1. Mixing a Rock Song from Start to FinishSetting initial levels and building a foundation| 00:00 | So here I have opened up a
cleaned-up version of the Take Me Down session
| | 00:04 | by Joshua Armstrong.
| | 00:06 | I have removed all the plug-ins, all
the sends, all the effects returns, and I
| | 00:10 | have set all the tracks to unity, so
the session is going to playback as it was recorded.
| | 00:16 | What I want to do here is give you a
peek into how my workflow would work on a
| | 00:19 | kind of a pop-rock tune like this with
real drums, bass, guitar, and vocals, and
| | 00:25 | give you some insights into my thought process.
| | 00:28 | So I am going to start here just by
playing back the session from the top and
| | 00:33 | getting a sense of the balance of the
tracks, and I am going to just grab my
| | 00:38 | all group here and I'm going to pull
everything down so I am not clipping my mix bus.
| | 00:42 | (music playing)
| | 01:00 | And at this point I am going to add
in a master fader here at the end of my
| | 01:05 | session, so I can monitor my main
outputs and kind of optimize the starting
| | 01:16 | points for this mix.
| | 01:17 | (music playing)
| | 01:30 | I want to make sure that I am going
to have enough headroom as I am adding
| | 01:33 | all of the elements going into the
chorus without having to do too much
| | 01:37 | adjustment to my master fader.
| | 01:38 | It's not a big deal if I have to go in
and adjust my master fader level later.
| | 01:42 | I just kind of want to get a good
starting level for everything here.
| | 01:46 | Now generally what I am going to do is
I am going to play back the song and I am
| | 01:50 | going to just give it a rough
level mix of balance and pan.
| | 01:54 | And ultimately, I am going to make some
different decisions as I move through.
| | 01:58 | It's important to realize that mixing
is extremely iterative and you are always
| | 02:02 | going to be making little changes, so
don't get too hung up at having to get
| | 02:07 | something perfect, like let's say the
drums perfect and only then can you move
| | 02:11 | on to the other elements.
| | 02:12 | So don't worry too much about that.
| | 02:14 | So I am just going to take you here from
verse one. And generally before I start
| | 02:19 | this part of my mixing process, I am
going to go ahead and insert my first
| | 02:23 | plug-in, and that's some console
simulation from Slate Digital. I am going to
| | 02:29 | insert the mix bus plug-in here.
| | 02:31 | Because what I want to do is I want to
hear my mix as I work through it with
| | 02:35 | this console simulation, because
that's going change some of my decision
| | 02:39 | process as I moved through here.
| | 02:40 | And I think this is a rock tune, so I
am going to go with the API, and I am just
| | 02:44 | going to give it a little bit of drive
here to give it a little bit of flavor
| | 02:48 | pushing the mix bus.
| | 02:49 | I am going to hide that track
list to make a bit more space for me.
| | 02:53 | So I am going to leave that on there.
I might adjust that as I move through the
| | 02:56 | mix. And in addition to that, what I
am going to do is I am going to apply my
| | 03:01 | track-based console modeling so that
I am hearing everything for that. I am
| | 03:05 | going to hold Option+Shift and add the
virtual channel. Option+Shift is going
| | 03:11 | to apply to all the selected tracks,
and that's going to take a while to load
| | 03:16 | those plug-ins there.
| | 03:18 | Now that's good. They all came up in a
group. I am going to set the group also
| | 03:25 | to the API and give it a little bit of
group drive, and make sure that they are
| | 03:29 | following that group setting. It looks good.
| | 03:32 | And like I said, I just want to
listen to my mix with this filter from the
| | 03:38 | get-go so that all my
decisions are made through that.
| | 03:41 | Cool, now I am going to play back the
session and start making some adjustments
| | 03:45 | to my track levels and pan, start
getting the basic mix going on, make sure my
| | 03:50 | all group is off there. Cool.
| | 03:53 | (music playing)
| | 06:07 | Cool, I've got a fairly good balance
there. I've made some pan moves. Hopefully
| | 06:12 | you could hear I was panning some of
those guitars as kind of, like, I got a
| | 06:15 | sense of what the arrangement was doing.
| | 06:17 | You may have noticed that I have a set
of guitars here. I have some power chord
| | 06:23 | guitars called Tele Main electric guitar.
I have an acoustic guitar that's
| | 06:26 | kind of mirroring that guitar in terms
of the chords that it's playing, and so I
| | 06:31 | kind of wanted to balance
these in the mix left and right.
| | 06:35 | A lot of times when I am mixing and I am
deciding on pan and level, I try to see
| | 06:40 | what I have in the arrangement. And of
course if I wrote this song then I know
| | 06:44 | what's in the arrangement, but if I am
receiving this song from another producer
| | 06:48 | or artist, I'll go through and I'll maybe
solo up some of the elements and kind of
| | 06:52 | listen to what they are doing and
I'll even look in the Edit window.
| | 06:55 | Let me switch back to Waveform view here.
| | 06:58 | I'll take a look at what's going on in
the Edit window and I'll say, hey, well I
| | 07:01 | can see that this Tele guitar and this
acoustic guitar are playing through the
| | 07:05 | entire track, you might go in and listen
and cool, sounds good and decide, yeah,
| | 07:16 | those would sound pretty cool if I
kind of panned that left and right, kind of
| | 07:20 | create a wider sound, make
some space for the vocal.
| | 07:24 | I can see here, just by looking at the
arrangement, my extra electric guitars
| | 07:28 | kind of follow the same shape, so maybe
with those I do a little bit of left/
| | 07:33 | right panning there, maybe not
as wide but we'll adjust as we go in
| | 07:37 | through the mix.
| | 07:38 | Now at this point I am going to do some
signal routing and I am going to set up
| | 07:42 | some effects sends that I can start
calling on kind of colors that I can paint
| | 07:47 | with, so I am thinking like a painter and
I am starting to kind of mix my colors
| | 07:51 | once I have decided what I want to paint.
| | 07:54 | Now I am going to start prepping that.
| | 07:56 | And the first thing I usually do once
I have a basic balance and pan mix, a
| | 08:00 | working level going on, is I am going
to sub-mix my drums and start getting my
| | 08:05 | drum and bass sounds.
| | 08:07 | I am going to start by taking all my
drum tracks and I am going to sub-mix those
| | 08:12 | into a new aux track, so I am going
select those, Option+Shift+Click here, and set
| | 08:17 | them to a new track.
| | 08:19 | So Stereo, Aux and call this Drum Submix.
| | 08:24 | So those are all going to my Drum
Submix now, so I have one master control here
| | 08:32 | for my drums and I'll solo safe that
so I can solo any of these elements.
| | 08:39 | And I don't have to come
over here and solo that.
| | 08:41 | Now at this point it is probably a good
idea to just go ahead and group for my
| | 08:45 | drum tracks. I am going to select
those and track-group those drums.
| | 08:51 | I have got one control, and for the
most part, I will turn that off for now.
| | 08:56 | I just want to keep those grouped
in case I have a need to grab that.
| | 08:59 | Now with my kicks, I have got a
sub-kick mic that's going to give me my low end
| | 09:03 | and I have got kind of a
beater mic if we listen here.
| | 09:06 | (music playing)
| | 09:15 | And so what I am going to do is I am
actually going to sub-mix those into their
| | 09:18 | own track and do this as Mono, Kicks.
| | 09:24 | So now I have one fader that controls those.
| | 09:27 | (music playing)
| | 09:33 | Cool, let's go ahead and solo safe that.
| | 09:35 | We'll go ahead and start working on the drums.
| | 09:38 | Now I added that kick so that kick
subgroup, so I am going to add that to
| | 09:43 | my drum group.
| | 09:46 | I am going to work on a drum sound, so
I'll go ahead and just solo these guys up
| | 09:50 | here. I have all those, solo those up,
and start working on a basic drum sound
| | 09:56 | here, starting with the kicks and the snares.
| | 09:58 | And usually at this point I am going to
decide, hey, do I want to do any sample
| | 10:02 | replacing or sample augmenting?
| | 10:05 | Do I feel that any of my drums
need a little bit of extra help?
| | 10:08 | And I think definitely at this point
the snare I am probably going to want to
| | 10:12 | augment with a sample trigger, and
maybe the kick, we'll see how we get here.
| | 10:17 | I am going start with this
kick drum and work from there.
| | 10:20 | (music playing)
| | 10:33 | Add a little EQ, filter out some of the
ultra-low lows, get rid of a lot of this
| | 10:41 | bulk in the middle, get
a little brightness there.
| | 10:50 | There is a lot of bleed on this kick so
what I might try to do here is add some
| | 10:59 | gates, try to get rid of some of that bleed.
| | 11:02 | (music playing)
| | 11:16 | That sounds good. I'll just copy
that over and check this one.
| | 11:20 | (music playing)
| | 11:26 | And the sub-mic is not picking as much bleed,
(music playing)
| | 11:35 | so it doesn't need it as
aggressive as a gate sound there. Cool.
| | 11:39 | And that gate is just going to clean
things up for me when I want to go ahead
| | 11:45 | and start compressing these kicks.
| | 11:49 | Now at this point what I can do--I am
going to add a little bit of Pultec to
| | 11:55 | those kicks, because I like the low end
there on the Pultec. I'm just going to set
| | 11:59 | the bandwidth here, not as a sharp of
a Q and give a little bit of boost and
| | 12:04 | maybe a little bit of top-end spike here.
| | 12:07 | (music playing)
| | 12:18 | Yeah, I like that.
| | 12:20 | Then I might EQ these a bit separately,
get a little bit more top end on that high
| | 12:28 | kick, blow out a little bit of that mud.
(music playing)
| | 12:43 | Cool, that sounds good. Let's go
ahead and add the snares in now.
| | 12:46 | (music playing)
| | 12:51 | There is quite a bit of bleed going on
in the snares and I want to check and
| | 12:54 | make sure that snare top and
bottom have been phase-aligned.
| | 13:00 | So what I can do is--sometimes
engineers do this at the recording stage.
| | 13:05 | They'll flip the phase on the bottom
snare mic, sometimes they won't, so I need
| | 13:09 | to do that.
| | 13:10 | So I am just going to go ahead and zoom
in here and see, you know what, they're
| | 13:14 | bit out of phase. I can see that this
one is pushing, while that one is pulling.
| | 13:19 | That's pretty typical of a
snare top and bottom mic.
| | 13:22 | So what I am going to do is just using
an EQ here, most EQs are going to have a
| | 13:28 | phase flip that I can grab real quick there.
| | 13:33 | Actually, this is coming up with all the
parameters set up for automations. I'm
| | 13:36 | going to actually turn that off and
set my preference so that plug-ins do not
| | 13:42 | default to automatically
enable all their automation.
| | 13:48 | So what we are seeing is there is
quite a bit of bleed on the snare, so I am
| | 13:51 | going to try to clean that up with a
bit of a gate, but ultimately, there is a
| | 13:55 | lot of intricate work going on in the snare.
(music playing)
| | 14:00 | So I can't get them too hard.
| | 14:01 | (music playing)
I am going to use an expander.
| | 14:10 | (music playing)
| | 14:23 | So see what I am doing here is I am just
cutting off a little bit of that bleed,
| | 14:29 | just trying to separate it a
bit from the underlying bleed.
| | 14:36 | (music playing)
| | 14:41 | And I'll copy that over the bottom.
The bottom I don't think has as bad of
| | 14:46 | a bleed issue.
| | 14:47 | You can see just by
looking at the clip itself. Cool.
| | 14:59 | Now I am going to add a little
bit of compression to this snare.
| | 15:06 | I am going to start out with the
1176 and see how I like the sound of that.
| | 15:15 | I'll use the black version here.
| | 15:17 | I am going to make the attack, so the 1176
has really a quick attack, and I don't want
| | 15:22 | it to be too fast, so I am going to
slow it down because I want some of the
| | 15:25 | spike of that snare to come through.
(music playing)
| | 15:29 | Let's listen to that in the verse.
| | 15:31 | (music playing)
| | 15:50 | That's okay. Ultimately, I feel like that
bleed is still causing me some problems
| | 15:54 | so what might work better is a
transient-designer-style plug-in.
| | 16:00 | So I am going to bring up the TransX
here and see if I can get a little bit more
| | 16:05 | spike out of that snare
without using a compressor.
| | 16:09 | These are cool because they allow us
to increase the transient without really
| | 16:13 | affecting the rest of the sound.
| | 16:15 | (music playing)
| | 16:22 | Yeah, I like that.
(music playing)
| | 16:36 | It's nice and punchy. I might even
copy that over to my kick drum there,
| | 16:40 | just reduce it a bit.
(music playing)
| | 16:52 | Cool. Now, my hi-hat is always going to
have a bunch of bleed, a ton of low end and
| | 16:59 | I just--I want to get that out of there.
| | 17:01 | So I am just going to go in and
choose a basic DigiRack EQ to just carve
| | 17:06 | that out.
(music playing)
| | 17:13 | And you can hear it's not
really affecting the hat itself.
| | 17:16 | (music playing)
| | 17:20 | It's just removing all
that bleed from the kick drum.
| | 17:24 | Cool. Now, I can balance that in the
rest of drum-kit, go ahead and solo
| | 17:30 | these guys up and listen.
| | 17:31 | (music playing)
| | 17:37 | Cool. Now I am going to take my
overheads here and apply a little bit of
| | 17:41 | compression and EQ. I like this
LA-3A on overheads, sounds real nice.
| | 17:48 | (music playing)
| | 17:57 | I just want to give it a little bit of fill.
(music playing)
| | 18:06 | And then I generally EQ my overheads,
so I am going to use basic DigiRack EQ to
| | 18:14 | roll off some of the low lows, just
make room for the kick, keep things from
| | 18:19 | being muddy, and I'll kind of carve out
some of the mud that's picked up in the
| | 18:24 | mid-frequencies there.
| | 18:26 | And then maybe I want to add a
little brilliance to the cymbals,
| | 18:31 | is kind of nice, so see what I've got.
We'll use that 1073 EQ here. It sounds
| | 18:38 | real nice on the top end.
| | 18:39 | So I'll go ahead and just pick, say, 12 here.
| | 18:44 | (music playing)
| | 18:48 | I want to get aggressive. That's nice.
(music playing)
| | 18:57 | And my room mic I'm generally going
to treat pretty much as same as the
| | 19:00 | overheads. It's a little muddier, so
what I might do is take that EQ, carve
| | 19:06 | it out a little bit more, maybe even
roll some of the top end off, compress it a bit.
| | 19:15 | I wasn't particularly thrilled with
the sound of the room in this case.
| | 19:21 | So sometimes I might just get rid of
the room mic altogether and work off the
| | 19:25 | overhead. In this case I am just going
to leave that room mic down for now and
| | 19:29 | see what I can do with the overhead
track, maybe adding a little bit of reverb
| | 19:32 | to it to get in a space.
| | 19:34 | So at this point I am going to need to
start adding some of my first effects
| | 19:38 | returns. So I am going to go over here
down towards the right-hand side--that's
| | 19:43 | right where I like to add my effects returns.
| | 19:45 | And I am going to create a stereo aux track.
| | 19:51 | And I'm going to create room reverb
that I can feed things like the drums into
| | 19:57 | just to give them a bit of space,
set to a bus. I've got some names in here
| | 20:03 | from the last session, so I've
got drum room, that's cool.
| | 20:06 | I'll grab the TrueVerb here.
It does a real nice job at room reverb.
| | 20:16 | I am going to pull up something.
Hey, let's try Drum room. I am totally not
| | 20:22 | beyond using presets if they sound good;
if not, I'll definitely adjust them.
| | 20:27 | Now for these drums here, I am just
going to take the overhead, I want to put
| | 20:30 | them in a space because I wasn't really
thrilled with the sound of the room, but
| | 20:35 | I do want to make them sound a
little bit more expensive and fancy.
| | 20:39 | So let's see how this sounds.
(music playing)
| | 20:51 | That's nice. I'm going to go
ahead and add that to the snare too.
| | 20:57 | Maybe even a little bit to the kick.
| | 20:58 | (music playing)
| | 21:05 | Just a bit, just to give it some space.
And definitely those toms. At this
| | 21:12 | point, I am going to go ahead and pan those toms.
| | 21:15 | Now when you're panning your toms
you can decide how you want to pan
| | 21:20 | your drum kit.
| | 21:21 | So if you want to do a drummer
perspective or audience perspective, that is to
| | 21:27 | say if it was audience perspective, the
low tom would probably be panned left;
| | 21:31 | if it was drummer perspective, it would
probably be panned right. There is no
| | 21:37 | right or wrong way to do this. You just
kind of want to make a decision there.
| | 21:42 | And so we'll give a little bit of
spread on the toms. That always sounds good,
| | 21:46 | copy that over, a little bit more action.
| | 21:49 | Remember, on your sends, you have pans too.
| | 21:50 | Cool, let's listen to that.
| | 21:53 | (music playing)
| | 22:01 | Nice, those drums are sounding pretty
good and as soon as I got the drum sounding
| | 22:05 | at least close to where I am going,
I am going to bring in my bass and see
| | 22:08 | what's going on with that guy.
| | 22:10 | And I've got my solo preferences set up
here to do the X-OR. I don't want that. We
| | 22:15 | are going to go latch. Cool.
| | 22:17 | (music playing)
| | 22:27 | That sounds pretty good. I'm generally
going to be compressing my bass, EQing my
| | 22:31 | bass. And I really like this CLA bass plug-in.
| | 22:36 | It's got a EQ, it's got a compressor
all built into the same one, and actually
| | 22:41 | sounds really, really good.
| | 22:42 | I am going to go ahead and turn off
the chorus here, turn down the sub.
| | 22:47 | Let me get a feel for this.
| | 22:51 | (music playing)
| | 22:58 | Add a little growl.
(music playing)
| | 23:14 | And that sounds pretty good. And what I
have done is I have made some space in
| | 23:18 | the kick drums for that bass to live,
and I might even make a little bit more
| | 23:24 | space kind of right in the 100 hertz
area, just so that nice warmth of that
| | 23:30 | bass can come through.
| | 23:32 | And then what I'll do a lot of times is
with my kick drum, I'll figure out where
| | 23:37 | that kick is speaking. And a little
cheater trick that I'll show you is you can
| | 23:41 | take your sound field plug-in, any kind
of frequency analysis tool--I am going
| | 23:46 | to make sure that it's
accurate down there at 10 hertz.
| | 23:49 | I am going to figure out where
the fundamental of my kick is.
| | 23:52 | (music playing)
| | 23:57 | So I can see that's living right around
50. We've got a harmonic right up there
| | 24:04 | around 100, and otherwise those things
are not very useful for mixing so much.
| | 24:10 | What that tells me is I can probably
get away with making a little pocket on
| | 24:14 | my kick, down here around 50, so that
whatever that CLA plug-in added in the
| | 24:21 | sub-frequencies I am just kind of
notch that out so that those guys can live
| | 24:27 | nicely there.
| | 24:28 | And I am mixing on headphones that you
guys can hear my dialogue and the mix
| | 24:32 | cleanly, so ultimately I'd want to make
sure that I check my low end on speakers
| | 24:37 | and really turn it up,
maybe even have a subwoofer.
| | 24:39 | But for now this is sounding pretty good.
| | 24:42 | (music playing)
| | 24:56 | Cool! That sounds good.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making the lead vocal the star| 00:00 | So now that I've got a vibe going on
between my drums and my bass, I like how my
| | 00:05 | kick drum is sounding, and kind of get
a punchy snare going on, I've got some
| | 00:09 | reverb on the drums, I might add a
little bit more plate to the snares as I start
| | 00:13 | flashing out the song,
| | 00:14 | but I have a solid foundation. And once
I have a solid foundation with my rhythm
| | 00:18 | section, I really want to move along
to my vocal at this point because that's
| | 00:22 | going to be a huge part of a pop tune.
| | 00:25 | And I want to make sure that I'm making
the right space for it before I add in
| | 00:30 | any of the big guitars or
things that are going to compete.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to come over here.
And sometimes at this point, I'll just go ahead
| | 00:36 | and solo-safe my vocal so that is
always in the session whenever I'm adding EQ
| | 00:43 | or making decisions.
| | 00:44 | And that can be a bit difficult to get
used to at first, but it really helps you
| | 00:49 | focus on creating contrast and
complementing the important part of your song.
| | 00:56 | So let's take a listen here in this first verse.
| | 00:58 | (music playing)
| | 01:05 | And this guy is definitely
going to need compression.
| | 01:08 | (music playing)
| | 01:19 | Cool! So I'm going to go ahead and show my
I/O view so I can work here from the
| | 01:23 | Edit window for a bit, so I can really
kind of make selections and see what's going on.
| | 01:28 | I'm going to take and start with
compression before EQ on the vocal because it's
| | 01:33 | kind of wild and it's kind of going
all over the place right now, and I really
| | 01:36 | want to kind of get it firmed up
before I try to place it in the mix.
| | 01:41 | I'm going to go with the Blue 1176 here.
| | 01:46 | I like that for vocals.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to speed up the release
time just a bit, and we'll start with a
| | 01:52 | ratio of 4:1.
| | 01:53 | (music playing)
| | 02:39 | Cool! So I'm getting some
compression. It's sounding pretty good.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to go ahead and add some EQ to this.
| | 02:47 | And you know what? When I'm doing my
basic EQing tasks, call it lazy or just
| | 02:54 | workflow habits, I'm always coming
back to this DigiRack EQ because I can
| | 02:59 | grab the little nodes.
| | 03:01 | It's really fast, and sometimes other
EQ plug-ins, for me at least, are just
| | 03:06 | not as fast as this.
| | 03:07 | And that's just something, an example
of, sometimes as a stock plug-in just
| | 03:12 | helps you work faster.
| | 03:13 | So in this case, I'm going to
carve off a bit of the ultra-low lows.
| | 03:16 | There's going to be some headphone
bleed in this vocal if we listen in
| | 03:20 | certain sections.
| | 03:21 | (music playing)
| | 03:28 | Let's see if we can find that there.
| | 03:30 | (music playing)
Yeah, so I'm cutting all that out.
| | 03:36 | I don't want any of that headphone
bleed or the ultra-low low mud from that.
| | 03:41 | There's not much on his vocal below 80 hertz.
| | 03:45 | Then what I want to do is try to find
some of these frequencies that are going
| | 03:50 | to be masking the low mids, just maybe he
got a little too close to the microphone.
| | 03:55 | (music playing)
| | 04:18 | Now I want to add a little bit of presence.
| | 04:21 | So instead of using the DigiRack EQ,
I'm going to go grab my 1073 here.
| | 04:28 | This is great for adding presence to a vocal.
| | 04:32 | Let's see what 3.2 gives us.
| | 04:35 | (music playing)
| | 04:42 | A little bit of air. I'm going to clip.
(music playing)
| | 04:48 | (music playing)
| | 05:28 | Cool! So the vocals sound pretty good,
but it's going to need some effects; it's
| | 05:32 | going to need something that's
going to make it sound like a rock star.
| | 05:34 | So I'm going to go ahead and create a
couple more sends and returns and actually,
| | 05:40 | a quick way I can do this just by
saying New Track here from the sends.
| | 05:44 | I'm going to start with a shorter delay,
and I want maybe a chorus, a longer
| | 05:57 | delay, maybe a longer verb.
| | 06:03 | So I'm building those returns right there.
| | 06:07 | I'll start with that short delay.
| | 06:09 | I'm going to do something
that's kind of a slap delay,
| | 06:16 | so I'll set that to sync with my session.
| | 06:18 | Hear what a sixteenth note sounds like.
| | 06:22 | I don't like the Space Echo program
there. I'm probably going to want to EQ on
| | 06:28 | the back end of that.
| | 06:29 | Before I even hear it, I know
I'm going to want EQ that thing.
| | 06:35 | Cool! So let's listen to that, solo-safe those.
| | 06:40 | (music playing)
| | 07:03 | Cool! So I ended up with a thirty-second note.
| | 07:05 | That sounds pretty good.
| | 07:07 | And I usually want a
longer delay in the session,
| | 07:11 | so I'm just going to copy that
EchoBoy over and I'm going to set it to
| | 07:15 | something a bit longer.
| | 07:16 | So well start with a quarter note and
see where that gets us. And generally, I'm
| | 07:21 | going to EQ those a lot more
aggressively, and you kind of get a little
| | 07:25 | telephone effect going on.
| | 07:27 | And a lot of times with those longer
delays, I'll do kind of a ping-pong thing,
| | 07:30 | so maybe a quarter note,
eighth or a quarter note, half note.
| | 07:35 | I'm just going to listen to that
there, a little bit more feedback for some taps.
| | 07:39 | (music playing)
| | 08:01 | That's cool. I'm going to change the style here
to the Telephone style. I like that.
| | 08:06 | (music playing)
| | 08:11 | Cool! I'm going to add a longer verb to my session.
| | 08:14 | Go right here and use
the Renaissance reverb. I like that.
| | 08:19 | Let's go with a plate, see what
their vocal plate sounds like.
| | 08:25 | And again, I'm always adding EQ to all
my FX returns so I can really shape that.
| | 08:30 | And I immediately know I'm going to want
to dig out some of the low frequencies.
| | 08:34 | I'm probably going to want to tame
out some of the high frequencies.
| | 08:36 | These guys have EQs in them, and that's great.
| | 08:39 | I typically just want more control.
| | 08:41 | I'm going to dip out some of the
500 and it's going to get a little bit
| | 08:44 | muddy with the vocal.
| | 08:47 | Take a listen to what that sounds like.
| | 08:48 | (music playing)
| | 09:19 | Cool! Let's see what that chorus sounds like.
| | 09:21 | (music playing)
| | 09:26 | Get a little bit wider. I like that.
| | 09:28 | (music playing)
| | 09:32 | That delay is getting a
little wild, a little too many taps.
| | 09:35 | So I am going to take in--I am
going to back that feedback down.
| | 09:38 | And since I changed it to telephone,
it's really kind of got enough telephone
| | 09:42 | effect going on there.
| | 09:43 | (music playing)
| | 09:50 | And ultimately, I might end up
automating something like this, and in the chorus
| | 09:55 | sections where it's not as
obvious, it's not as sparse.
| | 09:58 | Let's come back to some of this vocal
EQ, and I just want to see if I can make
| | 10:02 | any improvements now that I kind
of have a vocal sound going on.
| | 10:06 | (music playing)
| | 10:36 | And he is getting a little bit crispy on
some of those S's and so what I am going
| | 10:40 | to is I am going to use a de-esser.
| | 10:42 | You're going to use that on most vocals.
| | 10:45 | Sometimes you can get away without
using one depending on your mic selection.
| | 10:49 | I really like using high-frequency-only
de-essers on vocals because I think they
| | 10:53 | tend to take on a lisp if you start
digging in too deep. Let's set that range down
| | 10:59 | there, take a listen.
| | 11:01 | (music playing)
| | 11:15 | Cool!
(music playing)
| | 11:28 | Now, with these background vocals,
generally, I will either get to the
| | 11:32 | background vocals at this part of
the mixing process or I will save them for later;
| | 11:37 | it really just depends on how
big a part of a song they are.
| | 11:40 | Mixing some songs that have 40, 50, 60
tracks of vocals, because it's all about
| | 11:45 | the vocal stacks in R&B, especially,
say, hip-hop songs where you've got three
| | 11:51 | artists plus another artist singing a hook,
| | 11:56 | so most of your mixing process, the
bulk of the time spent mixing is just going
| | 12:00 | to be scoring through and
starting to manage those vocals.
| | 12:03 | This isn't one of those sessions.
| | 12:05 | So what I am going to do here is I am
just going to submix them real quick to a
| | 12:09 | new aux track, so I can treat them as one.
| | 12:11 | And I can just get a handle on what
they're doing, maybe just give them a
| | 12:19 | sound fairly quickly.
(music playing)
| | 12:25 | A little muddy, they're going to need some EQ.
| | 12:28 | (music playing)
| | 12:51 | And they're definitely going to
need a little bit of compression.
| | 12:58 | (music playing)
| | 13:13 | You see, I have got those panned pretty wide.
| | 13:16 | They were actually recorded with
panning them in mind so that we get a nice
| | 13:21 | wide background vocal sound.
| | 13:23 | Now to extend that, I am going to go
ahead and send that to some of my effects.
| | 13:28 | I am going to send that to my chorus.
| | 13:32 | Actually, label that chorus.
Not that chorus, this chorus.
| | 13:39 | And I have got some Long Delay, some
Short Delay, and some Verb on there.
| | 13:51 | (music playing)
| | 14:31 | If I feel like they need to be a
little bit wider, I might use a little
| | 14:35 | Stereo Widening, maybe throw a
little center on there, kick up the sides
| | 14:42 | and the center down a bit.
| | 14:43 | They're sounding pretty good here.
| | 14:47 | I might create some special effects for
the lead vocals just depending on what
| | 14:51 | I want to do.
| | 14:52 | Now, with the lead vocal, a lot of
times what I will do is I will add in a
| | 14:57 | duplicate lead vocal track that I
actually process in a different way.
| | 15:02 | So go ahead and save some of these
inserts for now, but I am probably going to
| | 15:07 | get rid of the EQ and the effects.
| | 15:09 | Let's just bypass them for now.
| | 15:12 | So what I am going to do--I am
going to move these out for a second.
| | 15:15 | What I am looking to do is kind of
get a grittier sound and then blend that
| | 15:20 | in to taste.
| | 15:22 | I really like the CLA effects because it's got
a bunch of cool effects that I can use
| | 15:26 | to layer with my vocal.
| | 15:28 | Let's go ahead and listen to that.
| | 15:30 | (music playing)
| | 15:58 | Now, I generally need to EQ this so it
doesn't get in the way of the vocal.
| | 16:02 | (music playing)
| | 16:06 | A lot of compression going on there.
I am going to move that up a little bit.
| | 16:09 | (music playing)
| | 16:20 | Cut out some of the mids.
(music playing)
| | 16:23 | Yeah, like that.
| | 16:27 | Top tops, I don't need those.
| | 16:32 | (music playing)
| | 16:38 | Depending on how aggressive I want to
get with this, I can really automate
| | 16:43 | that in and out.
(music playing)
| | 16:55 | Kind of my character fader right there.
| | 16:58 | (music playing)
| | 17:06 | Cool! So I have got a pretty good lead vocal
sound set up, and of course I am going to
| | 17:10 | go back and make tweaks to my lead
vocal effects, EQs, compression as I start
| | 17:16 | working with my other instruments.
| | 17:18 | I generally like to get that lead
vocal in as quickly as possible and get
| | 17:21 | it sounding like a star because
that's what's going to motivate me and pull
| | 17:26 | me through the mix.
| | 17:27 | If the lead vocal is just kind of
sounding dowdy and lame while I am working
| | 17:31 | on my other stuff, I am not going to
really be motivated and amped on the song.
| | 17:35 | So I like to start making that sound
special as soon as I can, and then I will
| | 17:39 | work my other tracks around that.
And that not only motivates me to work through
| | 17:44 | the song and live up to that lead
vocal sound, but I can also shape things
| | 17:48 | around that lead vocal.
| | 17:50 | So now I am making space with those
other instruments in contrast of a lead
| | 17:55 | vocal sound that I've already created.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Filling in the rhythm section| 00:00 | So at this point what I like to do is
save off another copy of my session, just
| | 00:06 | so I can kind of mark my progress with
a Save As. And sometimes I do this more
| | 00:11 | often than other times.
| | 00:12 | I might kind of work through the drums,
do a Save As. Sometimes I might work all
| | 00:16 | the way until I have a
rough mix and do a Save As.
| | 00:19 | But at any rate, I like to have
kind of an iterative documentation of my
| | 00:24 | session in case I go entirely down the
wrong rabbit hole and need to just get
| | 00:30 | back to somewhere where I
thought yeah, things are sounding okay.
| | 00:33 | I am just going to Save As. I am
just going to call this Drums Vox.
| | 00:42 | Cool. So now I've got my lead vocal in, I've
got my lead vocal effects track, and I'm
| | 00:48 | going to rename this.
| | 00:49 | I like to keep things organized when I'm mixing.
| | 00:53 | Sometimes organization can get away
with you when you get really creative.
| | 00:56 | And that's cool. When that happens
to me, I'll just come back when I have a
| | 01:00 | clear head and reorganize some
stuff. Call this Lead Vocal Effects.
| | 01:05 | Now at this point, I've got my lead
vocal, I've got my drums, I've got some
| | 01:08 | bass going on, but this
song is all about the guitar.
| | 01:10 | There're tons of guitars in this
session and I want to make sure I get to
| | 01:14 | those guitars.
| | 01:15 | So now I'm actually going to go submix
some things. I'm going to go ahead and
| | 01:19 | submix my main rhythm guitars here,
bringing those into a new track. I'll call
| | 01:26 | these Rhythm Gits.
| | 01:29 | So we've got my rhythm guitars and I
could go ahead and group those if I wanted to.
| | 01:33 | (music playing)
| | 01:42 | And I also have these higher guitars
that kick in in the choruses, kind of
| | 01:50 | doing this kind of edge thing, setting
the back wall. It's really nice actually.
| | 01:56 | (music playing)
| | 02:00 | But I like to have things organized,
| | 02:03 | so I might decide to sub-mix those in
case I want to change the overall level
| | 02:07 | of that group.
| | 02:08 | So I'll also make those high gits. Solo Safe that.
| | 02:13 | Cool. And then usually on those sub-tracks,
I'll have some kind of EQ that I can just
| | 02:18 | grab and kind of keep things
out of the way of the vocal.
| | 02:22 | I might not use it immediately.
| | 02:24 | Now moving over to these guitars,
first of all, this acoustic guitar--
| | 02:29 | (music playing)
| | 02:34 | --sounds pretty good. I'm going to add
a little bit of compression to it, just
| | 02:38 | to keep it nice and solid in the mix.
| | 02:41 | And I like that LA-3A for guitars,
just to give it a little bit of control.
| | 02:46 | I'm going to clip my plug-ins.
| | 02:51 | So I'm going to make sure I manage that gain stage there.
(music playing)
| | 03:00 | (music playing)
Just evening out those strums.
| | 03:15 | I might just pan it center to
hear it a little bit better for now.
| | 03:21 | Now I want to make sure any of
the guitars I've got going on aren't
| | 03:25 | competing with my lead vocal,
| | 03:26 | so I'll go ahead and kick that
vocal back into Solo Safe mode.
| | 03:30 | I'll bring in some EQ here.
| | 03:34 | Now with most instruments that don't
have ultra-low lows, I'm going to take a
| | 03:38 | high-pass filter to them, just to
carve out anything that might be down
| | 03:42 | there, any rumble that gathered in the
mic--maybe a truck drove by during the recording.
| | 03:48 | At any rate, the guitar is not speaking
below a certain frequency, and I want to
| | 03:53 | make sure that I'm not building up
any low-frequency noise in the mix.
| | 03:58 | And while you might not hear it on a
single track, if all the tracks add
| | 04:03 | together, all the small amounts of
low-frequency noise can actually build
| | 04:07 | up and make for a muddy low end.
| | 04:09 | So typically, what I like to do is
just leave my low-frequency elements down
| | 04:14 | there and kind of tighten everything up.
| | 04:16 | Now, I'm not saying go ahead
and do this to every track.
| | 04:21 | That's not going to get you very far.
I'm just saying, if you need a little
| | 04:26 | help, go ahead and take a frequency
analyzer, cheat a little bit, and see, hey,
| | 04:35 | where is this instrument living?
(music playing)
| | 04:43 | And I can see that in the key of this
song of the chords that he is playing, he is
| | 04:48 | not going to go much lower than 80.
You can see this is just--the instrument just
| | 04:54 | doesn't live down there.
| | 04:55 | I don't always need to
bring up a frequency analyzer;
| | 05:00 | I can just kind of do it by ear,
but I know that to be safe here, I can
| | 05:04 | filter at 80, no big deal.
| | 05:05 | I'm going to try to filter out any mud
that could compete with the vocal, and the
| | 05:09 | way I do this is I bring the vocal in
and then I'll just kind of sweep around
| | 05:13 | until I find something that
could be a little bit offensive.
| | 05:16 | (music playing)
| | 05:35 | I'm not looking to just
cut it all out completely--
| | 05:38 | I don't want to hollow out the guitar;
I'm just looking to make little notches
| | 05:43 | so that the vocal element, the vocal
here is going to be present and not get
| | 05:49 | overpowered by the guitars.
| | 05:51 | And they're going to be panned anyway
so there is going to space for them,
| | 05:54 | so I'm just making small changes,
and a lot of EQ is small changes.
| | 05:59 | I want to give a little bit of
low-frequency bump to this guy, a little
| | 06:05 | body. And I want to add a little bit
of presence just to get some pick out of
| | 06:12 | this thing.
| | 06:13 | While I usually do my cutting EQs, which is
just kind of a basic digital EQ, if I'm
| | 06:18 | just removing frequencies, I'll often
reach for a more colored EQ to do my
| | 06:23 | boosts, something that's going to
add a little sheen or a little sparkle.
| | 06:27 | Let's see what this pull text
sounds like up here, like 10K.
| | 06:32 | (music playing)
| | 06:42 | Yeah, that sounds nice.
(music playing)
| | 06:48 | Just add a little bit more of that pick
sound, bring in this other guitar. I want
| | 06:56 | a little compression on him too.
| | 06:57 | Now he is a little louder,
| | 07:02 | so I'm going to back that off a
bit. And he is on an electric guitar,
| | 07:04 | so he has already got some compression;
however, when you add compression to
| | 07:08 | electric guitars--especially distorted
ones--I mean even though they're already
| | 07:13 | compressed by the nature of the
distortion and the speaker and the amplifier
| | 07:18 | breaking up, you can even add more
compression to them, even a lot sometimes to
| | 07:23 | get them to kind of fill out even more.
| | 07:25 | Where you kind of have to be careful
with the amount of compression is on
| | 07:28 | the stuff like clean guitars,
especially acoustic guitars, because you can
| | 07:31 | really just squash the life out of
them and take all of the brilliance and
| | 07:36 | the tonal quality out.
| | 07:37 | (music playing)
| | 07:44 | Now this guy is kind of muddy.
(music playing)
| | 07:51 | We are going to get him
out of the way of the vocal.
| | 07:53 | I'm going to kick the bass guitar
in so I'm not competing with him.
| | 08:00 | (music playing)
| | 08:14 | We do want a little presence.
(music playing)
| | 08:21 | Make sure I don't clip.
(music playing)
| | 08:50 | And I want to make sure, because I'm
doing a left-right pan with these guitars,
| | 08:54 | that they have the same amount of
frequency balance, in terms of low end and
| | 08:59 | high end, and I'm feeling like this
acoustic guitar maybe could have a bit more low end.
| | 09:06 | (music playing)
| | 09:17 | Maybe a little less on this guy.
(music playing)
| | 09:22 | And this acoustic guitar is fairly close-miked,
| | 09:25 | so what I might do is bring
into a bit of the verb here.
| | 09:29 | So we've got this drum reverb, Drum Room.
| | 09:34 | Let's listen to what that
sounds like on that guy.
| | 09:36 | (music playing)
| | 09:39 | I'm going to pan it to the left
side of the reverb, kind of more of a
| | 09:42 | stereo effect.
(music playing)
| | 09:47 | Yeah, I like that. I'm going to do the
opposite to this guitar here.
| | 09:52 | So I'm actually going into the
opposite side of the return that it's actually
| | 09:57 | panned on, and this is kind of cool
trick to make things even wider than they
| | 10:02 | are, because we've got pretty
wide guitars going on here.
| | 10:05 | (music playing)
| | 10:11 | Nice.
(music playing)
| | 10:17 | Now let's say these power electric guitars,
| | 10:19 | they come in at the chorus, and
| | 10:21 | I want to see what these guys
are doing here, whether they are muddy or not.
| | 10:25 | (music playing)
| | 10:28 | Yeah, he is pretty muddy.
(music playing)
| | 10:32 | See how that is going to mask that vocal?
(music playing)
| | 10:47 | So what I'm doing is I'm
kind of bracketing it in.
| | 10:49 | There's not a whole lot on that
guitar cabinet above 10 or 12K, except for
| | 10:54 | noise, and this guy is getting pretty ruckus,
| | 10:58 | so I'm just going to bracket that in.
And now I really want to focus on how he is
| | 11:01 | going to behave with the vocal.
| | 11:03 | He is going to get panned,
| | 11:03 | so that's going to help, but if it gets
summed down to mono, we are going to be
| | 11:08 | back into the same spot.
| | 11:09 | So I'm going to do that same trick.
| | 11:11 | I'm going to kind of pan that around,
or I should say sweep around, until I find
| | 11:16 | those spots where it's really competing.
| | 11:18 | (music playing)
Yeah.
| | 11:30 | Maybe I'll shift some of that up there.
(music playing)
| | 11:35 | Now, this guitar kind of has this honky
mid-forward sound and I'm not trying to
| | 11:40 | totally take that away.
| | 11:42 | Again, I'm not trying to completely
reshape this instrument into something
| | 11:47 | that it's not;
| | 11:48 | I'm just trying to find little spaces
where I can make a bit more room, and again,
| | 11:53 | that's what mixing is all about,
| | 11:54 | finding little areas
where you can make contrast.
| | 11:58 | If you feel like that guitar doesn't
sound right for the song, well, maybe you
| | 12:03 | should mute it or maybe you should go
back and rethink the tone of the amp.
| | 12:06 | A lot of people put all this pressure
on the mixing stage, but you've got to pay
| | 12:10 | attention when you are recording.
| | 12:12 | If you read articles about how many
days it takes for them to set up just the
| | 12:17 | guitar cabinets and get guitar tones
for many major-label rock records, they're
| | 12:22 | spending like a week with guitar techs
and engineers whose sole goal it is to
| | 12:28 | get a really great guitar tone.
| | 12:29 | So if you think you can just kind of
put a guitar tone and shape it all with
| | 12:33 | EQ, you should probably think again.
| | 12:35 | (music playing)
I don't really like that. That sounds pretty good.
| | 12:45 | (music playing)
| | 12:56 | Now what's this guy doing?
He is a little chunkier.
| | 13:01 | That's cool, because we can put him on
the side of acoustic guitar and it's going
| | 13:04 | to give it a little bit more beef.
| | 13:05 | (music playing)
| | 13:18 | I actually kind of like some of that meat there.
(music playing)
| | 13:35 | What I might do on the guitar bus is
maybe I'll apply some extra compression
| | 13:40 | just to that bus just kind of fill some
stuff out. And maybe I use the LA-3A, but
| | 13:44 | you know what? Let's try
something where I can actually do a blend.
| | 13:48 | So I'm going to bring in the H-Comp here.
| | 13:51 | This has got a mix parameter.
| | 13:54 | So maybe I pull out something that
says something that's going to be good
| | 13:58 | for guitars here.
| | 14:00 | Let's take this parallel compression
one, just to kind of hear what's going on.
| | 14:05 | (music playing)
| | 14:15 | So it's a little of compression,
but we are just backing it off.
| | 14:20 | Yeah, I really get that fill.
(music playing)
| | 14:32 | Now what are these guitars doing?
| | 14:34 | These sound pretty muddy here.
| | 14:35 | I still feel like I don't have a lot
of clarity, and I feel like it is coming
| | 14:38 | from some of these high chorus guitars.
| | 14:40 | (music playing)
| | 14:44 | Yeah. So this was recorded actually with a
delay on it, and that's nice because it's
| | 14:52 | going to act kind of as my back wall.
| | 14:54 | Take a listen in the chorus section as
I bring this in and out. You're really
| | 14:58 | going to get a sense of the
mix depth changing dramatically.
| | 15:01 | Check it out.
(music playing)
| | 15:10 | Very forward, deep. It is actually a
super-important element, even though it's
| | 15:19 | just kind of a high little element.
| | 15:21 | So I'm going to kind of pan it up there.
| | 15:23 | What I want to do is I want to see,
how can I get that a little bit wider?
| | 15:27 | It's a mono guitar, so I can kind of
pan it, but you know, I really just
| | 15:33 | kind of want to make that nice and wide.
| | 15:34 | A trick that I'll use when I have a
mono element that I just want to kind of
| | 15:38 | put into space and make really wide and
big is I'll take a delay and then just be
| | 15:43 | a short, a mono, a stereo delay, and
I'm going to take advantage something
| | 15:47 | called the Haas effect.
| | 15:50 | Actually, I am going to set one side so
that there is no delay and another side
| | 15:55 | so that I'm just getting 10 to 15 milliseconds.
| | 15:59 | Take a listen to this.
| | 16:00 | (music playing)
| | 16:09 | Nice. Now, when you do this, you're
going to sort of prioritize whatever
| | 16:14 | is earliest.
| | 16:15 | That's part of the Haas effect,
because our ears are hearing the left side first.
| | 16:20 | So what I do often times, depending on
how this is sounding on speaker--so I'm
| | 16:25 | listening to headphones right
now, and it sounds pretty good.
| | 16:28 | But on speakers, what's going to
happen is you're going to hear a little
| | 16:31 | bit more on the left.
| | 16:33 | So what I might do is just kind of turn
the gain down just a smidge here to kind
| | 16:39 | of balance it out. And this is
something you can just kind of really do by ear.
| | 16:43 | I'm definitely going to have some EQ on
this guy. I'm going to get rid of a lot
| | 16:47 | of that low-end mud,
because that's just mud down there.
| | 16:50 | (music playing)
| | 16:53 | See, you really can't even hear the difference.
| | 16:55 | (music playing)
| | 17:01 | I kind of want to give it a little
bit of a kind of a telephone thing.
| | 17:08 | Now I'm hearing this kind of sparkly
top end that's just kind of just noise from
| | 17:12 | the amp and the pickups and things
like that and I'm just going to kind of try to
| | 17:15 | shave that off with a bit of low-pass filter.
(music playing)
| | 17:19 | I'm going to push it towards the back.
| | 17:21 | (music playing)
| | 17:29 | So here's without that delay.
(music playing)
| | 17:36 | It really changes the width there and it
makes some space for the vocal, and that's
| | 17:41 | something I might
consider doing with my B3 also.
| | 17:44 | So if we listen to this guy...
| | 17:45 | (music playing)
| | 17:50 | And that's a real B3 with a
real Leslie, so, totally cool.
| | 17:53 | I'm going to go ahead and
bring those into an aux track.
| | 17:56 | (music playing)
| | 18:08 | Again, no mud.
(music playing)
| | 18:14 | No competition with the vocal.
(music playing)
| | 18:20 | And these pad-style elements, we can add
a lot of verb to them and really create
| | 18:26 | that nice back wall.
| | 18:27 | So I might take that Long Verb and--
(music playing)
| | 18:33 | --put a lot on there. Yeah, that's really nice.
| | 18:38 | Then maybe I'll try that same effect. Oops.
| | 18:41 | That doesn't match, so let's go
ahead and do a Delay > Short Delay.
| | 18:47 | Now, remember how I said when you're using
the Haas effect, you can kind of weight
| | 18:51 | things to one side or the other. Check this out.
| | 18:55 | What I'll do when I'm using this on
multiple elements--and you've got to be careful.
| | 18:58 | Everything can't be wide in your mix;
| | 19:00 | you got to have some stuff in the center.
| | 19:02 | So be aware of that, just in terms of
mono compatibility and things like that.
| | 19:07 | What I was talking about is that
depending on what side you set to have the zero
| | 19:12 | delay, the brain is going to detect that
side as being a bit louder because it's
| | 19:16 | what it hears first.
| | 19:17 | Now, since I'm working with two of
these elements, and I took that guitar, on
| | 19:22 | that guitar, it was the left side that
was the zero, and then I kind of tried to
| | 19:27 | compensate for that.
| | 19:28 | Well, let's see if we can just switch
the sides so that the organ has the right
| | 19:33 | side as zero and the left
side has a bit of delay.
| | 19:37 | Let's do something like 15, and
we can kind of split that balance.
| | 19:42 | (music playing)
| | 19:47 | Now it's not as pronounced in the organ,
because the organ is already stereo.
| | 19:53 | And I've got this left-right mic
going on here, plus a low-frequency mic.
| | 19:58 | (music playing)
| | 20:18 | This lead vocal effect is kind of
creating this weird mask on the vocals,
| | 20:24 | so I think I need to work
on the EQ a little bit more.
| | 20:27 | (music playing)
I don't really like that.
| | 20:35 | So I didn't really this kind of weird--
that wasn't really doing it for me.
| | 20:39 | So we'll bring it down a bit.
(music playing)
| | 21:08 | A little room reverb on
that shaker wouldn't hurt.
| | 21:13 | (music playing)
| | 21:21 | A little EQ.
(music playing)
| | 21:32 | The tambourine comes in in the
chorus, so we kind of switch between the
| | 21:35 | shaker and the tambourine.
| | 21:36 | The tambourine can kind of
get a little bit aggressive.
| | 21:40 | (music playing)
| | 21:50 | Make sure that really comes
through there and gives that sparkle.
| | 21:57 | Now, tambourines--this is usually
something that happens with tambourines--you
| | 22:00 | can see that on the downbeats, it hits pretty hard.
| | 22:05 | So it's bang, chick-a, chick-a,
chick-a, bang, chick-a, chick-a, chick-a,
| | 22:08 | and usually needs a little bit of
compression just to kind of keep that tight in
| | 22:11 | the mix and filling out here.
| | 22:13 | Go ahead and grab our nice little LA-3A.
| | 22:17 | (music playing)
| | 22:22 | Use that bang, chick-a, chick-a,
chick-a, bang, chick-a, chick-a, chick-a.
| | 22:25 | (music playing)
| | 23:13 | Now I'm feeling that I'm using quite a
bit of that room verb here, this drum
| | 23:18 | room, and things are getting kind of a
little bit weird in the mids, probably
| | 23:24 | coming from--I'm using quite a bit
of it on my snare and my overheads.
| | 23:28 | It's going to kill my vocal and now,
like I said, keeping your vocal solo-safe
| | 23:35 | can be a little bit annoying, because
there are situations where you just need
| | 23:38 | to hear what's going on.
| | 23:40 | So you're going to mute it, because
you're not necessarily trying to work in
| | 23:43 | contrast or fit in a focal point;
| | 23:46 | you're just trying to figure out
hey, what's going on in my mix, I'm
| | 23:49 | hearing something weird.
| | 23:51 | So it's okay to solo stuff in that scenario.
| | 23:52 | And in this case, I think I'm going to
need a little bit of EQ on this track.
| | 23:58 | I am just going to crank that up
and really hear what's going on.
| | 24:01 | (music playing)
| | 24:05 | Yeah. Kind of boxy in there.
(music playing)
| | 24:11 | I'm just going to cut that out,
maybe tame some of those highs.
| | 24:15 | (music playing)
Keep that kick out of the reverb.
| | 24:21 | (music playing)
| | 24:44 | You know what it is? It's the snare.
| | 24:45 | It needs some EQ. I've kind of got this
mid kind of honky sound going on.
| | 24:51 | (music playing)
| | 25:03 | Give it a bit of top end there. Brightness.
| | 25:09 | It's got so much bleed from the other drums.
| | 25:14 | Let's give this a little bit of top end too.
| | 25:17 | (music playing)
Yeah!
| | 25:38 | Cool! So it's sounding pretty good.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Circling back and getting creative| 00:00 | So at this point when I'm listening to
my drums in the chorus section, I feel
| | 00:04 | like they are getting a little bit lost.
| | 00:06 | And this is something that happens when
you start mixing the drums first, and now
| | 00:11 | you've added the guitars and the
vocals and you've kind of got a big sound and
| | 00:14 | you're kind of thinking,
| | 00:15 | the kick is not punching through,
| | 00:16 | the snare is not punching
through as much as I want it to.
| | 00:20 | And so usually right around this time
what I'm going to do is on my drum submix--
| | 00:25 | this changes with each mix, but I'm
usually, on my drum submix, going to do
| | 00:30 | some kind of compression, generally
parallel compression, so that I can inflate those
| | 00:37 | drums a bit so that they cut
through in the bigger sections of the song.
| | 00:41 | And I can do this one of two ways. I could actually
duplicate my drums submix track and process that separately,
| | 00:47 | and then be able to automate that.
| | 00:49 | Or I can just add a compressor with a
mix parameter. And because I want to be
| | 00:53 | able to automate it, I'm going to
go ahead and create a new aux track.
| | 00:57 | I'm going to point that to my drums submix.
| | 00:59 | So now I have two tracks with the
drums coming in, and this is going to be
| | 01:03 | my Squash track.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to mute the regular drums.
| | 01:08 | I'm just not using that room, so I'm
actually just going to make it inactive and
| | 01:12 | hide it. Ooh, not hide everything,
just the room. Let's listen to these.
| | 01:18 | (music playing)
| | 01:22 | Let me kill that vocal for now.
| | 01:24 | (music playing)
| | 01:39 | Let's see, what's going to sound good here?
| | 01:41 | (music playing)
Let's try this Kramer.
| | 01:48 | (music playing)
| | 01:58 | I'm looking to really get a squash and
a fill. That sounded pretty good there.
| | 02:13 | Really digging that threshold in deep.
| | 02:15 | (music playing)
| | 02:30 | Now I've actually got kick tracks going
out to the main, and this is really just
| | 02:34 | a decision that you can make. Sometimes
people will keep that out of their drum
| | 02:40 | submix, because they want to do some
radical compression and they don't want the
| | 02:43 | kick influencing it.
| | 02:44 | Other times, you want the kick
in there. It's just kind of a
| | 02:48 | personal preference.
| | 02:49 | At this point, we'll just throw that
in there and see what it sounds like.
| | 02:52 | (music playing)
| | 02:57 | Yeah, it's not bad.
(music playing)
| | 03:04 | I kind of like that. I just want to bring
a little more power to all that.
| | 03:13 | And maybe I'll EQ this track.
| | 03:15 | Add a little bit more low-end boost
to it, just a bit. Maybe a little top-
| | 03:24 | end sheen.
| | 03:25 | (music playing)
| | 03:31 | Just to compensate for that compression.
(music playing)
| | 03:41 | And I'm still not totally in love with
the tone of my kick and my snare, and so
| | 03:47 | at this point of the mix, if I'm dealing
with real drums, I'll at least entertain
| | 03:51 | the option of doing some sample
replacing, just to kind of see, is that
| | 03:56 | sounding better, is it sounding awkward?
| | 03:59 | And so at this point, with my snare, I'm
definitely going to need to kind of do
| | 04:03 | parallel processing, because there is
all that stuff going on with the drags and
| | 04:07 | the roughs during the chorus sections
and the intro. So I'm going to go ahead
| | 04:10 | and duplicate these guys here. I don't
really need any of the inserts at that
| | 04:15 | point. I don't really want the sends
either. And we'll go ahead and I'll
| | 04:19 | duplicate one of my kicks here,
most likely the beater mic.
| | 04:24 | I'm going to move that out of the
kick bus and just set that up to go right
| | 04:29 | into the drum submix.
| | 04:32 | So I've got this guy is going to
be my Snare Replace, Kick Replace.
| | 04:39 | Like I said, I just want to hear this.
I want to hear this in the mix. I want to
| | 04:42 | hear what it's doing, and I pull up
trigger. I'm going to copy it over.
| | 04:48 | So for my snare, I go here
to Users, find my samples.
| | 04:55 | I like this CLA Hybrid Kit here for
this song. Let's try that. And it's kind of
| | 05:05 | got a lot of ambience, so
| | 05:06 | I'm going to back that down before I
listen. All right, let's set that up.
| | 05:11 | (music playing)
| | 05:17 | Yeah, I like that.
(music playing)
| | 05:21 | Increase that input, so we're getting
those harder hits, yeah! Really driving
| | 05:25 | that, that's what I want.
| | 05:28 | Cool! Let's listen to that with the regular
snare and kind of blend that to taste.
| | 05:34 | (music playing)
| | 05:48 | Yeah, let's do the same
thing with the kick here.
| | 05:52 | You know what? Instead of going through
that directory, I'm just going to copy
| | 05:55 | that trigger plug-in over, and now
I can just put that kick preset up.
| | 06:03 | Let's listen.
(music playing)
| | 06:08 | A little too much room.
(music playing)
| | 06:36 | Now what I could at this point is I
could mute these kicks and see if I want to
| | 06:40 | just go with the sampled kick,
because the kick is easier to replace.
| | 06:43 | There is not a lot of weird
intricate kick-work going on;
| | 06:47 | it's a straight-ahead rock song, so
I could get away with just using the
| | 06:51 | sampled kick if I want to.
(music playing)
| | 06:57 | And maybe I'm thinking it might be a
little heavy handed for this song. I mean
| | 07:01 | it's not that hard rock of a song.
| | 07:04 | I might ultimately try to choose a
different sample, but I kind of liked it
| | 07:09 | kind of blending the two together.
| | 07:11 | And these are decisions that, you
know what, I can make all the way up to
| | 07:15 | the end of the mix.
| | 07:15 | I could actually get this mix to the car.
| | 07:17 | Like I said, I'm working on
headphones right now. Once I get to speakers, I
| | 07:21 | could say, you know what, I
absolutely hate that kick.
| | 07:23 | I want a different sample. I want to
EQ it differently. Don't be afraid to
| | 07:28 | change your mind about this stuff.
| | 07:29 | You have a Pro Tools session. You can
close it, go take a break, open it back
| | 07:35 | up, and make tweaks. You can go to the car,
you can go on vacation and come back and
| | 07:41 | make tweaks to it, and
that's what I'll do in a real mix.
| | 07:45 | (music playing)
| | 07:47 | Let's listen to the chorus,
make sure those drums hold up.
| | 07:50 | (music playing)
| | 08:15 | That's muddy. I knew there was something
muddy in that last chorus.
| | 08:24 | A muddy high guitar part.
Let's listen to that again.
| | 08:29 | It comes in the last chorus I think.
| | 08:36 | There it is.
| | 08:37 | (music playing)
| | 08:45 | Let's try to feed that to--I could
actually lift the track a bit if I fed that
| | 08:51 | into a delay, kind of match that.
So what I'll do is, this is one of the few
| | 08:56 | times that I'll just put
the delay right on the track,
| | 08:58 | if it's a guitar. I mean
that's how a pedal works, right?
| | 09:01 | So I'm just going to go ahead and put
this right on to the track. Let's see what
| | 09:05 | that sounds like with the space echo.
| | 09:07 | (music playing)
| | 09:28 | Pretty cool! So I'll make sure I've got that
kind of panned to one side, and maybe I'll
| | 09:35 | feed that into a bit of my longer
reverb to just kind of reinforce that back
| | 09:40 | wall. Maybe I'll kind of do something like that.
| | 09:43 | (music playing)
| | 09:56 | And there is a guitar solo that's
happening somewhere in here, so I want to make
| | 10:00 | sure that I'm treating my elements that
don't happen at all parts of the song.
| | 10:04 | One thing that I always do is I always,
you know, working on a chorus, work on
| | 10:09 | a verse, and I get to the end of the
mix and I'm like, oh man, I never even
| | 10:12 | listened to the bridge. There is a
whole other set of instruments there that I
| | 10:16 | didn't even mess with.
| | 10:18 | So here we can see in
verse 2 a new guitar comes in.
| | 10:21 | (music playing)
| | 10:24 | And the tag, it's going to
need EQ. Get it out of the vocal.
| | 10:31 | (music playing)
| | 10:43 | So it's kind of doing a counterpart
to some of those other guitars up here,
| | 10:48 | some of these guitars.
| | 10:49 | (music playing)
Here.
| | 11:00 | Let's pan it that way.
(music playing)
| | 11:08 | Let's take a listen to this guitar solo.
| | 11:10 | (music playing)
| | 11:15 | Now it's got some effects on it
already that were recorded there. Again, a
| | 11:21 | little EQ just to rein that in.
| | 11:22 | Maybe if I really want to make it
sound special, just really kind of want to
| | 11:29 | put it out there and just get a quick
sound going on, I really like this CLA
| | 11:34 | guitar, just kind of quickly get a
sound going, and I like these clear tone presets.
| | 11:41 | It's kind of got some verb, got
some compression, it's got some
| | 11:45 | stereo widening. Yeah.
(music playing)
| | 12:05 | A little muddy in there.
(music playing)
| | 12:15 | And the guitar solo is definitely going
to need some automation, right, because
| | 12:19 | it continues into the bridge
section where he is singing.
| | 12:22 | (music playing)
| | 12:24 | So let's just go ahead and do that right now.
| | 12:26 | Anytime I know there is absolutely
going to have to be automation, I'm just
| | 12:31 | going to go ahead and do that.
(music playing)
| | 12:40 | And there we go.
(music playing)
| | 12:49 | Maybe even more.
(music playing)
| | 13:04 | Maybe I will use that as just kind of
a little exciting moment to go into
| | 13:08 | that last chorus.
| | 13:09 | (music playing)
| | 13:14 | But I don't want that verb tail to hang
on, because there's that sort of moment or breath
| | 13:20 | before the chorus and so what I'm
going to do is I'm going to just drop that
| | 13:23 | out so that we keep that breath.
| | 13:25 | (music playing)
More like that.
| | 13:33 | (music playing)
Yeah!
| | 13:47 | Now at this point, I can start
working on some of my bus compression, so I
| | 13:52 | usually like to use a
little bit of bus compression.
| | 13:55 | I don't put it on at the
beginning of my mix like some people do.
| | 13:59 | It's really up to you how you want
to deal with your bus compression.
| | 14:02 | Some guys don't use it all, and in some
mixes, I actually don't use it at all.
| | 14:07 | And so for the bus compressor, you can
try the API 2500 here. It was actually
| | 14:14 | designed to be a bus compressor, and
the cool thing is it has got a Thrust
| | 14:18 | control, which is basically like a side-
chain EQ that allows you to focus more
| | 14:24 | on the higher frequency elements and
less on the kick drum that's going to be
| | 14:28 | driving the compressor.
| | 14:30 | I am actually going to use it in the
New mode and we'll use a soft knee, and
| | 14:35 | we're going to go ahead and
just kind of listen to this here.
| | 14:38 | And I'm going to use manual make-up,
because I find that the auto make-up tends
| | 14:43 | to be a little too heavy handed.
| | 14:45 | I'm going to back the ratio down, I'm going
to use an attack of 10 milliseconds, and
| | 14:50 | I'm going to set my release here to--
let's start with 200 milliseconds.
| | 14:57 | (music playing)
| | 15:11 | Just a little bit of gain
reduction, just to firm things up a bit.
| | 15:18 | I don't want to crush it.
| | 15:19 | (music playing)
| | 15:38 | I want to make sure I'm not clipping
it either. And at this point, I'm usually
| | 15:41 | going to kick in some kind of brick-
wall limiter, so I'm actually hearing it
| | 15:45 | with that brick-wall limiting.
| | 15:47 | See how it's going to stand up
to mastering and stuff like that.
| | 15:51 | You know what? What I really like is
the 316; however, what that does, it
| | 15:58 | actually creates some problems
sometimes with delay compensation.
| | 16:02 | I just want to make sure I check that
| | 16:03 | I'm still cool with my delay compensation,
because it adds so much delay. We can
| | 16:09 | see that it's adding like 6,000 samples
of delay, which could be way too much,
| | 16:14 | depending on what else you have going on.
| | 16:16 | I'm just going to load up the
Basic 2. I really like that preset.
| | 16:20 | And this is basically a limiter that
prioritizes different frequencies, a
| | 16:25 | lot like the compressor has a side
chain that's setup to prioritize
| | 16:28 | different frequencies. And I'm just
going to get a little bit of compression
| | 16:32 | going on here.
(music playing)
| | 16:52 | And then I want to check in on my chorus.
| | 16:54 | (music playing)
| | 17:03 | And generally, how I check my compressor
is I'm just going to link them and bring
| | 17:06 | them down so that I can really compare
what it's actually doing to the signal.
| | 17:11 | (music playing)
| | 17:21 | Losing a little bit of the transient
punch, but not that much. It is actually
| | 17:24 | pretty good at retaining a
lot of that transient punch.
| | 17:28 | Now at this point, once I add the limiter
on, I'm probably going to need to bring
| | 17:31 | my monitoring down a little bit,
so I'm not blowing my ears out.
| | 17:35 | Remember, if you feel like
your mix isn't loud enough,
| | 17:39 | make sure it's not just
a monitoring-level issue.
| | 17:42 | I feel like a lot of people tend to
just not use their volume control and they
| | 17:46 | use the master fader a little bit too much.
| | 17:49 | And the master fader is used to
optimize your mix, so if I'm adding all these
| | 17:53 | tracks together and I'm seeing the master
fader clip, what that means is I'm getting
| | 17:58 | digital distortion. So if I'm seeing this--
| | 17:59 | (music playing)
clip, that's not good.
| | 18:07 | (music playing)
| | 18:12 | I want to make sure it's not clipping
generally before the plug-ins, because I
| | 18:15 | don't know how the plug-ins are
actually going to handle clipping.
| | 18:19 | Some handle it well; some do not.
| | 18:21 | (music playing)
| | 18:35 | The tambourine is kind of loud.
| | 18:36 | (music playing)
| | 18:45 | Now here I could, if I want to, I could
take a listen to what that BCC is doing
| | 18:54 | to my tracks. Bypass that.
| | 18:57 | You can go into the channel
here and do a group bypass.
| | 19:08 | (music playing)
| | 19:15 | And I can even try different
consoles. I could say, hey, what would the
| | 19:18 | Neve sound like?
| | 19:20 | (music playing)
| | 20:51 | I'll pull back some of these effects
on my lead vocals, just kind of dry it up a bit.
| | 21:00 | (music playing)
| | 21:15 | Cool! So right now I have a static mix.
I don't have a lot of automation going on, and
| | 21:20 | that's going to end up being a huge
part of the mixing process, because there
| | 21:24 | are sections of the mix where
things are just not at the right level,
| | 21:28 | and so as it moves into the chorus,
the mix, to me, is getting a bit imbalanced.
| | 21:33 | But for the most part I've listened
to all of the tracks, I've attempted to
| | 21:37 | treat those tracks with EQ around the vocal,
| | 21:40 | I've started doing some master bus
processing, and the next step would be sort
| | 21:45 | of reevaluating the volume levels and
the effects levels of different sections.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using automation to create excitement and contrast| 00:00 | So now that I've got a solid mix going
on here with static settings, what I'll
| | 00:05 | start thinking about is how I can
automate the different sections to accommodate
| | 00:10 | how the arrangement
changes from section to section.
| | 00:13 | So namely, is my lead vocal loud enough,
especially because I only have one lead
| | 00:18 | vocal in this session; I don't have a
whole bunch of doubles or things like
| | 00:23 | that that come in during the chorus.
| | 00:26 | I want to make sure that I can hear that.
| | 00:28 | So as I listen through this song, I'm
just kind of--listen for any last EQ,
| | 00:34 | compression changes that I need to
make, as well as any level changes as I
| | 00:38 | play through this song.
| | 00:40 | I like to do my automation from the
Edit window because I'm going to draw a
| | 00:43 | lot of that stuff in.
| | 00:45 | So I'm just going to kind of listen
through the song to anything that I need to
| | 00:50 | make some volume rides to and then
just kind of draw those in as I go.
| | 00:56 | (music playing)
| | 01:43 | I don't need as much of that high
chorus guitar in this first chorus.
| | 01:50 | Save a little bit for the last chorus.
| | 01:53 | (music playing)
| | 02:13 | The lead vocal could probably
come up in the choruses there.
| | 02:16 | (music playing)
| | 02:22 | Especially here, you know during
that tag he kind of gets a little lost.
| | 02:27 | (music playing)
| | 02:57 | That right there. Let's listen to that again.
| | 03:01 | (music playing)
| | 03:36 | It's still sounding a little bit muddy to me.
(music playing)
| | 03:46 | They'll give it back, a little bit of that.
(music playing)
| | 03:54 | Just a little tighter. Let's hold
that down during that second verse.
| | 04:01 | (music playing)
| | 04:12 | So listen to that here.
| | 04:15 | (music playing)
| | 04:40 | I'm going to do a little ride on that,
because that could add a little bit of drama
| | 04:43 | to that moment.
| | 04:46 | (music playing)
| | 04:51 | I like that.
Background's kind of loud there.
| | 04:59 | (music playing)
| | 05:02 | Let's make sure this one cuts
through, since it's the only one.
| | 05:06 | (music playing)
| | 05:12 | What I'm actually going to do is
automate the pan on that section, just because
| | 05:15 | it's just kind of coming out of left field there.
| | 05:19 | You see that here too.
(music playing)
| | 05:27 | Cool! I like that. Let's check this section.
| | 05:31 | (music playing)
| | 05:35 | Let's kick up those
background vocals towards the end.
| | 05:39 | (music playing)
| | 05:46 | I really want to hear it there.
| | 05:48 | I'm going to back down.
| | 05:49 | (music playing)
| | 06:14 | I don't need as many
background vocals in that pre-chorus.
| | 06:23 | Again, what I'm trying to do by kind
of tucking things out and maybe even
| | 06:27 | completely getting rid of things in
certain sections is I want to save something
| | 06:32 | for the end of the song.
| | 06:33 | I don't want to get to the second
chorus and have nowhere left to go.
| | 06:37 | And so you heard there with that
high chorus guitar, that's kind of a big
| | 06:43 | moment. I don't want to get ride of
it completely, but I do want to save a
| | 06:47 | little bit of that largeness for the
last chorus. And we do have these two
| | 06:51 | guitars that kick in there.
(music playing)
| | 07:06 | What I want to do here in this last
verse is add a little bit more effects to
| | 07:10 | the vocal, to just kind of make him
sound cooler towards the end. Let's kick up
| | 07:17 | that delay and see what that sounds like.
| | 07:19 | (music playing)
| | 07:24 | A little more chorus.
| | 07:26 | (music playing)
| | 08:14 | Make sure we can actually hear that.
And I don't like that last breath,
| | 08:17 | so I want to make sure I am turning that down.
| | 08:21 | Anytime I automate up the effects,
I want to make sure that--and there are
| | 08:25 | little moments that the music
cuts out, I want to use those.
| | 08:29 | (music playing)
That's a little bit better.
| | 08:39 | Now, as I'm adjusting some of this
automation, I might think about bringing up
| | 08:44 | that drum squash track in these
choruses, maybe even bringing up that snare.
| | 08:49 | I am going to use my grid to my
advantage here, just kind of make quick
| | 08:53 | selections so that I can use my
Trimmer tool just to kick things up a DB
| | 08:58 | here and there.
| | 09:01 | We'll keep that kind of up through the
last part of the song. And another thing
| | 09:06 | that I want to think about is any
plug-ins that maybe I want to automate.
| | 09:11 | So I know on my bass guitar
I kind of have this growl.
| | 09:17 | (music playing)
| | 09:27 | I want that to really cut through there.
| | 09:30 | I want to bring up some of
that growl during the choruses.
| | 09:33 | I am going to enable that parameter.
| | 09:36 | And this is where it really gets
creative, and this is where you could
| | 09:40 | really just spend hours.
| | 09:42 | Sometimes I'll spend hours trying to
figure out ways that I could just make the
| | 09:47 | mix more interesting at different parts,
different moments, kind of pushing the
| | 09:52 | energy, pulling the energy, guiding the
listener through the song. Let's take a
| | 09:58 | listen to that in the mix.
(music playing)
| | 10:15 | I don't want to forget the intro.
| | 10:16 | I want to make sure that we've got
the power in that intro, because that is all in.
| | 10:22 | So I want to make sure that also with
our drums we've got that nice power on
| | 10:27 | the squash track.
| | 10:31 | (music playing)
| | 10:35 | Or even bring up the drums.
| | 10:37 | (music playing)
| | 10:50 | So when I'm using my grid, it really just
makes this automation fast, and kind of let it
| | 10:56 | ride up there.
| | 10:57 | (music playing)
Let's listen to that.
| | 11:02 | (music playing)
| | 11:06 | Maybe ride that.
(music playing)
| | 11:21 | Now as I'm listening here, I'm
feeling in the bigger sections, you know the
| | 11:25 | reverb that I've got rocking on my snare
might be a little too much, what
| | 11:28 | I've got going on my drum room.
| | 11:30 | I just want to make sure that
I am doing right by these.
| | 11:34 | I want to check those toms, too, not
hearing those as much as I'd like.
| | 11:39 | (music playing)
| | 11:42 | Now, I'm kind of getting towards the
end of my mix, maybe I'm getting a little
| | 11:45 | bit lazy, so, let's see what these guys
do, kind of an all-in-one drum solution.
| | 11:51 | Pull up a tom setting,
see how that guy sounds.
| | 11:56 | I am totally not above
using stuff that sounds good--oops!
| | 12:01 | Let's pull those back
down, get that group going.
| | 12:04 | Using stuff that sounds good, if it's
quick and gets me where I want to go.
| | 12:09 | (music playing)
| | 12:11 | Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
A little too much low end.
| | 12:13 | I want a little more bite.
| | 12:16 | (music playing)
More reverb.
| | 12:20 | (music playing)
Yeah, there we go.
| | 12:27 | (music playing)
| | 12:48 | During this process, I want to make sure
I am not clipping my mix bus, not being
| | 12:51 | too aggressive there.
| | 12:53 | (music playing)
| | 12:57 | And like I said, that reverb is kind
of bothering me a little bit, and I think
| | 13:00 | where it is, I think
it's just a little too long.
| | 13:02 | So I am going to that TrueVerb, I'm
just going to tuck in the decay time a bit
| | 13:06 | and just kind take the
size down a bit, see if I can
| | 13:10 | (music playing)
tighten that up.
| | 13:23 | That snare is getting a little lost in
the chorus, so maybe I'll take that snare
| | 13:26 | replace and either kick it up in the chorus.
| | 13:30 | Maybe I just want to add a little top end to it.
| | 13:32 | I just want to get a little
more brightness out of it.
| | 13:34 | (music playing)
| | 13:55 | I don't want to clip.
| | 13:56 | (music playing)
| | 14:22 | The guitar was a little loud for me.
| | 14:24 | (music playing)
| | 14:37 | A little more point to my kicks.
| | 14:38 | (music playing)
| | 14:48 | Check my bus compressor,
| | 14:49 | make sure it's not doing too much compression.
| | 14:52 | (music playing)
| | 14:57 | This guy too.
(music playing)
| | 15:02 | And when in doubt, what I'm going to do
is I am going to kind of check against a
| | 15:05 | reference mix or something like my phase
scope and just see, am I really out of
| | 15:11 | control with my levels?
(music playing)
| | 15:17 | Not bad. I'm not crushing it.
| | 15:24 | Probably lighten it up a bit.
| | 15:26 | (music playing)
| | 15:50 | Now, if I had more time, I might start
thinking about adding delays to specific
| | 15:54 | words, or maybe I'd think about doing a
different sound in the bridge, so I am
| | 16:00 | might think about, could I do
something where I brought up either the effects
| | 16:03 | track or I had a completely separate
track. So I would be duplicating this
| | 16:09 | without the active playlist there
| | 16:11 | and maybe copying down this part and
then treating it with something like, these
| | 16:18 | effects here, in a different
way, in kind of a radical way.
| | 16:21 | (music playing)
| | 16:35 | And then maybe turn down the lead
at that part so that it takes over.
| | 16:40 | (music playing)
| | 16:59 | Put a little limiting on there,
keep it nice and intact.
| | 17:04 | (music playing)
| | 17:09 | I think, you know what? I really like
that last word without the effect.
| | 17:14 | So I just want him to say, "I don't
want to be like this," back in his clean
| | 17:19 | voice, like this.
| | 17:21 | (music playing)
| | 17:27 | I'm going to add a little fade there
and fade that out a little bit, just a
| | 17:32 | little bit more graceful.
| | 17:33 | (music playing)
| | 18:41 | I still feel like my compression,
maybe on the mix bus, is a little too aggressive.
| | 18:46 | (music playing)
| | 18:54 | I'm going to try something a little
different here, maybe something a little bit cleaner.
| | 18:58 | I'll actually save what I'm doing there,
just bypass it, and see if I bring in
| | 19:08 | the C4, see if I can get a little
sheen on the top end here. I'll pull up one of
| | 19:16 | these mastering presets.
| | 19:19 | And the multi-band compressor is going
to react differently to each band, so
| | 19:23 | it's not just a single band reacting
to all the frequencies equally. Pull
| | 19:29 | the threshold up.
(music playing)
| | 19:33 | So I'm kind of clipping that.
I want to bring that down a bit, still clipping that.
| | 19:38 | (music playing)
| | 19:50 | With a little bit of firming,
a little bit of make-up again. I don't want
| | 19:56 | to flatten the mix.
| | 19:57 | I'm actually going to the set the range
to just a dB on each of these, a little
| | 20:12 | bit more in the top end
for those splashy cymbals.
| | 20:16 | (music playing)
| | 20:23 | Let's get a little bit of fill.
(music playing)
| | 20:32 | And as I am listening to that first
verse, what I'm hearing is that the
| | 20:35 | additional sample snare is just--it's
really killing it and that's great in
| | 20:39 | the choruses, just not so much in that
first verse. And so what I might opt to
| | 20:45 | do is just pull it down just a little bit.
| | 20:49 | But we want it to go into
that chorus. Let's take a listen.
| | 20:52 | (music playing)
| | 21:06 | Yeah, get some of that warmth back in there.
| | 21:08 | (music playing)
| | 21:34 | Now again, I'm working on headphones,
so my final decisions regarding reverb,
| | 21:39 | ambience, delay, things like that,
I'm definitely going to want to make those on
| | 21:44 | speakers or at least check my mix on speakers.
| | 21:48 | What happens if you're mixing on
headphones is you might tend to make things too
| | 21:52 | wet, because you can't hear them in
the context of an actual space, which is
| | 21:56 | going to add additional reverb.
| | 21:58 | It's very rare that the end listener is
going to listen to music in an anechoic
| | 22:03 | chamber with no reflections.
| | 22:04 | Now, many listeners will listen on headphones.
| | 22:07 | That's great! You've got that taken care of.
But a lot of listeners are going to listen
| | 22:11 | in their living room, which is
basically drywall on the walls and nothing much else,
| | 22:17 | so you are going to get a
lot of reflections there.
| | 22:18 | So want to make sure you check your mix
on speakers for both the low end--make
| | 22:23 | sure you got your bass and your kick
right--as well as any of the ambience, any
| | 22:28 | of the reverb and delay.
| | 22:30 | So at this point, I think is a good
place to stop with this mix, let our ears
| | 22:35 | rest. We are going to want to go and
check this in a few different environments.
| | 22:38 | Maybe we're hitting the mark, maybe
we're missing the mark, and at that point
| | 22:42 | I'm going to take some notes, listen to
as many systems as I can, and then come
| | 22:47 | back to the mix with a fresh set
of ears and implement those changes.
| | 22:52 | But hopefully in this process you've
kind of got the chance to get in my head a
| | 22:57 | little as I'm working through, as I'm
troubleshooting different parts of the
| | 23:01 | mix, so that you can think more like a mixer.
| | 23:05 | Because at the end of the day,
following exactly what I did might not be the
| | 23:10 | best plan, and you can see, even
throughout this process, I've been changing my
| | 23:15 | mind almost every five or ten
minutes as I hear new things.
| | 23:19 | New things inspire me.
My attention might be drawn to a new problem.
| | 23:24 | So it's important to understand that
mixing is a very iterative process. There's
| | 23:28 | no one way, there's no one roadmap, and
no one set of plug-ins that you can use.
| | 23:34 | It's going to be different for every
song, every set of instruments, and if
| | 23:39 | I come back tomorrow and mix this
song, it's probably going to sound
| | 23:42 | entirely different.
| | 23:44 | So keep that in mind.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Revising and bouncing the final mix| 00:00 | So I took a break from the mix,
slept on it, listened to the mix on a few
| | 00:04 | different speaker systems, and I
actually made a couple of final changes that I
| | 00:08 | want to make to the mix after hearing
it on some larger speakers outside of
| | 00:12 | these headphones that I've been working on.
| | 00:14 | And so I'm going to make those
changes, and then we're going to bounce the
| | 00:18 | mix and finish it off.
| | 00:19 | Now one thing that's almost always
a problem with mixing completely on
| | 00:23 | headphones is that a lot of your center-
channel elements, placing them in the mix
| | 00:28 | are either going to be too loud or too
soft when you hear them on speakers.
| | 00:32 | And in this case I felt the lead vocal was
just a touch too loud when I heard it on
| | 00:37 | a smaller speaker system; it just
kind of stuck out a little too much.
| | 00:41 | And so what I am going to do is
instead of changing the automation that I
| | 00:44 | already have, I'm just going to open up
my last plug-in and just knock it down
| | 00:48 | by, you know, maybe just a dB and a half there.
| | 00:51 | And I also notice it was a bit bright.
It was a bit harsh in the top end on some
| | 00:57 | speaker systems, so I think what I
want to try is I'm just going to play with
| | 01:01 | this EQ here for a bit.
| | 01:02 | (music playing)
| | 01:08 | Maybe back off a bit here.
| | 01:11 | (music playing)
| | 01:27 | And that's fairly common to have to
come back and readdress some of the EQ
| | 01:31 | decisions you made when you're
hearing it on different speakers.
| | 01:34 | Every speaker system, every set of
headphones is going to have its own frequency
| | 01:38 | response that's going to accent
certain things and play other things down, and
| | 01:43 | so what I'm really looking to do
here is just kind of find a happy balance
| | 01:48 | between all the different systems
so that the mix translates well on
| | 01:52 | everybody's playback system.
| | 01:54 | Another thing that I notice is this
lead vocal part in the bridge--and I
| | 01:57 | should re-label that--
| | 01:58 | was a bit too loud also, so I'm
just going to back that down by a good 3 dB.
| | 02:05 | That was real loud when I heard it on speakers.
| | 02:07 | And let's just check that bridge section.
| | 02:11 | (music playing)
| | 02:23 | I think that's sounding pretty good.
| | 02:26 | Now, another thing that you'll run into,
especially mixing on headphones, or
| | 02:30 | really just mixing anywhere, is when
you take that mix outside the studio,
| | 02:35 | especially if you don't have a totally
tuned room, you'll find that the level of
| | 02:40 | your kick, either the frequency
response or just the overall level on the mix,
| | 02:44 | isn't exactly how you want it to be.
| | 02:46 | Now working with reference tracks can
really help with this, because you can kind
| | 02:50 | of listen to a reference track and then
immediately listen to your mix and get a
| | 02:54 | good balance going on there.
| | 02:56 | When I heard it on some bigger Genelecs,
I just noticed that, to me, for this song,
| | 03:01 | the kick was maybe just a little bit
too powerful. And I think what's going on
| | 03:06 | is I think the sample that I used just
kind of has too much sub-energy that I
| | 03:13 | wasn't hearing on the headphones,
because these headphones don't go down
| | 03:17 | much below 60, and so there is a lot of
sub-energy on that replacement kick that
| | 03:23 | I just don't know if that's
working with my sub-kick here.
| | 03:26 | So what I'm going to try is I'm going
to try muting that out and just kind of
| | 03:29 | working with the existing kick, because
actually really like the kick drum that was
| | 03:33 | recorded in this song.
So let's play with that a bit.
| | 03:36 | (music playing)
| | 03:44 | Maybe give it a little bit more
brightness now that we are ditching the sample.
| | 03:49 | See what we've got going on here.
| | 03:52 | (music playing)
| | 04:03 | I want to make sure that cuts through.
| | 04:04 | (music playing)
| | 04:15 | Cool. And maybe if I was working with a
bit more time, I might automate the EQ on
| | 04:20 | that beater kick, just to kind of be a
little brighter in the choruses and maybe
| | 04:24 | a little darker in the verses so
it's not so powerful during the lighter
| | 04:29 | sections of this song.
| | 04:30 | But it's sounding pretty good now.
| | 04:32 | I'm kind of liking it without that sample.
| | 04:34 | Sometimes sound replacing works well;
sometimes it just doesn't quite workout
| | 04:38 | when you listen to the mix on another
speaker system. And I could go through a
| | 04:42 | bunch of different samples
and find just the right one,
| | 04:44 | but since I did like the original kick
drum, I'm just going to go ahead and hide
| | 04:48 | this and make this inactive, not use it.
| | 04:50 | Now I also thought that the snare could
be just be a little more present. Again
| | 04:55 | it's something that's in the center,
and it's always going to be these things
| | 04:58 | that are dead center that you are
going to have a hard time finding a good
| | 05:02 | volume balance for in headphones.
| | 05:04 | They are either going to be too
low in the mix or too hot in the mix.
| | 05:08 | The vocal was a just bit too hot for
me, and I felt that the snare was just a
| | 05:12 | bit too low.
| | 05:13 | So I'm going to go ahead and kick
up I think the snare replace track.
| | 05:18 | And instead of messing with the
automation again, I'm just going to come into
| | 05:22 | the plug-in here and kick it up.
| | 05:24 | Add a dB, dB and a half maybe.
| | 05:30 | (music playing)
| | 05:33 | I think that's going to work.
| | 05:35 | Now another idea I had as I was
listening to the full power of the low end of
| | 05:40 | the mix, especially with that kick drum,
I was listening to the kick and I was
| | 05:43 | thinking wow, there is a lot of sub-
energy going on. What can I do to give the
| | 05:50 | bass guitar and the kick drum a
little bit tighter of a relationship.
| | 05:54 | This isn't a slow song. It is not super
fast, but I really want to gel that low
| | 05:59 | in and so I thought maybe I could try
using a compressor side chained to the
| | 06:07 | kick drum to kind of just duck to the
bass guitar a little bit, kind of just
| | 06:10 | give them a nice little
lock-and-key relationship.
| | 06:12 | I've already done a bit of EQing
on the bass and the kick drum in a
| | 06:17 | complementary way, sort of
making space for the kick on the bass,
| | 06:22 | but I think it could be cool the key
off this Kick Bus--I am just going to
| | 06:26 | activate that key there.
| | 06:28 | Fast attack--I want to grab it instantly--
and a fairly fast release. I don't want
| | 06:33 | it to modulate with the kick's waveform.
| | 06:36 | Let's try this out.
| | 06:37 | (music playing)
| | 06:51 | Just a little bit. I just want to kind
of tighten it up, just the tiniest bit.
| | 06:59 | And I'm just leaving a little bit of
room. I'm leaving a few milliseconds for
| | 07:03 | the beef of the kick to cut through,
and I'm just ducking that bass note down
| | 07:07 | just a bit so that the two transients
don't fight each other and sound more in
| | 07:13 | unison, more like one note.
| | 07:16 | I think that's going to work really well.
| | 07:19 | So, just checking my list here, I worked
with my kick, I've got my vocal down, I
| | 07:23 | made that bass a little tighter.
Everything else was sounding pretty good to me.
| | 07:27 | I liked how everything else turned out.
| | 07:29 | And again, mixing is a very iterative process.
| | 07:33 | So once I bounce this down, I might go
listen on those same speaker systems and
| | 07:37 | decide, wow, like I took out too much
of the kick drum or I pulled the vocal down too much.
| | 07:45 | So I might come back to the
mix and make some adjustments.
| | 07:48 | Thankfully, with Total Recall in Pro
Tools, it's really easy. I just open the
| | 07:52 | mix back up and literally in less than
a minute, I can make that adjustment and
| | 07:58 | then bounce that out.
| | 07:59 | The longest wait that I have is
actually bouncing the revision out.
| | 08:03 | So at this point, that's what we are
going to do. We are going to bounce out our
| | 08:05 | mix. And instead of using Bounce to
Disc, what I'm going to do is I'm going to
| | 08:09 | select all of the tracks that are
going to my main output, and I'm going to
| | 08:14 | submix them into an audio track and record that.
| | 08:18 | So notice I'm not grabbing anything
that's already going into a bus here, just
| | 08:24 | the things that are pointed to main.
| | 08:25 | And that looks good. Cool, so I'm going
to take that, send those out to a new
| | 08:39 | audio track. We'll call this TMD Bounce.
| | 08:43 | So everything is going there. I'm
going to record-enable that, make sure
| | 08:46 | everything is going, and I don't have
any more mains left over, just checking
| | 08:50 | that. And then I also add my master
fader to the TMD Bounce bus so that all my
| | 08:56 | plug-ins come along for the ride.
Let's check those, make sure everything is
| | 08:59 | good in there.
| | 09:00 | Yeah that looks good. Cool.
| | 09:02 | I'm adding some dither here at the
L316, just some regular 16-bit dither,
| | 09:09 | normal noise shaping.
| | 09:11 | This is going to end up being a
16-bit file. Once I send it out of Pro Tools,
| | 09:15 | it'll truncate from 24 down to 16.
| | 09:19 | And so now all that's left to do is
just go ahead and run it down from the
| | 09:23 | top and record it out.
| | 09:26 | (music playing)
| | 12:59 | Cool! Let that play out all the way
out, make sure everything decays.
| | 13:05 | And then, depending on what I want to do,
I kind of like the character of having
| | 13:10 | little things happen at the end there.
| | 13:12 | But if I need it to be more radio
friendly, I might just trim that back and do a
| | 13:17 | little fade, fade like that.
| | 13:21 | Maybe let's do like an S
curve. We'll preview that.
| | 13:27 | (music playing)
| | 13:36 | And that sounds pretty good.
| | 13:37 | So ultimately, I think we came out with
a really great sounding mix. If I had a
| | 13:41 | little bit more time to work on this,
I might play with the vocals a little bit,
| | 13:45 | play with the effects on the vocals.
| | 13:47 | It's really in all the little
details that you can spend a lot of time:
| | 13:51 | automation, making tweaks
for different speaker system.
| | 13:55 | Typically, a mix is going to take me
between four, five to ten hours depending on
| | 14:02 | what I'm trying to do, how creative I'm
trying to get with the vocal, how much
| | 14:06 | time I have with the client,
how many revisions I have to do.
| | 14:10 | We spent just over two on this mix,
but I really want to reiterate that
| | 14:15 | this is just one way to approach mixing
this one song, and these are just some
| | 14:21 | ideas that I had in real
time as I was mixing this song.
| | 14:26 | So the real goal of this course and
this project is for you to take the mix,
| | 14:33 | zero out all the faders, remove
all the plug-ins, and mix it yourself.
| | 14:38 | See what ideas and inspiration you
have along the way. See how the tracks
| | 14:42 | are speaking to you.
| | 14:44 | How do you want the vocal to sound?
| | 14:46 | How are you going to automate different
moments of the session to make it more
| | 14:51 | exciting as the song plays out?
| | 14:53 | Again, these are just some ideas to inspire you.
| | 14:57 | I would not suggest or even expect
you to follow exactly what I did point for point.
| | 15:04 | Make it your own, add your own voice
to the project, and above all, have fun with it.
| | 15:11 | Mixing should be fun, not stressful.
| | 15:14 | Now, if you want to stay up to date with
me and the projects that I am working on
| | 15:18 | and I am mixing, be sure to visit my
website, brianleewhite.com, and follow me on
| | 15:24 | Twitter, @brianleewhite, also be sure
to check on my other courses on the
| | 15:28 | lynda.com online training library.
| | 15:30 | Cheers, and happy mixing!
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