 | those low frequencies, and maybe I won't
treat it so much in the top end. I generally with
| | 05:47 | a Double I want one to be more prominent
than the other so that I don't get too much of
| | 05:53 | a muddy build up between
the lead, and that Double.
| | 05:59 | In this vocal situation I'm
definitely going to want to use compression.
| | 06:03 | The goal with any hip-hop vocal is to really
make sure that the listener can hear the lyric.
| | 06:10 | I mean, essentially, it's sung poetry, and I
really want to make sure that the listener
| | 06:15 | can hear exactly what the artist is saying
over the track, and that typically means using
| | 06:21 | EQ as well as compression to even out the
dynamic ranges between the peaks and valleys,
| | 06:27 | so the loud words and the soft words I
want to reduce the distance between those using
| | 06:33 | the compressor so that no words pop out,
well no words sink under the level of the track.
| | 06:41 | And so in this case, right after the EQ, I'm
going to use a compressor, and I really actually
| | 06:49 | like this glue compressor on vocals.
| | 06:52 | It's designed as a mix bus compressor--it's
based on a SSL mix bus compressor--but I find
| | 06:57 | that I really like it on vocals.
| | 06:59 | So to start what I'm going to do is I'm
actually just going to turn the Oversampling on, this
| | 07:05 | guy, and that's just going to allow it to
run at a higher quality right there Oversampling
| | 07:11 | up, I want to switch that Realtime to 2x.
| | 07:15 | Now for this vocal what I'm going to do is
I'm going to start with an attack of about
| | 07:19 | 1 millisecond, and then I'm going to
do a release of about 200 milliseconds.
| | 07:26 | So that's not a super fast attack, but
it's not a super slow attack, and that's not a
| | 07:31 | super fast release, but it's not a
super slow release, and we'll start there.
| | 07:37 | (music playing)
| | 07:45 | Get about 5dBs of gain reduction,
bring the make up to recover that.
| | 07:54 | (music playing)
| | 08:02 | Cool, and that's sound pretty good, we can
listen in the context, let me just copy that
| | 08:06 | over to the Double.
| | 08:08 | (music playing)
And that sounds pretty good.
| | 08:21 | In this specific vocal here I don't have to
use a ton of compression, I'm only using about
| | 08:26 | 5dB on average, and that's because he really
does have an even performance here, if I look
| | 08:33 | at the waveform, I'm not seeing a ton of
variation when we move to the hook vocal,
| | 08:38 | the actual sung vocal during the chorus we'll
find that we have to use a lot more compression,
| | 08:43 | because there is a lot more variation in Jonathan
President's vocals than they are in K-I-D's vocals here.
| | 08:48 | So that's one thing to think about when you're
working with vocals and compression, and using
| | 08:56 | presets from compressors is that the preset
can never really know how dynamic or un-dynamic
| | 09:03 | your recording is. It doesn't know the
individual performer, and how they are standing in front
| | 09:10 | of the mic and how they're performing.
| | 09:12 | So you always want to go in and adjust that
threshold in that makeup gain to use the appropriate
| | 09:19 | amount of gain reduction even if you
are using a preset as a starting point.
| | 09:24 | Now the other thing I want to do to this
vocal, and this is something that I do to most of
| | 09:28 | my vocal tracks is I have already added an
EQ, but I want to go ahead and add another
| | 09:33 | EQ for my brightness or my brilliance.
| | 09:38 | Now a fairly common technique that I use
is EQing mud out before the compressor.
| | 09:45 | Maybe I need just a little bit of presence in intelligibility.
And this is using a more surgical EQ, an EQ
| | 09:50 | where I can really control the frequency, the
Q and the amount of gain, and really chip away
| | 09:56 | at any mud or problems in the signal.
| | 09:59 | Then I'll feed that into my compressor, but
the compressor is naturally going to take away
| | 10:04 | some of the brilliance or the brightness,
and I want to add that back. And I like to
| | 10:08 | use a character EQ to add
in some of that brightness.
| | 10:12 | Of course, I could use another surgical EQ
to do that, but in this case, I like the sound
| | 10:17 | of this specific EQ. And what I want to do
is just add a little 2.5 k just to that top
| | 10:23 | in there and add a little AIR on the
top just a bit, let's listen to that.
| | 10:33 | (music playing)
| | 10:49 | So that's just going to bring out the
brilliance of that vocal, really kind of allow it to
| | 10:53 | cut through the mix.
| | 10:55 | Now it can kind of start to sound a little
bit harsh and build up on some of the sibilance
| | 11:00 | or the Ss of the vocal when I do that.
| | 11:03 | So, when I use this Brilliance EQ here I'd
like to cap it off with a Virtual Tape Machine
| | 11:12 | or a Tape Simulator and what that's going
to do it's going to kind of act as a De-esser and
| | 11:17 | an additional compressor to
soak up any of that harshness.
| | 11:21 | So, tape has a very unique bias or the way
that it handles frequency response, and it's
| | 11:27 | known for having a characteristic that
softens high frequencies in a really pleasing way,
| | 11:34 | so check this out, I'm going to switch it
to 15 ips, because I like the texture of that
| | 11:39 | a little bit better.
(music playing)
| | 11:49 | It's very subtle but very effective at
removing any of the sibilance or not totally removing
| | 11:57 | it, but taming it to a point where it's
tolerable, and I'm just going to take on the Double,
| | 12:02 | copy those over, and I'm going to reduce the
amount of brightness that I'm adding to that
| | 12:07 | Double just to keep that
lead in front, so let's listen.
| | 12:11 | (music playing)
| | 12:30 | That's a really good foundation for our vocal,
I've really brightened it up, put it at the
| | 12:35 | front of the mix, cleaned up some of that
mud, added some compression to really make
| | 12:41 | the lyricist sound confident and on top of
the mix, and added a little bit of that tape
| | 12:47 | saturation just to give it a little color and
texture, and add a little bit of attitude to it.
| | 12:53 | Next, what I'll start working on is the actual vocal
effects returns, and we'll do that in the next tutorial.
| | 12:59 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up the vocal FX returns| 00:00 | So now that I have a great sound going on
from my Rap Lead and Double, now is a good
| | 00:05 | time to start thinking about my vocal
effects returns that I am going use both on the Rap
| | 00:12 | vocals as well as later on the
Hook vocals and the Background vocals.
| | 00:17 | And what I'll start out with is using some
of my Long Verb that I already created for
| | 00:25 | my drums, let's go ahead and listen to that.
(music playing)
| | 00:39 | Just a little bit of that, I just want to
add a little bit of that long space to help
| | 00:43 | tie that vocal back to some of that percussion.
| | 00:46 | I don't want to really drill it up too far
otherwise the vocal is going to get lost and
| | 00:51 | start to sound muddy.
| | 00:52 | We're actually going to give the vocal that sense of
specialness using delays and harmonizers and pitch effects.
| | 01:00 | So I am going to leave that down say
right around -19, that's a good starting point,
| | 01:06 | we might adjust that later in our mix.
| | 01:08 | And I'll just go ahead and copy that over
to the Double, and we'll see how that sounds
| | 01:14 | as we add our other returns.
| | 01:16 | Now for the next set of returns I am
actually going to have to build those now and so I
| | 01:21 | am going to start by adding a new Send
Stereo, and we are going to call this Vox Space.
| | 01:35 | And instead of just having a Long Verb I
also like to have something that's kind of a very
| | 01:41 | close ambient space for the vocal so that
it takes it out of that very dry room that
| | 01:47 | the vocal was recorded in and gives it kind
of a nice sense of space and texture so it's
| | 01:53 | not so bare, helps it sit
in the track a little bit.
| | 01:57 | Now what I am going to use for this is a
TrueVerb, and I've got a little Preset called Vox Space
| | 02:09 | that I made, and what it is it's just, it's a
shorter reverb with some more stereo characteristics,
| | 02:15 | and we can just go ahead and
listen to that. Let me Solo Safe.
| | 02:21 | (music playing)
| | 02:29 | Let's mute that Long Verb so
you can just hear that Space.
| | 02:33 | (music playing)
| | 02:44 | And that's just going to give it a nice
little sense of space, kind of make it seem as if
| | 02:49 | the vocal was more in the room
without washing it out so much.
| | 02:53 | Then we'll add back that out Long Verb.
| | 02:55 | Remember that Long Verb we used a pre-delay
of around 30 milliseconds to make sure that
| | 03:01 | the tail was separated from the initial
dry sound so that it didn't get lost or sound
| | 03:06 | like it was in the back of the room.
| | 03:09 | Now I want to add a few more return tracks,
I am going to add a Slap delay so we will
| | 03:17 | call this Slap delay, and this
going to be a very short delay.
| | 03:23 | I really like the EchoBoy delay because it
allows me to choose so many different styles
| | 03:31 | of delay, and for this one
specifically I like the texture of a Space Echo.
| | 03:37 | When you think about delays a lot times you
think about your basic delays built into Pro
| | 03:42 | Tools and those are really just digital delays,
you're getting a tap that sounds pretty much
| | 03:47 | identical to the original sound.
| | 03:50 | You might be able to EQ it or modulate it a
little bit, but it doesn't have any feedback
| | 03:56 | degradation like you would find in a
traditional Tape delay where as it regenerates back in
| | 04:03 | the feedback loop it starts picking up
artifacts so the pitch starts changing or modulating
| | 04:10 | and the frequency of the signal changes.
| | 04:14 | And so these styles here simulate different
types of analog and digital delays, regeneration
| | 04:21 | artifacts, and I really like the Space Echo
that's a classic delay, and it works really
| | 04:26 | well for a slap-back style delay.
| | 04:28 | So as far as the timing of our delay, I
am going to go with a 30 second note, I want
| | 04:33 | to make sure switch this to all the way
wet because we do have it on a send in return.
| | 04:38 | Now I don't really need any feedback, so just go
ahead and listen to what that sounds like, Solo Safe that.
| | 04:43 | (music playing)
| | 05:02 | And I think I just want remove some of the low
frequencies from that so it doesn't get too muddy.
| | 05:07 | So I have a LowCut in here.
| | 05:09 | I could use an additional EQ which I'll do
a lot of times on my delay, but I find that
| | 05:14 | this LowCut built into
the delay works just fine.
| | 05:17 | (music playing)
| | 05:29 | Let's just do a little cleanup, we're
going to move these here real quick.
| | 05:35 | Then I might copy some of these settings over.
| | 05:37 | I might not copy everything over, in fact
I might remove this Long Verb now from the
| | 05:42 | Double so that things don't get too washy.
| | 05:47 | Now another vocal effect that I usually
have in my templates is some sort of harmonizer
| | 05:54 | or pitch effect for the
vocals so we'll call this Harm.
| | 06:01 | And what I am going to use here, kind of
simulating an old even tide H3000 harmonizer effect is
| | 06:14 | go here to Pitch Shift, and
it will bring up the Doubler.
| | 06:21 | And I kind of like some of these Dave Pensado
presets, we'll just go with out Pensado Vocal here.
| | 06:28 | Notice the Direct has been turned off
because I don't want that direct signal, I am not
| | 06:32 | using it as an Insert effect,
I am using it as a return.
| | 06:36 | But I do have my Voices here, and you can
see that they're panned left and right, there's
| | 06:40 | a bit of detuning on there so that what's
actually going on is there is a little bit
| | 06:46 | of delay for these signals, it's repeating
those signals with a bit of delay and then
| | 06:50 | it's detuning them up and down a bit.
| | 06:52 | So I kind of get this
widening and chorusing effect.
| | 06:56 | Now I don't want that to mess with my
original signal, so I am going to go ahead take an
| | 07:02 | EQ, and I'm going to aggressively
filter out those low frequencies.
| | 07:10 | You know anything right
around 250-300 is going to work.
| | 07:13 | Let's just listen to that now.
(music playing)
| | 07:32 | Cool. And that just gives a nice little texture to the
vocal, helps it connect with the rest of the mix,
| | 07:37 | kind of mix it sound special.
| | 07:39 | Now I like to at the end of this chain, so
after my EQ here I like to add an insert to
| | 07:47 | widen that a little bit more, so I am
going to go into my Sound Field and pull up that
| | 07:54 | Center plug-in, and I am just going
to go ahead and pull up a little preset.
| | 08:00 | It's basically just the Sides.
| | 08:02 | What this is doing is it's leaving the
Sides up and turning the Center channel down and
| | 08:09 | so what that sounds like is.
(music playing)
| | 08:15 | Just a little extra width.
(music playing)
| | 08:22 | And what you'll notice in the way that I
treat a lot of the vocal effects in terms of the
| | 08:26 | amount that I'm blending in is I'll kind
of push it up until I can hear them and then
| | 08:33 | bring them back a little bit, because I'm
not looking for something that's super overt,
| | 08:37 | I'm just kind of looking
to spice it up just a bit.
| | 08:40 | Now sometimes with certain parts of the
song or certain vocals I do want to play it up
| | 08:47 | a lot so you can really hear the effect.
| | 08:49 | But with lead vocals, a lot of time I find
less is more and just a subtle sort of subconscious
| | 08:56 | amount of a delay or a harmonizer or reverb
is just enough to tie it to the track while
| | 09:04 | still making the vocal sound special.
| | 09:07 | Now I also want to add a longer delay so I
have a slap-delay, but I want to add a longer
| | 09:13 | delay here so I am going to add a new
return, I am going to call this Long delay.
| | 09:19 | And again I am going to use the EchoBoy so I could
just copy this over, Option-drag or Alt-drag on the PC.
| | 09:25 | And I do like that Space Echo, but what I
am going to do here since I already have Tempo
| | 09:29 | tied in, I'm going to do something let's say
a quarter note delay so it's a longer delay,
| | 09:35 | and let's go ahead and listen to what that
sounds like, so we'll Solo Safe that, bring
| | 09:41 | up that Long delay return.
(music playing)
| | 09:52 | Now this actually does need an EQ in this
situation because what I want to do is I want
| | 09:59 | to make sure that I'm not muddying up that
vocal track with delay taps that are a quarter note.
| | 10:06 | So just like a reverb any time that I'm
using a very long delay quarter note, half note,
| | 10:12 | I tend to aggressively filter that so that
it doesn't get caught up in the rest of the
| | 10:18 | track or muddy up the vocal
that's happening right at that moment.
| | 10:22 | Because if you think about a delay, it's
actually extending that word later into time, and we
| | 10:27 | don't want what's delaying to mask what's
actually happening in the vocal at that moment.
| | 10:33 | What I'll do is generally do some kind of
telephone shape here and really all that means
| | 10:38 | is just kind of aggressively band-pass
filter and getting rid of all the lows as well as
| | 10:45 | a lot of the highs and
what that sounds like is this.
| | 10:47 | (music playing)
| | 10:55 | And the other thing that I like to do with
my long delays is process them through a little
| | 11:01 | bit of reverb so I'll just use a D-Verb in
this case and so we'll actually have a delay
| | 11:06 | going into a reverb.
| | 11:09 | And I'll just use something like
a LARGE HALL, bring that gain up.
| | 11:14 | Now I'm not going to do 100% Wet here,
I am actually looking for just about 30%.
| | 11:23 | And we'll shorten this up a
bit so it's not super long.
| | 11:28 | And that's going to really extend that
delay and push it even further back in the room,
| | 11:33 | so it's going to kind of darken it up, wash
it up a bit, and really create that sense of
| | 11:37 | depth with our vocal.
| | 11:39 | With my Lead vocals what I want to do is
I want to send them to the back of the room
| | 11:44 | without actually putting the initial
vocal at the back of the room, so as opposed to
| | 11:49 | putting the singer all the way at the
back of the room in a wash of reverb and delay
| | 11:54 | what I want to do is have them up front but
I want to cast that local all the way to the
| | 12:00 | back end of the mix, so it really creates
this nice sense of depth in the vocal that
| | 12:05 | ties it all the way back to all of the instruments,
really makes the lead vocals sound special. Check this out.
| | 12:11 | (music playing)
| | 12:36 | And what I might do is just copy that same
Center process over where I was actually removing
| | 12:42 | the Center information and playing up the Sides
just to kind of get some extra width on my return.
| | 12:50 | All right, so just to recap what we did.
| | 12:52 | We created a few returns of Vox Space, a slap
delay or a short delay, the harmonizer effect and
| | 13:00 | a longer delay, and we're actually going to
reuse those when we get to our other vocals,
| | 13:04 | the adlibs, the hooks, the background
vocals and the bridge vocals, so we'll be able to
| | 13:09 | reuse these send effects later in our mix.
| | 13:13 | And it's actually a good idea to put stuff
like this into a template that you can import
| | 13:17 | into your session time and time again, and that
really saves you time when starting a new mix.
| | 13:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding the rap stabs| 00:00 | So now that I've built some of my vocal affects
returns I want to move onto my Rap stabs and ad-libs.
| | 00:08 | Now the stabs and ad-libs I had muted before,
because they were kind of getting in the way.
| | 00:13 | And they definitely play an
important role in a rap verse.
| | 00:17 | They serve to hype up the
song at different points.
| | 00:20 | The stabs kind of reinforce certain lyrics
whereas the ad-libs kind of act as a response
| | 00:26 | to some of the lyrics.
| | 00:28 | The problem with stabs and ad-libs I find
in mixing a hip-hop or urban music is that
| | 00:35 | they tend to kind of mask the lead vocal
when not treated very aggressively.
| | 00:41 | So that is to say that they kind of just
appear and then they create too much build up in
| | 00:46 | the low frequencies or the even high
frequencies and they kind of mask the lead vocal.
| | 00:52 | They can be rather tricky to deal with,
because you want to be able to hear them but at the
| | 00:56 | same time you want to have a contrast
between those stabs and the lead, because you want
| | 01:02 | to provide the listener with a reference
point to what the center of attention or the focal
| | 01:08 | point is in the song.
| | 01:10 | So for these rap stabs let's just go
ahead and listen to them in isolation here.
| | 01:16 | (music playing)
| | 01:22 | If left untreated they
just kind of muddy up the mix.
| | 01:28 | (music playing)
| | 01:34 | So not only can I not hear them, they just kind of come in,
and they kind of just smear the lead vocal and the Double.
| | 01:42 | One technique that I like to use when treating
stabs and ad-libs is to kind of really put
| | 01:48 | them in a very specific dedicated space
and really hone in their frequency response so
| | 01:55 | that you can hear what they're doing,
but they're not getting in the way.
| | 01:59 | What I am going to do is to
start by giving them a basic sound.
| | 02:03 | Anytime I have a vocal that I just need a
quick sound on, I really like these Artists
| | 02:08 | Series plug-ins from waves
specifically the C-L-A stuff.
| | 02:12 | I can really just give something a really
quick sound, because we are getting EQ, Compression,
| | 02:19 | little bit Ambience, and some delay.
I am just going to copy that over there.
| | 02:24 | So what we have are a bit of EQ, compression,
tiny bit of room, a little bit slap, and a
| | 02:31 | little bit of width or harmonizer effect.
| | 02:34 | So I am not going to have to use
those vocal effects that I already built.
| | 02:38 | It's already built into this plug-in.
Now as is it is going to be too big.
| | 02:44 | (music playing)
| | 02:46 | So those sounds good, but I actually want to dirty
them up a bit by adding a sort of telephone effect.
| | 02:54 | So I'll just go ahead and
pull up a starting point.
| | 02:59 | What I want to do is really
focus it towards the high frequencies.
| | 03:02 | I am going to move these guys over, move my
high cut and low cut and really drill up some
| | 03:12 | of those high frequencies.
So let's listen that.
| | 03:15 | (music playing)
| | 03:18 | And I'll just copy that over,
and I have a really unique sound.
| | 03:24 | (music playing)
| | 03:27 | What I might want to do is kind of pan them in
the way so that they are slightly off-center
| | 03:37 | kind of just hovering around the leads.
(music playing)
| | 04:03 | So now I can clearly hear what they're
doing, but they're not taking center stage.
| | 04:07 | I've kind of placed them with panning as well
as EQ in the frequency spectrum to kind of be next to
| | 04:16 | the lead vocal and back a little bit on the
stage, not upfront and masking that lead vocal.
| | 04:23 | Now not all stabs and ad-libs are
going to get a telephone effect on them.
| | 04:28 | This is really an aesthetic decision that
I made with the specific song to give them
| | 04:33 | a unique sound as they
exist around the lead vocal.
| | 04:37 | The important thing to think about rather
than always putting telephone effect or not
| | 04:42 | putting telephone effect or a specific EQ is
think about contrast and how you want things
| | 04:48 | to be presented in the mix.
| | 04:50 | Think about what is the focus point that you
want to deliver to the listener so that they
| | 04:55 | can easily latch on to what's important and
how do you want to place things around that
| | 05:00 | focal point to complement it or contrast it,
not to conflict with that focal point or fight
| | 05:08 | for space in the mix.
| | 05:11 | One technique that I use quite a bit is this
sort of telephone style effect with some little
| | 05:16 | off-center panning just kind of
sit back around the lead nicely.
| | 05:21 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Processing the hook lead vocals| 00:00 | So now that I have a good lead vocal
sound for the verse, I want to
| | 00:04 | move on to the lead vocals in
the chorus or the Hook 1 and 2.
| | 00:09 | Let's just go ahead and
listen to what that is doing here.
| | 00:14 | (music playing)
| | 00:29 | So I'm actually going to process the hook
vocals very similarly to the rap vocals in the verse.
| | 00:37 | So I can start just by copying over.
| | 00:41 | In my settings here I'm actually going to go ahead
and take the time to organize some of these returns.
| | 00:48 | So I'm actually going to take my returns
and move them all the way over here next to my
| | 00:54 | master fader just so they're
out of the way. Great.
| | 00:59 | Now I can just start copying
over some of these plug-ins.
| | 01:03 | Of course, I'm going to want to
adjust these once I get them on the vocal.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to use the same plug-in chain for a
lot of the same reasons. This vocal iss definitely
| | 01:17 | going to need some EQ.
| | 01:18 | I'm just going to go ahead and reset that so
that I can EQ that unique to this specific vocal.
| | 01:25 | So here I'm just going to solo up this guy and
the reason I'm soloing this up to EQ initially
| | 01:31 | is so that I can just kind
of hear what I'm working with.
| | 01:35 | Typically, when you're EQing something you
want to make sure that you always check that
| | 01:40 | in context or with the other tracks to make
sure it fits, but when you first start working
| | 01:45 | on something it is okay to solo it up just
to get a handle on what you're working with,
| | 01:50 | clear out any of the mud or the
bad stuff that you need to remove.
| | 01:55 | Then you can go ahead and work in context
when you're adding some of the boost moves
| | 02:00 | or brightness or fitting it
within the context of the track.
| | 02:04 | (music playing)
| | 02:10 | Get rid of some of mud.
(music playing)
| | 02:59 | So that's a good start we might go ahead
and tweak that once we get it into context.
| | 03:03 | Now I want to move on to my compressor.
| | 03:08 | This specific vocal tracks going to need a
little bit more compression than the wrapped
| | 03:12 | vocal, and that's because
it's significantly more dynamic.
| | 03:16 | That is to say the differences between the
loud parts and the soft parts are much greater.
| | 03:22 | We can actually see that by switching over
here to the Edit window, and if I make that
| | 03:33 | a little bit bigger there I can see that
the difference between the soft sections here
| | 03:42 | especially here and then the louder
passages here and here is pretty significant.
| | 03:49 | I'm actually going to use a little bit more
compression on the hook vocal just to smooth
| | 03:54 | it out and help it sit in
the track a little bit better.
| | 03:58 | Now I'm going to do that by adjusting
the threshold so I can get more compression.
| | 04:03 | I'm going to go ahead and...
(music playing)
| | 04:18 | ...add a little make up.
(music playing)
| | 04:21 | Now I'm going to adjust my
attack and release settings a bit.
| | 04:25 | I'm going to do that just because the
delivery of the hook vocal it's a little different.
| | 04:32 | The envelope of the audio is a little smoother, and I
want to just to sit with the track a little bit better.
| | 04:39 | It's not as sharp or biting as
the rap vocal is intended to be.
| | 04:44 | So I want to kind of make that smooth with
a bit slower of a release time and a little
| | 04:50 | bit faster of an attack time just of
kind of really sit that nice in the track.
| | 04:55 | So it really gels together and
gives this a really nice coherency.
| | 05:00 | So let's take a listen to that.
(music playing)
| | 05:06 | And let's copy that and listen to both.
(music playing)
| | 05:25 | Now we added a little bit of top in here.
Maybe add a little less that.
| | 05:30 | A little more air and on my Double again I
like to generally kind of pull back some of
| | 05:38 | the low and low mid frequencies.
So they're not as pronounced on the doubles.
| | 05:46 | So we'll just kind of pull
those back just a little bit.
| | 05:52 | (music playing)
| | 05:58 | And I'm tucking the Double just a little bit
underneath the leads so that there is some separation.
| | 06:09 | (music playing)
| | 06:22 | Of course, I'm capping that off with the
VTM which is acting as an additional compressor
| | 06:29 | as well as a little bit of a DSer on
any top end that I'm adding to that vocal.
| | 06:36 | Now what's really going to make the lead
vocal on the chorus shine or sound special is going
| | 06:43 | to be some of our return effects, and I'm
going to use some of the same return effects
| | 06:48 | that I used on the rap vocal on the verse.
| | 06:52 | So I can really just kind of copy over these
elements here, and we'll go ahead and adjust
| | 07:04 | these a little bit with the verb.
| | 07:07 | (music playing)
Little bit more.
| | 07:12 | (music playing)
| | 07:20 | Little bit more of this slap.
(music playing)
| | 07:37 | Cool. And I will just copy those over.
(music playing)
| | 08:11 | Now I want to add one more
return effects here to the hook vocal.
| | 08:15 | Something that I like to do to just help tie
the vocal back to the feeling or mood of the
| | 08:21 | track is that some kind of textural or
distortion type return for my vocal that really helps
| | 08:28 | me kind of blend it in.
| | 08:31 | This is a good trick that you can use if
you have a vocal that's just not quite sitting
| | 08:36 | with the track how you want it.
| | 08:38 | Maybe it's feeling a little
disconnected from the track.
| | 08:41 | Adding a little bit of modulation or
distortion via an effects return can really help tie
| | 08:47 | that back to the mood and
feeling of the rest of the elements.
| | 08:51 | So I'm going to add another stereo aux track
here, and we're just going to call this Dirty
| | 08:57 | for lack of a better word there, because that's really
what I'm going to do to this vocal, and there we are.
| | 09:09 | What I'm going to do is bring up a Modulation >
MetaFlanger will work for this and any really kind of
| | 09:18 | flanger modulation plug-in works, and I'm
just going to pull up a vocal preset there.
| | 09:25 | Then I'm going to do a little bit of
distortion with the Decapitator, and I'm going to cap
| | 09:33 | that off with an EQ, because I know
I'm going to need to clean that up.
| | 09:37 | So I'm going to start building the
sound here to get a little level on my send.
| | 09:47 | (music playing)
| | 10:00 | Now that's really kind of muddy.
| | 10:01 | So I'm going to want to really trim that
down and make it real lean, really get rid of any
| | 10:06 | of those mids that are going to make it dirty.
(music playing)
| | 10:23 | I'm actually not going to use that much of it.
| | 10:25 | Just use a little, and I'm going to pan it
into send hard left so that I can take the
| | 10:31 | Double and pan that hard right.
| | 10:36 | Get a little extra width
from that. So let's listen.
| | 10:40 | (music playing)
| | 10:50 | Now I might need a little more from the right-hand
side since the Double is actually turned down a bit.
| | 10:56 | So I might try that little bit more.
(music playing)
| | 11:23 | Don't be afraid to take your return track,
your aux track, and adjust the level to adjust
| | 11:30 | the overall amount of the effect as
you're using it across all your tracks.
| | 11:35 | So I know a lot of people like to leave their
returns set at Unity so that they can control
| | 11:40 | the level on the send.
| | 11:42 | But a lot of times I find
that I have a nice balance.
| | 11:45 | I have the appropriate amount of wet to dry,
but I just want to overall pull back the entire
| | 11:52 | effect across the whole mix.
| | 11:54 | So I'll just go ahead and I'll grab my return
fader, and I'll either pull that back or push it up.
| | 12:02 | That's a really cool trick that saves you
from having to go into all your sends and
| | 12:07 | adjust those there.
The hooks are sounding really good.
| | 12:11 | They're going to sound even better once we
add in the harmony vocals, because we have
| | 12:15 | some really nice responses to the hook as
well as these Cant Stop and Hey vocals here.
| | 12:23 | These are kind of cool little responses to
what the hook vocal and the chorus is saying.
| | 12:29 | One says you can't stop us.
This one says, hey.
| | 12:32 | Once we process those we are really
going to start to hear our chorus come to life.
| | 12:37 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Processing the background vocals| 00:00 | All right, now that I have my main chorus vocal
sound I want to start working on my
| | 00:06 | background vocals or my harmonies
and these go right along with the leads.
| | 00:12 | So they're fairly important in
terms of the overall chorus sound.
| | 00:17 | Now I want to point out that the harmonies
actually build over the course of the song.
| | 00:23 | So where I actually want to work with
these is starting in the second chorus.
| | 00:28 | So as they can see here I've got
some of the harmonies that come in here.
| | 00:32 | I've got two harmonies that come in the first
chorus, but in the second chorus and the third
| | 00:39 | chorus is where I have my full
harmony or background vocals stack.
| | 00:45 | So I'm going to work with them here in the second
chorus so that I'm working with all of the vocals.
| | 00:51 | Now I'll start by sub-mixing these into an aux track
so that I can group process and control their levels.
| | 00:59 | So we'll go to a New Track, BGVox, and I
will solo safe that so that I have a nice common
| | 01:11 | control, and I can solo up
these vocals and take a listen.
| | 01:16 | Start that from our second chorus.
(music playing)
| | 01:33 | So how I typically treat background
vocals is I like to process them as a group.
| | 01:38 | So a lot of time I'll EQ and
compress them as a group on the aux track.
| | 01:42 | What I'm first going to do is even out the
dynamics by applying some compression directly
| | 01:48 | to each vocal, and I'm
going to use this Massey CT4.
| | 01:52 | I really like it as just a
clean go-to vocal compressor.
| | 01:57 | It also works great on any kind of instrument.
Super simple to use.
| | 02:01 | You just have two controls and
switches for attack and release.
| | 02:06 | You don't have to worry about timing, and
I'm just going to switch both of these to
| | 02:08 | fast and add a little compression.
| | 02:11 | (music playing)
And copy that.
| | 02:27 | (music playing)
| | 02:33 | Cool. I'll add one more at the bus
just to glue everything together.
| | 02:38 | I'm not going to use such
dramatic settings here though.
| | 02:41 | So I'm just going to use a little bit of compression
on the entire bus with a little bit of makeup.
| | 02:47 | (music playing)
| | 02:56 | Now these are pretty thick and they're going
to compete with the lead and the rest of the
| | 03:01 | track if I don't EQ them.
| | 03:04 | (music playing)
| | 03:16 | Right now they're sounding a little bit muddy.
| | 03:18 | So I'm definitely going to want to take
some EQ here and really carve those out.
| | 03:22 | I really want to place them in context
around the lead vocals in a way that they truly are
| | 03:29 | background vocals so that they're in the
background a bit and they kind of hug that lead vocal.
| | 03:36 | This is why they're panned
hard left and hard right here.
| | 03:40 | They're actually, these are Double, so I
have one on the left side one on the right side.
| | 03:44 | Then I have the second set of harmonies,
again, panned hard left and hard right.
| | 03:50 | So I want to take in, and this case, aggressively
EQ them so I can really cut out any of that mud.
| | 03:58 | So let's just go ahead and listen here an
isolation so we can get an idea of what that sounds like.
| | 04:03 | (music playing)
| | 04:22 | Add a little top end.
| | 04:25 | (music playing)
| | 04:31 | Okay, let's listen in context.
(music playing)
| | 04:55 | So now they're just kind of floating over the
lead vocals instead of weighing them down.
| | 05:01 | I want them to be these airy uplifting
parts that really hug the lead vocal, but don't
| | 05:07 | weight it down really hard.
| | 05:10 | To extend that idea I'm actually going to
place some of the long reverb, a little bit
| | 05:16 | more than I have on my lead vocal and a
bit of the long delay just to kind of put them
| | 05:27 | towards the back of the mix
and here's what that sounds like.
| | 05:32 | (music playing)
| | 05:38 | Tame that out a little bit.
| | 05:41 | (music playing)
| | 06:54 | So that's a really good starting point
for those background vocals.
| | 06:57 | I'm sure I'm going to need to adjust some
of those levels as I add in the other elements
| | 07:03 | of the hook or the chorus these Cant Stop vocal parts
as well as the ad-lib that comes in, in the final chorus.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Processing the FX vocals| 00:00 | So I'm working towards completing my chorus
vocals sound, and I have these quirky little
| | 00:06 | effects vocals that I need to deal with, the
Hey and the Cant Stop, and if we just switch
| | 00:12 | over to the Edit window, we
can see where these take place.
| | 00:19 | Let me just solo these for you.
(music playing)
| | 00:30 | So those are the response to the hook chorus
vocals and the way I actually recorded those
| | 00:39 | was I recorded at half speed so that when
it plays back at normal speed it's actually
| | 00:44 | pitched up an octave.
| | 00:47 | But because it's sort of a vary speed effect
it's like speeding up a record, you get this
| | 00:51 | kind of chipmunks effect on it.
| | 00:54 | And so that's something that I didn't actually
use a plug-in to create, I actually just recorded
| | 00:58 | at half speed in Pro Tools, you can do that just
by holding down Shift and hitting Command+Spacebar
| | 01:04 | that actually puts you
into record at half speed.
| | 01:08 | And then when I play it back and normal speed I get
this really cool chipmunk octave up kind of sound.
| | 01:15 | Now what I want to do with this is I want
to really provide a huge contrast between
| | 01:20 | this really small sound and the rest of the chorus
so that kind of creates this nice sense of depth.
| | 01:28 | And how I'm going to achieve that, this is
actually something I designed with this sound
| | 01:33 | in mind, once I recorded it I
designed this plug-in chain for it.
| | 01:37 | And how I'm going to achieve that is I'm
going to start with this C-L-A vocals, and that's
| | 01:41 | just going to give me a basic vocal sound.
| | 01:44 | I'm going to add some delay and then the
real secret here is I'm going to add a FutzBox
| | 01:52 | which is going to
simulate a lo-fi speaker effect.
| | 01:57 | So we'll move back to the
beginning of our chain, the C-L-A vocals.
| | 02:00 | What I'm going to do is just call up a
Preset that I may call Chamber Vox, and
| | 02:06 | this is just a basic vocal starter we can
listen into that with a nice chamber reverb,
| | 02:12 | so it's got a nice long tail.
(music playing)
| | 02:20 | Cool and so that's giving me a little bit
of EQ which is not really going to matter
| | 02:23 | once it gets into this FutzBox.
| | 02:26 | Some compression, a little bit stereo
widening and of course that really nice chamber,
| | 02:31 | I really like the chamber in this
C-L-A Vocal plug-in specifically.
| | 02:35 | Now I want to cast that out into time, and I am
actually going to use a dedicated delay for this.
| | 02:42 | So I'm going to make sure that I sync that
to Tempo, and as far as the mix I don't need
| | 02:47 | too much, but I am going to change the Style
type here to Telephone, because I really want
| | 02:52 | that kind of lo-fi telephone delay effect,
and I'm going to do a lot of feedback.
| | 02:58 | Let's go ahead and listen to that.
(music playing)
| | 03:08 | So that really just cast it out over the
entire length of the chorus as that plays back,
| | 03:17 | as those little chop edits play back.
| | 03:20 | Now to cap this off I want to give it
that really dirty in the back of the room kind
| | 03:25 | of feel, almost as if you're hearing this
play off a tiny little transistor radio in
| | 03:31 | the back of the song.
| | 03:33 | The reason I like to make some things really
narrow in terms of frequency in a song is
| | 03:38 | that really gives me that sense of the
back end or the back depth of the wall.
| | 03:43 | Sometimes you have to make things really
small and dirty sounding to make other elements
| | 03:49 | sound really big and clear and
upfront, because it's all about contrast.
| | 03:54 | Mixing is all about creating focal points
and adding areas of contrast with the other
| | 04:01 | instruments to keep things interesting.
| | 04:03 | So I've got little Preset called Classic Baseball
here and really it's just kind of this little
| | 04:08 | transistor radio that gives us this effect.
| | 04:12 | Let's listen to that.
(music playing)
| | 04:17 | And now in context.
(music playing)
| | 04:44 | Cool. So that's really neat
and actually this Hey sound...
| | 04:47 | (music playing)
| | 04:49 | ...can use the exact same
chain, because I like that.
| | 04:56 | (music playing)
In context.
| | 04:59 | (music playing)
| | 05:16 | Cool. So again creating these kind of very small
reverby delays sounds that act as contrast
| | 05:23 | to the other elements of this song, and in
this case, this is kind of the call in response
| | 05:28 | to our chorus, and because it is actually
pointing out the title of this song, so this
| | 05:34 | is kind of our title lyric Cant Stop, I really
wanted to give it a special sound that someone
| | 05:41 | is going to remember.
| | 05:42 | So not only did I do that kind of baby vocal,
kind of high-pitched thing, it's kind of nice
| | 05:47 | little novelty that you're
going to remember, ear candy.
| | 05:51 | But I also kind of did this cool echoey
transistor radio kind of effect that really gives it
| | 05:57 | a nice contrast against the
smoother clean sung vocals of the chorus.
| | 06:05 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a unique vocal sound for the intro and the bridge| 00:00 | In addition to having the sung chorus in the
song I also have a sung Intro and Bridge part.
| | 00:07 | And if we go ahead and just
take a listen to our Intro here.
| | 00:12 | (music playing)
| | 00:27 | And if we bring up our Bridge
we'll hear something a little similar.
| | 00:34 | (music playing)
| | 00:51 | And these are actually cut to two separate
tracks just because the lines overlap just
| | 00:55 | a tiny bit, and I wanted to give this singer enough
of a chance to take up breath, to get those lines clean.
| | 01:01 | So you know a little trick you can do is just cut
them to two separate tracks if you need that space.
| | 01:07 | Now what I want to do here is I really want
to give these a unique sound, I want to kind
| | 01:11 | of use the Intro and the Bridge as the
opportunity to kind of create a really moody section of
| | 01:17 | this song, because that's really how the
instrumentation is playing that, we kind of have this spooky
| | 01:23 | organ sound, even have this background noise effect
that's kind of rainy day kind of vinyl vibe going on.
| | 01:32 | And so really want to carry that vibe on to
the vocals, and I want to make these Bridge
| | 01:38 | vocals and Intro vocals sound different than the
sung vocals in the Hook and different than the Rap vocals.
| | 01:47 | And what really inspired me was how I kind of
treated the Hey and the Cant Stop baby vocal effects.
| | 01:54 | And so I think I want to do something similar or at
least try something similar on the Intro and the Bridge.
| | 02:01 | Now just to save time and resources I'm
going to go head and sub mix these together.
| | 02:07 | We'll just call this Bridge
Vox into a stereo Aux track.
| | 02:15 | And so I want to kind of
carry on with that C-L-A Vocal.
| | 02:18 | That was a really nice sound that I had there
on the Cant Stop as well as that FutzBox, which
| | 02:26 | really kind of gave me
that kind of magic radio sound.
| | 02:30 | I want to try something here that is similar
to the Preset that I used on the effects vocals.
| | 02:40 | I'm going to try something here called
Big Sisters Radio, this just for memory.
| | 02:46 | And really these are just presets that I've
used before so I kind of know what the vibe is.
| | 02:52 | And that's okay, you know you'll find
that you'll kind of have favorites in terms of
| | 02:57 | presets that you find inside your plug-ins,
and you kind of commit those to memory and
| | 03:01 | go back to those, and that's great
because that actually saves you time.
| | 03:05 | In this case, this uses the same simulator
module that kind of transistor what they call
| | 03:11 | Red Pocket Radio there.
| | 03:13 | And back here on the C-L-A I'm going to go again for
that chamber sound, going to wall the compressor.
| | 03:23 | Give myself a little bit of bite,
remove all of the low frequencies.
| | 03:29 | Do a little bit of delay here while widening.
Let's take a listen to what that sounds like.
| | 03:42 | (music playing)
| | 03:51 | Still a little bit muddy so I think what I
want to do is just cap that off with an EQ.
| | 03:56 | You may have noticed that in certain plug-ins,
specifically like that C-L-A, it has EQ built into it.
| | 04:03 | But a lot of times the EQ is not flexible
enough to really carve out the sound I want.
| | 04:09 | So I'll found myself using additional EQs or
processing to get the sound that I'm looking for.
| | 04:15 | In this case, I'm really just going to kind
of roll off some of the mud in here, and let's
| | 04:20 | just listen in context.
| | 04:23 | (music playing)
| | 04:54 | Cool. That sounds pretty good,
let's listen to the intro.
| | 04:58 | (music playing)
| | 05:29 | Cool. So that sounds really good.
| | 05:30 | I've got a nice unique sound that
really fits the mood and tone of the song.
| | 05:35 | I might go back and adjust some of the
amount of reverb or the amount of EQ once I get the
| | 05:41 | sound of my instruments working.
| | 05:43 | Remember, I'm really focused on getting my
vocals sound let's say 85% done before I move
| | 05:50 | on to the other instruments, so I really know
what I have space for since the vocals really
| | 05:55 | are the primary focal point of this song.
| | 05:58 | I want to make sure I spend a lot of time
on those in getting a sound that I really
| | 06:02 | like before I really move on and dig into some
of the other instruments that have frequencies
| | 06:08 | that may compete with the lead vocal.
| | 06:11 | And then I'll come back and kind of try
everything together, tie up any loose ends, I'll make
| | 06:16 | any changes to volume or level, EQ or send
effects that I need after I get everything
| | 06:22 | bass, EQed, compressed, and leveled.
| | 06:27 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working in the ad lib vocals| 00:00 | So last thing I need to do to wrap up my
vocal sound here is address my Adlib vocal, and
| | 00:06 | this comes in at the final chorus,
let's just go ahead and listen to that.
| | 00:11 | (music playing)
| | 00:28 | So this actually plays some
fairly important roles in this song.
| | 00:33 | One thing that is very common with urban R&B,
hip-hop music arrangements is that unlike
| | 00:40 | a lot of rock and traditional pop where the
production or the arrangement grows significantly
| | 00:48 | throughout this song, chorus you
keep adding more and more instruments.
| | 00:52 | It's fairly common in a hip-hop track to see
the beat kind of just stay the same 16 bars,
| | 00:59 | some elements come in, some elements leave
during different sections, but the way that
| | 01:04 | the track really gets
built is through the vocals.
| | 01:07 | So the dynamic change over the course of this song
really happens in the way the vocals are stacked.
| | 01:14 | So more background vocals, more Adlibs coming
in towards the end of the song to really take
| | 01:21 | it home or make it big.
| | 01:24 | Now in this case, our Adlib is also serving
the function of being the first thing that
| | 01:28 | you hear coming back into the last chorus.
(music playing)
| | 01:38 | So in that case, it is going to be a lead
instrument, so I'm not really going to treat it so much
| | 01:43 | in the background as I did
let's say those Bridge parts.
| | 01:47 | And it's also the last
thing that we hear in the song.
| | 01:51 | (music playing)
| | 01:55 | I really have this unique situation where
I want to treat it as a lead instrument, but
| | 02:01 | I'm not going to process it exactly the
same way that I processed my hook lead vocals or
| | 02:07 | the rap lead vocal because I do want to
create a unique space for it that as a little leaner,
| | 02:14 | maybe a little wetter
with a little bit more delay.
| | 02:17 | So it really draws the emotion out of these
oohs and aahs that he has here in his Adlib.
| | 02:24 | He's really pouring out all of his emotion here,
so I really just want to take the idea of that hook.
| | 02:31 | I cried, I cried all day, I cried all night
and really put it into this Adlib as a vocal
| | 02:37 | treatment to really put the
listener in that mood, in that feeling.
| | 02:42 | And so the first thing I want to do is I
see that I have some really strong transients.
| | 02:48 | And those strong transients here are going to limit
the way I can compress some of these softer oohs and aahs.
| | 02:55 | I'm going to really have to dig into the compressor to
get those oohs and aahs to really come out and be forward.
| | 03:01 | However, I have some parts that they're
really quite aggressive here, like this plosive.
| | 03:06 | Now what I like to do in those situations
is take something like an L1 and just cap
| | 03:12 | off just kind of use it to cap off anything.
| | 03:15 | Now very similar to how I treated the 808
kick drum, I'm not going to be using any makeup
| | 03:21 | gain here, all I'm doing is
looking to cap off that transient.
| | 03:25 | (music playing)
| | 03:33 | So you can see it's not working all of the time,
it's really just working on these hard parts.
| | 03:39 | (music playing)
| | 03:42 | Otherwise, it's extremely transparent, and
that's why I like to use limiters like the
| | 03:47 | L1 in these instances,
because it is very transparent.
| | 03:52 | It's not going to add anything to the signal,
but it is going to tame those plosives before
| | 03:58 | I run that into my next
compressor in the signal chain.
| | 04:02 | In that case, I'm going to use the C-L-A again here,
kind of my really quick vocal sound that I can get.
| | 04:10 | And so I'm going to get a little compression,
going to get a little bit of EQ here, pull
| | 04:16 | down some of those low frequencies just a bit.
| | 04:20 | I'm going to use another EQ after this, I'm
not so concerned with what's going on here.
| | 04:25 | Really like this tight reverb sound, but
I am going to use some of my own reverb.
| | 04:32 | Let's listen to that.
(music playing)
| | 04:36 | It's a little loud.
(music playing)
| | 04:50 | Like I said I'm going to add my own EQ to
this here so I can further refine that and
| | 04:55 | get the specific sound that I'm looking for.
| | 04:58 | I find that and a lot of these plugins
where you just have general tone controls those
| | 05:01 | are great for brightness, darkness or
for low end general kind of shelf-in EQs.
| | 05:08 | But when you really want to hone in, you're
going to need to bring up a dedicated parametric EQ.
| | 05:13 | In this case, what I'm thinking I want to
do is kind of a half telephone, and I call it
| | 05:19 | a half telephone because I'm kind of really
cutting out all the low frequencies and kind
| | 05:25 | of giving it that telephone style bell shape,
but I'm not cutting out the high frequencies
| | 05:32 | like you typically find on a regular band-pass
telephone style vocal effect, let's listen to this.
| | 05:39 | (music playing)
| | 06:06 | To really take this Adlib home I'm going to need to
use some of my return effects that I've already created.
| | 06:12 | In this case, I'm going to use some of
that long verb, some of that long delay.
| | 06:17 | I'm going to use some of my harmonizer and some of
that dirty effect that I created for the hook vocal.
| | 06:27 | And in general I'm going to process this
a bit more wet than everything else just to
| | 06:33 | kind of really take it home,
really give it that emotion.
| | 06:41 | Harmonizer there, push up a little
of that, and let's just take a listen.
| | 06:48 | (music playing)
| | 07:12 | And let's just check that here
to make sure that sounds good.
| | 07:16 | (music playing)
| | 07:24 | Cool. And I might need to automate that a little
bit to really bring out those first and last
| | 07:29 | words of the chorus and so they're fairly
important, and I might want to adjust my EQ a little bit.
| | 07:36 | Now one last little trick that I like to use
on Adlib vocals is I like to kind of get them
| | 07:41 | out of the center because that's kind of
where my other lead vocals are living, and I want
| | 07:46 | to kind of put it slightly off center
just to give it a little space of its own.
| | 07:51 | A trick you can use is any
kind of sound fill processor.
| | 07:55 | I'm just going to go ahead and
use the S1 Imager here to do this.
| | 07:59 | And I'm just going to set the rotation
slightly to one side, and that's just going to kind
| | 08:04 | of kick it off just a little bit, I
don't want to pan it hard right or hard left.
| | 08:09 | I just want to kick off its center to the
left or right so that it is not right in the
| | 08:15 | middle of the other vocals.
| | 08:16 | And it actually comes through a lot more,
I might even have to adjust the volume.
| | 08:20 | (music playing)
| | 09:21 | Cool. So that sounds really good.
| | 09:26 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Additional InstrumentsWarming up the bass tone| 00:00 | So now that I have a solid lead vocal sound I
can go ahead and move on to my instrumentation
| | 00:05 | and getting that fit
into the context of the mix.
| | 00:08 | And the first thing I want to
look at is my bass instrument.
| | 00:12 | Now this Sub bass here only comes in during the
chorus, so let's go ahead and take a listen to it.
| | 00:19 | (music playing)
| | 00:27 | It's a very, very low-frequency bass, so
the things we're going to want to watch out for
| | 00:32 | or how much low-frequency information is it
adding to this song in addition to my heavy
| | 00:39 | 808 and kick drums once it
kicks in during the chorus.
| | 00:42 | So I am going to want to make sure that I
don't add too much bass during my chorus section
| | 00:48 | so that I can remain consistent in
my ultra low lows throughout the song.
| | 00:54 | The other thing I am going to want to do
is try to warm up this ultra low bass so that
| | 00:59 | we can hear it better on smaller frequencies.
So I think that's where I am going to start.
| | 01:05 | A lot like I processed my 808 I can add a
little bit of harmonic distortion in the form
| | 01:11 | of tape simulation or saturation to a bass
to pull some of the lower frequencies forward
| | 01:18 | so that we can hear them
on smaller speaker systems.
| | 01:21 | I've got a little Preset that I may call
bass Harmonics and all of that is here is just
| | 01:26 | a little bit of Warm Tape in the low end
and in the high band some Heavy Saturation just
| | 01:32 | to really pull out some of those high
frequencies that are buried in there.
| | 01:37 | Imagine the bass fundamental at 50 Hz, this
is actually going to add information at the
| | 01:43 | harmonics, so 100 Hz,
150 Hz, so on and so forth.
| | 01:48 | So that we could actually here it on speakers that
may have a lower limit of somewhere around 100 or 150.
| | 01:55 | Remember, very small speakers like ear buds
they're not going to do very well down around
| | 02:00 | 40 Hz, 50 Hz where the
fundamental of this bass tone lives.
| | 02:04 | So let's go ahead and listen to this.
(music playing)
| | 02:31 | So you might be surprised how much of the heavy
saturation band I can get away with in context.
| | 02:36 | Now in isolation it mighty just sound
distorted like I am distorting the top end of the bass,
| | 02:42 | but actually in context it really helps tie
that bass instrument to the rest of the mix
| | 02:47 | and the other high frequency elements, so
it sits it really well and ties it into the
| | 02:52 | song a little bit better
than just that sub energy.
| | 02:55 | And it's also going to allow me to really pick that up
on very small speakers like laptop speakers and ear buds.
| | 03:03 | So, I really pulled out some of those
harmonics, so I am liking the tone of my bass.
| | 03:07 | The next thing I want to consider is how
much sub frequency information is it adding when
| | 03:14 | that low sub bass kicks in during
the chorus. Is it going to be too much?
| | 03:19 | Because I want to keep a consistent amount
of low frequency information throughout my
| | 03:24 | song, so my ultra low lows that are being
provided by my kick drums, I've set them up
| | 03:29 | in the verse to be a specific level.
| | 03:32 | Now I'm adding a new sub frequency
element in the chorus. Is it going to be too much?
| | 03:38 | So one sneaky little trick that I can do to
kind of automatically adjust for that addition
| | 03:44 | is use a side chain compressor.
| | 03:47 | Now I am not just going to use any old
side chain compressor, I am going to use a side
| | 03:52 | chain multiband compressor, the
C6 here, the SideChain version.
| | 03:57 | I am going to just go ahead
and reset it to its default here.
| | 04:03 | What this guy lets me do is it lets me use
individual bands, and I can key those individual
| | 04:09 | bands from an external side chain.
| | 04:11 | So first of all a multiband compressor allows me to set
separate threshold attack and release controls for distinct bands.
| | 04:20 | In this case, I have low frequencies,
mid frequencies, and some high frequencies.
| | 04:25 | So what I'm looking to do is only compress
the ultra low lows, but I'm actually going
| | 04:30 | to trigger that compression from a side chain
from the 808 kick drum so that when that kick
| | 04:37 | drum kicks in, it just turns down the lowest
bass frequencies of this bass instrument just
| | 04:44 | a touch, and that's going to really help
tie the two instruments together so they gel,
| | 04:49 | and it's going to keep the mix from getting
an overwhelming amount of sub frequency energy.
| | 04:54 | So I am going to go ahead and pick my key, or just
pick Bus 25 because I am not using that anywhere else.
| | 05:01 | We'll go over to my 808 kick, and I am
going to add that Bus, Bus 25 here, send a little
| | 05:09 | of that information in there.
| | 05:10 | Now set this as PRE because what that's
going to do it's going to allow me to solo just
| | 05:16 | the bass, and I'm still going to get signal
coming through that Bus 25, so I don't have
| | 05:22 | to here the 808 kicks so I can really
adjust the envelope and the amount of compression
| | 05:27 | on the bass without having
to hear the kick at first.
| | 05:30 | So check this out, we're going to close this,
and we're going to go back over to that bass
| | 05:36 | and add a little compression here.
| | 05:38 | Now I don't want to use these
other bands I am just going bypass them.
| | 05:42 | Now I am going to pull down the threshold to
start getting some compression in my main band here.
| | 05:49 | (music playing)
| | 05:53 | And I'll pull that range control down
which will allow for that compression to happen.
| | 06:00 | (music playing)
| | 06:03 | But that range control also limits the total
amount of compression so I just want a little
| | 06:07 | bit, so I am going to keep that set around
5 so that no more even 5 dB of gain reduction
| | 06:13 | ever happens regardless of
what's coming through that side chain.
| | 06:16 | I am using a fairly fast attack here right
around 10 milliseconds, I am going to quicken up the
| | 06:22 | release so that of that recovers a bit faster.
(music playing)
| | 06:29 | Let's listen in context.
(music playing)
| | 06:56 | So it's a subtle change, but it ties the
bass to the kick drum a little bit better.
| | 07:01 | Now that's an aesthetic choice, I might have
chosen to just leave the bass as is and just
| | 07:07 | let that sub energy just overflow over the
top of the chorus, and that would be a sound,
| | 07:13 | and that would be fine.
| | 07:14 | In this case, I really just wanted to tie that
bass instrument back to my other low frequency
| | 07:20 | elements, the kicks in this case, to really
give that a nice coherent sound and a little
| | 07:24 | bit of rhythmic pump that kind
of just gels the track together.
| | 07:29 | And using this side chain here allows me to
really do that in the low frequencies without
| | 07:34 | having to get too much pumping in the case
of using a full band compressor where it would
| | 07:42 | compressing all the frequencies of that
bass signal, so you'd hear more of that swelling
| | 07:47 | effect, which would also be a
very valid sound to use on your bass.
| | 07:51 | In this case, this is the kind of
aesthetic or feel that I was going for, and you can
| | 07:56 | use these sneaky little tricks with
multiband side chain compressors really to just tell
| | 08:01 | frequencies to go away when certain other
elements are coming into the mix that prevents
| | 08:07 | me from having to do automation on an equalizer or spending
too much time studying the balance between those elements.
| | 08:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding drama to the choir track| 00:00 | One of the main instruments and something
that plays through the entire session is this
| | 00:05 | Choir track. And if we go ahead and take a listen to it...
| | 00:10 | (music playing)
| | 00:14 | ...we can hear it's kind of a dramatic
children's choir kind of thing and its adding this kind
| | 00:19 | of spooky overtone to the entire song.
| | 00:23 | It's also giving us the chord change information for
this song as well as the bulk of the harmonic content.
| | 00:29 | Now I want to take this drama and extend it
even further with the aesthetic of this track,
| | 00:36 | kind of make it even more spooky and vibey with this
kind of lo-fi sampled sound that we've got going on.
| | 00:44 | So the first thing I want to do with this
Choir track is add a little bit of delay to it.
| | 00:51 | And the delay is just going to set it back
in the mix a bit, but it's also going to help
| | 00:55 | with some of these chord change transitions
where the chords cut from one chord to another,
| | 01:00 | and it can be a little bit abrupt, the delay is
going to kind of smear those out a little bit.
| | 01:05 | So we'll just do something simple like a quarter note
just a little bit in the Mix area, let's listen to that.
| | 01:17 | (music playing)
| | 01:24 | So you can hear that nice little tail, I
am not going to use any Feedback here, I just
| | 01:29 | want just a little bit of a tail on that.
| | 01:32 | Now what's really going to give me the
drama on this track are two plug-ins actually.
| | 01:39 | I'm going to use a Tremolo plug-in called
Tremolator and what I want to do is I want
| | 01:47 | to give this choir track some movement or
some bounce, a little bit like side chain
| | 01:53 | in a Compressor but with more control.
| | 01:56 | And how I am going to do that, I am
actually going to tempo sync my Rate here.
| | 02:03 | And right now I've got a shape, and
if we listen to what this sounds like.
| | 02:07 | (music playing)
| | 02:12 | And if I switch that to
let's say a quarter note.
| | 02:16 | (music playing)
| | 02:20 | That's a cool effect but I want a slightly
different envelope on the dip, more of like
| | 02:26 | a pumping effect that you'd
get from SideChain Compressor.
| | 02:30 | And the cool thing about Tremolator is
you can actually custom draw the shape.
| | 02:34 | I've actually made a shape that I call
brian goodness, I use it so much, and I'll show
| | 02:40 | you what that looks like.
| | 02:41 | I'll go here to Edit, and I've actually
designed this shape to sound very similar to a SideChain
| | 02:48 | Compressor just that I have a whole lot
more control over the envelope, so I can really
| | 02:54 | control how the sound comes and goes along
with that Depth control, so let's listen to that.
| | 03:01 | (music playing)
| | 03:07 | I am going to back the depth off a little
bit so that it's not driving all the way,
| | 03:13 | again very similar to a SideChain
effect, and that sounds like this.
| | 03:17 | (music playing)
And in context.
| | 03:24 | (music playing)
| | 03:36 | Now it gives it this really, really cool
movement, and it almost takes on a groove of its own
| | 03:42 | as it pulses with that quarter note rhythm.
| | 03:45 | I like to take opportunities to tie the rhythmic
information of the track to some of the harmonic
| | 03:53 | parts at different stages of the mix just
to kind of get elements to groove together.
| | 03:59 | Anything that's going to make the listener
bob their head just a little bit more, even
| | 04:03 | if it's super subtle, even if I used the
Depth at a very minimal amount I would still add
| | 04:09 | a little bit of that
rhythmic movement to this track.
| | 04:13 | Now I am going to cap that off with something
even more dramatic, and that is a Filter effect.
| | 04:22 | And I really like using this OneKnob Filter,
because it's just so simple, I can just kind
| | 04:29 | of grab it and automate it any way I want.
(music playing)
| | 04:41 | So it's kind of like that DJ style filtering.
(music playing)
| | 04:48 | And that's actually what I am going to do,
I want to automate this throughout the track
| | 04:52 | so that it has even more movement, and it
adds even more drama as the track builds from
| | 04:59 | the intro, to the verse, to the chorus.
| | 05:02 | So anytime you can use EQ or Filters to kind
of change the tonal balance or the frequency
| | 05:09 | balance of elements at
different points of this song.
| | 05:12 | That's a great way to add drama or add change
to static elements, elements that are otherwise
| | 05:19 | pretty much the same loop
throughout the whole song.
| | 05:22 | This Choir part really is just the same
chords playing over and over again, and this song
| | 05:28 | has the same chords in the verse as it does
in the chorus, there is not really any change,
| | 05:33 | so to keep that from getting boring I want
to add dynamic elements to that instrument
| | 05:39 | so that it carries the listener through
the track and keeps their ears interested.
| | 05:43 | So to automate this I am actually going
just enable this parameter here for automation
| | 05:48 | by holding down Ctrl+Option+Command on
the Mac, that will be Ctrl+Alt+Windows key on
| | 05:54 | a PC, and I am going to
enable that for automation.
| | 05:57 | And that actually will then
show up in my Automation list.
| | 06:01 | And again I really like as plug-in because it's
simple, it's just one knob, it's exactly what it says.
| | 06:06 | And I can just get what I
want to get done and move on.
| | 06:10 | There are other filters out there, I could
use the built-in filter inside of Pro Tools,
| | 06:15 | and that would work just as well.
| | 06:17 | So to do this Automation I am actually
going to do it visually so I can be more accurate
| | 06:22 | and kind of achieve my goal
quicker than doing real-time automation.
| | 06:26 | So I am going to move to the
Edit window to accomplish this.
| | 06:30 | I am going to find that Choir track, make
that big enough so we can see it, and I am
| | 06:37 | going to switch my Automation view to
that filter, back out a little bit there.
| | 06:43 | Now for this Intro I really
want that filter nice and low.
| | 06:48 | So we'll start real deep and then I want
to kind of build up until I get to that Verse
| | 06:56 | section that first verse.
| | 06:59 | And then I want to give a little bit of
that back or raise that breakpoint there.
| | 07:04 | So we'll pull back a little bit so we
save some of that drama for the Verse section.
| | 07:10 | Then I'll actually build that through to the
mid-part of the Verse, so maybe we come back
| | 07:17 | up almost to about 8.
| | 07:20 | So it's a little bit
higher than where we left off.
| | 07:24 | And then we can open it up a little bit
in this section and then what will be really
| | 07:30 | cool is if I open it up even more in the Chorus, so we
get that extra a high frequency lift happening there.
| | 07:40 | Now once I have that established what I can
actually do is I can copy and paste this automation
| | 07:47 | information so I can actually copy this
here and then paste it at the next verse.
| | 07:55 | And then for the Bridge, I think what I
actually want to do is do the same that I'm doing in
| | 07:59 | my Intro, and then we have
our final Chorus here like that.
| | 08:06 | And I just want to make sure that I clean
up any of these hard edges because those can
| | 08:10 | actually sound pretty
rough as it tries to transition.
| | 08:16 | So over here just want to clean that up.
So let's listen to that in context.
| | 08:24 | (music playing)
| | 09:05 | Cool. So that adds a whole ton
of drama to that Choir track.
| | 09:09 | It's really just going to take that
emotion to the next level rather than just having
| | 09:14 | that static part playing the chord changes,
and I think it's going to work really well
| | 09:19 | in helping to tie all of our rhythmic
and harmonic elements together in the track.
| | 09:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Re-creating a sampled vinyl sound for the organ| 00:00 | Now that I have a cool sound going on for
my Choir track, I want to address the other
| | 00:05 | main melodic component of the song that's
the Dirty Organ or the Dirt Organ here, and
| | 00:11 | that also plays through the entire track and
kind of has the main melody lick that we hear
| | 00:19 | as sort of the hook instrument of the song.
| | 00:22 | We'll just listen to it
here in the intro real quick.
| | 00:25 | (music playing)
| | 00:33 | And the instrument itself already
kind of has a spooky lo-fi sound.
| | 00:38 | I actually played that as a MIDI instrument.
| | 00:41 | I found a really cool patch that
kind of sounded like a broken old organ.
| | 00:46 | And what I wanted to do to kind of tie it
back to the aesthetic of the track is make
| | 00:50 | it sound even more lo-fi, kind of like I
sampled it off an old record or even sampled it off
| | 00:58 | an old wax gramophone style recording.
| | 01:02 | So there is a little bit of ambience to
it, but a lot of grit and a lot of dirt.
| | 01:07 | And so what I'm going to do to achieve
that is go back to that FutzBox which is really
| | 01:14 | good at simulating those old
radios and things like that.
| | 01:19 | And we'll pull up the same thing
that we did on our bridge vocals.
| | 01:25 | (music playing)
| | 01:31 | So that gives it a really cool kind of lo-fi
sound, almost as if I sampled it from vinyl,
| | 01:38 | like it's a loop that I sampled,
but instead I actually played it.
| | 01:42 | And so that's actually kind of a cool technique
that you can use in producing hip-hop and R&B.
| | 01:48 | A lot of times using samples is not the
best idea depending on the kind of clearance you
| | 01:54 | can get for the sample,
the legal clearance, right?
| | 01:56 | So if you are actually going to put out
the record, make money off of it, you need to
| | 02:02 | get any samples that you use.
| | 02:04 | If you took something from a vinyl record,
you're legally obligated to go get clearance
| | 02:08 | for that, otherwise you could get in trouble.
| | 02:11 | So a lot of times, what producers will do
is they'll make things sound as if they were
| | 02:17 | sampled using plug-ins and things like that,
when they really just played them fresh from
| | 02:23 | scratch, they recorded them as either a
virtual instrument or a real live instrument and they
| | 02:28 | kind of dirtied them up.
| | 02:29 | That's kind of what we are doing
in this situation with the FutzBox.
| | 02:32 | Now, what I'm hearing here is with this
effect we're getting a lot of buildup in an area
| | 02:39 | that might affect the lead vocal.
So I'm actually going to add an EQ to that.
| | 02:43 | And we've already got a lot of the low
frequency and high frequency filtering from the FutzBox.
| | 02:50 | What I want to do is just kind of make
sure that I am not masking my lead vocal.
| | 02:54 | So to find that spot, I'm just going to go
to the verse, play a little bit and figure
| | 03:00 | out where that might be.
(music playing)
| | 03:22 | Cool. And I'm not looking to totally take away all
the higher frequencies from this instrument,
| | 03:27 | all I'm looking to do is clear out some space
in that area where the lead vocal intelligibility
| | 03:33 | is going to live, because it does get a little bit
crispy in that 1.5 to 2K range after adding that FutzBox.
| | 03:44 | And another little trick that I can do to
give it some space so that lead vocal can
| | 03:49 | live right in the center is a
little trick with a delay plug-in.
| | 03:54 | I'm not really going to use it like a delay,
like you typically think, I'm just going to
| | 03:59 | use the built-in delay in Pro Tools.
| | 04:02 | What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to have
one side of the delay, so this is a Stereo delay.
| | 04:08 | I have controls for the
left and the right-hand side.
| | 04:11 | I'm going to just delay one side by about
12 milliseconds, and I can do anything from
| | 04:18 | 5 to 25 milliseconds to achieve this
effect, which is called the HAAS effect, H-A-A-S.
| | 04:25 | I'm going to get a full stereo widening
out of this, because the ear is actually going
| | 04:31 | to hear the non-delayed signal first and then pick
up the right-hand side that's been slightly delayed.
| | 04:37 | So let's just take a listen to what this does.
(music playing)
| | 04:42 | So it kind of centered.
| | 04:46 | (music playing)
Now wide.
| | 04:52 | Now sometimes what happens is your ear is
going to hear the non-delayed side a little
| | 04:59 | louder, even though on
the metering we can see that.
| | 05:02 | (music playing)
| | 05:03 | They're both the same, but the
psychoacoustic effect of this HAAS setup on the delay is
| | 05:11 | going to have my ears perceiving the
left side, in this case, a little bit louder.
| | 05:16 | So what I'll do to compensate for that is
I might notch down the direct side, the side
| | 05:21 | with no delay, just by a tiny bit to kind of
balance that out, and you can kind of balance
| | 05:26 | that out by ear on your speakers.
So check this out.
| | 05:30 | (music playing)
| | 05:41 | On top of the vocals.
(music playing)
| | 05:45 | Wrapped around the vocals.
(music playing)
| | 06:01 | So it's a cool way to add a sort of stereo
with something that is not too stereo, but
| | 06:07 | it's also a cool way to get things out of
the way of stuff in the center channel, the
| | 06:13 | lead vocals, in this case.
| | 06:15 | Now just to top this off, I'm going to add
a bit of my ambience reverb to this guy, the
| | 06:21 | one that I actually made for the drums.
| | 06:24 | So I've got this sort of Short
Verb that I made for the drums.
| | 06:29 | (music playing)
| | 06:31 | Just give a little extra wetness there.
(music playing)
| | 06:50 | And now that I've added these effects to
my Choir and Dirty Organ tracks, I might need
| | 06:56 | to go back and readdress
some of the levels of my vocals.
| | 06:59 | When they were full, I pushed those vocals
up pretty hot so that I could hear them.
| | 07:04 | Now the vocals are
sounding maybe a little bit hot.
| | 07:07 | So it might be a good idea just to kind of
pull these back, maybe by about a dB here.
| | 07:15 | (music playing)
| | 07:19 | Especially these ad-libs
are really coming out now.
| | 07:25 | (music playing)
| | 07:31 | And let's just check the
chorus to see where we are on those.
| | 07:34 | (music playing)
| | 08:03 | Cool. We might come back to those once
we have all the instruments mixed in.
| | 08:07 | Again, mixing is a very iterative process,
so whenever you set levels or EQs or send
| | 08:14 | or effects levels of anything, know that
it's okay to come back and adjust those as you
| | 08:20 | have new ideas about sounds or textures
or the direction you're taking in your mix.
| | 08:27 | It's very rare that I just set
something and leave that forever.
| | 08:32 | I'm always kind of coming back and
tweaking things and adjusting things.
| | 08:36 | And sometimes I'll take an instrument, and
I'll clear out some of the mud from it, and
| | 08:41 | that'll actually make me hear something
happening on another instrument that I need to go back
| | 08:45 | and address, something that I thought I
had already gotten where I wanted in the mix.
| | 08:49 | So you are kind of always adjusting things and
tweaking things as new things come up in a mix.
| | 08:56 | So don't be afraid to embrace this iterative process and
tweak things and come back to things as you go.
| | 09:06 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Layering the remaining instruments| 00:00 | Now that I have the mix on my main
instrument elements, I want to come back and fill in
| | 00:05 | the other instruments that come in during
certain parts of the track. The full organ
| | 00:11 | comes in midway through the verse, and
it's just going to add some additional harmonic
| | 00:15 | content at the midway point just to kind
of fill that out, go ahead and listen to what
| | 00:20 | that's doing here.
(music playing)
| | 00:38 | So what I want to do with that is I think
I am going to give it that same movement as
| | 00:42 | the choir just not as much.
(music playing)
| | 00:57 | Just to tie it back to the track.
| | 00:59 | Now we have another organ, the Hi Organ here, I can
just kind of move that next to all the other organs.
| | 01:05 | What that does is it comes in during the
chorus, and it actually plays the same part as the
| | 01:10 | Dirty Organ, it's just to
Double up so we can listen to that.
| | 01:13 | (music playing)
| | 01:25 | And it's just defining
that melody a little bit more.
| | 01:29 | So one of the things I want to do is
spread that out in a similar way with that delay,
| | 01:35 | expect what I'll do is I'll switch the
sides of that HAAS effect, so it's actually you
| | 01:41 | hear the right side first.
(music playing)
| | 01:49 | Now also take a little EQ to do that just
to kind of get rid of any low-frequency mud
| | 01:55 | that might be building up there in that organ.
Maybe even brighten it up just a little bit there on 2K.
| | 02:02 | (music playing)
| | 02:20 | Cool. That's really nice.
| | 02:21 | Now the Viola again does the same
thing, it's just doubling the organ part.
| | 02:26 | (music playing)
| | 02:37 | So I just want to give some movement to that,
and I really like this, Maserati Harmonics
| | 02:42 | plug-in for movement, I like
this kind of Bounce mode right here.
| | 02:47 | (music playing)
| | 02:49 | Gives it a little width, a little more presence.
| | 02:55 | It's kind of a stereo enhancer with a delay
built into it, see it automatically tempos things.
| | 03:05 | (music playing)
| | 03:17 | At this point I'm just trying to tie these
layers back to the sound that I have going
| | 03:22 | on in my mix so that
they sound like they relate.
| | 03:26 | Each part of the arrangement has its own
function in terms of either strengthening the harmonic
| | 03:32 | content of the chords or the melody or
the rhythmic information, and now that I have
| | 03:38 | a really solid mix, what I am trying to
do is just really kind of tie those elements
| | 03:43 | in, so they have the right
amount of contrast against each other.
| | 03:47 | But don't stick out so much so that they
sound as if they don't belong as part of the track.
| | 03:52 | I am just kind of trying to bring
them into the fold at this point.
| | 03:56 | So that sounds pretty good.
| | 03:58 | The pads are just playing the same chords as
the Choir here. Only in the chorus we are
| | 04:04 | just getting kind of a
light lift on everything here.
| | 04:09 | (music playing)
| | 04:15 | So I think carrying that Tremolator over
again, we are adjusting the depth a little bit.
| | 04:20 | Those paths are kind of clean, so I think
what I want to do is kind of dirty them up
| | 04:25 | a bit some of this Decapitator.
(music playing)
| | 04:39 | And then we'll clean up any low-frequency
issues here, clean up anything around 500
| | 04:57 | and 2K that might mess with my vocal.
| | 05:01 | I don't want to filter too high because I
want some of that warmth of those paths to
| | 05:06 | still live in my low-mids, I don't want
to kind of filter it all the way up here.
| | 05:10 | (music playing)
| | 05:12 | I want to maintain some of that
warmth, glue the track together.
| | 05:20 | (music playing)
| | 05:35 | So these paths really help glue kind of all
the elements together into a nice congealed
| | 05:40 | soup there during the chorus, and I really
like the paths serving that function, also
| | 05:45 | giving me a little bit of air and
dirtying them up just helps kind of tie it back to
| | 05:50 | the tracks, so they are not super clean.
| | 05:53 | Now I also have this Noise element
that plays through the entire mix.
| | 05:56 | (music playing)
It's just kind of this rainy day noise.
| | 06:03 | I kind of wanted to have this, kind of this
spooky thing that carries to the whole mix.
| | 06:09 | And I am thinking it might be cool to just
kind of have a little bit of movement in that
| | 06:13 | just to kind of tie it back to the rhythm
of the track since it is very random, and
| | 06:17 | it's just kind of a noise repeating.
(music playing)
| | 06:23 | Not too much, like that, but maybe like that.
And I definitely want to make sure that I'm
| | 06:29 | getting rid of any low-frequency mud that it
might be harboring down underneath a hundred.
| | 06:35 | (music playing)
| | 06:46 | And it's really just subconscious, it's kind
of giving me almost a vinyl record sound but
| | 06:51 | I didn't want to use kind of
cliche vinyl record sample.
| | 06:55 | I wanted to find something a little more
human so I found this lo-fi, people talking, rainy
| | 07:02 | day, kind of wide, we can't
really hear what they are saying.
| | 07:05 | And I just loop that throughout the track, it
doesn't really have any rhythmic or harmonic relationship.
| | 07:10 | It's just kind of this additional smearing
noise, it's going to glue everything together
| | 07:15 | and in the intro it kind of
really makes things extra spooky.
| | 07:18 | (music playing)
| | 07:38 | So you can kind of hear the rumbling of what
I think is kind of like a lo-fi thunder--who
| | 07:43 | knows what it actually is--and you can kind of hear
some of those voices speaking through. It's like hey,
| | 07:48 | are those voices? Just kind of adding a
cool randomness to the track that I liked when
| | 07:54 | I was putting this stuff together.
| | 07:56 | So I just want to make sure that none of the
frequencies in that are going to mask anything
| | 08:01 | else in the track.
| | 08:03 | And I realize that it is noise, and it is
adding a noise floor to the track, but that's
| | 08:07 | something that I'm okay with and the
Tremolator helps that kind of tie back to the rhythmic
| | 08:14 | information of the drums.
| | 08:17 | So we have kind of got everything tied together as far
as our instrument sounds, our drum sounds, our vocal sounds.
| | 08:25 | Now what we can start to do is kind of
circle back and tie up any loose ends, work with
| | 08:32 | some automation and finish off the track.
| | 08:37 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Finishing UpCircling back and revising the mix| 00:00 | So I've been making notes as I've been going
along, here, thinking about things that I want
| | 00:04 | to come back to and update as
I've been adding things to the mix.
| | 00:10 | Now generally, I would tackle those problems
as they arrived during the mix process, but
| | 00:17 | in the best interest of this tutorial, I
wanted to save a list of those things and come back
| | 00:22 | to them so I could fully explain my thought
process behind them as opposed to just acting
| | 00:29 | all scatterbrained as I move to the mix.
| | 00:31 | But the reality is is sometimes it can be
very scatterbrained as you are moving through
| | 00:36 | a mix, kind of working on one thing, you get
inspired by something else, and you move over
| | 00:39 | there really quick, and it's just
very train of thought kind of thing.
| | 00:44 | In interest of this course, I have decided
to save some of those thoughts and come back
| | 00:49 | in one tutorial and kind of go through some of the
updates that I want to make to the mix after
| | 00:56 | getting a full mix together.
| | 00:58 | One thing I've been noticing for awhile now are
some of the drums with a lot of that distortion
| | 01:04 | are fighting with the lead vocal, now that
I have my lead vocal sounds. Specifically
| | 01:10 | we have these Perc Hits and
my Clap, which are very dirty.
| | 01:15 | If we listen to those.
(music playing)
| | 01:25 | So I am hearing some mud kind of in the 400
to 600 that might be competing with the vocals.
| | 01:30 | So what I want to do is just
try to clear that up a little bit.
| | 01:36 | (music playing)
| | 02:10 | Just a little bit.
(music playing)
| | 02:24 | And on that note I think what to do here is
take my instrument tracks starting with the
| | 02:31 | choir going all the way to the noise, and
I want to submix those to kind of continue
| | 02:37 | that idea of breaking up some of the frequency
information so that the most important element,
| | 02:43 | the lead vocal, stays out front.
| | 02:45 | So I am just going to submix
these here into a new Aux track.
| | 02:50 | We will call this Music.
| | 02:54 | So as opposed to going back and adjusting
the EQ individually on all these tracks, some
| | 02:59 | of them I did EQ, some of them I didn't.
| | 03:01 | What I can do is just kind of submix them,
because this EQ is all going to be for the
| | 03:06 | common goal of making a little bit of space
for the vocal, and I find that the areas where
| | 03:12 | you really need to watch out in terms of
affecting the vocal intelligibility is right around
| | 03:19 | the 400 to 600 area of the mids and
then up kind of around 1.5 to 2.5 K.
| | 03:27 | You can lose some brilliance in the vocal
if there is too much masking around there,
| | 03:32 | but what you can do is just kind of sweep
around and find the areas that may affect
| | 03:38 | the tonality of the vocal, because every
vocal is going to be a little bit different.
| | 03:43 | (music playing)
| | 04:09 | I am just taking a tiny bit out
just to improve the clarity a bit.
| | 04:13 | I don't want to unbalance the mix.
| | 04:14 | I am not looking to totally pull out all the
mid-frequencies or the upper mid-frequencies
| | 04:22 | from these instruments.
| | 04:24 | All I'm looking to do is make a little bit
of extra space to give an extra edge to that
| | 04:30 | lead vocal in terms of frequency priority.
| | 04:33 | We can go ahead and listen
in the verse just to check.
| | 04:37 | (music playing)
| | 04:48 | Cool. So another thing that I noticed as I was
listening to the mix is that on the Dirty Organ applying
| | 04:55 | the FutzBox really pulled out a lot of
the nice warmth of the original organ sound.
| | 05:02 | (music playing)
| | 05:08 | So we'll save that.
(music playing)
| | 05:14 | So there is some nice warmth in there, and
I am just going to reclaim a little bit of
| | 05:19 | that by pulling the mix back just a bit.
(music playing)
| | 05:28 | Keeping some of that.
(music playing)
| | 05:42 | And in the Choir, I think what I
want to do is maybe pull back the depth.
| | 05:45 | It might be a little too
deep on this choir track.
| | 05:49 | (music playing)
Maybe give myself a little bit more delay.
| | 06:20 | (music playing)
Cool. That's sounding pretty good.
| | 06:21 | Now the other thing that's been bugging me
a little bit, and you can probably see it
| | 06:26 | right here is the base has some noise being
generated by a plug-in. And a lot of people
| | 06:32 | might think, well, that shouldn't be
a problem, right, with its plug-in.
| | 06:36 | There is not going to be any noise floor.
| | 06:38 | And actually with a lot of these plug-ins
that simulate amplifiers, which Saturn is actually
| | 06:44 | simulating some guitar amp simulation here
with its heavy saturation, there is going
| | 06:50 | to be a modeled noise floor.
| | 06:52 | So in efforts to really capture the vibe of
an analog device, including the noise floor
| | 07:00 | is going to be part of that sound.
| | 07:02 | So you will actually find in a lot of
these plug-ins that simulate saturation whether
| | 07:07 | it'd be Mixbus saturation or guitar amp
simulation, they're going to add a little bit of noise.
| | 07:14 | Some of these plugins allow you to go in and dial
specifically just the noise floor down, some do not.
| | 07:22 | So in this case, what I am going to do is I
am just going to go ahead and automate that
| | 07:28 | bass out during the verses I am not hearing
it and then I'm not so concerned about the
| | 07:35 | noise in the chorus when it does happen.
| | 07:38 | What's actually happening is going to mask
any noise that we are hearing, but I don't
| | 07:42 | want to add any additional noise to
the mix when the bass is not in the song.
| | 07:46 | Now there are two ways I can go about that.
| | 07:48 | I can actually automate the
volume to Mute or pull down.
| | 07:53 | I could also just use a gate.
| | 07:56 | That way I don't have to
go mess with the automation.
| | 07:59 | It's a very sustaining bass.
| | 08:01 | So it's going to be really
easy to use a noise gate on.
| | 08:06 | So we will go on here, and we will just go ahead
and use the one built into Pro Tools. It's fine.
| | 08:12 | So I'll just increase the range, set the
attack really fast, and the release really slow so
| | 08:18 | that it doesn't close back down
when the bass is articulating.
| | 08:24 | Set that hold up, and we
will increase the Ratio.
| | 08:34 | I will move that Threshold down.
| | 08:35 | Say, I want to move it down to right where
that noise is going to see. Not too low.
| | 08:39 | See, that's opening the gate,
but just right about there.
| | 08:43 | That's going to keep it closed, and we will just check
that during the chorus to make sure that it's...
| | 08:48 | (music playing)
| | 09:03 | And we can probably speed up that
release and hold time a little bit.
| | 09:07 | That's going to work real well rather than
going in and messing with the automation.
| | 09:11 | Now I can continue to use my volume control
to set the level instead of automating it.
| | 09:16 | If it was a more complicated bass line, I might
have to go on and actually do some automation
| | 09:21 | or just let's say print the track and then
cut out any of the noise after I've printed
| | 09:27 | the track with the effect.
| | 09:29 | So another thing I wanted to come back and
address are the level of my background vocals,
| | 09:34 | my harmony vocals, and I think I really
just want to kick those up significantly.
| | 09:38 | I am going to pull these up,
feeding into that Aux track.
| | 09:44 | Let me pull this back a
little bit, take a listen.
| | 09:48 | (music playing)
| | 09:58 | And we will listen in a bigger chorus.
(music playing)
| | 10:41 | They're coming up here as the ad-lib vocal,
and I want to do something just a little bit
| | 10:45 | more just to give it a little bit more
texture and make it a little bit grittier or more
| | 10:51 | emotional just really carry that
emotion home when that kicks in.
| | 10:55 | I think what I want to use to do that,
I'll just show my other set of inserts here.
| | 11:02 | I am going to move that S1 to be the last slot.
| | 11:06 | I am going to use the VTM here, and I am
actually going to use it with a little bit more input
| | 11:17 | drive, and you can see that
automatically pulls the output down.
| | 11:20 | So I don't have an overall volume change.
| | 11:23 | It accommodates for more drive by pulling
down the output, but it is going to drive
| | 11:28 | that tape stack a little bit harder.
| | 11:31 | So I have switched that to the 15 ips setting,
and we'll go ahead and listen to what that
| | 11:36 | does here in our last chorus.
| | 11:39 | Just make sure we hit
that last little part there.
| | 11:46 | (music playing)
| | 12:19 | Nice. So that's very subtle, but gives
it just a tad bit more texture.
| | 12:24 | Now with a lot of the stuff I've been doing
you might be saying, well, Brian is it mixing
| | 12:28 | mostly just about adding a lot of EQ and a
lot of compression and a lot of these sort
| | 12:33 | of basic tools to make the mix sound really
clean, and you might be thinking, well, you've
| | 12:38 | been spending a lot of time doing creative
tasks like changing the color or the tone
| | 12:43 | of sounds using special effects
or saturation or texturizing tools.
| | 12:49 | And the thing is every mix is different.
| | 12:52 | Every mix is going to call for
different things to bring it to life.
| | 12:56 | Some more traditional mixes like if I am
mixing a traditional rock or folk song, yes, they're
| | 13:01 | going to be a lot about using EQ and
compression to make the live instruments that have been
| | 13:07 | recorded sound their best.
| | 13:09 | So make them sound more natural, add any
sparkle or a punch to them and bring them forward
| | 13:15 | in the mix so that you can really
hear the tonality of the performances.
| | 13:20 | Other types of songs specifically urban,
electronic, hip-hop, R&B music that is mostly produced
| | 13:26 | with virtual instrument, samples, and arranged
entirely in the computer is not going to have
| | 13:32 | the same dynamic and frequency issues as
let's say a live rock band with a live drum kit,
| | 13:39 | miked guitars, things like that.
| | 13:42 | For example, in this song I'm not dealing
with a lot of dynamics issues in terms of
| | 13:48 | stuff being too loud or too soft.
| | 13:50 | My snare drum is very consistent, because the MIDI, that
I programmed it with, had a consistent velocity.
| | 13:57 | So I am not needing to use compression
as much to even out note for note hits.
| | 14:03 | I am using that in the vocal,
because that is a live instrument.
| | 14:07 | Now as far as adding special effects and
things like that, like I was saying a lot of times
| | 14:13 | I'm adding these effects to increase or
enhance the texture of what is a rather plain sound
| | 14:21 | or something that stays
consistent the whole time.
| | 14:24 | Again, unlike a live rock performance
where things are changing all the time just due
| | 14:30 | to the nature of humans performing it throughout
the whole song, you're getting these variations.
| | 14:36 | I'm dealing with sometimes one bar, two bar
loops that loop the entire song and never change.
| | 14:42 | So what I'm looking to do is create things
that change or that are interesting or add
| | 14:49 | rhythmic or harmonic movement to the
elements that capture a certain aesthetic that I'm
| | 14:55 | going for and really kind of
drive home a specific mood.
| | 15:01 | In a lot of cases mixing for me in the
songs that I'm working with sometimes can be as
| | 15:07 | much as 70% vibe kind of move, so 70% of the
plug-ins that I'm adding are for vibe or texture
| | 15:14 | or mood and only 30% are those traditional
where I've got to clean it up with some EQ,
| | 15:20 | I've got to use some traditional compression
to control dynamic range, so on and so forth.
| | 15:26 | So when you are thinking about your mixes
and finding a unique voice as a mixer, don't
| | 15:31 | just think about the basic building blocks
of just getting a clean mix, also think about
| | 15:38 | how you can add little tricks and textures and
ways of adding movement to make it interesting,
| | 15:45 | really make it your own thing, your own vibe,
you own voice, because that's really what's
| | 15:51 | going to create interest for the listener.
| | 15:54 | You can have a clean mix, but a lot
of times that can be kind of boring.
| | 15:58 | I'd much rather have a mix that had
interesting sounds and textures something that kind of
| | 16:04 | made me say, hah, that's really interesting,
I kind of like the vibe of that, something
| | 16:08 | that polarizes me towards an aesthetic.
Rather than having something that's just kind of
| | 16:13 | boring and clean and sterile, so some things to
think about when you're working on your mixes.
| | 16:19 | Now the last thing that I want to do here, I
am just going to touch up some volume levels
| | 16:23 | of a few things that I think maybe are
a little too soft or a little too loud.
| | 16:28 | So I will just playback the track
from a verse and start to work on that.
| | 16:33 | (music playing)
| | 19:42 | Cool. So that's sounding really good.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding automation| 00:00 | Now that I have a good static mix of all of
my elements, I can move on to automate some
| | 00:06 | parts to add movement or
change throughout the session.
| | 00:10 | Now as far as an automation strategy in
this style of music, it's going to be a little
| | 00:14 | bit different than let's say a vocal jazz
session where I might be using lots of automation
| | 00:19 | rides on the vocals and the
instruments in lieu of heavy compression.
| | 00:25 | In this case, I'm looking to use automation
to kind of make things change or be a little
| | 00:30 | bit more interesting from section to section when I'm
really just looping the same elements over and over.
| | 00:37 | So I'm looking to use automation in
certain places to keep the parts interesting that
| | 00:42 | are just looping over and over again.
| | 00:45 | One area that I can focus on to start with
are my hi-hats. And since the hi-hats really
| | 00:52 | are just kind of the same loop that start
towards the end of the verses and carried
| | 00:57 | through the choruses, one real easy thing
I can do is automate their volume level so
| | 01:03 | that they come down a little bit when they
first appear and then kick up in the chorus
| | 01:09 | section. And that's just going
to give me a tiny bit of variation.
| | 01:13 | I'm not looking for anything dramatic just for a
little variation as I move from section to section.
| | 01:20 | I am actually just going to kick them come down a bit
to begin with, because they're a little bit loud.
| | 01:24 | And what I'll do here in the verses is just
bring them down, you know maybe 3 dB, so they
| | 01:34 | just kick up in the chorus.
Let's hear what that sounds like.
| | 01:38 | (music playing)
| | 01:50 | Maybe not so much, what I'll
do is pull off a dB there.
| | 01:54 | Now some people like to automate using real-time
automation and moving the faders and doing
| | 01:59 | it as the mix plays back.
| | 02:01 | Well, other people like to use
graphic editing of automation.
| | 02:05 | I particularly favor using the graphic
editing of automations, it just allows me to be a
| | 02:10 | little bit more accurate, and I'm used to it.
| | 02:13 | I'll make some changes, listen, tweak
those changes, but either way it's fine.
| | 02:18 | There's no one right way to approach it,
it's just whatever works for your workflow, that
| | 02:23 | same concept will carry out
through all of your mixing decisions.
| | 02:27 | You'll find that two professional mixers
may have radically different opinions on how to
| | 02:32 | approach something like automation or EQ.
| | 02:35 | So make sure that when you're learning to
do this stuff, you explore all the options,
| | 02:41 | and you find the options that fit
your needs and your workflow the best.
| | 02:46 | Don't be afraid to try different things,
and if something is actually working for you,
| | 02:51 | even if it doesn't make sense to someone else,
don't be concerned with that just go ahead
| | 02:56 | and do what works and be original.
| | 02:58 | So I'm just going to go ahead and copy this and
paste that same move here over to the other section.
| | 03:07 | This is just the chorus, so I
don't need to worry about that.
| | 03:10 | So that's going to give us a
little bit of movement in a hi-hat.
| | 03:12 | It's just going to brighten things up, and I think
I also want to do something similar with this snare.
| | 03:19 | I just want to pull that snare down.
Maybe just a dB will do it in the verses.
| | 03:26 | So I'm just going to pull those down
just by about a dB, copy that over here.
| | 03:34 | So we're just going to
kick it up just a little bit.
| | 03:37 | (music playing)
| | 03:54 | Cool. That sounds pretty good.
| | 03:56 | One thing that I'll generally spend some time
thinking about the automation of, are the vocals.
| | 04:01 | In a song like this the
arrangement doesn't change that much.
| | 04:05 | So my first chorus, my second chorus, and
my third chorus aren't really changing from
| | 04:10 | a musical arrangement standpoint.
| | 04:12 | And I'm using a fair amount
of compression on the vocals.
| | 04:14 | So I don't find that I have to automate the
lead vocals so much to get it to sit at the
| | 04:21 | level that I want in the session.
| | 04:23 | However, as far as these harmony parts are
concerned, the harmonies do change a little
| | 04:28 | bit and how they are stacked
against the chorus 1, 2, and 3.
| | 04:34 | And specifically here in the last eight
measures of chorus 2 and 3, the Hook Harmony vocals
| | 04:42 | do kind of a cool response to
the lead hook. We'll listen.
| | 04:47 | (music playing)
| | 04:53 | So he's saying stop, stop kind
of in response to the lead vocal.
| | 04:58 | And it might be cool to just kind of bring that out a
little bit more those sort of second and third stops.
| | 05:05 | So what I can do is I'm just going to change
my grid here so I can make a shorter selection.
| | 05:10 | Maybe I kick those up just a tiny bit, fraction of a dB,
copy that over, and we'll see what that sounds like.
| | 05:23 | (music playing)
| | 05:29 | And I'm thinking now maybe it's even cool
to climb them a bit, so kind of do a cool
| | 05:37 | little, so it's kind of go to stop,
a little louder stop and then stop.
| | 05:43 | I think that could add
just a little bit of drama.
| | 05:46 | And I am not looking to do anything super
radical here, I'm just adding a little bits and pieces.
| | 05:52 | Now this one since the Hook is actually singing here,
I don't want to obscure that by automating those.
| | 05:59 | So I'll leave that one as is.
| | 06:02 | So we'll just paste that
automation there to the last chorus.
| | 06:06 | One other thing that I was thinking about
automating is actually doing some plug-in
| | 06:09 | automation here at the beginning of
the song on this little can't stop part.
| | 06:16 | And what I think might be cool is if I kind
of mirrored the filter automation of the choir
| | 06:23 | as it comes in here.
| | 06:24 | So I did do a little bit of automation on the
filter here so that rises up and adds some drama.
| | 06:32 | And so I'm thinking it might be cool
to just add that to the can't stop.
| | 06:36 | And what I can start
with is just copy that down.
| | 06:40 | That's actually going to copy the automation.
| | 06:43 | And so what I can do is I really don't
need it here, delete that, and I'll raise that
| | 06:51 | all the way to the top.
| | 06:55 | And that last can't
stop I want to be fully open.
| | 07:00 | We'll just go ahead and listen.
| | 07:01 | I'm going to play with that and
see what a good starting point is.
| | 07:07 | (music playing)
| | 07:29 | Cool. So that's a good starting point.
| | 07:30 | I could play with the amount of filtering,
if I wanted it to be a little darker towards
| | 07:37 | the end, I can pull that down or if I wanted it
to start a little brighter, I could pull that up.
| | 07:42 | Really it's just to taste,
there's no one right amount of filtering.
| | 07:46 | It's something you just kind of feel out by
ear, work it until it feels good to you.
| | 07:51 | Now one other thing that I usually automate
in most sessions, a little trick that I like
| | 07:57 | to do is actually some Master Fader automation
just to kind of kick up the energy at different
| | 08:03 | parts of this song.
| | 08:04 | This is going to work really well, once I
add my Brick Wall Limiter in the next tutorial,
| | 08:09 | because it's going to sort of push things into the Brick Wall
Limiter a little bit more throughout the song.
| | 08:14 | What I'm going to do here is take this
Master Fader, which is controlling the whole mix,
| | 08:19 | and I'm going to add little bits of automation
to push or pull the song just by tiny amounts.
| | 08:26 | So I'll switch this to a bar. Just by tiny
amounts to increase some of the drama as it
| | 08:34 | goes into different parts.
| | 08:35 | So maybe for the intro, I'm just going to
pull this down by let's say half a dB, so
| | 08:41 | it really kicks in when the verse happens.
| | 08:42 | And then when the chorus happens, maybe
what I do is I go up by half a dB, go ahead and
| | 08:54 | do that for this second chorus.
| | 09:01 | And then let's say for chorus 3, I go up a
whole dB and these are just subtle little changes.
| | 09:10 | Let's go ahead and listen
here between a verse and a chorus.
| | 09:14 | (music playing)
| | 09:32 | Now one thing that I just realized here is
that my chorus actually has a pickup and so
| | 09:38 | what I might want to do is kind of figure
out where that pickup happens, and I can see
| | 09:43 | that it's just a quarter
note shy of the downbeat there.
| | 09:49 | So what I might want to do, I'm actually just
going to pull this up, so I can reference it.
| | 09:54 | I do that quite a bit, I move tracks
around so that I can reference other tracks when
| | 09:58 | I'm trying and break points.
| | 10:00 | Maybe what I'll do is add that change,
so it gets that pickup right there.
| | 10:10 | So that's going to work.
| | 10:12 | I can just copy that and paste that over to
my other sections, and this last pickup just
| | 10:23 | paste that in, we'll
make sure that sounds good.
| | 10:26 | (music playing)
| | 10:36 | And again these aren't jump out
of your seat levels of automation.
| | 10:40 | These are very, very, very small tweaks.
| | 10:44 | The idea is just to kind of subconsciously
increase the energy by small amounts at the
| | 10:50 | different points of the song and automating
the Master Fader by small amounts can really
| | 10:55 | help achieve that, and once that actually
pushes into the compressor and the Brick Wall
| | 11:01 | Limiter that we're going to add, it's really
going to kind of congeal everything together,
| | 11:05 | and it's just going to push that limiter
just a little bit more in those sections.
| | 11:09 | So I get a little bit more
density out of the whole track.
| | 11:13 | Now automation is something that you can
literally spend half or more of the amount of time of
| | 11:19 | the entire mix working on.
| | 11:21 | So sometimes I spend 3, 4, 5 hours just on
the automation, making little tweaks here
| | 11:28 | and there, muting returned tracks at the
end of phrases so that the delays don't trail
| | 11:33 | on, adjusting vocals word for a word,
scrutinizing every instrument and its level.
| | 11:40 | So definitely spend some time thinking
about automation, because it can really take the
| | 11:45 | track to the next level.
| | 11:46 | For this track, it's a fairly simple
arrangement, and I think I've given you some ideas about
| | 11:51 | how you'd approach automating this style of
song, but get creative and think about different
| | 11:58 | ways so you can add interest
to your mix as it grows over time.
| | 12:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mastering the track with compression and limiting| 00:00 | Now that we have a good candidate for a final
mix, I can move on to the last stage of Master
| | 00:05 | Bus Processing, adding equalization, compression,
and limiting to my entire mix bus to achieve
| | 00:12 | that final polished and competitive sound.
| | 00:17 | What I'm going to do here on my Master Fader,
remember I initially inserted the VCC, and
| | 00:23 | I mixed through that. Now some mixers will
actually mix through their compression and
| | 00:29 | limiting during the mix process, I didn't in this case,
so I'm going to approach things slightly differently.
| | 00:35 | Know that it is okay to mix through
compression and limiting and some actually have great
| | 00:40 | success with those techniques, sometimes I
use those techniques, however, I do want to
| | 00:45 | point out that mixing through a limiter
means you have to be very careful about how you
| | 00:52 | change and set levels
throughout the mix process.
| | 00:56 | Because if you push something too hard, you
may end up with 6, 7, 8 dBs of gain reduction
| | 01:02 | on your Master Fader Compressor without
even knowing it, and really kind of choking out
| | 01:08 | all the dynamics of the mix.
| | 01:10 | So I would say it's more of an advanced
technique to manage the headroom and the finesse of
| | 01:18 | mixing through a bus compressor or a limiter,
but don't let that stop you from trying it.
| | 01:24 | Back to our situation, we've got a finished
mix and so we're going to apply some final
| | 01:29 | polish to that, and I'm
going to start with an EQ.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to use a special kind of EQ
called the Mid/Side EQ and actually allows me to
| | 01:39 | EQ the center channel information separately
from the side channel or the stereo information.
| | 01:47 | And this can be helpful in mastering
processes to isolate things like the lead vocal, the
| | 01:52 | snare drum, the kick drum, kind of give
them a little more focus while widening out the
| | 01:57 | stereo field at the same time.
| | 02:00 | With this guy, I'm just going to go ahead and
adjust some of the settings so I'm listening
| | 02:04 | to the mix and then I'll come
back and describe what I did.
| | 02:08 | (music playing)
| | 03:13 | Cool. So you notice I made very
subtle changes to the mix.
| | 03:17 | One thing you want to keep in mind when you're
using an EQ on the entire mix, as we are here
| | 03:22 | in the mastering process is that
anything you do is affecting all of your tracks.
| | 03:27 | So if you need to adjust the sound of your
vocal track or the sound of your kick drum--
| | 03:33 | let's say you want more punch out of your
kick drum--rather than approaching it from
| | 03:37 | the Master Fader, go back to
that track and adjust the EQ.
| | 03:41 | One thing that sometimes people forget when
they're working with these all-in-one mastering
| | 03:46 | plug-ins, or they're smearing EQ over their
entire mix is that if you're trying to correct
| | 03:52 | something, it's going to be much better to
just go back to that element in the mix than
| | 03:57 | trying to pick it out with just a stereo EQ,
where you're likely to affect other elements
| | 04:03 | and upset the balance of your mix.
| | 04:05 | So you'll notice here that I'm making really
broad strokes, so I've had a very wide boost
| | 04:11 | of only about a dB in the mid-channel just
to kind of bring out some of the center focus
| | 04:17 | of the instruments, the lead
vocal, snare, things like that.
| | 04:20 | A little bit of a bump on the bass
just a tiny bit just to warm up the track.
| | 04:26 | I've got a High Pass Filter set very, very
low, right around 20 Hz, and that's just going
| | 04:32 | to get rid of any sub-energy that I don't
need, that's just wasted headroom down there.
| | 04:37 | And on the Stereo side I did not do that same
boost, but I did increase the presence here,
| | 04:43 | a very gentle high shelf, at about 12K.
| | 04:47 | I don't want to really brighten it
up, take it over the top too much.
| | 04:52 | And with the Stereo Width control, what I'm
doing with this control here is I'm just turning
| | 04:55 | up the side channels a bit.
| | 04:57 | I just want to kind of
wide in the mix just a bit.
| | 05:00 | I'm not looking to create any serious phase
problems, so I have this Correlation Meter right here.
| | 05:07 | I'd like to keep it above 0,
closer to the +1 there.
| | 05:12 | But I just want to make the
mix just a little bit wider.
| | 05:14 | It's important to think of mastering kind
of like how you would use salt and pepper
| | 05:19 | on your final meal preparation.
| | 05:21 | You add a little salt, add a little pepper
just to improve the flavor, but it's not going
| | 05:26 | to take a terrible tasting dish
and turn it into a gourmet meal.
| | 05:32 | Mastering is no different.
It's really just enhancing what's already there.
| | 05:35 | And a lot of people make the mistake of thinking,
oh, I have this terrible mix, what it really
| | 05:40 | needs is a great master that's
just going to make it sound amazing.
| | 05:43 | And I think you'll be disappointed, even if you
spend a ton of money on a top master engineer,
| | 05:49 | that garbage in is really garbage out.
| | 05:52 | So while you have this opportunity to go
back to elements in your mix when you're doing
| | 05:57 | sort of mastering in the box, like we are
here, think about going back to earlier stages
| | 06:02 | if you need to fix things there. A lot of
times fixes need to be made at the mix stage
| | 06:07 | or even earlier at the
arrangement or recording or editing stage.
| | 06:13 | Think about the whole process holistically
rather than putting all the weight or betting
| | 06:18 | the farm on just the mix, or all I need is
a good master, or you know, we'll fix it in the shrink
| | 06:24 | wrap kind of thing.
Don't think that way.
| | 06:28 | From every stage think about your final
goal and think about how you can improve that,
| | 06:34 | and if you have to go back a few steps, do so.
| | 06:37 | Now that I've got an EQ going on here, I
want to do some compression and some limiting.
| | 06:42 | I'm actually going to do
that in the same plug-in.
| | 06:44 | I really like this Slate FG-X, it's got
a compressor and a limiter built into it.
| | 06:50 | I could use separate
compressor and a brick wall limiter.
| | 06:54 | The compressor is just going to be to get a
little bit of additional glue on the entire
| | 06:58 | mix just a little bit of tie together.
| | 07:01 | I didn't mix through the compressor, so in
this case I'm actually going to use a very
| | 07:05 | fast attack and a very fast release.
| | 07:07 | I'm not looking to play off the bus
compressor, as I would if I was mixing through it.
| | 07:13 | I might use a slower attack setting to allow
some of the transients through and play with
| | 07:18 | the release to time it
to the rhythm of the song.
| | 07:21 | In this case I'm going to be using very minimal amount
of compression just a kiss to glue everything together.
| | 07:27 | And I find that I like the sound of a very fast
attack and release in this specific compressor,
| | 07:33 | it's a very transparent compressor, it's
not going to add any character to my mix.
| | 07:39 | Now, other compressors are
going to sound totally different.
| | 07:43 | The one thing that I can guarantee you is
that matching attack and release settings
| | 07:47 | on different compressors is not just a
matter of matching the milliseconds, right?
| | 07:53 | Every compressor is going to react
differently in terms of its time constant, so definitely
| | 07:58 | listen when you're adjusting those.
| | 08:00 | Now, I'm going to set the Ratio here, very
light Ratio, and I don't think I need any Threshold.
| | 08:06 | (music playing)
| | 08:15 | That's perfect. All I'm looking for
is about a half dB of compression.
| | 08:19 | Like I said, I'm just looking to kind of
tuck everything in a little bit, that lead vocal
| | 08:23 | is really going to drive that
compressor and help sit it back into the mix.
| | 08:29 | Moving on to my limiting stage here, Brickwall
limiting is really that step that makes your mix loud.
| | 08:36 | What it's actually going to do is reduce the
distance between the peak transients and the
| | 08:41 | average level of your song.
| | 08:44 | Now, the reason we can't just raise the Master
Fader to make our mix louder is that our transients
| | 08:49 | actually sit very close to that limit of 0
dBFS, the clipping point of our converters.
| | 08:54 | And if we were to turn it up, we would
find very quickly that those would get clipped
| | 08:59 | and start creating digital
distortion, which is nasty.
| | 09:02 | What a Brickwall Limiter does is sort of acts
like a wall that holds back those transients
| | 09:09 | and allows us to push the average level of
our mix forward or up, kind of like pushing
| | 09:15 | a spring into a brick wall. The coils
compact so the distance between that wall and the
| | 09:23 | end of the spring is getting closer and closer.
| | 09:26 | And what we're doing here with a Brickwall
Limiter is we're taking the RMS, or the average
| | 09:31 | level, the level that our human ears detect
more so than peak level, and we're pushing
| | 09:36 | that up closer to peak.
| | 09:38 | Now, if I look at my Metering here, my mix
is sitting right around 15 RMS in the verses
| | 09:44 | and around 13 RMS in the chorus.
| | 09:46 | What I'm looking for to be competitive with
other songs in my iTunes library and other
| | 09:51 | CDs is I want to shoot for
around 9-10 RMS on the mix.
| | 09:57 | Now, some modern pop tunes, especially really
lean and mean guitar rock driven tunes, they
| | 10:03 | can move towards 6 or 7 RMS,
that's getting really crispy.
| | 10:09 | And the more RMS level you have, sort of the
shorter the range between your average level
| | 10:15 | and the peak level, the less
dynamic punch your mix is going to have.
| | 10:19 | It's going to lose all of its intensity.
| | 10:21 | So you want to be aware of that and not
totally kill the dynamics of your mix.
| | 10:26 | To set that I'm just going to move to my last
chorus here, the loudest section of the song,
| | 10:31 | remember I did that Master Fader automation.
| | 10:33 | And what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn
on the Constant Gain Monitoring, that allows
| | 10:38 | me to listen without adding any gain using
the Gain parameter. And that allows me to
| | 10:43 | be honest with the process to hear any of the
artifacts that are being added by the limiter.
| | 10:49 | My goal with limiting this track is to
keep as much of my mix balance as possible, as
| | 10:55 | much of the punch, dynamics, crispness of
the mix as possible, while gaining some volume.
| | 11:02 | And this Constant Gain Monitoring is going
to allow me to find that sweet spot where
| | 11:07 | I'm getting the volume that I want, the average level
that I'm looking for, without crushing all my transients.
| | 11:14 | (music playing)
| | 11:22 | So you could see I'm hitting that
target RMS there between 9 and 10.
| | 11:26 | (music playing)
| | 11:29 | Getting a little crispy.
(music playing)
| | 11:36 | Now, the Slate has a cool feature that
allows me to add back in some of my low and high
| | 11:40 | transient punch just by dialing these back in.
This is kind of the special sauce of this
| | 11:46 | plug-in that allows me to dial back in some
of that punch or brilliance that I lost by
| | 11:52 | squeezing that track with the Limiter.
| | 11:54 | Now, I also have this Dynamic Perception knob
that I like to dial in a little bit, and that's
| | 11:58 | going to bring back some of
that dynamic movement to the track.
| | 12:02 | I'm just going to leave my ITP here set
right in the middle, the recommended setting.
| | 12:06 | I'll leave my Dither On, because I'm
eventually going to bounce out a 16-bit file for CD.
| | 12:13 | Once I've set this up, and I've confirmed
that I'm getting the RMS that I desire without
| | 12:19 | distorting the actual mix, let's just
listen to what that would sound like.
| | 12:23 | (music playing)
Terrible.
| | 12:27 | So once I've confirmed that I'm getting the
level I'm looking for, I'm getting the competitive
| | 12:32 | level, but I still have some dynamic range, I'm
going to turn off that Constant Gain Monitoring,
| | 12:36 | because I actually want to take advantage of
that extra 4 dB of Gain, extra 4 dB of loudness.
| | 12:42 | So now I'm actually going
to hear it at its full level.
| | 12:45 | (music playing)
| | 12:53 | And one thing that I instantly notice, now
that I'm hearing this mix through a Brickwall
| | 12:57 | Limiter, with this additional layer of
compression is some of the things that I've balanced are
| | 13:03 | sounding a little bit off to me, and this
is one of the great things about being able
| | 13:07 | to preview your mix through mastering tools.
| | 13:10 | Even if you're going to take all this
mastering off and send it to a real mastering engineer
| | 13:15 | and have them apply the Brickwall limiting
and compression, what this is allowing me
| | 13:19 | to do is preview my mix under the
stresses of a Brickwall Limiter.
| | 13:24 | And what I'm hearing and some of the
adjustments that I want to make now that I'm hearing that
| | 13:29 | are some levels here in the mix.
| | 13:31 | I want to bring that dirty return down
that I was using on my chorus vocals.
| | 13:35 | I feel like that's just kind
of getting over the top now.
| | 13:39 | I also feel that with that stereo width enhancement
and the limiting, the background vocals are kind of loud.
| | 13:44 | So I'm actually going to pull them back, and
instead of messing with the automation, I'm
| | 13:48 | just going to pull back the output of the EQ.
| | 13:51 | It's a trick you can do just use one of the
plug-in's Outputs controls instead of messing
| | 13:57 | with your automation.
| | 13:58 | And the other thing that I'm hearing
is this dirty pad, that's just too loud.
| | 14:03 | I think that's just coming up in the mix
with that limiting and the compression.
| | 14:07 | I'm just kind of creating a little more
crunch than I want, so I'm going to pull that back,
| | 14:14 | and let's just go ahead and listen.
(music playing)
| | 14:43 | Cool. That sounds good.
| | 14:44 | I'm kind of getting that right amount of
limiter crunch and volume, but not so much over the
| | 14:50 | top, and again, it's okay to go back and
adjust settings in your mix once you hear it in the
| | 14:55 | context of the Brickwall Limiter.
| | 14:58 | Actually some producers and mixers
insist on it, that's how they get their sound.
| | 15:02 | A lot of dubstep producers produce through
the Brickwall Limiting and compression, so
| | 15:08 | they're actually picking samples, adjusting
their snares, and EQing at all times to this
| | 15:13 | maximum loudness, and that allows them to achieve
this crazy volume, while still retaining all that punch.
| | 15:19 | If you were to take the Brickwall Limiter
off a dubstep style mix, you'd actually hear
| | 15:25 | the distance between the transients and the
rest of the levels would be quite extreme,
| | 15:31 | like the snares and the kicks
would just sound 10 dBs too loud.
| | 15:35 | But once that Brickwall Limiter comes into
play, it squeezes everything together, gives
| | 15:40 | it a really nice punchy aggressive sound.
| | 15:42 | Now, I'm not saying you should always mix
through a Brickwall Limiter, but it's something
| | 15:46 | that you can experiment with as you
become more advanced in your skill set.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Printing the final stereo mix| 00:00 | Now that I have applied my final
mastering style plug-ins, it's time to get this mix
| | 00:05 | out of Pro Tools and into the real world
to see how it lives in the car, and on other
| | 00:10 | speaker systems, and make sure there's no final
changes that I want to make to it before releasing it.
| | 00:16 | What I am going to do here is I am
actually to bounce to a new track in Pro Tools and
| | 00:21 | then export that file.
| | 00:23 | Now traditionally, you could use the File >
Bounce to > Disk technique, and that works fine.
| | 00:29 | However, I really like the flexibility of
printing to a stereo track inside of Pro Tools,
| | 00:35 | because that allows me to print revisions.
| | 00:37 | Let's say I just need to increase the vocal
during the verse section, but no where else,
| | 00:42 | I can just print that section in the song,
reconsolidate the track and quickly export
| | 00:47 | it without having to
rebounce the entire four minute song.
| | 00:51 | And this can really come in handy
when working with extremely long tracks.
| | 00:56 | Now to do that, I'm going to need to bus
everything into a new stereo audio track.
| | 01:00 | So, what I am actually going to do is I
am going to come and take every track that's
| | 01:04 | not already going to output 1 and 2, and I
am going to send that to a bus and bring that
| | 01:09 | into a new stereo audio track.
| | 01:11 | Now I am going to do
some organization first here.
| | 01:13 | I am going to take all these
returns that are just lingering.
| | 01:18 | I am going to move them all the way over
here by the other reverb and effects returns just
| | 01:26 | to keep things organized. Cool.
| | 01:30 | Now to make my life easy instead of
clicking on the outputs of each individual track, I
| | 01:35 | am actually going to use a shortcut
in Pro Tools to do this very quickly.
| | 01:38 | So, I am going to go ahead and select
everything that's not already going to a bus because
| | 01:42 | these are already going to a drum bus, so I
am actually just going to select the things
| | 01:46 | going to output 1 and 2, the bass, the
Music submix, get all my vocals, cool.
| | 02:05 | Now I am going to hold down the key command
Option+Shift on the Mac, or Alt+Shift on the
| | 02:10 | PC, and I am going to click on one of these
tracks' output, and I am going to choose New Track.
| | 02:16 | And then I am going to choose Audio Track,
so I am actually want to record the mix into
| | 02:20 | this in real-time inside the session, and
I'll name this Cant Stop, name of the song,
| | 02:26 | put my initials after
it just what I like to do.
| | 02:29 | So, what you are going to see here is a bus
was created and a new audio track was created,
| | 02:33 | and it's routed everything
into that new audio track.
| | 02:37 | Now I can click the I button to monitor
the input of that audio track in real-time.
| | 02:42 | Now if you don't have Pro Tools HD, you don't have
this feature, this input monitoring audio tracks.
| | 02:48 | That's no problem, all you need to do is
just create a Stereo Aux Input track, set that
| | 02:54 | to the same bus and go ahead and just
mute the audio track when you're not using it,
| | 03:01 | and this will act as an open
monitoring source so you can listen.
| | 03:04 | And when you're actually recording, you can
just switch those, so you can actively listen
| | 03:08 | to the track you are recording.
| | 03:10 | Now I am going to get rid of that, I don't
really need that on this system just to make
| | 03:14 | things clean, we'll click the I, and it's a
good idea to solo safe that. And then sometimes
| | 03:19 | what I'll do is I'll just mute this, and
I'll play back the session just to make sure I
| | 03:22 | didn't miss anything.
| | 03:26 | Now what you can see here is something
very important and that's that the effect of this
| | 03:31 | Master fader, all of the plug-ins and the
limiting, and the automation and the fact
| | 03:36 | that I reclaim some headroom in that first
tutorial because I was clipping the output,
| | 03:42 | none of that is making it onto this bus.
| | 03:44 | This is actually just
acting on the main output.
| | 03:47 | So what's happening is my mix is clipping
and then it's going to this set of plug-ins
| | 03:52 | and trim and going out my converters.
| | 03:55 | So this is actually really bad, I
need to correct this before I move on.
| | 04:00 | And to fix this now that I'm monitoring my
mix off this new bus, I am going to switch
| | 04:05 | my Master fader to
listen to that very same bus.
| | 04:09 | So, these gain changes happening at the Master
fader as well as these plugins will make their
| | 04:16 | way into my printed stereo track.
| | 04:20 | Now because I'm capping everything off
with a brick wall limiter at the end, and that
| | 04:26 | doesn't let anything go past 0 dBFS or the
clip point in Pro Tools, I don't need to create
| | 04:32 | another Master fader just to look at one
and two again, because I am not going to make
| | 04:36 | any adjustments to the mix,
post this last plug-in here.
| | 04:41 | So, now I can listen to make sure that I've
got everything routed correctly, unmute that.
| | 04:48 | (music playing)
| | 04:56 | So, all my routing is good, I can just
kind of scroll through and make sure nothing is
| | 05:02 | still going to that output 1 and 2.
| | 05:05 | I just kind of do a nice visual check.
Everything looks nice.
| | 05:14 | Now what I can do is actually print my mix in
real-time, so I am actually bouncing to a track.
| | 05:20 | So I'll record enable this track, and I am
going to switch to the Edit window, so I can
| | 05:26 | watch this, lay down, and I'll go back to
the beginning of the session, and I am actually
| | 05:32 | going to record the output of all these tracks
coming into this bus, and I am going to monitor
| | 05:37 | that in real-time.
(music playing)
| | 09:17 | So, we'll make sure to let those tails play out,
so we don't cut anything off, any reverb tails.
| | 09:21 | So, now what I have is an actual stereo clip
of my entire bounce inside of Pro Tools, but
| | 09:29 | I want to get that outside of Pro Tools so
that I could burn it to a CD or put it on my iPod.
| | 09:34 | Now I could go extract that from the Audio
Files folder, but the quickest way to handle
| | 09:40 | this is just to go to my Clips list, and I've
got that clip selected, and I can just right-click
| | 09:46 | or choose the Clips list menu
and use Export Clips as Files here.
| | 09:53 | Now I am going to choose a WAV, standard
File Type, and I am going to choose Interleaved,
| | 09:57 | I don't want (Multiple) Mono, that's
going to give me a separate left and right-hand
| | 10:01 | file that's not compatible with
things like iTunes and audio player.
| | 10:05 | So I am going to choose Interleaved.
| | 10:06 | I am going to choose a Bit Depth of 16
Bits and the Sample Rate, we are going to keep
| | 10:11 | that at 44, that's a CD
Bit Depth and Sample Rate.
| | 10:15 | Now if I was sending this to additional mastering,
and I was leaving off my final stage of limiting
| | 10:21 | here, I would send the mastering engineer
the highest Bit Depth that I was working at.
| | 10:26 | So if I was working at 24 Bits, I would
send him a 24 Bit, 44.1 file, if I was working
| | 10:31 | at 24, 88 or 24, 96, I would send him the
highest resolution that I was working at within my mix.
| | 10:39 | In this case, I just want something to take
out to the car, listen to on my phone, make
| | 10:45 | sure I don't need to make
any more changes to the mix.
| | 10:47 | So, I can choose where I want to export this,
I am just going to choose my Desktop here,
| | 10:55 | and I am going to hit Export.
| | 10:58 | And where that's going to go, I'll find that,
if I hide Pro Tools, I am going to find that
| | 11:03 | right here on my Desktop, and that is a standard
stereo audio file, uncompressed, it's a WAV file.
| | 11:09 | I can now take and upload that to sound cloud,
I could put it into iTunes, I could burn it
| | 11:14 | to a CD, bring it to my car, and check it out.
| | 11:18 | So, this point, during the mix stage now
that I've got a finished mix, I have done some
| | 11:23 | mastering to it, what I'll typically do is
I'll let my ears rest to kind of give myself
| | 11:29 | a break, some distance from the song and
then I'll listen to it on a bunch of different
| | 11:33 | audio systems, the car, in my living room, on
my television, on ear buds, things like that.
| | 11:39 | And I'll make any notes about things I want
to change, whether those would be aesthetic
| | 11:43 | things like hey, I am going to kind of
getting tired of this tone of the delay or maybe I
| | 11:48 | am using too much distortion on this, or
actual frequency problems, like there's too much
| | 11:53 | bass, or I think the vocals
need to be a little louder here.
| | 11:56 | I will make sort of a list of notes,
sometimes even on paper if I really want to remember,
| | 12:01 | and you come up with these ideas kind of
at weird times, I'll be listening one ear as
| | 12:07 | I am standing in the
kitchen and kind of go huh,
| | 12:09 | you know that snare drum's kind of loud.
| | 12:11 | So, I'll write that
down when I come back to it.
| | 12:14 | And so when I come back, I'll integrate any
of those notes and kind of rinse and repeat,
| | 12:19 | it's an iterative process that
will continue until you get it right.
| | 12:22 | That's a nice thing about having a DAW like
Pro Tools is you can just open the mix back
| | 12:26 | up and make small changes
and bounce it back out again.
| | 12:31 | That being said, at some point, it does
just need to get out the door. Because you could
| | 12:36 | sit, and you could tweak a mix forever, and
you are just never going to be happy with it.
| | 12:40 | So at some point, you just got to say hey.
We beat this to death.
| | 12:44 | Let's put this thing out,
it's going to be good.
| | 12:46 | With that said, the techniques and tricks
and tips that I have showed you, working on
| | 12:51 | this mix, my goal is to not have you
duplicate every technique on your mixes or go out and
| | 12:57 | buy every plug-in that I've used.
| | 13:00 | But I'm looking more to inspire you to try
your own tricks, maybe use some of mine, adapt
| | 13:06 | them to your workflow, take this song, mix
it completely differently, give it your own
| | 13:11 | unique voice, do a better mix than
I did, or a different mix than I did.
| | 13:15 | And if I went back, and I mixed this song
again, it would probably sound different because
| | 13:20 | I am in a different mood, I
am feeling different things.
| | 13:22 | And that's okay, that's what's special
about making music, producing music, and mixing
| | 13:27 | music is that there are differences, there
are dynamics, because if it was all just the
| | 13:32 | same, it'd be really, really boring.
| | 13:35 | Take these ideas, make them your own,
be original, and above all, have fun.
| | 13:40 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reviewing the final master| 00:00 | So I actually sent this mix out for a
final professional Master, and I wanted to take
| | 00:06 | this opportunity to let you hear the
differences between the Pre Master, that is the Master
| | 00:12 | with no limiting, the Master that I did,
during the bounce stage as well as the final Master
| | 00:18 | that came back from the Mastering engineer.
| | 00:22 | And I also wanted to talk about the
process of sending something out to a professional
| | 00:27 | Mastering engineer some of the things you
want to look for as well as some of the benefits
| | 00:32 | and other considerations of using a
professional Mastering engineer as opposed to Mastering
| | 00:38 | your mixes yourself like
we did in the previous movie.
| | 00:42 | So, let's start out by
listening to the differences here.
| | 00:45 | Now this was my Master that I did.
(music playing)
| | 01:05 | And this is the Master that came back
from the Mastering engineer, Shawn Hatfield at
| | 01:11 | AudibleOddities mastered this for me, and I'll
talk a little bit about what he did after we listen.
| | 01:18 | (music playing)
| | 01:31 | Again, just for reference, here
is the Master we finished with.
| | 01:35 | (music playing)
| | 01:40 | And the final Master.
(music playing)
| | 01:51 | And what you're hearing is a little more
brightness, a little more fill from the compression, a
| | 01:57 | little more tightness overall just
kind of a more expensive, expansive sound.
| | 02:04 | The reason I have this Pre Master in
here, we can go ahead and listen to that.
| | 02:09 | (music playing)
| | 02:16 | And what you'll notice is that, that's much
lower in volume than both my Master and the
| | 02:22 | Final Master from Shawn, and the idea is is
I actually sent the mastering engineer this
| | 02:28 | pre-mastered version, the only difference
between this file, and this file is the final
| | 02:36 | stage of limiting and compression.
| | 02:38 | And so that's one thing that I typically like
to do, when I send something out to get mastered
| | 02:44 | professionally is I'll take off the final
stage of compression and limiting so that
| | 02:49 | the mastering engineer doesn't have his or
her hands tied when it comes to treating that
| | 02:54 | with compression or limiting themselves.
| | 02:58 | A louder signal or a heavily limited
signal is really going to limit what they're able
| | 03:04 | to do at the mastering stage.
| | 03:06 | So what I'll usually do is send them a
version without limiting, a version that has plenty
| | 03:11 | of headroom so that is it's not clipping
anywhere during the entire bounce, and it doesn't have
| | 03:18 | any final brick wall limiting at the
output and so the signal is much lower.
| | 03:24 | Now I'll also send them a version of my
Master, so what I was hearing, so they can kind of
| | 03:29 | get a sense of the compression, the
limiting that I was using and maybe what the client
| | 03:35 | had approved from the mixing stage, and then
they can work off of that to deliver something
| | 03:41 | that is hopefully just a tad bit better,
brighter, bigger than what we did here with our Master.
| | 03:49 | Just to go back to Shawn here, in his
Master from AudibleOddities and talk about what he
| | 03:55 | did, I actually asked him specifically for
the purposes of this movie, exactly what his
| | 04:02 | signal chain was so that I
could share that with you.
| | 04:05 | And what he did was run this through some
analog outboard gear first, and that's very
| | 04:11 | typical when you're sending out to a
dedicated mastering engineer, they usually have access
| | 04:15 | to a lot of really great sounding gear and
part of what makes them special, aside from
| | 04:20 | the gear in the critical listening space
is they really know their gear and they know
| | 04:25 | what's going to color that sound the
best for any specific piece of music.
| | 04:30 | Now, in this case, he ran the mix out first
to a Dangerous Music BAX EQ just to give it
| | 04:38 | a little bit of sheen, a
little bit of high shelving.
| | 04:41 | So, really the only EQ he's using here is
a bit of high-shelf, and you can hear that
| | 04:46 | in the difference between the
brightness of the final Master.
| | 04:50 | (music playing)
| | 04:57 | In my Master, which is slightly darker,
it doesn't have the same amount of clarity.
| | 05:02 | After the BAX EQ, he ran that through
another EQ, but without using any boost and any of
| | 05:10 | the bands, you are not through an
API 5500 just for the op-amp color.
| | 05:14 | So whenever you have analog gear whether it's
tube or solid-state gear, a lot of times this
| | 05:20 | gear is going to have a sound
signature even when you're not doing anything.
| | 05:24 | If it's a compressor, you might not be
compressing, if it's an EQ, you might not be boosting or
| | 05:29 | cutting, but it's still going to lend a vibe
because of the amplifiers or the other components,
| | 05:35 | the transformers, the capacitors, or the op-amps
are going to lend a color or a vibe and he
| | 05:41 | just thought that the API kind of lended a
nice vibe or depth to this specific recording.
| | 05:48 | After the EQ, he ran it into two compressors,
the first one was a Foot Control System's
| | 05:54 | P3S, and that was just for a half a dB of
compression just to really kind of kiss in
| | 06:00 | those peaks, kind of like we were doing
with the Slate compressor in our final Master.
| | 06:06 | So, it's just really kind of tucking in
those peaks and then he followed that up with a
| | 06:11 | Manley Vari-Mu Compressor, and that's
to kind of get the attitude or the fill.
| | 06:18 | And one thing you'll notice between my
Master and especially the Pre Master is the amount
| | 06:23 | of fill that we are
getting out of Shawn's Master.
| | 06:27 | Let me let you listen one more time.
(music playing)
| | 06:52 | So that extra stage of compression from
the Manley is really just kind of filling that
| | 06:57 | out, really bringing out the attitude
in the fill, in the 3D space of the mix.
| | 07:02 | You can really hear the sides come up in
those instruments really fill out there.
| | 07:07 | After all the analog stuff, what he did
was captured it back to digital using a Crane
| | 07:12 | Song HEDD converter and then did his final
stage of limiting, actually using a compressor,
| | 07:18 | using the Voxengo Elephant limiter inside
the box. And so a lot of mastering engineers
| | 07:25 | who work in a hybrid environment, while they
use some analog gear, but also take advantage
| | 07:30 | of some of the things that only digital can
do well and in the case of look-ahead brick
| | 07:35 | wall limiting, I think what you'll find
is that today's digital limiters, I like the
| | 07:40 | Slate that we were using or maybe something like the
waves L2 or L3, or in this case the Voxengo Elephant.
| | 07:47 | They can really just achieve that modern
loudness that you really couldn't get from traditional
| | 07:53 | analog gear, because they can actually look
ahead and know it's coming and adapt the threshold
| | 07:59 | attack and release settings, and the amount of
game reduction based on that future information.
| | 08:04 | Again just to kind of recap this whole thing,
why did I send this out to another mastering
| | 08:11 | engineer, what is mastering, and why didn't I just
do it myself, like I had done in the other movie?
| | 08:16 | Well, as a professional mixer, I always
like to have another set of ears and hopefully
| | 08:21 | that somebody with a monitoring
environment that's better than mine.
| | 08:26 | And in that case, what I get from a
professional mastering engineer is just that extra check,
| | 08:32 | and maybe an extra 5% to 10%
on the quality of my mix.
| | 08:36 | I think people make
mistakes in either direction.
| | 08:39 | They think, well, why do I need a
mastering engineer, I just bought ozone, or I just
| | 08:43 | bought a limiter, and that's mastering,
right? Or they go the other way, hey,
| | 08:47 | I have a really bad mix, but if I get it
mastered, it's going to sound really great.
| | 08:52 | And neither of those is true.
| | 08:54 | I think what you're hearing here hopefully is
that the final Master from Shawn at AudibleOddities,
| | 09:01 | does have an edge, it is a bit bigger,
it's a bit wider, it's a bit brighter, and that
| | 09:05 | comes from his ears, in his room,
and his creative addition to the piece.
| | 09:12 | But it's not so much so that it's order of
magnitude, or it's transcending space time
| | 09:17 | to become this amazing thing
that was once this terrible thing.
| | 09:22 | So, really a balanced mix should come back
from mastering, pretty much the same as you
| | 09:28 | sense it, but slightly better, and that's
a confirmation that you actually did your
| | 09:33 | job at the mix stage in terms of EQ
and compression and things like that.
| | 09:38 | But what you'll find as if you do a really
bad mix, and you send it out to mastering,
| | 09:41 | it's not going to turn into a great mix.
| | 09:44 | A lot of people would say that best case
scenario you can get a grade level from mastering.
| | 09:50 | So if it's a B, you can turn it into an A,
but if it's a C, you might turn it into a
| | 09:54 | B, and if it's an f, you maybe turn it into a D,
but that's still failing there in my opinion.
| | 10:00 | So, I am not saying that you have to go out
and get all your mixes professionally mastered,
| | 10:05 | there is an expense to that, but I think
you'd be surprised if you look up some people in
| | 10:09 | your local area or even give Shawn in
AudibleOddities a call, that it is surprisingly affordable
| | 10:15 | and attainable even on an indie budget.
| | 10:18 | So, you definitely don't sell yourself short,
look into it, and there are a lot of great
| | 10:23 | guys, both in your local town as well as
internationally that work over the Internet that do excellent
| | 10:28 | work and can really help take your mixes to
that final level that you are really looking for.
| | 10:35 |
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | I hope you've enjoyed the course and picked
up a few tips, tricks, and inspirations that
| | 00:04 | you can implement into your own projects.
| | 00:07 | If you want to grab a copy of the song used in
this course, learn more about the collaborating
| | 00:12 | artists, or stay up to date with my current projects,
be sure to visit my website at brianleewhite.com.
| | 00:19 | Or follow me on twitter @brianleewhite.
| | 00:21 | So on that note, stay creative,
have fun, and I'll see you next time.
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