1. Mixing SecretsMix room acoustics| 00:00 |
Setting up a good listening position, a
listening environment and monitor
| | 00:04 |
placement is really important.
You can see here, we've got our main
| | 00:08 |
monitors all of our monitors, a few feet
away from the back wall there.
| | 00:13 |
I've gone into people's studios and seen
the speakers pressed up against the
| | 00:17 |
walls, this creates like a low end bump,
like it's reflecting sound.
| | 00:21 |
Low end sound, off the back of the
speaker, out the back of the speaker and
| | 00:25 |
back towards the listener.
Showing up out of phase in a listening position.
| | 00:30 |
Now, the second thing to think about,
skew the speakers in a little bit like
| | 00:34 |
this, and set up an equilateral triangle.
You want your head to be about as far
| | 00:39 |
away from the speakers as they are from
each other, so you have a triangle going
| | 00:43 |
right here, center of the speaker, your
ears.
| | 00:48 |
You want to set up a nice spot like that,
that ensures that the speakers are
| | 00:51 |
arriving at your ears at the same time,
which of course means they're going to be
| | 00:54 |
in phase.
The next thing to be aware of, is your
| | 00:59 |
computer screen, you monitor.
Where, where is it?
| | 01:02 |
If you have it up over here in front of
one of the speakers like this, you're
| | 01:06 |
blocking the audio to you.
It's, you're not hearing what's going on,
| | 01:10 |
it's bouncing off the back of this screen
here and that's a really garbled mess.
| | 01:15 |
I see this quite frequently.
Here, we've got it mounted on this
| | 01:17 |
awesome little arm.
You can just set it up so you make sure
| | 01:21 |
they're not, that your monitors not in
the way, like something like that.
| | 01:25 |
Just be aware of this, it's really
important.
| | 01:27 |
Another thing to be aware of, are any
other reflections between you an your
| | 01:31 |
monitors or your listing position.
In a studio like this you have a console.
| | 01:36 |
There are reflections bouncing right back
up to your ears off of the console.
| | 01:40 |
Those are called first reflections, and
they're dangerous.
| | 01:43 |
We're not hearing the audio directly,
we're hearing a bounce back up at us,
| | 01:47 |
which takes a little bit longer.
Thus, once again, you're hearing things a
| | 01:51 |
little out of phase.
It's hard to do anything about it, like
| | 01:54 |
in a studio like this, we just can't pack
up the console and move it out of the way.
| | 01:59 |
But if you're setting up a situation with
a don /g, a controller, you can easily
| | 02:01 |
set it up where you don't have
reflections like the console in front of you.
| | 02:05 |
Be aware of desks that you're working on.
Any kind of situation that would reflect
| | 02:10 |
like that.
Speaking of reflections, and first
| | 02:13 |
reflections, try the mirror trick.
Bring a mirror in, have a friend walk
| | 02:18 |
along the wall.
About head level.
| | 02:21 |
You sit in the listening position.
And look over on the wall and see where
| | 02:25 |
you see your monitor, reflecting in the
mirror.
| | 02:27 |
That would be a first reflection spot.
That's an obvious spot to treat the
| | 02:32 |
acoustics of the room.
If you put some absorbent material right
| | 02:35 |
there, the sound is not going to arrive.
It's going to get absorbed and not arrive
| | 02:39 |
back at your head.
Also, be aware that the electronics that
| | 02:42 |
you're running your audio through, while
monitoring can affect the sound that you
| | 02:46 |
are hearing.
Whether that's a monitor control section
| | 02:49 |
on the console, an outboard controller
like this.
| | 02:52 |
These can affect the sound that you
hearing.
| | 02:55 |
I used to have a less than stellar
console, and finally one day I realized
| | 02:58 |
that it was really affecting the way I
was hearing even two track mixes played
| | 03:01 |
through it.
And when I replaced it with this Monitor
| | 03:05 |
ST by Dangerous, all of my mixes all of a
sudden sounded better and I could really
| | 03:08 |
hear more of what I was working on.
You may never be able to create the
| | 03:14 |
perfect listening environment and you
might not even be in a perfect room.
| | 03:18 |
But by using these tricks, you can find
many ways to help yourself really listen
| | 03:22 |
and get better mixes.
| | 03:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mixing with multiple speakers| 00:00 |
Even if my first, commercial recording
studio, which was really the basement of
| | 00:04 |
my home, i had several sets of monitor
speakers set up.
| | 00:08 |
I would switch between them when I was
mixing and then I'd listen to how they
| | 00:11 |
could translate, how was the mix
translating on these different speakers.
| | 00:15 |
Here at jackpot we got a similar thing.
Better speakers though and a better room.
| | 00:20 |
I've set up a couple of microphones here.
They're set where my head is.
| | 00:25 |
When I'm sitting in the chair and I'm
mixing a record or tracking, this is what
| | 00:28 |
I hear so I want to get a nice clean
recording for you to listen to.
| | 00:33 |
Of what's happening in this room when I
switch between speakers.
| | 00:36 |
Try listening on headphones or make sure
you have some really good monitors and a
| | 00:39 |
good listening environment and you can
probably hear some of the differences.
| | 00:43 |
And I'm going to talk about what I'm
hearing.
| | 00:45 |
(MUSIC)
| | 00:49 |
So that's the sound of my Adam s3a
monitors in the room.
| | 01:17 |
These are my main monitors.
They're, they're very detailed, they've
| | 01:21 |
got fairly decent low end, they've got
great highs.
| | 01:24 |
I do most of my work on these speakers.
They give me a fairly good picture of
| | 01:29 |
what's going on.
Now, the next set of monitors I'll switch
| | 01:35 |
to here, are the Yamaha NS10s.
(MUSIC) The Yamaha NS10s traditional
| | 01:48 |
studio monitors by the way, you see them
in a lot of places, they're very mid
| | 02:01 |
rangey, there's not a lot of low end.
And they have kind of a papery quality, a
| | 02:15 |
very mid range forward quality.
When I'm mixing, switching from the
| | 02:19 |
Adam's to the Yamaha's tells me if my
vocals are maybe sitting too far up in
| | 02:23 |
the mix, it's a little too loud maybe?
How's the EQ on mid range instruments as
| | 02:28 |
well, it makes me think about that.
What, do I need to bring something down
| | 02:33 |
like tame the mid range tone of the
guitars or something.
| | 02:37 |
The high end on these, on these Yamaha's
is a little harsh too so, so that kind of
| | 02:40 |
makes you kind of clean your mix up in a
good way so it doesn't get harsh on other
| | 02:44 |
speakers as well.
Now, we have another set of speakers,
| | 02:49 |
here - back here, tucked away a little
bit - the Avantones.
| | 02:54 |
The Avantones are designed to mimic a
speaker that used to be really common in
| | 02:57 |
professional studios called an Auratone,
little cubes that had just really kind of
| | 03:02 |
a car speaker in it, real small.
Let's check it out.
| | 03:06 |
(MUSIC)
| | 03:10 |
So, on those speakers we hear no highs,
no lows.
| | 03:38 |
They're very very midrange-y.
I always imagine I'm in the back of a
| | 03:42 |
Pinto, listening to those crummy speakers
from the rear deck.
| | 03:45 |
What I look for here are things like, do
I hear the kick drum at all?
| | 03:50 |
Do I hear the bass guitar?
Are they working together, I mean it's,
| | 03:54 |
you don't hear many lows, you're not
going here like something booming out and
| | 03:57 |
carrying low end, but you're looking for
that articulation that's on the higher frequencies.
| | 04:03 |
Another thing I look for are their
certain instruments that on the really
| | 04:06 |
nice monitors are sitting great and sound
wonderful but get lost on these little speakers.
| | 04:11 |
Or possibly are way to loud, that can
happen as well.
| | 04:15 |
So that's a really great way to know your
mixes are holding up.
| | 04:19 |
You gotta remember our mixes are going to
be going down the line, and being heard
| | 04:22 |
on ear buds and computer speakers all
kinds of pretty rough environments.
| | 04:27 |
Television, television speakers are bad.
You got to think like, will this survive
| | 04:32 |
the listening experience so you want your
mixes to be sturdy, having a multiple
| | 04:36 |
sets of speakers can help you do so.
Now another thing I do here, jackpot, is
| | 04:42 |
we have a sub woofer.
And generally I use the sub woofer in
| | 04:46 |
conjunction with the Adams speakers and
it's just adds another layer of lows down
| | 04:49 |
below where these speakers.
Can't really hold up.
| | 05:10 |
(MUSIC) So that sub-woofer gives me a lot
of low end information.
| | 05:23 |
What I'm looking for there is whether
like kick drums have too much lows.
| | 05:27 |
They're going to boom out on certain
systems and be kind of crazy I look for
| | 05:30 |
other things that might have been missing
like someone bumping a mic stand on a
| | 05:34 |
vocal performance and some kind of rumble
that wasn't really apparent on smaller speakers.
| | 05:41 |
And another way to really examine the low
end in your mixers is to use a good pair
| | 05:44 |
of headphones that have decent bass
reproduction.
| | 05:47 |
You'll be able to hear what's going on
better than in some of your speakers in
| | 05:50 |
the room.
I also like to hear the stereo width,
| | 05:53 |
what's going on with the panning and
such, in headphones.
| | 05:56 |
But mixing on headphones alone can be
pretty dangerous so I wouldn't advise it.
| | 06:01 |
Having multiple ways of hearing the
tracks that you're working on and
| | 06:04 |
listening to your mixes can really help
you bring out the most and make strong
| | 06:07 |
mixes that hold up in any environment.
| | 06:11 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cutting frequencies| 00:00 |
When I first started recording, I did a
lot of research into the art of recording.
| | 00:05 |
When I'd see interviews with professional
engineers, they would always talk about
| | 00:08 |
cutting frequencies, using equalization
to remove certain frequencies from sounds
| | 00:13 |
and therefore getting better mixes.
Well, I listened to that information, but
| | 00:18 |
then I kind of abandoned it and I went to
what most novice recordists do, I would
| | 00:22 |
always add EQ boost.
Like, I want to hear more top end, I
| | 00:26 |
want to hear more top end.
But I've come to learn that cutting
| | 00:30 |
frequencies, especially while your
mixing, can be really, really rewarding
| | 00:34 |
and actually help everything else work
much better.
| | 00:39 |
I'm going to show you a few examples here
that'll work well for you in the real world.
| | 00:44 |
So first up, I have a guitar track that I
find to be a little dark and muddy.
| | 00:48 |
Hear a split second of that.
(MUSIC) What I'm hearing in there is not
| | 00:55 |
a lot of bright sounds.
I'm not hearing a lot of top end, and I'm
| | 00:59 |
hearing a very thick mids and, and thick
low mids, especially on the, the tack of
| | 01:03 |
the pick on the string there.
So, what I'll do is set up an equalizer
| | 01:09 |
and frequently I work this way.
I'll start playing the track and then
| | 01:14 |
I'll boost a, I'll make a boost on the
equalizer and search around for the
| | 01:17 |
frequency that's bothering me.
(MUSIC) And you can hear right there,
| | 01:24 |
that I found the thumpy part of the
picking, and also, some of the muddy part
| | 01:30 |
of the tone.
So I'm going to reduce that frequency.
| | 01:36 |
Now let's here it.
| | 01:37 |
(MUSIC).
| | 01:45 |
While we were listening, I brought it
back up a little bit.
| | 01:48 |
That was too much reduction at first.
But listen now.
| | 01:50 |
I'm going to AB.
I'm going to bypass the EQ off and on.
| | 01:55 |
And we're going to hear what it's doing
to change the tone.
| | 01:57 |
(MUSIC).
The great thing about cutting those low
| | 02:07 |
frequencies, is that now the guitar
appears to be brighter.
| | 02:10 |
In effect, think of it this way, if you
were boosting, the high part of the
| | 02:13 |
guitar just to make it brighter you'd
still have those low muddy mids in there.
| | 02:18 |
By reducing just the low muddy mids, then
all the other frequencies of that guitar
| | 02:22 |
sound come back up in the mix.
So we have a more rounded uniform tone to
| | 02:26 |
the guitar still, just reducing the part
that we don't want to hear.
| | 02:31 |
Next, we're going to listen to a bass
track and see if there's any frequencies
| | 02:34 |
we can adjust in order to help it out.
(MUSIC) So that sounds nice, but it's a
| | 02:44 |
little muddy.
I know I've recorded better sounding bass
| | 02:47 |
guitars before.
So I'll open up an equalizer plugin, take
| | 02:51 |
it out of bypass mode, and once again
I'll search for frequencies I want to attenuate.
| | 03:06 |
(MUSIC).
Right there around 194 hertz, this
| | 03:08 |
frequently happens around 200 hertz,
there's kind of some woofie tone, and I'm
| | 03:12 |
going to bring that down.
Let's hear that back (MUSIC).
| | 03:20 |
A lot of times that's too much cut even
though it's kind of working well.
| | 03:31 |
So what I'll do is reduce the Q, in
effect make the EQ cut a little less
| | 03:35 |
wide, a little less bright across the
track
| | 03:38 |
(MUSIC).
| | 03:41 |
So by cutting some of those low mids,
we're actually able to make the base
| | 03:46 |
guitar sound a little cleaner, a little
less woofy as I like to call it.
| | 03:53 |
And it's going to all sit in the mix a
little bit better than it would've before.
| | 03:57 |
Now we can do a similar thing with a kick
drum.
| | 03:59 |
Here, we've got the track as we recorded
it (SOUND).
| | 04:02 |
What I'm going to do is go in, open up an
equalizer.
| | 04:12 |
And I'm going to look for the frequencies
that I want to attenuate.
| | 04:15 |
(SOUND) I've landed about 140 hertz
there, so let's try cutting that
| | 04:21 |
frequency, and I know that I want to give
it a really tight sue, I don't want a
| | 04:27 |
really broad stroke on this.
It's really about cleaning up just the
| | 04:36 |
sort of barmy tone and the lows that the
kick drum has.
| | 04:41 |
(MUSIC).
That kind of low cleanup with the EQ will
| | 04:43 |
also work really well if we want to add
some compression to the kick drum and
| | 04:48 |
have it stay in the mix really solid.
This way, we're not bringing up the woofy
| | 04:54 |
part as much.
And we're going to get a tappier, tighter
| | 04:57 |
highs, tighter lows.
And a much more present kick drum in the mix.
| | 05:01 |
One thing I like to do is put an
equalizer in the kick drum that's just
| | 05:04 |
attenuating some of the very, very bottom
of the low end.
| | 05:09 |
I'll use a high pass filter, and I'll go
down as low as like 25 or 30 hertz and
| | 05:13 |
just give a little trim to the bottom
end.
| | 05:18 |
Lot's of times, this will help because if
the kick drum has been recorded in the
| | 05:21 |
Pro Tools.
Pro Tools can carry ridiculous amounts of
| | 05:24 |
low end, it will pick up everything
that's happening.
| | 05:27 |
Whereas back in the day on tape we could
actually see a little bit of low end roll-off.
| | 05:32 |
So in some ways I try to approximate what
happened on tape back in the good old
| | 05:35 |
days and I'm able to make our kick drum
sit in the mix a little better and not
| | 05:38 |
have ridiculous amounts of low end
extension that's suck up all the energy
| | 05:41 |
of a mix.
Let's listen to that with both equalizers
| | 05:46 |
in place.
(SOUND) So notice that a lot of this is
| | 05:50 |
about tailoring the sound and actually
reducing the frequencies that we're hearing.
| | 05:57 |
We're trying to focus these sounds so
they work well on a mix.
| | 06:02 |
Taking a little bit of lows out of a kick
drum or base might seem counter-intuitive
| | 06:06 |
to what we're trying to do.
But think, we're trying to bring up the
| | 06:10 |
other frequencies around it and make
those work better in the mix as a whole.
| | 06:16 |
Applying high-pass filters or low cuts,
can be another way to clean up other
| | 06:19 |
tracks in your mix.
On sources that don't have a low energy
| | 06:23 |
component to them, like, say, vocals and
acoustic guitars.
| | 06:27 |
Running a high pass filter and shelving a
tiny bit of lows, can help clean up any
| | 06:30 |
unwanted noises in the bottom end.
One thing you may also want to consider,
| | 06:35 |
is applying this kind of equalization
while tracking.
| | 06:38 |
Once you're really comfortable picking
frequencies and pulling them out, you'll
| | 06:41 |
know ahead of time whether you want to
hear that in the mix or not.
| | 06:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Prepping vocal takes for mixing| 00:00 |
I get sent a lot of songs to mix from
people all around the world.
| | 00:04 |
I love doing this work.
One of the first things I'll always do on
| | 00:08 |
these sessions is go in, listen to the
vocal tracks, and do a little bit of cleanup.
| | 00:13 |
And back in the old days, I did
everything on tape, and you couldn't
| | 00:16 |
really get in and neat pick the way you
can with a computer these days.
| | 00:21 |
But even then sometimes I would take the
vocal track and record it over to a new
| | 00:24 |
track, selectively cutting out the parts
where I don't want to have some
| | 00:28 |
background noise, in between verses or
whatever.
| | 00:33 |
And I would take out little clicks and
pops sometimes, not transfer those over,
| | 00:36 |
really carefully.
It took a while, It's kind of difficult
| | 00:39 |
work but it would give you a nice clean
vocal that you could put up in a mix, and
| | 00:42 |
not have any surprises or strange things
happening.
| | 00:47 |
I've seen a lot of cases where I'd finish
a mix, and and send it off to mastering,
| | 00:51 |
and the artist would go, what's that one
weird sound?
| | 00:55 |
And it'll turn out to be like a little
vocal click while someone's opening their
| | 00:58 |
mouth to breathe, or some kind of sound
that was extraneous after a word was sung
| | 01:02 |
that would pop up in the mix magically
later on and surprising us.
| | 01:07 |
I like to eliminate those things, and I
like to make a nice clean vocal to work from.
| | 01:12 |
Now, one of the first things I look for
on a track is pop Ps, eplosives, you
| | 01:17 |
know, the P sound hitting a mic, the big,
bumpy bottom end result of that is pretty nasty.
| | 01:25 |
So I'll go in and kind of actually
visually look at the vocal tracks in Pro Tools.
| | 01:31 |
Now, here's a great example where we have
some popped Ps that are highly visible to
| | 01:36 |
you right now.
| | 01:39 |
(MUSIC).
| | 01:45 |
There's three Ps in the song, the third
one's fine but those first two are
| | 01:48 |
gigantic spikes of low end energy.
We specifically recorded this without a
| | 01:52 |
pop filter, by the way, in order to give
you something good to listen to.
| | 01:56 |
Now let's go in, and I'll show you one
way to eliminate these guys.
| | 02:01 |
You can see a giant low-end sine wave
right there, just taking up all that energy.
| | 02:09 |
What I'll do is I'll highlight that
section.
| | 02:11 |
Where the low frequency is.
I'll open up an EQ plugin, simple 1 Band
| | 02:16 |
is fine.
I'll set up a high pass filter, just
| | 02:21 |
rolling off some lows.
Sometimes you got to search this out a little.
| | 02:25 |
I'm going to try around 100 hertz, and
I'll render this spot.
| | 02:31 |
You can see that those peaks have been
drastically reduced.
| | 02:34 |
Let's listen real quick and see if that
works.
| | 02:36 |
(MUSIC) That helps ,there's still a bit
of energy in there but it's definitely
| | 02:41 |
helping the track and that would fit okay
in a mix.
| | 02:46 |
Now I have another way of doing this as
well, what I do is I use a product called
| | 02:50 |
iZotope RX.
It's a plug in sweep and a stand alone
| | 02:54 |
application that allows you to capture
audio and attenuate any of the
| | 02:59 |
frequencies you'd like to work on.
Here we can see the low implosive
| | 03:05 |
happening at the top of the word.
I'll highlight that section and apply
| | 03:11 |
some simple attenuation.
One more time for good measure.
| | 03:16 |
You see the color getting a lot darker.
That means there's less energy in the low end.
| | 03:21 |
Lets go back.
Lets render in the track.
| | 03:24 |
Looks like that disappeared and just play
it back.
| | 03:27 |
(MUSIC) Much more effective than the EQ
as well and it doesn't have any After
| | 03:32 |
Effects taking away some of the other
sounds.
| | 03:36 |
And sometimes the EQ will affect the
vocal more adversely.
| | 03:39 |
Another thing I find myself cleaning up
on vocal tracks are clicking noises that
| | 03:43 |
I hear.
They can come naturally from the mouth
| | 03:47 |
like your tongue against the roof of your
mouth.
| | 03:50 |
certain letters in the words, like L's or
T's will sometimes have a little bit a static.
| | 03:55 |
F's can certainly has this as well too.
And I'll go into the track and try to
| | 03:59 |
clean some of these up.
They are natural sounds, and if it's
| | 04:02 |
proper in the mix.
If the vocal is very pleasant against the
| | 04:06 |
soft mix, It can also lend itself a sense
of intimacy, so I might leave them.
| | 04:10 |
But in many cases, they sound like a
little bit of electronic static or
| | 04:13 |
something instead, so I try to remove
them so we don't have that little
| | 04:16 |
surprise later.
Now here we have a vocal track that's got
| | 04:20 |
a little bit of clicking at the top,
right before she starts to sing.
| | 04:24 |
(MUSIC) So certainly we could simply
erase this section, just delete it and do
| | 04:29 |
a little ramp fading in.
But if you want to keep a little bit of
| | 04:33 |
the breath leading in to the vocal I'd
advise going in and getting rid of the
| | 04:38 |
click itself.
One way is zoom in really close and look
| | 04:43 |
where the most offensive little spikes
are.
| | 04:47 |
It's going to be hard to clean it up, but
we can actually with a Pencil tool,
| | 04:50 |
actually just draw them out.
Replace with a straight line.
| | 04:58 |
Search for more.
There's a real obvious one there.
| | 05:07 |
And there's the last batch, right here.
So we've drawn those out with the Pencil tool.
| | 05:15 |
Let's listen back real quick.
(MUSIC).
| | 05:17 |
The sound has almost been eliminated.
Frequently I'll do that and also draw a
| | 05:24 |
little ramp in fade.
It'll fade in real nice like that.
| | 05:28 |
(MUSIC) I'm also looking for spots in a
song that needs some DS'ing, that's
| | 05:33 |
(UNKNOWN), the sharp S's that jump out of
a track.
| | 05:39 |
Take this example.
(MUSIC) There's some very sharp high end
| | 05:43 |
S's on there, the frequencies are jumping
out.
| | 05:49 |
We'll open a Massey De-esser like this.
Take it out of bypass and see how it
| | 05:53 |
changes it.
(MUSIC) It brings us down quite a bit.
| | 06:00 |
The great thing is you can hold your
cursor on the frequency knob and actually
| | 06:02 |
hear what it's removing.
(SOUND) Removing those frequencies can
| | 06:07 |
really help a vocal fit into a mix much
better.
| | 06:12 |
Another thing I like to do while prepping
vocals Involves just breaking the parts
| | 06:16 |
of the song up into different sections.
I'll take a track like this where we've
| | 06:21 |
got versus and choruses, and separate and
delete the parts of the vocal that I
| | 06:24 |
don't need in the mix.
Sometimes I'll put these onto completely
| | 06:29 |
separate tracks by duplicating the track
in question.
| | 06:32 |
And then having one track be a chorus
vocal and one track be a lead vocal.
| | 06:37 |
This allows you to apply affects in
different levels to the vocals at
| | 06:39 |
different parts of the song.
Cleaning up the vocals and prepping them
| | 06:44 |
properly can make the mixing process much
easier down the line.
| | 06:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Parallel drum buss compression| 00:00 |
Parallel drum bus compression is
something I've seen more people using
| | 00:04 |
over the last ten or fifteen years, and
it's something people talk about quite a bit.
| | 00:09 |
Now what it is, it's really simple in
concept.
| | 00:11 |
You take the drum mix that you've already
created, hopefully one you're happy with.
| | 00:15 |
And then also send that to a stereo
compressor and blend it in under the mix
| | 00:19 |
that you have already.
What it does is it really thickens up the
| | 00:23 |
drum mix.
You've reduced all the peaks in the
| | 00:25 |
compressed part of your drum mix.
And that blended in underneath your
| | 00:29 |
regular drums makes your peak to average
ratio change.
| | 00:33 |
And makes the drums sound louder.
Yet all of the peaks of the transients,
| | 00:37 |
the hits, or the kick in the snare.
Those are coming through exactly as loud
| | 00:41 |
as they did before you applied this
effect.
| | 00:44 |
So let's see how this works in process.
(MUSIC).
| | 00:48 |
So that's our straight mix.
We got a mix going on the console, what I
| | 00:56 |
did here is, I actually assigned that mix
to buses one and two.
| | 01:02 |
And it's coming down over here, on buses
one and two, as the dry drum mix.
| | 01:07 |
Now, I've also assigned buses three and
four over here, and I've run that bus
| | 01:12 |
into a compressor, into a Chandler TG1.
I like this compressor a lot because it
| | 01:18 |
crushes in kind of a fun, musical way.
It gets a little distorted when you push
| | 01:22 |
it hard especially, but it really sounds
great.
| | 01:25 |
Now I'm going to run the mix again and
slowly bring in the compressed drum mix.
| | 01:30 |
(MUSIC).
| | 01:32 |
You can hear the mix gets stronger and
get louder.
| | 01:49 |
Let's listen to the compressed drum mix
just by itself.
| | 01:52 |
(MUSIC).
You can hear the snare distorting a
| | 01:58 |
little bit.
You can hear the room sounds come up.
| | 02:08 |
The room becomes more present because
you're reducing those peaks.
| | 02:11 |
So sounds in the background become louder
and part of that is just the ambiance of
| | 02:15 |
the room in the tracks you've already
recorded.
| | 02:18 |
Let's do this again, here's the dry mix.
And I'm going to blend in the compressed mix.
| | 02:39 |
(MUSIC).
That's kind of fun, too, where I've
| | 02:41 |
actually let the compressed mix take over
from the dry mix.
| | 02:45 |
If I want a really aggressive, distorted
drum sound, I can do that quite easily.
| | 02:49 |
But then again, I can always pull those
faders back down and give us something
| | 02:52 |
that's a little more traditional, a
little softer sounding.
| | 02:55 |
One thing to keep is mind is, what do you
want to send to this compressed mix?
| | 03:00 |
In some cases, you can just send the kick
and the snare into this compressor.
| | 03:04 |
And then blend that into the mix to make
the kick and snare pop out of the mix more.
| | 03:08 |
Other times, you can put the kick, snare,
the toms, maybe even the overheads, but I
| | 03:13 |
generally try to avoid putting the room
mics into that mix.
| | 03:17 |
One reason is what we heard already where
the, the room sounds coming up a little
| | 03:20 |
more in the background.
But, in this case especially, I've
| | 03:23 |
already given the room mics a little bit
of compression when I was recording them.
| | 03:27 |
So I don't want to compress them twice
and make it really splattery.
| | 03:31 |
But, you know, why not?
Let's hear what that sounds like.
| | 03:34 |
Here I'm assigning the room channels to
the compressed mix, and let's hear a
| | 03:36 |
little bit of that.
| | 03:38 |
(MUSIC).
| | 03:42 |
That's kind of fun.
We could hear more of my scratch guitar
| | 03:51 |
in the mix there too, but we heard some
real exciting room distortion sounds.
| | 03:55 |
So in most cases, I wouldn't put them in
there.
| | 03:58 |
I'd be careful to accentuate the room so
much, but if you want to accentuate the
| | 04:01 |
room, this will help you do it.
Now let's also move over and show how
| | 04:05 |
this is done inside the computer.
Okay, I've opened up another Pro Tools
| | 04:10 |
session here.
And this one has a drum mix in it.
| | 04:13 |
It sounds pretty similar to the one in
the console.
| | 04:15 |
(MUSIC).
So that's the mix with no parallel compression.
| | 04:26 |
Let's switch over to the mix screen here.
And you can see I've already set up a
| | 04:30 |
little bus here.
Now this has an 1176 compressor on it and
| | 04:33 |
what we're going to do is, we've sent all
these channels through buses one and two.
| | 04:40 |
Just like we did on the console over to
this 1176 bus entering right there.
| | 04:46 |
And I've also turned the one off for the
room sound, like we had on the console.
| | 04:52 |
Let's hear this, how this sounds when we
blend in the 1176 into the drum mix.
| | 05:10 |
(MUSIC).
Just like the console, that makes the mix
| | 05:14 |
kind of pop, makes it louder, a little
more aggressive.
| | 05:20 |
One thing to be really aware of in this
case is Delay Compensation.
| | 05:25 |
If you don't have Delay Compensation on
for your plug-ins.
| | 05:29 |
And this track here this extra bus of
drums is delayed because it's running
| | 05:32 |
through a compressor plug in.
As opposed to the dry bus which is
| | 05:36 |
running straight, you will be in trouble.
The phase errors between those two the
| | 05:41 |
lateness of the compress bus.
Is going to actually thin out the drums
| | 05:45 |
as they are on the dry bus.
You can hear it like this.
| | 05:52 |
Here I'm turning off the delay
compensation in Pro Tools.
| | 05:54 |
Okay, now that we've turned off the delay
compensation, lets hear those tracks together.
| | 06:01 |
(MUSIC).
It'd seem pretty strange and metallic if
| | 06:07 |
something was being cut out, that's the
problem you could run into.
| | 06:17 |
So always be aware that could be
happening in your mixes.
| | 06:22 |
So you can see how easy it really is to
use parallel drum bust compression.
| | 06:26 |
It's a good trick, it makes your drums
fit in the mix better, stronger It works
| | 06:30 |
on aggressive music as well as quiet
music.
| | 06:34 |
I frequently use it to make just softer
drums just stay a little more present,
| | 06:37 |
hold their own against vocals and other
instruments.
| | 06:41 |
So try this up, play around with
compression settings and levels of dry to
| | 06:44 |
compressed and, you'll find it works for
you too.
| | 06:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Preparing the drum tracks for mixing| 00:00 |
Before I start mixing a song, I'll spend
a bit of time working on the drums and
| | 00:03 |
preparing them to make mixing much easier
down the line.
| | 00:08 |
A lot of times I'm working on tracks that
somebody else has already recorded, and
| | 00:12 |
I've had a few occasions where there had
been bad edit points.
| | 00:16 |
Maybe the drums were hutched in over a
quick track, or maybe takes for comp
| | 00:19 |
together, but they weren't quite finished
off in the right way.
| | 00:23 |
So, I'll start by looking for clicks and
pops in the drum tracks.
| | 00:28 |
Here we have an example of a track that's
been edited together improperly.
| | 00:32 |
We have a punch point, or edit, in the
middle of this tom here right here.
| | 00:36 |
If you listen back to the track, it's not
that obvious.
| | 00:41 |
(MUSIC) But if you solo the tom, you'll
hear it, (MUSIC) A weird little flutter
| | 00:48 |
or click.
Especially if you use the scrubbing
| | 00:52 |
feature, and listen closely.
(SOUND) You can hear a little click or
| | 00:57 |
pop right there.
What I'll do in this case is first start
| | 01:02 |
by moving the punch point, because
obviously that's in a really weird spot,
| | 01:05 |
cutting the tom hid in half.
I'll move the punch in to the beginning
| | 01:13 |
of the tom hit.
That'll undoubtadely sound cleaner and
| | 01:16 |
I'll put a short cross fade right there
as well.
| | 01:20 |
I'm pretty sure this will sound a lot
better.
| | 01:22 |
(MUSIC) A lot of times, there's little
edits like that in a drum track that you
| | 01:28 |
won't hear if you're just playing the
song.
| | 01:33 |
So, I really go in and visually inspect
all the tracks and look for that kind of thing.
| | 01:38 |
Those little tiny clicks might not seem
like anything at this point, but when you
| | 01:41 |
start compressing, doing parallel
compression and.
| | 01:45 |
And building a mix up, they can start to
appear as weird little artifacts that
| | 01:48 |
make mixing that much more difficult.
Here's a kick drum track that was
| | 01:53 |
recorded on tape, rather poorly, in fact
I did this intentionally, but you'll hear
| | 01:57 |
a lot of background hiss.
(MUSIC) That's a little excessive and,
| | 02:03 |
when I get tracks like this to mix, what
I'll do is clean off the hiss.
| | 02:13 |
My favorite way to do this is using
Isotope's RX denoiser.
| | 02:17 |
This plugin is actually able to hear the
noise.
| | 02:22 |
You give it a short sample of hiss that
learns it.
| | 02:29 |
Then you select the whole track, and it
will remove a good amount of that hiss
| | 02:33 |
from the track itself.
Close the plug-in, and lets listen.
| | 02:41 |
(MUSIC) If I didn't have isotopes
denoiser plugged in, I'd have to find
| | 02:51 |
some other way to remove that noise.
Either way with a gate or parallel gate
| | 03:00 |
that brings the background level down a
little, or maybe some judicious EQ in the
| | 03:04 |
high end.
There's ways to do that, but that plug-in
| | 03:08 |
works fairly good for this.
One thing I'll look for is instances were
| | 03:12 |
parts of the drum kit have been hit
slightly louder than the rest of the song.
| | 03:17 |
This happens frequently on the kick drum,
you know, when the drummer hits the one,
| | 03:20 |
then there's a cymbal crash, and then
bam.
| | 03:23 |
They hit the kick drum just a little bit
harder than the rest of the song.
| | 03:27 |
It's like this.
(MUSIC) You could hear on that 3rd hit,
| | 03:33 |
its louder than the other ones.
This is really extreme, sometimes you
| | 03:37 |
need to reduce the volume to make it fit
in the mix.
| | 03:41 |
One way to do that is to isolate the
region, separate it from the rest of the song.
| | 03:46 |
Here we're just simply cutting the track.
And in the case of Pro tools, we can use
| | 03:50 |
click gain and reduce the level a tiny
bit.
| | 03:53 |
This will match the rest of the song.
(MUSIC) If your data does not have quick
| | 03:57 |
gain, you can also use a simple gain
plugin and just reduce the level of that
| | 04:03 |
track in relation to the others around
it.
| | 04:08 |
Now the next problem I have Is a clipped
snare drum.
| | 04:12 |
It sounds like this.
(MUSIC) You can see that it's hitting the
| | 04:17 |
peaks there in Pro tools.
It's been recorded too high.
| | 04:24 |
And if you zoom in, you can see how the
tracks are distorted and clipped.
| | 04:28 |
Look at that.
They're just clipped right off.
| | 04:33 |
One way to deal with this is to simply
reduce the volume, if you bring it down a
| | 04:35 |
little bit you might be able to get away
with it working in the track.
| | 04:40 |
At least you're not clipping the output
of the channel.
| | 04:44 |
(MUSIC) I used a simple gain reduction
plugin to do that, and in Pro Tools 10 or
| | 04:50 |
11, you can use clip gain reduction as
well.
| | 04:56 |
In this next clip, I've actually used
iZotope's declipper, another product
| | 05:00 |
available on their RX suite.
It's able to take away a lot of the
| | 05:04 |
clipped overs and give you a better
picture of what the snare could have
| | 05:09 |
sounded like if recorded properly.
(MUSIC) And really extreme examples of
| | 05:16 |
this, where something is distorted so bad
and clipped so bad, a lot of times I'll
| | 05:21 |
actually go in and replace a few hits
where I can really hear it.
| | 05:28 |
If there's an extreme amount of like
scratchy distorted nasty snare sound.
| | 05:34 |
I might actually find a snare from
another part of the song and then cut and
| | 05:37 |
paste that in place to replace the
offending sound.
| | 05:42 |
The next I'd do is cleaning up the tom
tracks.
| | 05:45 |
A lot of times, the mics on the toms are
open and they're picking up all the
| | 05:48 |
stuff, the rattle.
The humming along or the top heads of the
| | 05:52 |
toms while the drummers playing the rest
of the kit.
| | 05:55 |
So, what we're looking for is really just
the hits, where the toms are hit in the song.
| | 05:59 |
We're going to bring those in, so we only
hear them when they're being played.
| | 06:03 |
The first thing I'll do is just trim the
tops off, kind of roughly.
| | 06:07 |
And then, I'll clean the tails.
I'm not sure where to stop in this floor
| | 06:12 |
tom here, so I'll give it a little bit of
room, take the hit right there on that one.
| | 06:18 |
We'll just focus on these two hits right
here, right now.
| | 06:21 |
Zoom in, I always do a lot of zooming in,
make sure I'm not chopping off the
| | 06:25 |
initial hit of the toms, clean the track
right up.
| | 06:29 |
I'll put a tiny little fade at the top.
Zoom back out.
| | 06:37 |
Get rid of this garbage over here.
All right, I'm going to solo these toms
| | 06:41 |
now, and let's take a listen.
(MUSIC) So we hear the floor tom carry on
| | 06:47 |
a little bit longer than the rack tom
did.
| | 06:53 |
In fact, I edited it that way knowing
that I don't need to hear as much rack tom.
| | 06:57 |
Here, I'm going to do a simple fade-out,
and let that carry out naturally.
| | 07:01 |
The floor tom is different.
Let's hear how long that's going.
| | 07:05 |
(MUSIC) I think we can cut it about here
sort of decayed out of the picture by then.
| | 07:11 |
But we're hearing a lot of right cymbal,
and that's typical since the (UNKNOWN)
| | 07:15 |
mic was close to the ride cymbal.
This is another trick I like to do.
| | 07:20 |
I take this section and highlight it.
Now open up a single one band EQ and I'll
| | 07:26 |
put a low pass filter on it.
Somewhere down here at 500 hertz realm,
| | 07:33 |
and I'll render this part of the track.
What I've done now is just taken all the
| | 07:38 |
high end and rolled it right off.
I'll slide this point over a little bit,
| | 07:44 |
and then I'll do kind of a longer fade.
Now listen to what this does.
| | 07:51 |
(MUSIC) By EQing the end of the tom's
tail you can actually bring it up louder
| | 07:55 |
in the mix without the ride symbol
popping in and out of the mix in a
| | 07:58 |
strange way.
It will also allow you to just compress
| | 08:03 |
it more, bring it up louder and have more
of that low wind kind of sustaining out
| | 08:06 |
through that part of the song.
So you see this kind of attention to
| | 08:11 |
detail and prepping the drums giving you
something stronger to work with in the end.
| | 08:15 |
And it'll make for a better recording and
a better mix.
| | 08:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drum mixing| 00:00 |
It would be foolish of me to thin that I
could demonstrate everything there is
| | 00:04 |
about mixing drums in five minutes.
So really, what I'm going to do is a bit
| | 00:08 |
of a rundown that's going to touch on
some of the other movies we've already
| | 00:10 |
done about setting up and prepping your
drums and even recording drums.
| | 00:15 |
And then we're going to go through some
of the tracks in the drum kit, talk about
| | 00:18 |
what possibly could need to be down in
most scenarios and just rough out a drum
| | 00:22 |
mix to start with here.
So the first thing I'm going to look at
| | 00:26 |
is the kick drum.
We've got a track in here, and this is
| | 00:30 |
what it sounds like.
(MUSIC) It's pretty typical on a kickdrum
| | 00:35 |
like this that we would be putting in a
little bit of EQ, like cutting some of
| | 00:42 |
the low mids.
You can see that on our cutting
| | 00:47 |
frequencies movie as well.
I'm always looking for those honky
| | 01:01 |
frequencies that kind of jump out and
right now we're at 200 hertz.
| | 01:05 |
Cutting some of those out will clear up
some of the tone of the kick drum.
| | 01:09 |
Frequently after I do that I really like
to put in a little bit of compression,
| | 01:12 |
like this 1176 plugin here.
(SOUND).
| | 01:26 |
Set properly it can give you a little
more attack, a little more edge to the
| | 01:29 |
sound as well.
Next, I'm going to listen to the speaker
| | 01:35 |
that we're using as a microphone on the
kick drum.
| | 01:38 |
The sub-kick mic (SOUND).
This track is simply there to carry some
| | 01:47 |
low frequency bump.
Some bottom end that we add in to the
| | 01:52 |
kick drum mic.
Lots of times I'll put an equalizer on
| | 01:56 |
it, cutting off all the high frequencies.
A simple low pass filter can just take
| | 02:07 |
all the high components out and then we
have a track that just simply does one thing.
| | 02:13 |
It goes bump.
We use a small amount of that in
| | 02:16 |
conjunction with the kick drum mike to
create our kick drum sound.
| | 02:21 |
Next the snare mic.
Let's give it a listen.
| | 02:24 |
(MUSIC) It doesn't sound too bad, but one
thing I love to do is this.
| | 02:39 |
Here, I've duplicated another snare
track, and on this track I'm going to add
| | 02:42 |
a few effects.
Let's hear it with the effects in place.
| | 02:47 |
First of all, I've gaited it.
See the movie that we did on gating.
| | 02:52 |
And the second thing is, I've compressed
it, after the gate.
| | 02:55 |
And let's hear how different that sounds.
(MUSIC) Now, let's hear that mixed in
| | 03:01 |
with the original snare track.
(MUSIC) Hear how there's a longer sound
| | 03:13 |
to the snare drum there.
There's a little bit of decay and it
| | 03:21 |
hangs out longer.
Has a little more of a crunchy splat.
| | 03:24 |
That's pretty cool.
Let's see how this works with the snare
| | 03:28 |
bottom mic.
(MUSIC) I'm not so sure on that.
| | 03:37 |
So we're going to gate that as well.
(MUSIC) And I've also applied some EQ to
| | 03:43 |
take out a bit of a pokey mid range that
was bugging me.
| | 03:51 |
Now, let's hear all those snare tracks
together.
| | 03:56 |
(MUSIC) One thing to be aware of, is I'm
mixing through the console, but I'm
| | 04:02 |
sending both of these snare tracks, the
snare top and the snare duplicate down
| | 04:07 |
through the same track, channel 19.
So I brought the snare duplicate track
| | 04:15 |
down a little bit in volume to blend in
against the original.
| | 04:21 |
It's kind of like parallel drum buss
compressing, but just one drum at a time.
| | 04:27 |
Next are the tom tracks.
I've already cleaned these up.
| | 04:33 |
See how I'm moving and prepping drums for
this.
| | 04:36 |
Here's the rack tom being played in this
section.
| | 04:38 |
(MUSIC)
| | 04:40 |
In this section I did not clean the toms
up.
| | 04:53 |
(MUSIC) You can see how possibly the ride
symbol there could be an issue.
| | 05:02 |
Here's the rack in floor.
You can hear the EQ that I added to the
| | 05:09 |
floor tom there, which takes the high
component out of the picture.
| | 05:15 |
We'll put these back in the mix.
Cleaning them up really helps get rid of
| | 05:20 |
the extra noises that are happening when
the toms aren't being struck, makes
| | 05:23 |
mixing quite a bit easier.
Now the overhead tracks, are stereo
| | 05:28 |
overheads here, they sound pretty good.
Let me mute some of these channels.
| | 05:34 |
(MUSIC) But if we go to a part of the
song where there's more going on.
| | 05:47 |
(MUSIC) Maybe there's some frequencies we
want to remove.
| | 05:57 |
It's not too bad.
This one sounds pretty good, but I'll
| | 06:03 |
tell you, I always go for a little cut
around 200 Hz.
| | 06:13 |
(MUSIC) In this case, I'm mostly using
the drum roller heads for the cymbal sound.
| | 06:19 |
If I was trying to paint a picture of the
kit using the drum roller heads, I would
| | 06:21 |
probably leave this intact, because I
don't want to suck the life out of the
| | 06:24 |
toms and the snare.
But here this works pretty well to give
| | 06:28 |
those tracks as close mics a little bit
of room when we cut the frequencies where
| | 06:32 |
their power lies.
Also putting a little bit of compression
| | 06:37 |
on the overheads can work really nice.
(MUSIC) Makes it jump out of the mix just
| | 06:44 |
a little bit more like holding the
picture a little bit better.
| | 06:53 |
It's a good trick.
Now, let's listen to the room mic real quick.
| | 06:58 |
(MUSIC)
| | 07:02 |
I love limiting and squashing room mics
on drums.
| | 07:29 |
(MUSIC) That sounds really nice and dirty
right now.
| | 07:31 |
I'm digging it.
So now, let's listen to the whole drum
| | 07:34 |
mix through the console.
I'm unmuting the channels.
| | 07:47 |
Let's drop in here.
(MUSIC) We got a pretty nice picture of
| | 07:58 |
the drums.
Now, we're going to bring in the parallel
| | 08:02 |
drum bus compression right now.
Make sure to see the movie that we did
| | 08:08 |
earlier on that.
(MUSIC) As I brought in the parallel
| | 08:15 |
compression, I could hear that the
parallel compression and gate on the
| | 08:24 |
snare drum is popping out of the mix
more, and I don't like the sound of that.
| | 08:39 |
I'm going to turn that down a little bit
inside the box here.
| | 08:42 |
So now we're going to hear more of the
regular snare drum as it was recorded.
| | 08:45 |
Let's check that out.
(MUSIC) And now we're going to add one
| | 08:57 |
more thing, something I really like to
do.
| | 09:03 |
Just a little more drum ambiance.
I know we've got these room mikes on the
| | 09:07 |
drums, but let's hear a little bit of
like.
| | 09:10 |
Digital reverb added onto the snare drum
and the rack and floor tom.
| | 09:31 |
(MUSIC) I always like to turn an effect
like that up too much, if it's
| | 09:40 |
I'll just go way to loud.
So, it's kind of extreme and then dial it back.
| | 09:46 |
I want to hear the effect.
What's it really doing?
| | 09:48 |
Get kind of overt and then pull it back a
little bit.
| | 09:51 |
And make it work into the mix.
Let's see how the whole drum mix works
| | 10:05 |
against the music here.
(MUSIC) So that was a really quick
| | 10:22 |
version of they way I mix drums when I'm
working the studio.
| | 10:37 |
Take these same techniques, everything
I've shown you here, stretch it out, make
| | 10:40 |
it your own and it'll hopefully improve
your own drum mixes.
| | 10:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Sound Processing SecretsGating audio for noise elimination| 00:00 |
Many engineers think of audio gates as
simply noise gates, as a way to eliminate
| | 00:04 |
noise coming down a track.
A gate is a simple device, either a
| | 00:09 |
plugin or a piece of hardware, that looks
at the sound coming in, or a sound from
| | 00:12 |
an external triggering source through the
key, and opens up the audio track or
| | 00:16 |
keeps it closed.
It's a simple device.
| | 00:21 |
It's easy to set and use.
And I've got some really creative ways
| | 00:24 |
I'm going to show you of how to use it in
a second.
| | 00:27 |
But first let's talk about using is a
noise gate.
| | 00:30 |
I've a plate reverb here at Jackpot.
And that's got a little bit of background
| | 00:34 |
noise, which we're going to highlight
right here.
| | 00:37 |
You can hear a split second of this.
There's a little bit of hum and hiss
| | 00:42 |
going on there from the electronics and
just from the pickups that are physically
| | 00:47 |
picking up the sound on the plate reverb.
So what we're going to do here is put a
| | 00:55 |
gate on a reverb with a vocal track going
into it.
| | 00:59 |
First of all let's hear a moment of the
vocal track going into the reverb with
| | 01:02 |
out a gate on it.
(MUSIC) Now we hear that sound decay for
| | 01:12 |
quite a while, but then after the sound
of the reverb decays, we're also getting
| | 01:15 |
the buzz and the hum that's way in the
background.
| | 01:19 |
So what I'll do is put a gate on my
reverb.
| | 01:25 |
I'll take these out of bypass mode,
because I've already wired them in
| | 01:30 |
through the patch bay and now we're
going to hear the gate close slowly,
| | 01:35 |
after the reverb tail-ends.
(MUSIC) You can see, the gate closing
| | 01:41 |
right there, that indicator, when it's
green means that it's actually open and
| | 01:45 |
red means it's closed.
Now, you can do some other things when
| | 01:49 |
you are doing this kind of gating on
reverbs.
| | 01:52 |
One thing that's really interesting is to
have a real slow attack.
| | 01:56 |
And the gate, or the reverb gradually
enters the audio picture.
| | 02:05 |
(MUSIC) Even slower, lets try that.
(MUSIC) I'll put this back where we had it.
| | 02:15 |
And another thing you can do is tighten
up how long the reverb tail lasts.
| | 02:21 |
Right here, we're changing the Hold and
Decay times.
| | 02:23 |
(MUSIC) Let's go even tighter.
(MUSIC) Now, you heard the reverb tail
| | 02:35 |
get cut off.
Sometimes you can use that for effect.
| | 02:41 |
If you don't hear the tail of the reverb,
you can have reverb under the vocal.
| | 02:45 |
But it disappears as soon as it stops so
you don't really quite hear the
| | 02:48 |
expansive, large sound of the reverb.
Changes how people perceive it in the
| | 02:53 |
mix, on the song.
Let's hear that same sound on a snare drum.
| | 02:58 |
Let's set these settings back kind of
where we started here, with a longer hold
| | 03:03 |
and decay, fairly quick attack
| | 03:04 |
(MUSIC).
| | 03:12 |
And you hear the reverb come out and then
clean up.
| | 03:14 |
Takes the tail off a little bit.
Takes out all the hum.
| | 03:17 |
If we do this too tight, like I was
showing earlier on the vocal (SOUND).
| | 03:22 |
Woah, we got a little bit of fluttering
there because the Attack and the Hold are
| | 03:26 |
fighting against each other.
You'll hear that sometimes.
| | 03:29 |
(SOUND) The gate turns off really fast.
That's an interesting trick you can use
| | 03:37 |
for like crazy drum sound at certain
times.
| | 03:40 |
So now let's go do some other stuff with
the gates.
| | 03:42 |
And here we've got a snare track.
And I've duplicated the snare track.
| | 03:48 |
So we have a snare top track that we
recorded earlier.
| | 03:51 |
Two instances of it.
The reason I duplicated it, is I'm
| | 03:54 |
going to show you how you can gate one
and leave the other one ungated.
| | 03:58 |
And make the snare kind of pop in the
mix.
| | 04:01 |
Now, what we'll be hearing first will
just be the straight snare as recorded.
| | 04:04 |
(MUSIC) So we want to get a little more
attack out of this snare drum maybe.
| | 04:12 |
One great way to do it is to do this, put
a gate on this track, and we'll hear it
| | 04:18 |
like this.
(SOUND) So you hear right there, we got a
| | 04:25 |
really extremely gated snare drum.
It just kind of comes in and attacks.
| | 04:31 |
It, it, the hold time and the release
time are pretty tight, so it doesn't last
| | 04:35 |
very long.
If we put those a little higher, they'll
| | 04:39 |
take longer to release.
(MUSIC) But you're hearing that high-hat
| | 04:44 |
sound in there, and that's what I don't
want.
| | 04:47 |
So I'm going to tighten these guys up So
that the snare really comes in (SOUND)
| | 04:51 |
and then goes away.
Kind of a natural sounding.
| | 04:55 |
It sounds like a bad sample or something,
but check this out.
| | 04:59 |
If we mix that in with the original snare
drum.
| | 05:01 |
(MUSIC) We're giving a little more of a
punch to the snare sound, here it is once
| | 05:13 |
again, I'll take it in and out on the
console with the mute button.
| | 05:28 |
(MUSIC) Pretty cool trick.
Easy to do.
| | 05:31 |
You want to be kind of careful about
blending in too much of the gated snare
| | 05:34 |
track, against the regular snare track.
It'll start to sound kind of weird and
| | 05:39 |
clipped, but just bring in enough to give
that snare some extra punch.
| | 05:43 |
Now, you can do the same trick, with the
snare bottom mic.
| | 05:48 |
Well, here's what a snare bottom mic
sounds like, without a gate on it.
| | 05:51 |
(MUSIC).
Kind rattly.
| | 05:52 |
And you heard it rattling along with the
kick drum a little bit.
| | 06:02 |
Remember, you can use the gates that are
in your computer, the plug ins.
| | 06:08 |
You can use the external gates if you
have 'em, like we do here.
| | 06:11 |
They both perform the same function.
I tend to choose the gates based on ease
| | 06:15 |
of use and there's certain times as we'll
see especially later.
| | 06:19 |
Where it's easier for me to just grab a
knob and turn it and set, set it to what
| | 06:22 |
I want to do.
But a lot of times when I'm gating snare
| | 06:26 |
bottom heads or doing parallel snare
gating like we just did.
| | 06:30 |
I will use a plug in because I can set it
up pretty quick and it's really efficient
| | 06:33 |
way to work.
And it actually has a look ahead
| | 06:37 |
function, which you'll see right here on
the plug in.
| | 06:40 |
That allows you to look ahead on the
track and the gate will open faster than
| | 06:44 |
a physical gate, a hardware gate, in the
real world.
| | 06:47 |
So, it's good to pick plugins or hardware
based on what'll do the job best.
| | 06:53 |
So here we are with a gated bottom head
| | 06:57 |
(SOUND).
| | 06:59 |
That's a little bit quick.
I'm going to add a little release and
| | 07:04 |
hold time here.
(SOUND) I'm going to pull it back a
| | 07:07 |
little bit so I don't have to hear the
high hat entering, once again, that can
| | 07:12 |
be really distracting.
If the high hat enters into the snare
| | 07:17 |
track that you're gating, either the
parallel snare track or the bottom snare
| | 07:20 |
track, it's going to make the high hat
appear to get louder at different times
| | 07:24 |
in the mix.
Which can really sound wrong, so be
| | 07:28 |
aware, be really wary of that.
I've also done another thing here,
| | 07:32 |
there's a Filter you can put in place to
roll off the low end on the side chain.
| | 07:38 |
Now the side chain is really the signal
of the bottom head of the snare here.
| | 07:43 |
And it's just rolling off the low end so
that we don't hear much of the low end of
| | 07:46 |
the kick, and that won't open up the
gate.
| | 07:49 |
We don't want the kick to open up the
gate, we don't want the high hat to open
| | 07:52 |
up the gate, we just want the snare hits
to open up the gate.
| | 07:55 |
So I need to route this track here, I had
it going to the wrong output.
| | 08:00 |
So here's our straight snare track from
the top head (MUSIC).
| | 08:06 |
Here's our bottom head gated (MUSIC).
Together, we get this (MUSIC).
| | 08:21 |
So that's more of the standard way of
using gates to treat audio in the studio,
| | 08:24 |
to clean up tracks and to kind of like
focus what you're working on.
| | 08:29 |
But check out the next movie where we're
going to use gates in a very creative
| | 08:32 |
fashion and have a lot of fun.
| | 08:34 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Gating audio for creative and musical purposes| 00:00 |
In the previous movie, I showed you how
to use audio gates in a standard fashion.
| | 00:05 |
We were like cleaning up tracks, cleaning
up the noise on reverbs, focusing snare sounds.
| | 00:12 |
Now, I'm going to show you how to use an
audio gate in a creative manner.
| | 00:16 |
I have a track here where I've recorded a
Moog synthesizer bass line against some drums.
| | 00:21 |
So, here's how it sounds as recorded.
(MUSIC).
| | 00:32 |
But what I want to hear is that
synthesizer pulsing along with the drums.
| | 00:37 |
I've set up a hardware gate over here.
I had it in bypass mode, so, I'll kick it on.
| | 00:44 |
Listen to this.
| | 00:45 |
(MUSIC)
| | 00:47 |
Now, how is it doing that?
Well, it's simply, I'm using the external input.
| | 01:01 |
The external input is fed from the
(UNKNOWN), from the kick and snare tracks
| | 01:05 |
which I have turned up.
So, I'm sending kick and snare signals
| | 01:09 |
out into the external input of the gate
which is triggering the gate to turn off
| | 01:12 |
and on.
Check this out (MUSIC).
| | 01:18 |
(MUSIC) So, that's setting the threshold
to where it's not allowing the gate to
| | 01:29 |
come on.
(MUSIC) At that setting, we're letting
| | 01:40 |
the gate come on, the kick and snare
sounds are triggering the, the pulsing synthesizer
| | 01:57 |
(MUSIC).
| | 02:00 |
By tweaking the hold and decay times, we
get longer notes blooming out after the hits.
| | 02:05 |
(MUSIC) And by setting a longer attack
time, we have the notes show up later
| | 02:12 |
than the hits, which can sound kind of
cool in certain parts.
| | 02:22 |
Now, let's go back over to the console.
Here, I've got a couple of buses set up.
| | 02:30 |
Let's activate those.
The buses are simply working like
| | 02:33 |
(UNKNOWN) are on my console and sending
the sound over to the gate.
| | 02:38 |
Here's the gate, we're going to turn it
on, and here I have it assigned to the
| | 02:42 |
side chain input.
That means that the buses are coming in
| | 02:46 |
right there, on Voss one.
Now, when I play the track, we're
| | 02:50 |
going to hear the Moog pulsing along with
the kick and snare internally in the computer.
| | 02:56 |
(MUSIC)
| | 03:06 |
Perfect.
We're able to get the same kind of
| | 03:20 |
pulsing synthesizer sounds that we were
getting with external hard ware.
| | 03:24 |
Maybe it's not quite as much fun as
twiddling with nobs and everything, but
| | 03:27 |
you can do this in the box using a nice
simple plug in like this.
| | 03:31 |
Another thing we can do is use this same
trick to set up just a low note pulsing
| | 03:35 |
with the kick drum, kind of like you hear
on a lot of hip hop tracks and such.
| | 03:41 |
We're going to move over to another drum
track we have set here.
| | 03:44 |
I recorded just a really low frequency on
the synthesizer.
| | 03:48 |
You can see it on the top track there.
(MUSIC) Especially on a good system with
| | 03:54 |
a sub-woofer or some headphones, you'll
hear a gigantic low end energy blooming
| | 03:59 |
out on this track.
Take it out of the mix, quite different.
| | 04:09 |
The great thing is you can king of tailor
this as well.
| | 04:13 |
Maybe not have it bloom out as long by
clamping down on the hold and the release.
| | 04:19 |
Clearly, you have it coming out a little
sharper with more attack.
| | 04:25 |
Watch out for the little bit of clicking
you'll get sometimes.
| | 04:32 |
So, there I've shown you a couple of
pretty cool ways to use gates and their
| | 04:38 |
key inputs to make cool pulsing
interesting sounds.
| | 04:45 |
There's a lot of other ways you can use
this.
| | 04:47 |
And you should go out there, and try 'em
out.
| | 04:49 |
I've taken people's mixes and sent them
back things with pulsing keyboards
| | 04:52 |
popping in and out at certain times.
And a lot of times, they really love it,
| | 04:56 |
it really adds something to the track.
Sometimes the unpredictable aspects of
| | 05:00 |
what happens are the most exciting.
So, go out there and try this out.
| | 05:04 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using analog tape delay for vocals| 00:00 |
When I'm mixing a song a lot of times I
want to add some kind of effects to the
| | 00:03 |
vocal tracks in order to make them fit in
the mix better.
| | 00:07 |
It will start like this without any,
(MUSIC) which is fine.
| | 00:13 |
You know, that's a good, clean, well
recorded vocal.
| | 00:16 |
It would sound good in the track, but I
like getting a little bit of ambiance in
| | 00:19 |
the background, a little something around
the vocal.
| | 00:22 |
Sometimes I even think about like a
little halo that makes it sit in the mix
| | 00:25 |
better and work properly.
One of my favorite ways to get a good
| | 00:29 |
vocal effect is to use analogue delay,
and one of my favorite delay units is
| | 00:32 |
this full tone tube tape echo.
It's based on the old echoplex units
| | 00:38 |
which used a tape loop passing over
several tape heads.
| | 00:42 |
You can see the tape loop here stores in
a cartridge and it runs around through here.
| | 00:48 |
It records on this head, it plays back on
this head.
| | 00:51 |
The cool thing is, that allows use to
pull this one to any position.
| | 00:57 |
Thus we'll have a longer delay when the
tape head, the tape is being played back
| | 01:00 |
over here.
On a shorter delay, when its being played
| | 01:04 |
right there, that gap determines how long
of a delay we're hearing.
| | 01:10 |
Let's put this back together.
What I really like, is like an Elvis
| | 01:14 |
style vocal slap back thing.
Its real easy to set up, just a simple
| | 01:19 |
tape delay coming after the vocal.
Let's plug this in here.
| | 01:24 |
One word of warning.
A lot of tape decks like this, these
| | 01:28 |
analogue delay hits, they will make a
squeaking noise.
| | 01:31 |
I'm not sure if you're hearing it now but
it drives me crazy in the control room.
| | 01:35 |
Lots of times I'll take it and and put it
out in the live room and run cables out
| | 01:38 |
to it.
Okay, let's hear it in the track.
| | 01:42 |
Female
| | 01:49 |
(MUSIC).
| | 01:57 |
Male So there is a certain kind of low
fidelity quality to that I find it that
| | 02:00 |
actually helps us setting the mix better.
If it was a full, pristine copy of the
| | 02:04 |
vocal track that we were hearing delayed,
it actually takes a little more space and
| | 02:08 |
jumps out against the lead vocal, and
this low-fidelity version sits back in
| | 02:12 |
the mix better.
That's kind of a cool texture.
| | 02:17 |
I really like it.
Now, one thing to be aware of is setting
| | 02:20 |
the levels.
When you're working in this kind of
| | 02:23 |
realm, you really should take care to be
recording the tape delay the way you
| | 02:26 |
want to hear it.
Listen to this by itself as we're tracking.
| | 02:30 |
I'm going to turn.
(SOUND).
| | 02:33 |
The level up a little bit.
And also the tone here.
| | 02:36 |
There's a tone knob that'll change the
sound of it.
| | 02:38 |
And we're going to hear just the tape
delay on this pass.
| | 02:42 |
Female We're going to make this work.
We're going to figure it out, try to fit
| | 02:48 |
the parts together, and put things in
their place.
| | 02:55 |
Male So you can see how distortion, and
those Ss popping out when I'm pushing the
| | 03:00 |
tape a little too hard, can be a bad
thing.
| | 03:04 |
One way to alleviate that is to do this,
we'll go to our vocal track and we'll
| | 03:08 |
open up a de esser.
I'm using the Massey de esser which I
| | 03:13 |
really enjoy using.
And the de esser will make the lead vocal
| | 03:17 |
actually sound this way.
Female We're going to make this work.
| | 03:23 |
We're going to figure it out.
Male So you can see the DS'ers pulling
| | 03:28 |
the s sound down in the mix.
I wouldn't DS a lead vocal this much.
| | 03:33 |
But when I'm just sending it to tape, why
not try doing that?
| | 03:36 |
So let's hear how that sounds.
As we're actually going to tape and
| | 03:40 |
soloing the tape.
If we're going to have those kind of S's
| | 03:43 |
popping out anymore.
Female We're going to make this work.
| | 03:48 |
We're going to figure it out.
Try to fit the parts together and put
| | 03:55 |
things in their place.
(NOISE).
| | 03:59 |
Male So that de esser cleaned up the
vocal sound there quite a bit on the delay.
| | 04:04 |
After I print this, I'll take the de
esser off, remove it from the vocal
| | 04:07 |
track, and we'll have a nice clean vocal
with a delay in the background.
| | 04:12 |
A lot of times I'll take this one step
further and print two passes of tape echo
| | 04:16 |
for the vocals.
What I'll do is I'll just nudge the
| | 04:19 |
second pass a little bit out of time.
Maybe either faster or slower, just very
| | 04:25 |
slightly and then I'll print that.
At the same time as the other track has
| | 04:30 |
already been recorded.
| | 04:32 |
(MUSIC).
| | 04:47 |
Male That sounds pretty wild.
I panned them left and right, so you have
| | 04:50 |
even more width.
A lot of times I'll just do it really
| | 04:52 |
subtle and it just adds a little more
depth, and it keeps the delay from having
| | 04:55 |
to be in the center of the mix and it
gives a little more room for the vocal, itself.
| | 05:00 |
The other thing that I haven't touched on
is this.
| | 05:04 |
The echo repeats or regeneration knob on
the delay.
| | 05:08 |
This allows me to feed the tape delay
back into itself.
| | 05:12 |
Send it back again to the record head.
And that's where you get, like, all the
| | 05:16 |
fluttering echo we're used to hearing.
It sounds like this.
| | 05:19 |
(MUSIC).
| | 05:34 |
Male It makes it sound a lot more like
reverb as opposed to tape delay.
| | 05:38 |
And that makes total sense, because
reverb in a room is actually multiple
| | 05:41 |
reflections become more diffuse.
And by regenerating it back on itself, it
| | 05:46 |
actually does sound like an acoustic
space.
| | 05:49 |
Now the fun thing is that we can go even
further with this, and a lot of times,
| | 05:53 |
I'll print tracks where I go kind of
crazy, and I get hands on, and I slide
| | 05:56 |
the time and I get a lot of really weird
effects going.
| | 06:01 |
We can get some cool, cool sounds, and
I'll show you a little bit of that right here.
| | 06:06 |
(MUSIC)
| | 06:16 |
(SOUND)
| | 06:27 |
(MUSIC).
| | 06:37 |
Male So that's some pretty overt fun
there.
| | 06:40 |
And by sliding it this way, of course,
it's like stretching out the time and
| | 06:43 |
getting lower frequencies, lower pitch.
And sliding it back this way, it's
| | 06:48 |
decreasing the time and pitching it back
up and then regenerating, starts looping
| | 06:52 |
the audio, kind of, and creating all that
fun stuff.
| | 06:57 |
You've probably heard that kind of effect
on records by Radio Head and a lot of
| | 07:00 |
cool groups like that.
And here's one cool trick that I've heard
| | 07:04 |
on one of their songs in particular.
| | 07:06 |
(MUSIC).
| | 07:18 |
Male That sounds pretty awesome, huh?
All it is, is just turning off the power
| | 07:22 |
to the tube tape echo and all of a
sudden, the motor slows down, the
| | 07:25 |
electronics stay on for a split second
and we hear the tape coming to a halt
| | 07:29 |
over the re-pro head.
(NOISE) Pitch drops, done.
| | 07:34 |
It's really dramatic, I love that sound.
I am guilty of trying got sneak it onto
| | 07:39 |
too many records myself.
Maybe I've got to.
| | 07:42 |
Take that easy in the future.
Now, another trick that I really, really
| | 07:47 |
like is backwards tape delays.
And, it takes a little bit to set this up.
| | 07:53 |
We have another movie that's about
backwards reverbs, and that explains a
| | 07:57 |
lot more detail.
About this process.
| | 08:00 |
Let me run you through this really fast,
and definitely check out our reverb video
| | 08:04 |
for more of this.
So, I've copied this audio from an
| | 08:08 |
earlier part of the song.
Same thing we've been listening to.
| | 08:13 |
(MUSIC) So for the first step.
Male And then, I've taken the audio and
| | 08:17 |
used a plugin to reverse the audio so it
plays backwards.
| | 08:21 |
(MUSIC).
| | 08:26 |
Male That sounds pretty crazy, right?
And then, what I did, was I printed 2
| | 08:30 |
tracks of tape delay off of this reverse
audio, so we have a delayed reverse
| | 08:34 |
version of the vocal.
Then i take those taped delays and
| | 08:40 |
reverse those, so now they go in the
opposite direction of how i recorded.
| | 08:46 |
They sound like this.
| | 08:48 |
(MUSIC)
| | 08:52 |
(MUSIC).
| | 08:56 |
Male That's pretty wild.
And when you hear them against the vocal
| | 08:59 |
going the proper direction.
| | 09:00 |
(MUSIC).
| | 09:09 |
Male So that came out pretty wild
sounding.
| | 09:11 |
Spooky kind of a weird ethereal thing
going on.
| | 09:14 |
Always try to think of your effects as
something you can really tailor for the song.
| | 09:19 |
Even if you're using plug-ins and you
don't have a fancy tube tape echo.
| | 09:22 |
Go in there and EQ your effects returns,
compress them, and try and make them
| | 09:27 |
sound unique.
That way your mixes are you going to
| | 09:29 |
really stand out and be your own.
| | 09:31 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and using backwards reverb in a DAW| 00:00 |
Backwards reverb can create a really
awesome, ghostly effect.
| | 00:05 |
You get the tail of the reverb going in
the wrong direction, swooping in before a
| | 00:08 |
sound enters a song.
You hear that on stuff like Led
| | 00:11 |
Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love, all the
weird stuff in the middle.
| | 00:15 |
It's spooky, it's crazy, you hear it in
ghost movies and stuff.
| | 00:18 |
It's the, the voice from beyond,
whispering to somebody in the present day.
| | 00:23 |
Now back in the old days, we did that on
tape.
| | 00:27 |
We'd take a reel of tape like this.
(SOUND) We'd flip it over.
| | 00:32 |
(SOUND) We would take the track that we
wanted to send the reverb, which is now
| | 00:37 |
playing in reverse.
Send that to the reverb unit, record a
| | 00:43 |
couple of tracks of reverb back on the
tape, then we take our tapes off the tape
| | 00:47 |
deck, flip them over, play them it the
normal direction.
| | 00:52 |
At that point, the reverb would precede
like, say, the vocal and swoop up into
| | 00:56 |
the vocal sound.
That's how we got backwards reverb.
| | 01:01 |
Now, in the computer, it's a little bit
different.
| | 01:04 |
The first thing you need to do is to go
into the song, grab the item that you
| | 01:07 |
want to send the backwards reverb, and
isolate it.
| | 01:11 |
I usually put it at the end of the song
somewhere and set it by itself.
| | 01:14 |
I don't need to hear the rest of the
track in order to do this properly.
| | 01:18 |
So I have a vocal going like this.
(MUSIC).
| | 01:23 |
Great.
There's the vocal.
| | 01:24 |
I want to put backwards reverb on that.
What you do, simply this.
| | 01:28 |
Highlight it, go to a plugin that will do
reverse, and render it as a reverse track.
| | 01:35 |
Now we have this.
| | 01:36 |
(MUSIC).
| | 01:39 |
That sounds pretty crazy.
So we want to put some reverb on that.
| | 01:47 |
I'm going to show you two ways to do
this.
| | 01:50 |
The first one is like this, using our
external reverb here at Jackpot.
| | 01:53 |
It's a real plate reverb that we have out
in the live room.
| | 01:56 |
(MUSIC).
We've recorded the reverb back into the session.
| | 02:11 |
All we gotta do now is highlight these
tracks and flip them back over, using
| | 02:15 |
that same reverse plugin.
(SOUND) And we get this.
| | 02:34 |
(MUSIC) I love that sound.
Now, other things we can do would be like
| | 02:37 |
taking this reverse reverb, let's zoom in
a little, and sliding it so it's a little sooner.
| | 02:43 |
And this sounds really crazy.
(MUSIC) You have a weird, ghostly echo of
| | 02:53 |
the vocal preceding.
(INAUDIBLE) actual vocal inside the reverb.
| | 03:01 |
It sounds really cool.
Now, what if you don't have an external
| | 03:04 |
plate reverb?
Well, you can do this another way.
| | 03:07 |
We got a track that I've already reversed
up here, and we're going to turn a plug
| | 03:12 |
in on.
In this case, Trillium Labs, TL space.
| | 03:16 |
Set on a simple reverb setting, and I've
routed the output of Pro Tools back into
| | 03:21 |
itself, so I can record it on this track
down here.
| | 03:26 |
So I just took the outputs, plug them
back into the inputs.
| | 03:29 |
Be careful if you do this sort of thing.
Keep the mute on over here because you
| | 03:33 |
don't want to have the kind of screaming
feedback you're going to get when you
| | 03:36 |
turn this on.
And here we're going to record the reverb
| | 03:39 |
back into this part of the song.
| | 03:41 |
(MUSIC).
| | 03:53 |
Don't forget for this to be really
effective, your reverb plug-in has to be
| | 03:56 |
set to 100% wet mix.
Just reverb, not the actual vocal that
| | 04:00 |
you put the plug-in on.
Now, we'll go back here, turn off the
| | 04:04 |
plug-in, go back, disable record unmute
the reverb, and, as we did earlier, we're
| | 04:10 |
going to flip these tracks back in the
proper direction with the reverse plug-in.
| | 04:21 |
There we go.
Alright.
| | 04:23 |
Let's hear some of that.
(MUSIC).
| | 04:35 |
You can also do this by bouncing the disk
or rendering the tracks.
| | 04:38 |
But in a lot of cases, that's actually
taking me longer and just routing Pro
| | 04:41 |
Tools in the analog round-back into
itself and recording the track, sped up
| | 04:45 |
the process.
So at this point you can think of some
| | 04:48 |
other things too.
This is kind of fun.
| | 04:51 |
I sometimes clip bits off and do
different kind of fades going in and out
| | 04:56 |
of the reverb.
And I might even have the reverb
| | 05:00 |
disappear once the vocal is in the track.
Here's a kind of example you've probably
| | 05:04 |
heard on records.
Clean that up.
| | 05:08 |
And this just gives us a little lead in
into the song.
| | 05:10 |
(MUSIC).
| | 05:12 |
Or we can do this as well.
We can add some delay to that reverb and
| | 05:23 |
come up with a whole other sound as well.
(MUSIC) That's pretty cool.
| | 05:34 |
It gives it a little cascading sound
after the reverb cuts off.
| | 05:37 |
You can go even wilder.
I've done some crazy effects that once
| | 05:40 |
you sneak them into the tracks sound
pretty cool.
| | 05:43 |
So play around with this kind of stuff.
It's a really neat effect, it's kind of a
| | 05:47 |
classic effect, especially coming from
the old tape days and try it out on your
| | 05:50 |
tracks and see what you get.
| | 05:53 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Why compress?| 00:00 |
Compression is one of the subjects that
many recorders get bogged down in when
| | 00:04 |
they first start recording.
I remember some friends bringing over a
| | 00:07 |
compressor to my home studio a long time
ago.
| | 00:10 |
We were just turning knobs and listening,
I don't think we had the slightest idea
| | 00:14 |
of what we were hearing, and whether it
was helping the audio or harming the audio.
| | 00:19 |
I'm going to show you a few simple things
to kind of wrap your head around.
| | 00:23 |
I don't want this to be a tutorial where
we're talking about all the knobs and
| | 00:26 |
explaining how the compressor works, and
then leave you hanging with no way to use it.
| | 00:30 |
This is going to be a little bit of
application, and just some simple
| | 00:33 |
examples to help you wrap your head
around compression, and see how you might
| | 00:36 |
be using it in a mix.
Think of it as a limiting amplifier,
| | 00:40 |
that's what they earlier compressors were
called.
| | 00:44 |
It limits the peaks of audio coming in
and then re-amplifies it back up.
| | 00:49 |
So, a compressor essentially, is taking
your audio and kind of squashing it, in
| | 00:53 |
ways that you can use in the mix where
you hear it overtly and ways that you
| | 00:56 |
don't hear it all that overtly.
I always think of, when do I need
| | 01:01 |
compression, why do I need compression.
If I don't hear something poking out of
| | 01:05 |
the mix or getting lost in the mix, then
maybe that instrument doesn't need any
| | 01:09 |
compression at all.
If I'm working on a mix, and the snare
| | 01:14 |
drum keeps popping it's head up and then
disappearing at different times during a song.
| | 01:18 |
Then maybe I need to just compress that
snare drum lightly, and it will stay
| | 01:22 |
present in the mix all the way through,
and do it's job properly.
| | 01:26 |
I might put it where it's very
transparent and you don't hear it, or I
| | 01:28 |
might set it so, it's really aggressive
and changes the tone of the drum.
| | 01:33 |
That's fine.
That kind of use is creative and cool.
| | 01:36 |
But what I'm doing really, the most
important thing, is just evening that
| | 01:39 |
level out.
Taming an unruly sound.
| | 01:43 |
Now, let's go over to the computer, I
want to show you something real simple.
| | 01:46 |
I recorded this guitar part a little bit
ineptly, because I'm not the best guitar player.
| | 01:51 |
You can hear some of the notes have
different volumes and such.
| | 01:54 |
(MUSIC) So, here is the sound of this
guitar going through the hampton compressor.
| | 02:15 |
(MUSIC) So at the top of the screen were
seeing of course, the original guitar
| | 02:17 |
sound as I recorded it.
At the bottom we are seeing the sound as
| | 02:21 |
we recorded it back through the hamptone
compressor.
| | 02:24 |
So, what were seeing and what were
hearing is that this level has been
| | 02:28 |
brought down a little bit and evened out
by the compressor.
| | 02:33 |
You see larger volumes on the ends of
notes, less decay as the note rings out.
| | 02:37 |
And you also see a sharper attack where
the picks hitting the string.
| | 02:41 |
That's because the compressor is taking a
moment to grab onto the note after it
| | 02:45 |
hears it.
That also makes it sound a little
| | 02:48 |
chimier/g, it gives the pick sound a
little more attack.
| | 02:52 |
Compressors really need to be thought of
as limiting amplifiers.
| | 02:56 |
They limit the audio as it comes in.
They take the dynamics out of it, and
| | 02:59 |
then they have a gain stage which makes
up the gain after that.
| | 03:03 |
If you think of it that way, it kind of
helps you visualize what's going on.
| | 03:07 |
Now, on our next example, here's the bass
guitar as always originally recorded with
| | 03:11 |
no compression.
(MUSIC) You can see that the wave forms
| | 03:19 |
have different volumes.
In our next example, I've compressed it
| | 03:24 |
with a plug in and rendered it.
And I did a fairly quick attack and a
| | 03:28 |
decent sustain, just so, it creates sort
of a thick bass note that hangs in the
| | 03:31 |
picture here.
(MUSIC) You hear a little more low end
| | 03:40 |
sustaining through when the bass is
played.
| | 03:43 |
You do start to hear something else
though.
| | 03:44 |
Did you hear that little clicking attack?
That's part of the sound that starts to
| | 03:48 |
happen because of what I mentioned
earlier.
| | 03:50 |
Where the compressor's trying to grab on
to the note as it happens.
| | 03:54 |
And it's not succeeding, because it can't
really look ahead, out in the analog
| | 03:57 |
world especially.
So, here we're hearing a little click as
| | 04:01 |
the bass notes hit.
But sometimes that can be great, and that
| | 04:04 |
can add a little bit of attack, that
helps it sit in the mix and compete with
| | 04:07 |
the drums.
Here's a version I rendered where there's
| | 04:11 |
a much slower attack.
And in this case, you can see massive
| | 04:14 |
peaks where the pick is hitting the bass
string.
| | 04:17 |
It sounds a little bit obnoxious, but I
wanted to have an extreme example for you
| | 04:20 |
to see what could happen.
(MUSIC) That last one, (INAUDIBLE) makes
| | 04:29 |
like a sharp clicking noise that's pretty
obnoxious.
| | 04:31 |
So, be aware, when you are setting or
compressing those sort of things can happen.
| | 04:35 |
Check your attack and release times, and
make sure that their working together.
| | 04:40 |
Here's a great example of how to change a
sound using a compression.
| | 04:44 |
Snare drums frequently need a little more
impact or body to them.
| | 04:48 |
And a compressor set the right way can do
a really good job.
| | 04:51 |
Here's the original snare track we
recorded.
| | 04:54 |
(MUSIC) Nothing wrong with that.
It sounds good to me.
| | 05:01 |
Here's that same sound going through a
distressor, one of the few classic new
| | 05:05 |
compressors being built these days.
(MUSIC) You can even see on the bottom of
| | 05:11 |
the screen, there's a little bit more
attack the same way the bass had that
| | 05:17 |
little bit of edge to it.
And we're getting a little bit of a growl
| | 05:24 |
or something when the snare gets hit.
Maybe it's sustaining a little bit of the
| | 05:29 |
body of the snare sound, and that gives
the snare a little bit more girth, and
| | 05:31 |
it'll sit harder in the mix.
It'll sit a little louder and stronger,
| | 05:35 |
and work really well.
In this next example, I have some stereo
| | 05:40 |
room mics that were recorded here at
Jackpot on a drum kit.
| | 05:43 |
They sound fantastic, but compression can
really make them exciting and bring out
| | 05:47 |
something in your mix that you don't
always get (MUSIC).
| | 05:56 |
So, that's how they naturally sound.
We're going to put this compressor on,
| | 06:02 |
universal audio 1176 plugin, and you're
going to hear something totally different
| | 06:09 |
happen (MUSIC).
A lot of that is distortion and the
| | 06:15 |
compression going kind of crazy, but it
makes those tracks really jump.
| | 06:22 |
When you blend that into your drum mix,
some really exciting stuff is going to happen.
| | 06:27 |
You'll also want to check out the movie
that I have on parallel drum-bust compression.
| | 06:31 |
That will really give you some great
examples of how to use compression to
| | 06:35 |
make drums sound huge, like this.
As you're working on your own recordings,
| | 06:39 |
think about when and where you might need
compression.
| | 06:42 |
Try out different compressors on
different sources, maybe print them back
| | 06:45 |
into the session like we did here, and
look at the changes that happen when the
| | 06:48 |
compression is applied.
And AB and listen to those tracks and see
| | 06:53 |
whether they are really helping, or
hurting the audio that you're using in
| | 06:56 |
the mixes.
Understanding compression and using it
| | 07:00 |
wisely can help you build great mixes.
| | 07:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Re-amping guitars| 00:01 |
So when we hear about re-amping in the
studio we commonly hear about
| | 00:04 |
re-amplifying guitar signals.
Taking a signal you've already recorded,
| | 00:08 |
whether it was recorded direct or
recorded through an amplifier originally,
| | 00:11 |
and taken that signal piping it back out
in the studio and running it back through
| | 00:15 |
a guitar amp and re-recording it to get a
different tone.
| | 00:20 |
I do this a lot.
I'll get tracks that are recorded direct
| | 00:23 |
from people in their home or apartment,
and I'll run them out through my amps
| | 00:26 |
here at the studio, put a mic up, and
re-record it.
| | 00:29 |
The great thing is, I can dial in tones
that are going to work great for me in
| | 00:32 |
the mix and change the way the guitars
fit into the song.
| | 00:37 |
What I use for this is a box called the
reamp, and there's also versions of this
| | 00:40 |
made by Little Labs.
There's a version by Radial Engineering,
| | 00:44 |
and what this box does is, it takes the
high balance line level signal that's
| | 00:48 |
coming out of your DAW or out of your
tape deck and drops it down to like a low
| | 00:51 |
voltage output like there is in the.
Output of a guitar amp, it makes it nice
| | 00:58 |
and low.
It changes the impedance and it makes the
| | 01:00 |
guitar amp think that it's getting the
same output that you get from a guitar or
| | 01:03 |
a base, or what have you.
So we run our signal out, bring it in
| | 01:07 |
from the recording from the control room,
run it into our re-amp box and then
| | 01:11 |
eventually, it comes over here, and goes
into the guitar amp.
| | 01:16 |
I'm going to show the stop boxes later.
But first, let's listen to the sound of
| | 01:24 |
this guitar, as it was recorded.
(MUSIC) (MUSIC) Cool, so that's the sound
| | 01:36 |
that we're starting with.
Now let's run just a straight re-amp
| | 01:40 |
signal coming into the guitar amp here.
We've got a little bit of reverb added,
| | 01:44 |
and we're going to hear a totally
different tone.
| | 01:47 |
(MUSIC)
| | 01:49 |
(MUSIC)
| | 01:51 |
Cool.
That's kind of fun.
| | 01:55 |
Adding the spring reverb adds a whole
different element that we didn't have on
| | 02:02 |
the original track as well.
Now what's kind of fun to do and why I
| | 02:09 |
have these set guys up.
Is to add stop boxes as well.
| | 02:13 |
You can totally change the sound like you
would if you were playing the lead yourself.
| | 02:18 |
(SOUND) And this really comes in handy
for changing sounds up for what you want
| | 02:20 |
to hear if you're mixing the track.
Let's hear that.
| | 02:23 |
(MUSIC) (NOISE) (LAUGH) Don't be afraid
to have a little fun with that too.
| | 02:42 |
So one thing to be aware of, if you're
taking the signal that you've already
| | 02:45 |
recorded and blending it in with the
tracks you're re-amping here.
| | 02:50 |
Is that they're going to be out of phase.
They're getting recorded a little bit
| | 02:53 |
later in time because they're coming
through the air, and you're going to have
| | 02:56 |
phase relationships that you need to
check out.
| | 02:59 |
Maybe you use an IBP, like we saw in some
of our other episodes.
| | 03:03 |
Or we use nudging, just nudge the tracks
in Pro Tools or such.
| | 03:07 |
And that can help out.
Another trick that's kind of fun is to
| | 03:10 |
run an acoustic guitar through an amp.
Of course you don't hear an acoustic
| | 03:14 |
guitar like this.
This is a track that we did with a
| | 03:16 |
microphone and we're going to hear this
coming back out through the amplifier.
| | 03:20 |
I'm just going to get some amp tone on
it.
| | 03:22 |
So, let's hear that real quick.
going to add some spring reverb.
| | 03:25 |
(MUSIC)
| | 03:28 |
(MUSIC)
| | 03:30 |
And that's really cool.
We got a totally different sound.
| | 03:41 |
That was a mic, originally, on an
acoustic guitar.
| | 03:44 |
Now we're hearing an amp tone, we're
hearing a spring reverb, we're hearing
| | 03:47 |
different frequencies from what the tone
settings are set at here, and we can
| | 03:50 |
totally change up the sound of that
guitar.
| | 03:53 |
Maybe if it was in like a heavy rock mix,
or something.
| | 03:56 |
We can make it a little tougher sounding,
and fit in the mix better.
| | 03:59 |
That's what this's all about, you know.
Like setting these sounds up so that
| | 04:02 |
they're really going to work well for you
in the mix.
| | 04:05 |
Frequently I'll do multiple passes of
rhythm guitars, and re-amp them with
| | 04:09 |
different settings.
And decide like, you know, maybe the
| | 04:12 |
chorus has a heavy distorted guitar, and
maybe the Bridge goes into like a
| | 04:16 |
lighter, like more reverb, and more of a
Chinese sound.
| | 04:21 |
And, change up those sounds as they go
through the song.
| | 04:23 |
You can add more drama, you can add more
impact, and really just get really
| | 04:26 |
creative with the sounds that you're
working with.
| | 04:29 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Re-amping bass| 00:00 |
So we're going to reamp a bass guitar
signal right now.
| | 00:04 |
What we're doing is taking the signal
that we've already recorded and running
| | 00:07 |
it back out into the live room into an
amplifier and rerecording it,
| | 00:09 |
reamplifying it in the process, hence the
word reamp.
| | 00:12 |
Why do we do this?
A lot of times we do it to fix the mix,
| | 00:15 |
if we have a track that doesn't quite fit
in the mix, we might change the tonality
| | 00:20 |
by using a new amplified signal.
Other times just to bring out tonal
| | 00:26 |
colors that add interest to the part.
It can be really rewarding and a really
| | 00:30 |
excellent way to change the tone of a
track.
| | 00:33 |
Lots of times synthesizer tracks that
play the low end parts of a song, even
| | 00:36 |
tuba or upright bass, can sound excellent
running through a new bass amp and
| | 00:39 |
getting recorded this way.
It will add a lot of texture to the track
| | 00:43 |
as well.
So what we use to help re-amping is the
| | 00:47 |
reamp box.
These are currently made by Radio
| | 00:50 |
Engineering in Canada.
Little Labs also has a really good box.
| | 00:54 |
There's a couple other manufacturers make
a box that does this.
| | 00:58 |
What it does is you plug in your signal
coming off of your recording, off of tape
| | 01:01 |
or out of a DAW into the input of this,
take the output of it, plug it into your
| | 01:05 |
amplifier and you have a trim control
here which allows you to reduce the
| | 01:08 |
amount of signal going in or increase it.
And also a ground switch here.
| | 01:15 |
And so we'll go here, plug the output of
Pro Tools, in this case, into that.
| | 01:26 |
This cable's running into the bass amp
here.
| | 01:29 |
Now what I want you to do first is hear
what the direct bass guitar track sounds
| | 01:33 |
like on its own.
We're going to take a quick listen to that.
| | 01:36 |
(MUSIC)
| | 01:39 |
kind of dry.
Real straight.
| | 01:43 |
Okay.
So now we're going to run that sound into
| | 01:49 |
the amp here and hear the bass DI
recorded through the bass amp.
| | 01:55 |
(MUSIC) So keep in mind that you can
adjust the amp in any way that you want.
| | 02:04 |
You can push the label for a little bit
of distortion and also you can add
| | 02:09 |
high-end or low-end, change that around
any way you like and change the tone of it.
| | 02:17 |
Another really fun thing to do is to do
this.
| | 02:20 |
Instead of going straight to the amp,
(NOISE) why not go into a stomp box instead.
| | 02:26 |
Let's add a little bit more color to this
bass track.
| | 02:32 |
I got a couple of fun effects here, a
flanger, and the comp-torsion pedal to
| | 02:36 |
add a little bit of distortion.
So let's hear a little bit of that sound.
| | 02:42 |
(MUSIC) That's pretty crazy, whole
different tone that you got going there.
| | 02:54 |
Fun to do.
Now let's take this out.
| | 03:00 |
Another cool technique you can do with
this is to run several passes of the bass
| | 03:04 |
in, but I've done this a lot when I have
a DI that's just really lifeless, and
| | 03:07 |
hard to control in the mix.
So I'll do a pass where I take almost all
| | 03:13 |
the low end off of the amplifier, and get
a real treble-y bass track.
| | 03:17 |
I'll run this down to one track.
(MUSIC).
| | 03:29 |
And so in some cases I might even apply
an equalizer in the dah and just roll all
| | 03:33 |
the lows out so it's even thinner like a
planky little sound and record that
| | 03:36 |
through the amp.
But here, we're just going to use the amp
| | 03:41 |
tone controls, and then we can do another
pass on the low end.
| | 03:44 |
We could record them both separate and
then recombine them on the mix.
| | 03:47 |
We're going to have ultimate control over
the low end and the high end components
| | 03:50 |
of the base guitar.
Let's hear that.
| | 03:52 |
(MUSIC) That's awesome, just a big muddy
low bass.
| | 04:04 |
Gives us a lot of room to work with.
We could bring that in the mix, so the
| | 04:07 |
other one carry the high parts.
One thing to be really careful about with
| | 04:11 |
all of this stuff is the phase
relationships between the original DI
| | 04:14 |
track, or even your amp-recorded track
that you're re-amping, and the new tracks
| | 04:17 |
that you've recorded.
In a (UNKNOWN), you'll see that there's a
| | 04:22 |
little bit of a time.
You look at the wave forms.
| | 04:25 |
You can see those like, not lining up
completely because they're going out
| | 04:28 |
through the air, they're showing up later
in the recording.
| | 04:31 |
And if you're doing several passes like
we just did with the bass guitar here,
| | 04:34 |
those are actually going to be in phase
with each other, but not in phase with
| | 04:37 |
the DI.
So always keep that in mind.
| | 04:41 |
See our movie about understanding phase
because that's a big subject that I
| | 04:44 |
always harp on a lot with everything.
So here we have some really cool examples
| | 04:49 |
of ways you can use reamping to change
your tones, to make your mixing easier,
| | 04:52 |
and to just give you better results.
| | 04:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Re-amping drums| 00:00 |
So one mixing technique that I use a lot
is re-amping the drums.
| | 00:04 |
It's not necessarily the same as
re-amping the guitar tracks through a new
| | 00:08 |
amp, or base guitar through an amp and
those kind of things.
| | 00:13 |
It's more about creating ambiance and
adding some textures to the drums, and
| | 00:16 |
changing the tone in most cases.
What happens a lot is I get tracks to mix
| | 00:21 |
that are recorded in smaller rooms,
smaller studios, bedrooms, basements, all
| | 00:25 |
kinds of places that don't quite have a
larger ambience to them.
| | 00:30 |
Also end up with tracks that are recorded
from drum loops or samples pieced
| | 00:34 |
together that don't have like an overall
ambience.
| | 00:38 |
And even drum machines sometimes, which
could use a little bit of moving air in
| | 00:41 |
the real world.
So, what we do here at Jackpot is we use
| | 00:44 |
this pair of speakers we have over here.
This is an extra set of monitors that we
| | 00:48 |
use in here, we sometimes we'll talk back
over them but people on their headphones.
| | 00:53 |
We listen to mixes on them occasionally.
It's nice to have something in the live
| | 00:57 |
room that you can send music out over.
And of course frequently, we pipe our
| | 01:01 |
drums back out over these and record them
out here in the studio.
| | 01:04 |
One thing to keep in mind is that you
want to have like a really close to final
| | 01:08 |
mix of your drums ready before you pipe
them out and record some ambiance.
| | 01:14 |
If you have a really rough mix, you might
end up with elements that don't sound
| | 01:17 |
quite right, like a lot of kick drum, and
no snare, or crazy loud toms, or no toms,
| | 01:21 |
or you know, whatever the case may be.
You might have a really askew mix, it
| | 01:26 |
doesn't help the ambience of the drums,
but hurts them.
| | 01:29 |
So, make sure you got that mix in place,
then you can do, start piping it out over
| | 01:32 |
into the room.
So, what I always do is put some mics
| | 01:36 |
over here on the other side of the space.
Here I have a pair of Earth Works TC30K's.
| | 01:46 |
These are fantastic mics for capturing
ambiance.
| | 01:48 |
They're very flat.
They have a good kind of neutral quality
| | 01:51 |
that just brings out the room.
Sounds kind of neat.
| | 01:55 |
So, we're going to do a little bit of the
drum tracks here that we have recorded
| | 01:58 |
pipe them out of the room ,recording to a
new stereo track and mix that ambiance together.
| | 02:04 |
Let's hear that,
| | 02:12 |
(MUSIC)
| | 02:14 |
cool!
So, you can hear you add that ambiance to
| | 02:22 |
the track, it's going to sound like the
drums are recorded in a larger room,
| | 02:29 |
little more space around them.
Sometimes that can really help when
| | 02:36 |
you're mixing to add that back in.
But I don't always just do the full drum
| | 02:40 |
kit when I'm doing this.
Sometimes I'll just want the snare to
| | 02:43 |
have a little more ambience to it, maybe
the original track of the snare just
| | 02:47 |
lacks a little something, a little air
movement.
| | 02:51 |
Maybe want more of a kind of 80's big
snare sound.
| | 02:53 |
Whatever it is, What I'll do is this
trick.
| | 02:56 |
I'll gait the snare and I'll gait it
rather heavily, coming off a tape or out
| | 02:59 |
of Pro Tools.
And then I'll put that into the room
| | 03:02 |
mic's here and record just the ambiance
of the gaited snare going into the rooms.
| | 03:07 |
Let's hear how that works.
| | 03:08 |
(SOUND)
| | 03:11 |
So, that sounds really cool.
There's a lot of room ambiance added
| | 03:24 |
around that snare track.
You can bring it back into the mix so,
| | 03:27 |
the rest of the drums, it's going to pop
a little bit.
| | 03:30 |
It's kind of a sound kind of unique
compared to the rest of the drum kit.
| | 03:33 |
And maybe that I'll have it sit in the
mix better, do something kind of cool.
| | 03:36 |
It's unique.
So, the other thing that sounds great,
| | 03:39 |
so, take your tom track, the tracks you
record on the toms on, and pipes those to
| | 03:42 |
the room without the rest of the drums.
So, we're going to here a little bit of
| | 03:47 |
that and we get a really cool ambiance.
So, there's a section on this song that's
| | 03:50 |
all full of toms.
It sounds great.
| | 03:52 |
Let's try that out.
(MUSIC) So, imagine how that blended back
| | 03:58 |
into the regular drum mix can just make
those just explode and bloom into the
| | 04:07 |
room, and do something really cool.
I love hearing that kind of stuff.
| | 04:17 |
And think of it too, you can do this in
parts of the songs, and you can do it in,
| | 04:20 |
not in parts of the songs.
So, you can open up, the ambiance of a
| | 04:24 |
certain section and close it back down,
right by automating this, in the, in your
| | 04:27 |
DAW, or just recording certain sections
where you want this to happen.
| | 04:31 |
It's really cool.
Alright.
| | 04:34 |
So, the really crazy fun is when we do
this.
| | 04:38 |
We're going to take our drum mix and
re-amp it back out through our guitar amp.
| | 04:43 |
I'm going to to start with just kind of a
clean straight sound, which is of course
| | 04:46 |
is going to sound kind of mid-rangy and
fun.
| | 04:48 |
But then I'm going to turn up the spring
reverb and then I'm going to turn on the
| | 04:51 |
electro-harmonix micro synthesizer, which
is a crazy, goofy stomp box.
| | 04:56 |
And we're going to have some fun with
this.
| | 04:59 |
So, always be creative, make unique
sounds and you can have a recordings that
| | 05:07 |
other people cannot duplicate with a
simple plug-in.
| | 05:15 |
(MUSIC)
| | 05:18 |
,
| | 05:19 |
(MUSIC)
| | 05:22 |
(MUSIC)
| | 05:25 |
,
| | 05:25 |
(MUSIC)
| | 05:28 |
,
| | 05:29 |
(MUSIC)
| | 05:31 |
,
| | 05:32 |
(MUSIC)
| | 05:34 |
,
| | 05:36 |
(MUSIC)
| | 05:39 |
(SOUND)
| | 05:42 |
(MUSIC)
| | 05:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Re-amping vocals| 00:00 |
One of my favorite things to do in the
studio is to re-amp vocals.
| | 00:04 |
During the mixing process, a lot of times
there's a section of the song where, I
| | 00:07 |
want to hear a different sound.
And instead of like, equalizing and
| | 00:11 |
compressing and getting all aggressive
with outward studio equipment, in the
| | 00:15 |
control room I'll just pipe a signal out
to the studio here, send it through a
| | 00:19 |
guitar amplifier or something else like
that, and put a mic on it and record it.
| | 00:25 |
So, when we do that we use a reamp box
which allows us to take the line level
| | 00:28 |
signals and drop them down to levels like
a guitar output which allows us to go
| | 00:32 |
right into the amp like this.
So we're going to take a vocal track here
| | 00:37 |
that we've recorded earlier and pipe it
out through the amp.
| | 00:41 |
And just kind of do a little bit of
tweaking.
| | 00:42 |
I'll put some spring reverb on it and
stuff.
| | 00:45 |
Let's check this out.
(MUSIC) (MUSIC) Really fun.
| | 01:03 |
You can do stuff with that where you, add
different effects like this to it, little
| | 01:07 |
subtle effects, do a little bit of
equalizing, and kind of change the vocal sound.
| | 01:12 |
This works great sometimes for a whole
song, sometimes for just like, a chorus
| | 01:16 |
or a bridge or a breakdown.
But what I really like to do is plug in
| | 01:20 |
stomp boxes after the reamp box here and
have fun with it.
| | 01:24 |
I've got an Ibanez Tube Screamer and a
Boss Super Octave pedal.
| | 01:29 |
We're going to make her voice change
drastically by doing this.
| | 01:35 |
Here we go, let's run it.
| | 01:37 |
(MUSIC)
| | 01:39 |
Terrifying.
(LAUGH) We totally changed the sound of
| | 01:49 |
the vocal by doing that.
Don't be limited to one amp, either.
| | 01:58 |
We've got another amp set up here, this
little lunch box amp.
| | 02:01 |
And we're going to pipe the signal onto
that, and let's see what we can do with
| | 02:11 |
this guy.
(MUSIC)
| | 02:17 |
(MUSIC).
| | 02:19 |
That's super cool.
You know, there's kind of like, a radio
| | 02:25 |
sort of sound.
Like a small radio.
| | 02:27 |
And also even a source of intimacy that
that smaller amp brought, that we didn't
| | 02:30 |
hear on the bigger amp.
So that's something you can use to
| | 02:34 |
completely change, the sound of a vocal
while you're mixing.
| | 02:38 |
One of the things you really have to
watch out for, phase issues, if you
| | 02:40 |
decide to recombine this signal with the
track that you've already recorded with
| | 02:44 |
your clean straight vocal, its going to
be a little bit later in time because its
| | 02:47 |
passing through the air and such, so you
might want to line those tracks up in
| | 02:50 |
your da or run a thing like the IBP,
which we've seen in some of out other movies.
| | 02:57 |
And, dial those the face back into place.
So it actually works together.
| | 03:02 |
Use your imagination.
Mess around.
| | 03:04 |
Think of all the things you can pipe
vocals through.
| | 03:06 |
I've seen people use old amplifiers, old
home stereoes, little tiny, tiny amps
| | 03:11 |
like little plastic toy amps.
All kinds of fun things.
| | 03:15 |
And you can get some great sounds, things
that work really good in the mix when
| | 03:18 |
you're mixing a song.
| | 03:20 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Re-amping a Leslie speaker cabinet| 00:00 |
Here at Jackpot, we have a gigantic
Leslie speaker cabinet.
| | 00:04 |
It's kind of a beast and makes some funny
sounds.
| | 00:07 |
Normally, it's used for like the Hammond
Organ over here, the M-3.
| | 00:11 |
But I love piping other sounds through it
to get crazy, psychedelic swirling noises.
| | 00:17 |
Now, the great thing is, that we have
this deluxe combo pre-amp.
| | 00:21 |
And on here, we've got a couple of
instrument inputs.
| | 00:23 |
You could plug a guitar bass into it.
And a lot of times, yeah, we'll plug in
| | 00:27 |
and play guitar leads through it and
such.
| | 00:29 |
But pre-amplifying with my handy pre-amp
box, is one of my favorite things to do
| | 00:34 |
in the mixing process.
So what we're going to do right now, is
| | 00:38 |
run a bunch of different sounds through
the Leslie speaker and listen to them for fun.
| | 00:42 |
Now plug this in, I'm going to power this
up, but it's really noisy.
| | 00:49 |
One thing to remember is that we have
fast and slow speeds on this so we're
| | 00:51 |
going to do demos of some of these sounds
at both speeds.
| | 00:55 |
It's going to be pretty fun.
All right, there's the wonderful hum that
| | 00:59 |
it always makes.
Let's go in the control room, set this up.
| | 01:07 |
I've already set up a Pro Tools session
here with a bunch of prerecorded sounds
| | 01:11 |
that we've made.
And I'm going to pipe them back out
| | 01:14 |
through the preamp to the Leslie, and
record it on some tracks below.
| | 01:18 |
I'm going to start here with an electric
guitar.
| | 01:20 |
This sounds pretty fun, it's a good
rhythm track.
| | 01:23 |
(MUSIC).
| | 01:26 |
So that's at the slow speed.
Check this out at the fast speed.
| | 01:39 |
(MUSIC).
| | 01:41 |
The spinning speakers in there give it a
crazy, wobbly sound.
| | 01:56 |
Let's hear some more examples.
Here's how an acoustic guitar can totally
| | 01:59 |
transform, once it goes into the Leslie.
| | 02:02 |
(MUSIC).
| | 02:04 |
Now let's hear that fast.
| | 02:13 |
(MUSIC)
| | 02:16 |
(MUSIC)
| | 02:19 |
That's pretty cool.
Now let's hear a guitar solo.
| | 02:29 |
This is a classic thing to reamp through
the Leslie.
| | 02:32 |
Electric guitar solos, you get the, a
little bit of that George Harrison mojo
| | 02:35 |
maybe happening here.
| | 02:37 |
(MUSIC).
| | 02:52 |
Let's hear it fast.
A solo through a fast Leslie has a great
| | 02:55 |
bubbly tone.
(MUSIC).
| | 03:03 |
Awesome.
What about bass guitar?
| | 03:13 |
That can be pretty crazy.
(MUSIC).
| | 03:16 |
I'm pretty sure, I'm hearing the cabinet
rattle on everything in there.
| | 03:27 |
So, that's a special effect, (MUSIC),
even weirder.
| | 03:39 |
So that could be fun for part of a song,
right?
| | 03:42 |
Piano, this is a classic trick.
Piano in the Leslie.
| | 03:59 |
(MUSIC), it kind of makes you think of
organ sound, but it's piano sound.
| | 04:03 |
At the fast speed, (MUSIC), you know
you've heard something like that before
| | 04:13 |
on some classic records.
Vocals, of course, are a treat, (MUSIC)
| | 04:28 |
or fast, (MUSIC), way cool.
And last but not least, we're going to
| | 04:38 |
close out with some drums piped through
the Leslie.
| | 04:41 |
The room sound, especially, gets kind of
crazy.
| | 04:44 |
Try this trick If you've got a Leslie,
pipe things through it, It's so fun.
| | 04:48 |
Record a whole bunch of weird tracks.
(MUSIC).
| | 04:56 |
Now, let's hear that fast,
| | 05:16 |
(MUSIC),
| | 05:23 |
that's crazy,
| | 05:34 |
(MUSIC).
| | 05:49 |
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