Multi-platinum mix engineer Andrew Scheps, walks you through his entire mixing template, track by track, revealing the in the box mixing setup that he uses on every mix!
In this hour and half long tutorial, Andrew shows you how he imports his template to quickly setup his sessions and start mixing with familiar routing, plugins and effects all ready to rock.
The best part is after you watch Andrew walk through his template, you can download the same template session, that’s been carefully translated to 5 different DAWs using stock plugins.
Learn how legendary mix engineer Andrew Scheps sets up his mixes and then download and start developing your own mix system based on his template. Swap in your own favorites plugins and build a reliable mixing system for yourself to use on every mix.
Once you have seen how Andrew does it, you can download his personal template perfectly translated for the following DAWs:
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00:00:08 Hey kids, we're back
and now we're gonna
talk about something
which is not directly mixing
because we're never gonna hit
play and listen to audio
but it's everything else that
has anything to do with mixing.
00:00:20 That would be my
mix template session,
how I prep a session
I'm sent that is to be mixed
and how I import my template
into that session
so that when I start mixing
I'm ready to start mixing as
opposed to setting up.
00:00:34 I've managed to encapsulate all
of my session set up process
into one little ball
that can be done very quickly
on any song that I get sent
and it makes the song
look familiar to me and
sound familiar to me
in a certain way,
and you'll see what I mean
when we actually apply
my template to a session
we're gonna open up later on.
00:00:54 The session I've got open right now
is my actual mix template.
00:00:57 So, this is a session that is saved
on my start up drive
so it's always available no matter
what drive I've got hooked up
for the actual audio sessions.
00:01:05 So, I get a session from an artist.
00:01:07 It's got a bunch of audio
it might have a million aux tracks,
65.000 plug-ins,
whatever it happens to be
I will then import session data from
this session into that session.
00:01:18 So, let's focus on what I've got
in my template.
00:01:21 There are basically
only Aux tracks,
master tracks, and then I've got
some placeholder tracks,
which are actually Auxes
at the bottom which we'll get to last,
because they're much
more about this session prep
than they are anything else.
00:01:35 Before I go down the actual track list
I wanna show you something which is
a big part of my session
set up actually.
00:01:42 If we go to my I/O Setup
and look at my buses
I've got 16 outputs,
it doesn't matter how many
physical outputs I've got..
00:01:50 generally this will be remapped
to whatever hardware is
mapped when I first
open up the session I'm gonna mix
because this is being imported in.
00:01:59 But what's important is
I've got
Bus 1 to 128
in the session.
So, what that does
is it fills up the Bus A menu, then
starting from Bus 129 are all of
the Buses that I use in my session
and they are actually
in a very specific order.
00:02:17 So, I'm gonna take you
through the Buses within
my I/O Setup and then you'll see
those Buses all show up
inside the template itself.
00:02:25 The first thing is every
single bus that
I use in my template is named.
00:02:30 This is huge. As soon as
a Bus is not named
it means that you've got a little number
in a little chicklet on the screen
while you're mixing
and you're not quite
sure where that goes.
00:02:40 So, what I've done instead is using
named Buses.
In this way once I import
session data into
the other session
this will populate the Bus B menu
(and I'll show you what it means
once I close this dialog)
so that, my Buses are always in the
Bus B menu and
the Buses that were already
used in the session
if any, are in the Bus A menu.
00:03:01 So, there will always be
128 Buses in the A menu
none of which are from my template.
00:03:07 Bus B is nothing but my Buses.
00:03:09 The very top Bus is called Mix Buss.
00:03:12 This is where my mix goes to.
00:03:14 Every track whether it goes
through three Auxes
on the way here, or not,
going directly there out
of the audio track
It doesn't matter how
it gets there but eventually
gets to the stereo Bus called Mix Buss.
00:03:25 That feeds the track in
my session that has all my
2-Bus processing, which then
goes to an Audio track to be recorded.
00:03:31 Right below that is Rear Buss.
00:03:34 This is the shared
parallel compressor that is
for all the instruments
in the mix. Usually
except drums,
although there's an example
on the PureMix site where I actually
did put the drums
into the Rear Buss..
00:03:45 but this are the more
commonly used
Buses in my template and
this is why they're on top.
00:03:50 They would be at the top
of the B menu for Buses.
00:03:53 Then from there
we actually start working down
through the instruments
in the order that they will appear
in any session that I've set up.
I always work
top to bottom:
Drums, starting with kick
ending with room mics
or miscellaneous mics.
00:04:06 Then percussion, then bass,
then guitars and keys
and those can actually
kind of switch places
I don't care whether keys come
first or guitars come first.
00:04:16 That's more about how
the session is already set up.
00:04:19 Then after that would
be any other instruments.
00:04:21 So, if there
are strings or horns
or things like that
that would come after
the guitars and keys.
00:04:28 If there's a bunch of programming
that would actually come somewhere up
near the drums.
Either above or below
live percussion.
That depends on the session.
00:04:37 Just depends how it's set up.
Then we get
to lead vocals. Then we get
to background vocals.
00:04:41 So, you'll see here that
I've got Kick, Snare and Crush
down to Fatso.
00:04:46 These are associated
with drum effects.
00:04:49 and you'll see all of these
in the template in a second.
00:04:51 Then we get percussion.
00:04:53 They we actually get
a Bus that is no longer
in my template. I used to have
a 'mono bass track' crush Aux
and this Bus is just laid around.
00:05:01 So, I could delete it from my template.
00:05:04 and I just did. So, we've
just updated the template.
00:05:07 Which is another important point,
a little bit out of order here,
my template gets
updated to the point
where it gets saved under
a new name, at least
every couple of months.
00:05:15 Basically I'll get sick of something
or I'll build a new thing
inside of a mix that I like
and I get sick of doing it over and over
and as soon as I've done it
two or three times
I'll decide "you know what?
I've got to take a second...
00:05:28 ...close the song open
my template and make
the change permanent"
So, after percussion you'll see that
there's nothing specific except
for the vocal Buses now
and that's because
there's no specific
processing that happens parallel
for things like guitars, keyboards
strings, horns.
That stuff is all built on a
case by case basis.
00:05:47 But the vocals I have
some very specifics
stuff built, which
I'll show you in a second.
00:05:51 And then once you get down below
the Background's Bus
now we're into sort of generic
stereo processing.
00:05:59 There's the stereo vocal crush
which is only used on vocals but
then you've got Aphex, Slap, Spread
which are effects that are used
for many different types of instruments.
00:06:09 It could be used just for vocals
but it could also
be used on guitars or on
drums. It could be
used on anything.
00:06:15 Then there's a bus call Print
this is just a Bus that feeds
the audio track that
I'm printing the mix to
so I would never assign
something to print myself.
00:06:23 That's why it's down at the bottom
and the you've got a couple
other Buses which are sort of
internal to the routing of the template
but I would almost
never be assigning
something directly to them.
00:06:34 That way I don't need to go down
to the bottom of my menu
to find them.
So, my most used Buses
are the top of my D menu
and then I go in order
by instrument so it's
easy for me to find things.
00:06:45 Now really quickly
I'm just gonna say Ok
and come out here,
and you'll see that I've got
a bunch of Auxes, things like that,
I've got Auxes assigned to Mix Buss
so this things will all go
directly to my Mix Buss.
00:06:57 I've got some sends here
which we'll go through in a second.
00:07:00 I've got a few plug-ins that are
sprinkled around the session
and you'll see that there's
some inactive plug-ins as well.
00:07:05 These are things
that are either alternate
for the active plug-ins or
it's something that I don't always use
but I've used more often
than a couple of times, so I decided
let me pop it into the template
so it's there an available
but it's used, I would say
less than half of the time.
00:07:21 More than half of the time
it would be active
and I would go to the process of
deciding whether or not I want it
and then make it inactive if I didn't.
00:07:28 I'll go through the color
coding in a second.
00:07:30 There're also a bunch of VCA masters.
00:07:34 Which are labeled with colors
and with groups of instruments
those would get assigned to groups
as it's part of the session prep
but they live in the session.
00:07:41 But the tracks in
the session flow down
the exact same way
those buses did. So from here
to here
(to the VCA for drums)
that's all drum's stuff.
00:07:51 Then I've got an extra
VCA for programming
just in case I have some,
but there's no specific processing.
00:07:57 Then I've got an Aux for percussion
an a percussion VCA,
so there's very little
for percussion but it
does exist as an Aux
just in case and I show you why
when we look at what that send is.
00:08:06 Then I've got VCAs for bass,
keys and guitars.
Again there's no
processing involved
but the VCA is made.
00:08:14 Then here we get back
into some actual processing
and this chunk right here
is all of my vocals
and what I do is drop
this entire chunk of tracks
in-between my lead vocals,
which should be right above this
and my background vocals,
which would go just below.
00:08:30 And the reason for this
is one: visually being able
to find all my vocals,
being able to work in the balance of
the lead and the background vocals
So even if I've got 60 tracks
of background vocals
rather than following
the convention that I usually
follow, which you'll see later,
of having the audio tracks above
the processing and
the VCA that controls them,
I've actually put
the background processing
above the background vocals.
00:08:53 So, if I'm doing a track with
60 tracks of backgrounds
I don't have to scroll down
through them to get
to the actual stuff that's
affecting the sound.
00:09:01 Then below that we get into
the effects that are those sends
that were in my Bus menu
basically in the exact same order.
So, Aphex
Rear Buss, 'cos I'm not
generally needing to get
to this Aux.
The return from that Rear Buss
can live anywhere. We'll go through
specifically what is doing
processing-wise in a bit.
00:09:20 Then I've got my vocal effects.
So, reverb and slap.
00:09:23 The slap gets used, kind of,
as it is quite a bit.
00:09:26 The vocal reverb is really
just a placeholder
just so I have
a send to a reverb, but
what this reverb is
would change up.
00:09:32 But I'll show you what's on it now
and maybe we'll even change
what's on the template today.
00:09:36 Then I've got stereo vocal crush,
which is a parallel compressor.
00:09:40 Then spread, which is
an effect I'll show you in a bit.
00:09:43 Gets used on vocals quite a bit.
Also gets used on
guitar solos, anything that wants to be
spread out and be pseudo-stereo.
00:09:49 Now we've got the two
tracks that are the main
processors for the Mix Buss
there's a Master Fader
that controls the Mix Buss' Bus,
so the Bus named Mix Buss.
00:10:00 And then this is the
Aux that actually has
all my 2-mix processing,
which we'll go through in a little bit.
00:10:06 That is the only track in the session
that goes to the Bus called Print
and then from the Bus called Print
we feed an audio track.
This is
the only audio track in the session.
00:10:17 The only reason
this track is here is:
If I get a session,
generally there's a rough mix,
or twelve, in the session.
00:10:23 So, there's a track that's had
the mix printed to it already.
00:10:26 If that's the case,
I'm not gonna even bother
importing this audio track
but if there isn't,
I've got so sick
of creating stereo audio tracks,
solo safing them,
assigning the input and output.
I though, well let me just
put it in the template
so if I need it
I can import it and there it is.
00:10:41 But because it doesn't
have any audio on it,
it doesn't matter what
sample rate the session is.
00:10:46 I'm never importing audio.
00:10:48 So that's the placeholder
in case there aren't
any rough mixes already in the session
and it's where I'm gonna print my mix.
00:10:53 And then below that,
are placeholders
for my color code.
00:10:57 This is on the very rare occasion
where I have somebody else
prep a session for me.
00:11:02 I can just send them
my template, which is tiny,
fits in an email.
00:11:06 And they can see exactly
what color I use.
00:11:09 So, if they're gonna
color code drums,
they can open up the color template
select this track and see
that's the little chicklet
for the drum color.
00:11:17 Here's what I use for percussion,
here's what I use for bass.
00:11:20 I generally use darker colors
for electric guitar,
lighter greens for acoustic guitar.
But all my guitars will be green.
00:11:27 Keys, they could be
purple for synths or sort of
darker red for more organic keys,
like acoustic piano,
that kind of thing.
00:11:36 Then strings is a brighter red, but
these colors, because they
don't really get used all the time,
I'm a little looser with what those are.
00:11:43 But drums, bass, percussion, guitars
those have to be those colors because
that's how I find things
in the session.
00:11:50 Then lead vocal and background vocal.
00:11:53 So, that's my color code
but again I never import
these tracks into the session.
00:11:58 Before I go individually though,
let me just show you
how the Bus menu looks.
00:12:02 When I open up my Bus menu
I've got A and B,
so Bus 1 through 128
are just numbered Buses.
00:12:09 And again I've left these opened for
the client's Buses. Because
no matter what Buses they've used,
if they've named them,
whatever they've done,
they will overlay
starting with Bus 1, because that's the
way Pro Tools works. When you import
Buses into a session
They will leave named
Buses alone but it will
fill up the menu from 1 to 128.
00:12:30 That way the second
pop up menu here
is my Buses, it's always
my Buses and it's always
only my Buses. It's a very
important part of session prep
that my Buses show up here
so I can always find them.
00:12:43 So, here they are
in exactly the same order
that we saw them before.
00:12:49 Very exciting. And you can see that
in the session they're all used.
00:12:53 I don't bother making Buses
to name them and then
not use them. They're all
set up as the input or output
of either a send or
an Aux in my template.
00:13:04 So, let's start looking at
what we've got for drums.
00:13:06 I've already talked about
my color code for audio tracks.
00:13:09 Drums is a very good place to talk about
my color code for my template tracks
before we talk about
the actual processing.
00:13:15 So, one of the things about my
color code is...
00:13:18 You'll notice that most
of the tracks in my template
are actually very bright colors
and most of the tracks in my
color template, if you will,
the little guide tracks,
are much darker colors.
00:13:30 There's a really good reason
for this in my mind.
00:13:32 Because I always
like my sessions
to have the clip color
be the same as the track color.
00:13:38 And that means, as I'm quickly
scrolling through a session
I see a bunch of green blobs,
those are the guitars.
00:13:43 I wanna look at the audio
that's actually playing
as opposed to have
to look at the track title
to see: "oh those are guitars"
or even to look at
the color of the track
only over in
the state plates
for inserts and sends.
00:13:56 I wanna see
the colors in the tracks.
00:13:59 And I want that color
to be rather vibrant.
00:14:01 I mean the saturation and brightness
isn't that high in my template
but I would say, you might saturate
as much as this, to really
get the colors to pop
and make them easier
to see depending on
how your monitor's set up.
00:14:12 So what does mean is
I want dark colors for audio.
00:14:15 Because they don't hurt my eyes.
00:14:16 Whereas for here
this is used for parallel processing
and I use this very bright blue
in the top row is all the brightest
versions of the colors
in the color palette.
00:14:26 If I had a bunch of audio
that was this color
it would actually hurt my eyes.
It's a lot to look at.
00:14:31 And I don't like having
really bright audio.
00:14:34 So, I've got dark colors
for audio tracks,
which leaves me all
of these very bright colors
that are very easy
to see as I'm scrolling
looking for a VCA
I know it's the really
bright yellow thing.
00:14:46 What I've done is
bright pink is for Auxes
that pass signal.
00:14:53 So, I would actually route
audio tracks directly
into these Auxes
and then these Auxes
send that audio elsewhere.
00:15:01 So, gives me a place to have sends
or processing on groups of instruments.
00:15:05 Then I've got my bright blue
which for parallel processing.
So I will only ever have a send
going to anything that's bright blue.
00:15:15 So, this could be parallel
compressors, but it's also
if you look down at my vocal effects,
it's also for reverbs and delays
things like that.
Anything you send to
is bright blue. Just makes
it easier to find for me.
00:15:26 Then I've got some left over Auxes from
longer ago. And the reason
I've made new colors
for my, let's say,
kick, snare and drum Aux
and my percussion Aux
as opposed to the tom Aux,
is just to separate in my mind
newer audio Auxes from
older audio Auxes.
00:15:43 So, this is purely something for me.
00:15:45 It has nothing to do with workflow
other than, I look for that bright green
I know that's where my toms go. 'Cos
this has been in my template forever.
00:15:52 and I've only recently
decided that I wanted
to have some overall
Auxes for the kick,
the snare and
the rest of the drum kit.
00:15:59 And then we've got some darker tracks
for some Master Faders and I'll talk
about what those are doing later on.
00:16:06 The reason is because I almost
never need to get to these tracks.
00:16:09 So, I don't need them to
pop out as I'm scrolling around.
00:16:12 And if I do need them
they're right next to the thing
they are the master for.
00:16:18 And the thing they are the master for
is one of the bright colors.
00:16:20 If I'm looking for the Rear Buss,
I know it's bright blue.
00:16:23 and then right next to it is
the Master Fader for the Rear Buss.
00:16:26 I can always find it there.
I didn't need to have a different
color that pop out for
the actual Master Faders.
00:16:32 It's more of a color that I don't need
and I wanna make it sink
into the background.
00:16:36 And then the last one is
bright yellow is for VCAs.
00:16:40 And you'll see when I actually
start doing my session prep,
I need every single
audio track in the session
to be part of a group
that is controlled by a VCA.
00:16:52 That is so that I can solo
my drums VCA
and I hear every single
track in the session that is
drums. It isn't necessarily
just the drum kit.
00:17:01 It's the drum kit plus
any drum samples.
00:17:03 If there's only a little
bit of programming,
I'll lump it in with the drums.
00:17:07 And that way I can very
quickly solo and mute
to hear things as I'm building out
my balance. I can also try like:
"Hey, what happens if I just pull
the drums back a little bit?"
And these will always be assigned
to new groups that I make
when I'm prepping the session.
00:17:22 "But, Andrew..."
you might say
"in your Ziggy Marley videos
you re-used groups..."
"...and you made a point to saying
well, why do new work.."
"...if there's already a Bus
there to cover the drums..."
"...then just go ahead and use it."
I've actually stopped doing that.
Not too long after mixing that song,
I got into trouble where
I was reusing a group
because I assumed that they had
assigned the group properly
and it turned out that the drum group
also had some background vocals in it.
00:17:46 And I was printing instrumentals
and I still had background vocals
in my instrumental
I had to print them offline because
it was an emergency thing for licensing
and I've just decided
from now on
my groups controlled by
my VCAs are made by me.
00:18:02 So, I will make new groups
inside of the session, even
if they are all completely redundant,
and then assign them to the drums.
00:18:10 And you'll see that process when
I actually import my template
into a session later on.
00:18:14 Alright, so that covers
all of the track types
except for these Auxes
which are just for vocals.
00:18:20 These colors are random.
They're just meant to be there.
00:18:24 I never really use red,
so I use it for lead vocals
and this background color
is pretty close
to what I use for background vocals.
00:18:31 But it's a little bit arbitrary.
00:18:32 These are always in
the session in the same place
and I find the vocal tracks and
I always know that these are these
So I don't need a visual queue
as I'm scrolling around.
00:18:42 Ok, so now what I wanna do is
talk a little bit about the routing
within the session,
'cos it's actually quite simple.
00:18:49 Every single track that passes audio
passes it to the Mix Buss.
So, these
three Auxes, which will get the drum kit
will pass it to the Mix Buss.
00:18:58 All of the returns from my parallel
processing go straight into the Mix Buss.
00:19:02 If you see here the toms
and the toms' verb
go into the drum kit Aux,
which then goes to the Mix Buss.
So...
00:19:10 these get split out a little bit
because they're taking a piece
of the drum kit a long the way.
00:19:14 All this let's me do is EQ
the toms as a whole
and get a hold of them to send
them to some tom reverb.
00:19:21 Without having to set it up individually
on the individual tom tracks.
00:19:24 All I've gotta do,
is take my tom tracks
from the actual session assign
them to the Bus called "Toms".
00:19:30 and now they have all of
the drum routing they need.
00:19:33 So, this is two levels deep but
that's about as deep as we'll ever get.
00:19:37 Hear the rest of the drum compressors.
They go straight to the Mix Buss.
00:19:41 Another drum distortion
goes straight to the Mix Buss.
00:19:44 Percussion, straight to the Mix Buss
Lead vocal is slightly different.
I'll take all my lead vocal tracks.
00:19:50 and assign them to a
Bus called "Lead Vocal Bus".
00:19:54 Then that splits into two Auxes
which we'll talk about in a little bit.
00:19:58 Those two Auxes get combined to
a Bus called "Lead Vocal Combiner".
00:20:02 I will never assign anything
to lead vocal combiner myself.
00:20:06 That's been done in the template.
00:20:08 I will only assign stuff to get
into these two Auxes.
00:20:11 But all that happens is
the output of these two
gets combined down
into this one, which has
almost no plug-ins,
but this is where all the sends
to the vocal effects come from.
00:20:20 Then this goes to the Mix Buss.
00:20:22 Background vocals
exactly the same thing.
00:20:24 Background Vocal Bus is
the input to these two Auxes.
00:20:27 They both come out to
the background vocal combiner,
which goes down to this Aux,
which goes to the Mix Buss.
00:20:32 So, these are completely identical
sets of Auxes. Just one for the lead,
one for the background,
so I've got some control.
00:20:40 Down here are a lot of the
effects, as well as some
other parallel compressors.
00:20:44 These are all going
directly into the Mix Buss.
00:20:47 And then down here I've got an Aux
whose input is Mix Buss.
00:20:51 So this is where the Mix Buss goes to,
through my 2-Bus processing,
to a Bus call Print.
00:20:57 Which goes to my placeholder mix track
whose input is Print
and it's output is 1 and 2.
00:21:03 'Cos I just listen to outputs
1 and 2 mixing in-the-box.
00:21:06 That track is solo safed.
00:21:08 Now, before I forget
there's actually one
hidden track in the session
called RX.
00:21:15 I use Izotope RX for spectral repair
or the noise reduction quite a bit.
00:21:20 If I get bass which
has ground hum on it or
I'm trying to get rid of click bleed,
in an acoustic piano track,
from the headphones.
00:21:27 I'll use RX quite a bit
and the way RX monitors
itself is now only a stand alone app.
00:21:33 So, you send audio to the app
and then you'll hit play
and they give you
a plug-in called monitor.
00:21:39 So, this let's me listen
to the output of the app
and I actually have that
going to the Mix Buss.
00:21:45 Because otherwise
what will happen is, if I just
listen to the app going
straight to the speakers,
it's gonna be much quieter
and it may be even hard to hear
the thing that I'm trying
to fix that's gotten so loud
because of all of
my 2-Bus processing.
00:21:59 So, this allows me to monitor things
that I'm fixing in
an external application
through the Pro Tools mixer.
00:22:04 So, this is there.
It's solo safed.
00:22:06 It's always active.
It goes to the Mix Buss.
00:22:08 But I don't ever need to see it.
00:22:10 And the thing is all taken
care of, so as soon as
I open up my Audiosuite plug-in,
which looks like this,
select some audio and say send,
it's gonna switch me over into the app.
00:22:21 I get play in the app, I hear it.
00:22:23 So, that's the one hidden track
inside the template.
00:22:26 Alright, let's talk about audio.
00:22:29 I'm gonna start by going
through the parallel processors
for the drums and then
we'll come back to these Auxes.
00:22:34 'Cos the Auxes don't do much,
except allow you
to get to the parallel processors
while grouping things.
00:22:39 I've got a couple of things that I use
on almost every single mix.
00:22:42 So, I'm gonna start with those,
even though that's not
the order everything is in.
00:22:46 The kick snare crush.
00:22:48 This is a parallel compressor
that's used on the kick and the snare
and it's used on basically
every single mix I do.
00:22:56 When I assign anything to go
to one of my parallel compressors
all I need to do,
and I'll just go ahead and
do it on this Aux track
to show you how I do it,
I just select that I'm taking a send
to a Bus that's called
"Kick Snare Crush".
00:23:11 I have my preferences set
so that all my sends default to zero
follow main pan and they're post fader,
so what that means is
no matter how much EQ or
insert compression or distortion
or sample triggering or whatever,
that I do to, let's say, the kick drum,
I'm taking a copy of that
post all of the processing
at whatever the balance is
that's heading off to the Mix Buss.
00:23:37 Picking up a copy of it and sending
it off to that parallel compressor.
00:23:41 That way if I re-balance
my kick in and my kick out mic
that new balance is what's being
sent to the Kick Snare Crush.
00:23:49 I don't have pre fader sends
that I have to remember
to mute later on when
I'm printing an acapella mix,
and I don't have pre fader sends
that I have to go change
the balance the same way
I just did on the main faders
and I don't have to remember
that in the bridge
I decided to pan the kick
all the way to the left but it's still
going to the center.
00:24:08 of my drum crush.
00:24:09 This way the send follows
everything I do
that has anything to do with the mix.
00:24:15 Ok? Whatever I assign
to Kick Snare Crush
comes down to
the Kick Snare Crush Bus.
00:24:21 and it goes into one of the simplest
chains you can possibly have,
which is the DBX160 VU.
00:24:26 This is what used in hardware so
this is what I use in software.
00:24:30 And I've got two versions of the plug-in
on this track. I've got the UAD one here
and I've got the Waves one
sitting in the wings.
00:24:37 And actually what we'll do
is we'll save the template
with the Waves one enabled now.
00:24:41 So, I've got two versions of it.
00:24:44 The one thing that the Waves version has
that the UAD doesn't is
a high pass filter on the side chain.
00:24:49 So, if I've got a very subby kick drum
and I like that sub
that can end up getting
very messy and noisy
in the kick snare crush,
and the kick will dominate.
00:24:58 So, I can switch to the Waves one,
if it's not already on.
Hit the
hi-pass side chain and
now all of the sudden
the compressor isn't looking
at all of that low end.
00:25:07 It still passes through and
it's still in the compressor
but the detector circuit
doesn't look at it anymore.
00:25:13 Two versions of the same plug-in
just over four to one
the threshold is set where,
with how I normally have kicks
and snares, which is pretty loud,
that it will just tickle the threshold
so you'll go above on every transient
but you're never living
above the threshold.
00:25:28 And then I don't use any of the noise
or the mix controls on the Waves version
and on the UAD version you don't
really have that option anyway.
00:25:37 That is the Kick Snare Crush.
Gets used on almost every single mix.
00:25:42 Down here I've got two
stereo compressors,
which are used on pretty much every mix
right now I actually use both of these.
00:25:50 So, this is the drum crush,
which is the first
stereo drum parallel
compressor that I've built
when I started mixing in-the-box.
00:25:57 And then there's the Fatso which I built
when I got bored of the drum crush.
00:26:01 That's something that
happens quite often
where you start to hear the sound
of the parallel compressor you use
in the same way you would start to
hear the sound of a tuning plug-in
or anything that has
any kind of artifact
or very specific sound to it.
00:26:16 And I just get bored of it or I start
to hear that more than the benefit
and I'll decide to change it up.
00:26:22 Sometimes I'll just go in
and go to a new plug-in
but sometimes,
like with the drum crush,
I'll just think: "Well, you know what?"
"Let me keep that around
but I'll build a new one."
So, I built a Fatso, which
I'll show you in a second.
00:26:33 Then I started to get sick of the Fatso
about three months ago and thought:
"Well, I need to build a new one"
And instead of building a new one,
because I'm so unbelievably lazy,
I said: "Well, what about that one
that's already in my template...
00:26:44 ...that I'm not using?"
And I started using that one again
and then I started using both.
00:26:48 So, now I'm using both
parallel drum compressors.
00:26:51 There's no difference between them
in my mind, in terms of one is doing
this job and one is doing that job,
but they sound very very different.
You need to listen for yourself
what parallel compressors
you like on drums
and they just have different characters.
00:27:04 And there's no way to even really
characterize them 'cos it depends on
how much cymbal activity there is, how
clean the drums are, that sort of thing.
00:27:12 Like differently, I supposed
possibly the drum crush
is a little brighter
and the Fatso is a little dirtier
but that's not always the case.
Ok, so that said
let's look at one of
the very simple chains,
which is the drum crush.
00:27:27 This is the Fairchild 670
this happens to be the Waves model.
00:27:30 I have it in Left/Right mode
which means it's dual mono.
00:27:34 There is a little bit of
threshold control which on a
Fairchild compressor is
the send to the detector circuit
so technically it's a fixed threshold
and it's how much
level do you wanna hit
the detector circuit with.
00:27:47 Unity gain is basically around,
12 on the input knob in terms
of the audio you're gonna hear.
00:27:52 If you just have your
output gain at zero
and your input gain at 12
and you're not hitting it that hard
you should get about the same
level out as you put in.
00:28:01 And I've got the setup to be
a little bit of compression.
00:28:03 Now, how many dBs of compression
am I usually getting out of this?
I almost never look at it.
I would guess 4 or 5 dBs
of compression,
if it's a really loud drum kit.
00:28:12 It may be almost nothing. But that said,
even if I'm not really compressing
there's still quite a bit of color that
comes from any Fairchild emulation
or any these sort of older
crustier over-built compressors
which would include something
like the Fairchild 670 or 660.
00:28:28 the RCA BA6A, the Federals,
anything that was built for broadcast
and was built in the 50s is gonna
have way too much electronics in it.
00:28:38 So that, rather than having
just the right number of components to
do the job they need to do electrically
anytime that you may have one tube,
well let's use two tubes because then
each tube is working quite as hard
or use both sides of the tube
to do the same job
instead of splitting it up.
00:28:54 And what this means is
that you'd be going
through many more components
in the signal path.
00:29:00 So, the magic of
the Fairchild is not that
it's vintage and it's good-wired
and it's clean.
00:29:07 The magic is that it's far from clean.
There is...
00:29:10 tons of harmonic distortion
that happens as you go through.
00:29:13 And even dynamics that
happen going through
the input and output transformers.
00:29:17 They all have a transfer function
in terms of how they
can react the transients.
00:29:21 They have hi-pass and lo-pass
filters built into them.
00:29:25 A transformer is a hi-pass
and a lo-pass filter
now, the hi-pass is at about 5Hz maybe
and the lo-pass is at maybe 20k
but that does affect the sound.
00:29:36 If you ever try to get kind of a
vintage sound out of an EQ.
00:29:39 add hi-pass and lo-pass to it,
at very high and low frequencies
and you will find that all of the sudden
it has a little bit more
character to it.
00:29:47 It's very weird how a lo-pass filter
at 20k can affect the bottom
of your kick drum
but it absolutely can and
it's about the character. So...
00:29:55 this compressor has plenty of
character and it also pumps.
00:29:58 even with the time constant set to 1
which is the fastest release
time you can have.
00:30:03 It's still relatively slow by
modern compressor standards
So it's mushy and in parallel
it brings up cymbals and it just
helps glue the kit together.
00:30:11 So, that's the first of
my stereo compressors.
00:30:14 One thing I wanna point out is because
I have all of my sends defaulting
to being at zero
so they are the levels the drums are at
and usually drums end up
being balanced pretty loud,
I've got the return of this
one at -6
just because it was always too much
and I like the amount
of compression I had
so I didn't want to turn
the input control down
and just turning the output control down
sort of felt like it should be
more like unity gain
for noise and gain structure,
things like that.
00:30:43 So, I've just turned down
the return around 6dB
I probably thought this
should be exactly 6dB
and in small track mode,
even with the fine control
is tough to get exact numbers.
00:30:54 and I just left it at 6.2
and down here there's some 6.2.
00:30:58 It's an arbitrary number but it's there
because the drum crush was always
too loud with all of the sends at zero
and there's no preference to
set you sends to -6.
00:31:07 Next would be the Fatso.
Does exactly the same job
as the drum crush in a totally
different way sonically.
00:31:13 So, it's a Fatso
turned out it's the Fatso Junior,
so this is much more like the hardware.
00:31:19 The reason I use this is
when I got sick of my
drum crush that I'd set up
I thought: "Well Ok, I've got to
set up a drum crush right now."
And it was very daunting,
because if you look at
my plug-in list for dynamics
(I'm gonna look at Native
because there are more of them)
I've got a lot of compression plug-ins.
00:31:38 I don't wanna go through those
and try and find out which
one is gonna be good.
00:31:42 That's what I should do.
I should go through all of them
and see which one is
the best on a drum kit.
00:31:46 But the thing is it'll be
best on that drum kit
then I get a slightly different
drum kit on the next song
and I'm gonna have to tweak it.
00:31:52 And it takes probably
ten mixes before I stop
tweaking something that's
new on the template
and it settles in to a spot
that usually works.
00:31:59 And I just didn't wanna go through it.
00:32:01 So, what am I gonna use
for stereo drum crush?
In hardware, when
I was mixing on a console
I used the EMI TG1 in limit mode.
00:32:09 I didn't like the plug-in for that
as a drum crush,
it was much too aggressive.
00:32:13 so that's how I ended up with
the Fairchild. That's what worked.
00:32:16 I thought: "Well Ok, what else
have I used when mixing?"
Because I didn't always mix
just in my own studio.
00:32:22 And I thought back to "99 problems"
and the only compressor I had
other the 1176 on the vocal
was the Fatso, that someone
had told me about
said: "Man, you gotta
check out the Fatso"
"Ok, I'll check out the Fatso".
And I rented it.
00:32:35 And I ended up bouncing
all of the rhythmic elements
of "99 problems" through it
back into Pro Tools and
then just un-muting that
in the choruses.
So that was one of my first
kind of shared parallel compression
being used just to build the track
by only using it in certain sections.
00:32:51 And, I had to say Ok
I'm gonna make it work on the Fatso.
So I opened up a couple of old sessions,
got rid of the drum crush,
put on the Fatso,
tweak settings, I've actually
started off
you can see here with
one of the presets.
00:33:03 I went through presets first
just to try to get something close.
00:33:06 Then I tweaked it.
This is what I ended up...
00:33:08 It's interesting.. is that...
00:33:10 when I had it in the template for years
it was actually linked as
a stereo compressor
whereas I'm documented saying "I don't
like the sound of stereo compressors".
00:33:19 I have a feeling that
the preset was linked
and I didn't notice and I didn't unlink
it and it worked fine for years.
00:33:26 Now I've unlinked it. I don't
even know if it's better.
00:33:29 So, this settings are not magic,
there's just stuff that worked.
00:33:33 And like I said when something
gets added to the template
you always tweak it for
the session you happen
to be listening to,
but your template is for every session
So, the first 5, 10,
possibly 20 times you use something
you need to check it.
Make sure it's cool
Maybe try tweaking it a little bit
and just see, and eventually
you'll find out that "yep, that's a
good starting point for everything".
00:33:55 So, that's what the
settings are on the Fatso.
00:33:58 You'll notice the return from
the Fatso was also at -6-ish.
00:34:02 It's at minus 6.6
but then because of
where the input control was
which isn't that high,
it was still getting hit too hard
and I didn't wanna change
the input control 'cos
you don't have to think as
hard about gain structure
going through a plug-in as you do
a piece of outboard gear when
you're using analogue gear,
because you don't have
quite the same noise floor.
00:34:21 But when you're using,
specially emulations of
hardware that'd been modelled,
you do start to get some of
those same gain structure issues.
00:34:29 Plus you kind of wanna be
in the sweet spot of controls.
00:34:31 The pots that are used when
people are modelling hardware
they are actually
modelling actual pots,
are not necessarily as well calibrated
on the extremes of their range.
If you can have a knob
somewhere in the middle
60% of its range
other than attack and release
times on compressors
where you usually wanna
be at adding extreme,
you're probably in a spot where you get
the expected result as you turn the knob
it isn't in this crazy place
where when you've just
bump it everything
changes radically. So...
00:34:59 I like to be in kind
of the normal range.
00:35:02 So, I decided to put a Master Fader on
because this gives me control
of how much is getting into the Fatso
without me having to open
a plug-in window
and see what's going on
without me having to remember I've gotta
link the controls if they aren't linked
and turn down the input level.
00:35:19 While I'm mixing I can very
quickly just grab this Master Fader
move it around and go: "Yep".
00:35:24 "Ok, that's nice".
00:35:26 And it's base just on what I hear.
00:35:28 So, since I had to tweak
it a couple of times
while mixing a song,
I decided 'let me just
put a Master Fader
so I can see it.'
The other thing is
I never ever look at the mix window.
00:35:38 So this is somewhat important in that
the reason my template has all ten slots
of inserts open and all ten sends open,
and the I/O pane and the comments
'cos I never ever, ever
look at the mix window so
I need all of the information
about my mix showing on
the screen in the edit window.
00:35:56 What that also means is
I don't have a fader
sitting there for every track
that's really easy to see
or opening up plug-in
windows and I've got
real estate where I can cover up
some sense for a bit.
00:36:07 I'm always covering up audio
or other mix information I need to see.
00:36:11 So I don't like to leave a lot
of floating windows open
so what this gives me
is a way to instantly with one click
affect the amount of level
going into the Fatso,
which is something that I used to tweak
more often that I do now
but if I have to tweak it
more than once a month
I want it sitting there on a fader
that is gonna pop up and be seen.
00:36:30 So, that's why there's
a Master Fader here
but there isn't a Master Fader
on the drum crush.
00:36:35 For whatever reason I don't
really ever have to tweak
the drum crush.
It just seems to work.
00:36:39 So, those are my three
main drum compressors.
00:36:43 Then I've got
four things for the drums, which are
much more specialized and used
on more of a case-by-case basis.
00:36:51 So, the last stuff on
the drum side of things, and
we're gonna start cranking after that
'cos I've got lots of
processing for drums
and lots for vocals
and that's kind of it.
00:37:01 But bear with me,
I've got a specialty thing.
A Devil-Loc.
00:37:05 This is in fact the Devil-Loc plug-in.
00:37:08 This is every once in a while
I want kick and snare
to sound lo-fi drum machine-y.
00:37:13 Snare reverb. It's setup in the session,
it's here in case I want it.
00:37:18 It's got a gate to let
you gate out bleed
so that only the attack of the
snare drum gets into the reverb,
and then it is a very
generic ambient reverb.
00:37:28 It's not natural sounding at all.
00:37:30 It's relatively short.
00:37:31 It's just for length on the
snare drum and you won't
hear this. This is not like
a gated reverb thing.
00:37:37 It's not even meant to
be a natural room sound.
00:37:39 All this is, is sometimes,
once the cymbals are going
and the guitars are cranked up
the snare just sounds dry and short.
00:37:46 This will let the snare
sound more like the drum kit
when you solo the drums
after you drop everything else in.
00:37:53 I'll also use this quite often
to build the track. It will only be
in the choruses of a song.
00:37:58 Let's say. Straight up reverb,
it goes straight to the Mix Buss.
00:38:02 Next we've got toms.
00:38:03 So, I will route however
many tom tracks there are
into this Aux.
00:38:08 What it gives me is plug-in for EQ,
that's normally by-passed
but if I feel that
I wanna EQ the toms this is
a really good starting point.
00:38:16 It's some broad 5k for
the attack of the toms
and then some lo-end for the floor tom.
00:38:23 I would say I use the EQ
around half of the time.
00:38:26 There's an L2 bringing them up
'cos toms always need to be louder.
00:38:29 They just do. By the time
I've gotten the drum kit slamming
the toms have got to be ridiculously loud
to come through, so there's 4dB of gain.
00:38:37 It's really what that's used for
so I'm not looking for the sound
of a limiter I'm just looking for gain.
00:38:41 But I wanna do it in a way where I'm not
distorting everything on the way pass.
00:38:44 And there is also a send
to a tom reverb.
00:38:48 So, this tom reverb is very much like
the snare reverb.
It's just meant to make
the toms feel bigger.
00:38:55 You're not gonna hear this reverb.
00:38:56 I built it kind of like as
a joke on a session
where I've taken a filter to get rid of
all the unwanted cymbal
bleed in the toms
because there will always be
cymbal bleed in the toms.
00:39:06 Because that's what gets
hit right after the tom
80% of the time and you don't
want that triggering your reverb.
00:39:12 Then I go into basically
a tweaked version
of the snare reverb.
It's a little bit longer.
00:39:18 Then, there is a pitch-shift on it.
00:39:20 So, this is a chorused reverb
and this was sort of a "90s
Stadium" tom effect and
you would really hear this.
00:39:27 So, I built it on something I was mixing
almost as an "homage"
and then realized that if turned it down
it actually was just helping
the toms be big.
00:39:37 And then I thought:
"Well Ok, I just use the reverb",
get rid of the chorus and
they weren't as big anymore.
00:39:41 Because toms have so much pitch to them
that little bit of chorus on the reverb
just spreads them out
and makes them massive.
00:39:48 And on really heavy songs this is
kind of the difference between the toms
sounding gargantuan
and then sounding big.
00:39:54 And I'm always going for gargantuan.
00:39:56 So, the output of both of these tracks
then goes into the drum kit Aux,
which we're gonna have
a look at in just a second.
00:40:04 The only other track left is 'drums dirt'.
00:40:07 This is...
00:40:08 something which we're actually gonna
tweak the template on today.
00:40:10 So, I decided I wanted
a parallel drum's distortion.
00:40:14 Normally I like Sansamp for distortion
but Sansamp is not phase coherent.
00:40:19 For whatever reason there's some
sort of crossover network in there
for the different types of distortion.
00:40:24 and if you put it parallel and bring it
up everything starts to sound phasey.
00:40:27 So, I though: "Well Ok,
I start with some lo-fi"
That will be good and
it's really subtle.
00:40:32 And then I'm going into a trashed tube.
00:40:34 This is the least subtle thing
in the entire template.
00:40:38 This is smashing the
hell out of everything.
00:40:40 So, before we look at the settings
of this particular plug-in
I'm gonna go ahead
and get rid of the lo-fi.
00:40:46 I don't need it, it's not adding
anything to this picture.
00:40:49 This Trash 2, it probably
started from a preset
of something, but there is a filter,
there's trash and there are dynamics.
00:40:59 I was just looking for something
that was really blown up.
00:41:02 So what this sounds like,
when you listen to it
is a very distorted room mic.
00:41:08 What it feels like when you
blend it in with the drum kit
is "Wow, my drums are bad ass".
00:41:14 It gives them power that you
don't get without this distortion.
00:41:18 I don't know why it works
as well as it does.
00:41:21 When you listen to it on it's own
it sounds terrible.
00:41:24 When you blend it in with
the rest of the drum kit
it really makes the drum sound great.
00:41:28 It's down at minus 14.5
because of how much level
will come out. It also has
an unbelievably broad
dip in the mid range
because it gets rid of
all of the cymbals that have just been
made unlistenable by all the distortion.
00:41:43 So, this is all about
mid-range and lo-end.
00:41:46 And by mid-range I mean below 1k.
00:41:49 It's kind of low to lo-mids.
00:41:51 And the higher mids of
the cymbals are gone
and then I'm letting whatever air
through might have been there
just for a little bit of extra
crispiness on the drum kit.
00:42:00 It's turned way down. It is also set
to show me mute automation.
00:42:03 This will almost never be in
all the way through a song. It'll
usually just be on in the choruses.
00:42:08 And rather than mute the send to it
it's just as easy to mute the return.
00:42:14 Because it doesn't have any sustain
to it, so it doesn't matter
where I actually do the mute.
It's gonna sound the same.
00:42:20 And this way by, let's say,
its drums cut to a grid,
I can just go to grid mode
and with my grid set to one bar
just start slamming mute
automation points in there
and now this will turn on
the chorus and turn off.
00:42:33 I can also drag this track up
right next to the kick drum
and be very meticulous about
where those break points are.
00:42:38 I don't need to see
the volume automation on this
but I usually will automate
the mute automation,
so I leave the track
showing mute automation.
00:42:46 Just means one less click later on
and I can see it at glance
if this is on or off.
00:42:52 Then, next to it is the drums VCA.
00:42:54 That is all of the sort of
drum processing stuff
but I've also got three Auxes
I built for the drum kit.
00:43:01 I used to have nothing.
00:43:03 Drum tracks will all go
straight to the Mix Buss.
00:43:05 Then for a while I started having
a stereo drum kit Aux
because it just made life
easier, if I'm gonna send
every single drum track to the drum crush
and the Fatso,
why not just have one send
that's post everything on the drum kit?
And it also means that if I wanna
just add a little bit of EQ
to the drum kit or
compress it a little bit,
just because it's almost there
but not quite,
I've got one place to do it
instead of having
to figure out what
I'm gonna do later on.
00:43:31 Or worse, change the routing.
00:43:33 I don't want to change
the routing once I've set it up.
00:43:36 So, I had a drum kit Aux.
But then I realize
I don't always want the kick and snare
going to the stereo drum compressors
because what that can do
is make the cymbals
start sucking backwards because they'll
get pulled down in the drum compressor
everytime there's a kick or a snare.
00:43:51 And I need the cymbals to
stay up and be constant
because otherwise it can
give the impression
of the mix being crushed too much
even when the mix is
wide open, just because
the cymbals get that extra pump.
00:44:02 So, I got lazy
and in my non-lazy part of being lazy
I decided: "Let me finally just make
myself a kick Aux and a snare Aux."
And the first time I made
them they were mono
and then I mixed a song that
had stereo snare sound.
00:44:14 Ah! Open up the template
and make them stereo.
So now, I've got a stereo kick Aux
and a stereo snare Aux.
00:44:21 and they have sends that go to
the kick snare crush.
00:44:25 My drum kit Aux has sends that goes to
drum crush and Fatso,
and that's it, that's all set.
So, whatever my drum balance is
it automatically gets to
all of the parallel stuff
that needs to be there all of the time.
00:44:37 Then on the kick and snare Aux
I have inactive sends to
the drum crush and Fatso,
so that they're ready
to be put in if I want them.
00:44:46 I've also got inactive sends
to the drums dirt
if I want them.
00:44:49 And I've got an inactive send
to the snare reverb if I want it.
00:44:53 Now, all of the sudden with my drums
I never even go to the bus menu.
00:44:58 Every single bit of drum routing
I might ever need to do
is taken care of by the template
and all I need to do is
select my kick track
put it to the kick Aux.
Snare to the snare Aux.
00:45:08 Rest of the kit to the drum Aux.
00:45:09 Make a group of all the audio tracks,
assign it to the drums VCA.
00:45:13 I am done.
00:45:14 I will never do anything else,
housekeeping or
mix routing-wise to my drums.
I'm just listening
and doing balances and
make stuff sound good.
00:45:23 That's the drums.
00:45:25 I mixed a record
not too long ago that had
programming on every song.
I got sick
of making a new VCA for the programmings
so I added one to the template.
00:45:33 That's all there is for programing. Who
knows where it needs to go through?
Percussion. This Aux
is actually kind of a leftover.
00:45:41 I used to put a little bit of Aphex,
which you'll see what that effect is,
percussion all the time. I just did it.
00:45:47 Shakers, congas, they
all seem to benefit from it.
00:45:50 Now I don't like it as much.
00:45:52 So, it doesn't happen as often.
00:45:54 I leave this in the template
because if I ever have
any percussion that does
need a little bit of Aphex
I don't have to set up a send
down an individual tracks
that need to go there.
00:46:02 I can just quickly pop it
into the "Perc 1 Bus",
listen to it, if it's cool leave it.
00:46:07 If it isn't I can go ahead
and take it off.
00:46:10 Also, if I've got let's say congas
on three tracks and I want to do
some overall EQ to the congas.
00:46:16 I can just quickly put the congas
into the percussion Aux
and if I don't like
the Aphex, mute the send
and then now I've got a place
where I can EQ the congas.
00:46:25 It's kind of a placeholder
for doing processing.
00:46:27 And then I've got my percussion VCA.
00:46:30 Then for the rest of the instruments
that usually show up
(bass, keys, guitars)
just have a VCA. There is no processing
that I always do to those tracks
other than sending to
the Rear Buss which we'll look at.
00:46:41 But that gets done from
the individual tracks.
00:46:44 Then we get down into vocal-land.
00:00:00 So before I talk about vocal land,
I wanna skip down and talk about
the rest of my sort of global effects
because we use quite a few
of them in the vocal tracks.
00:00:09 So, right here is an Aux
that has my Aphex on it,
which I mentioned earlier.
00:00:13 This is usually used on vocals
but can be used on percussion
It can be used on anything that needs
a little bit of synthesised top end.
00:00:20 It is an Aphex aural exciter
set to solo up just the process.
00:00:29 There is stuff that happens
inside this plug-in
just due to the process that make
it not completely phase coherent.
00:00:35 But with the amount that I'm using
you'd get the benefit of it
and it doesn't matter,
it sounds fine.
00:00:39 There's not really anything else to say
about the way the plug-in is set up.
00:00:43 But if you send to it,
you'd get some of that top end back
and it goes off to the mix bus.
00:00:47 The next one is the Rear Bus.
00:00:49 Apparently this should be my nick-name.
It's how people know me.
00:00:52 So, this is a multi-mono compressor.
00:00:54 It is an 1176 styled compressor.
00:00:57 It's kind of like the version
of the Blue Stripe
but with a 2:1 ratio
and they've built it as hardware as an
anniversary edition of the original 1176.
00:01:06 So, why not make it new?
And then they said: "Well, we should
model that and make a plug-in of it".
00:01:10 So, they modelled their on
hardware and made a plug-in of it.
00:01:14 I used Blackface 1176s
when I was mixing in hardware.
00:01:17 and I just wanted something
that sounded the same.
00:01:20 This was the closest I could get.
So, that's it.
00:01:22 The gain structure through
the plug-in is pretty straight ahead.
00:01:25 I'm not hitting it very hard
but I've a lot of make-up gain.
00:01:28 My attack is as slow as can be
and the release time is pretty quick
but it's not as fast as
it can possibly be.
00:01:35 The reason for that is if you've
got a very percussive track,
you would actually really
hear this pumping
and you'd hear it grabbing all the
transients and then letting go right way
so this is a little bit smoother.
00:01:45 This is the only control I might
ever look up on the Rear Bus.
00:01:49 If I feel that the Rear Bus is
doing too much to a mix
then I would come in here and quicken up
the release time a little bit.
00:01:56 Sometimes that would fix it.
00:01:57 All of the sudden the mix opens up.
I get a little more clarity
because it's not holding the
compressor down quite as hard.
00:02:02 In a really dense mix,
that can be a problem.
00:02:05 I don't think I would
ever make it slower.
00:02:07 I'm not worried about it being
in time with the track.
00:02:10 There's some much stuff going into this,
it doesn't have time to release
in time with the track.
00:02:14 We're talking micro to
milliseconds here.
00:02:17 We're not talking quarter notes,
eighths notes, sixteenth notes.
00:02:20 So, other than the release time
these controls are set where it sounded
the most like my hardware.
00:02:27 There're not actually set anywhere near
where the knobs were on my hardware.
00:02:31 It's irrelevant.
00:02:32 So, that's the Rear Bus.
It's multi-mono, not stereo.
00:02:35 So, whatever goes in the left side
is compressing the left side,
whatever goes in the right side
is compressing
the right side and that's it.
00:02:41 There's a master fader right below it.
00:02:43 That is turning down the level going
into the plug-in an extra 6dB.
00:02:47 That's because almost everything
in the mix is going here.
00:02:51 This will pretty much,
when I set up a mix,
be on every single instrument in
the session except for the drums
and possibly the bass.
The bass comes and goes
every once in a while I will send
a little bit of the drums to it
just so that it will interact
with the rest of the instruments
but that send will actually
be turned down quite a bit usually.
00:03:12 Whereas, everybody else's
sending is at 0.
00:03:14 So it is a copy of the mix, minus drums
or minus drums and bass.
00:03:18 into this 1176 compressor
and then that get blended back
into the mix pretty loud.
00:03:26 But I'm taking down
the input an extra 6dB
above what I'm taking it down
with the input control in the plug-in.
00:03:32 That's the Rear Bus.
00:03:33 Below that, we've actually have a couple of very, kind of, standard
effects for the first time.
00:03:39 This is a reverb and it's a
placeholder for a vocal reverb.
00:03:43 So, at the moment it has a filter on it to keep the esses out
and to keep the boom out.
00:03:47 I'm filtering the send to a vocal reverb
or at least de-essing the send.
00:03:52 It can often make
the difference between
being able to use a reverb or not.
00:03:55 You'll hear the reverb a little bit
and then an "ess" will hit it
and it explodes
and now it's too much.
00:04:00 And you like the reverb but it's
too much so you turn it down
Why not just not let those esses
into the reverb in the first place?
So I'm doing it with a filter,
you can easily do it with a de-esser.
00:04:09 And actually let's switch
out this reverb now.
00:04:11 I'm gonna re-save my template
when I'm done with this.
00:04:15 So this is what I'll use from now on.
00:04:17 I almost never use this as is,
so let's go to a different UAD
Let's go to the EMT250.
00:04:24 It's hard to know what reverb
is gonna work on a vocal.
00:04:28 It's so dependent on the track.
00:04:30 Usually I use it more
to create a little bit of space.
00:04:34 So, I can actually end up using
something like TrueVerb quite a bit,
which is a Waves' room simulator
as opposed to a reverb.
00:04:40 But I'm gonna go ahead and
set this up 'cos it's nice
and it looks like R2D2
when you see it in person
and I'm gonna sort of randomly
set the settings like this.
00:04:48 So, I'm gonna have no pre-delay.
00:04:51 I'm gonna use outputs 2L, I don't know.
00:04:55 That's the default. Sure, why not?
I'll have my low-end actually times one
'cos I don't wanna have
less reverb on the low-end.
00:05:03 I'm already filtering a little bit.
00:05:04 And set it... 1.8 is a little long,
let's set it to 1.2 seconds.
00:05:08 So, nice and thick
I'm gonna turn off the noise.
00:05:12 Alright, this is how I would start
setting a reverb up in my template.
00:05:15 This could sound terrible.
00:05:17 I have no idea until I start mixing.
00:05:19 So when I start mixing what I'll do,
is I'll tweak the settings
and if I think like:
"Wow, that's a lot better."
I'll save the settings.
00:05:26 Then the next time I import my template
I'll see if my template is better
or those saved settings are better.
00:05:33 And if neither is good
then I'll tweak some more,
save the settings again
and eventually
my saved settings will be awesome.
Then I go back to the template,
recall the saved settings,
re-save my template, done.
00:05:44 Vocal reverb, super exciting.
00:05:47 Slap it's exactly what I said,
it's slap.
00:05:50 So, another filter. Just using
something else to do it.
00:05:53 And then this Bucket Brigade delay.
00:05:56 This is an awesome-sounding plug-in.
00:05:58 It's made by Air, they've made
a bunch of stomp-boxes.
00:06:01 This delay just sounds great to me.
00:06:03 The time on it however
gets tweaked quite a bit.
00:06:06 and the time needs to be
tweaked per song.
00:06:09 And strangely I find that
the slower the song
the shorter the time I want.
00:06:14 Because you sort of hear it more
discreetly when it's slow
because you don't have a lot of impact
from drums happening all of the time,
that kind of thing.
00:06:22 So, this 122 ms time is
some generic setting,
which almost never works.
00:06:27 It's usually either
too short or too long
so it makes me go ahead and tweak
the delay time as soon as I put it in.
00:06:35 Also the send that goes to
that's in my template.
00:06:38 off of both the lead vocal
and the background vocal which we will look out more later.
00:06:42 is at 0. That's way too much of it.
00:06:45 So this way when I put it in,
I hear way too much of it.
00:06:48 I immediately remember
I've gotta tweak the delay time.
00:06:51 And then I come back and
turn the send down.
00:06:53 So, this is a reminder to me
that I need to actually work on
this effect every time I use it.
00:06:58 So, it defaults to not be in at all.
00:07:01 But as soon as I turn the send
on I have too much of it.
00:07:03 Come down tweak the delay time
Close the plug-in, turn down
the send to where I want it
and then that's it, that's my slap.
00:07:11 I've got as a placeholder
down here another delay.
00:07:14 Which is Roland Space Echo
just sometime that Bucket Brigade
it's not what I want.
00:07:19 but usually if
I need something else
I'm gonna purpose-build
it for the session.
00:07:23 I haven't used the Space Echo
in quite a while.
00:07:26 And the slap return is
turned down a little bit.
00:07:28 But, whatever. That's just because
it was always too loud
and I didn't want to have my send
down to -30, so it's a compromise.
00:07:35 I'm gonna skip over the
Serial Vocal Crush for a second
and go to the last of
this sort of effect- effects.
00:07:40 This is a spread
and it is a short delay
and pitch-shift.
00:07:44 At the moment I'm using a Dual 910
The pitch-shift is at 1.01, 1.02
It's driffty, the way
the actual hardware is.
00:07:52 And then 0.997, 0.998
which if you look at the later
Eventide boxes like an H3000
you'd see that as plus, maybe,
7 or 8 cents minus 7 or 8 cents.
00:08:03 This is done in terms of percentage,
here they call it pitch ratio.
00:08:07 But times 100 you actually
get to the percentage,
so, 100% of the pitch
is the exact same pitch
anything above 1%
or 100% would be higher
anything below is lower.
00:08:18 It's just set to manual.
There's nothing crazy going on.
00:08:20 There's no feedback going on.
Is just straight pitch shift.
00:08:23 But the delay is actually a little
bit longer than you might think.
00:08:26 The micro-pitch slap
presets on the H3000
I believe default to 10 and 20 ms.
00:08:33 10ms has been
experimentally found to be
the shortest delay
that a human can perceive
if you put a transient into it.
00:08:42 So, if you put a click
track into a delay
and you have the delay set to 7ms
it really just makes
the click sound a bit longer.
00:08:50 As soon as you get to 10ms, as long
as the level is about the same
you'll all of the sudden start
to hear two discrete clicks.
00:08:57 and then over 10 you'd definitely
hear two discrete clicks.
00:09:01 The only way to hear it discretely
if it's below 10ms
it's to turn the delay up a lot.
00:09:06 If the delayed signal is a lot
louder than the original signal
then you can actually hear
it down to about 2 ms but
you're doing something
you wouldn't normally do in a mix.
00:09:15 You're not gonna have
the delay of your vocal louder
than the vocal itself probably.
00:09:19 Point being, that this is
actually set to 37ms and 58ms.
00:09:23 Those are arbitrary values
but they're longer.
00:09:25 and it's because I like
the slap being very subtle
but I started to wanna
hear it a little bit more.
00:09:32 I wanted it to be more of an effect.
00:09:34 And a really good example
of what this effect sounds like
if you listen to the intro of
"The adventures of rain dance Maggie"
which is a Chili Peppers'
song I mixed.
00:09:44 Right as the song is starting
you hear Josh say
"Alright, take it from the top."
or something like that and I think is on
one of the background vocals tracks.
00:09:51 And I was using Dual910
on his background vocals.
00:09:54 And I loved this "crazy discrete
pitch-shifted" delay sound,
so I just changed my template
to sound more like that
and so far this usually works
with this type of delay.
00:10:06 Normally used on vocals,
just enough to give
the impression of
the vocal being wider
not as something you'd hear a lot.
00:10:14 But it's definitely in there,
is also really good on guitar solos.
00:10:18 So, if you've got
a single amp guitar solo
and up the middle
it just feels a little small
a great way to spread it
out is a tiny, tiny bit of this.
00:10:27 Just below where it starts to chorus
you won't notice that it's there
but if you take it out
all of the sudden
the guitar sounds tiny.
00:10:34 Put it back in: it's like a
little bit of a slap delay
or a room or a spring reverb.
00:10:39 but it does it with
pitch-shift and delay
and it's very wide but very quiet.
00:10:43 It doesn't mess with
the pitch of the solo,
so it's a really good way to help
a solo, kind of, sound special
inside of a group of big guitars.
00:10:50 Then I've got a couple of other plug-ins
on this track that are there if I need them.
00:10:53 Every once in a while I can use
this exact same micro-pitch slap
to make more of... I think
the easiest reference would be
a Deftones vocal effect,
Which is a super-super distorted
stereo sound to a vocal.
00:11:07 Especially on the album...
00:11:08 like: "White Pony"
they've used it quite a bit
So you can hear that sound and it's
a really cool ultra-distorted sound
So, if you try to apply that kind
of distortion directly to a vocal track
you'll have no definition.
You'll have no vocal left.
00:11:21 But if you do it on the send
then it actually will work where you
can have this great stereo distortion
but you also have a clean
vocal in the middle.
00:11:30 So, I've got a Sans-amp sitting here.
00:11:32 Now I know I said before
you can't use this parallel
but this is so effected and it's
blended in at such a low level
that the phase shift between
vocal and the distorted vocal
really it doesn't matter at all.
00:11:43 This is, the actual,
is the preset "screaming lead"
It is all top end.
It's crazy distorted.
00:11:50 But then, because it's so distorted
it is like a massive compressor
and it brings up all the lip smacks and
it brings up all of the breathing
and all the stuff I don't want to have
to go back and chop out of the vocal
'cos that's really really boring.
00:12:03 So, there is another gate here.
00:12:06 And that just allows me
to set this threshold
so the vocals get through
but all the noisy stuff doesn't.
00:12:11 And they're just left there
as a placeholder
in case I want that effect.
00:12:14 I don't do it a lot but when I do,
why would I wanna set it up
from scratch, right?
This brings us to the last
of our parallel processors
that's in the template
and it's the stereo vocal crush.
00:12:25 So this is a stereo compressor
it's actually multi-mono
It's an all-buttons-in 1176,
slowest attack, fastest release.
00:12:32 with the noise turned off.
It's distorted and it's spitty.
00:12:36 and that's what it does but blended in
this is like an aggression knob.
00:12:41 The more of this you have the more
aggressive your vocal would sound.
00:12:45 I will quite often automate
either the return
or the send off of the lead vocal
to have less of this
in the very quiet intro
and then pop it in in the chorus
or bring it up in the chorus.
00:12:55 And it helps keep
the energy level of the vocal
consistent with the track without
drastically changing the sound.
00:13:02 It's really straight ahead. It's exactly
what I used to do in hardware.
00:13:06 Alright, now we're gonna
talk about vocals.
00:13:08 and I'm gonna tell you
about the lead vocal tracks
and I'm only gonna tell you
about the lead vocal tracks
because the background vocal
tracks are exactly the same.
00:13:16 It's just a copy.
00:13:17 So, all of my lead vocal tracks
will get assigned
to a Bus called "Lead Vocals Bus"
like I said before.
That goes into two different Auxes.
00:13:25 The first Aux is just
called "Lead vocals",
and it is quite nothing.
00:13:30 It has a bypassed EQ
in case I want it EQ.
00:13:34 It's got a P hoenix for a little
bit of harmonic distortion,
because that just always
sounds fine on vocals.
00:13:40 So I don't think I ever had to tweak
this or even think about taking it off.
00:13:43 And it's got a tiny bit of RVox on it,
which is just a little
bit of compression.
00:13:48 When I was mixing on a
console, I used to use RVox
on individual vocal tracks quite a bit.
00:13:53 So I've got into the habit of using it,
and this just got into
my template very very early.
00:13:58 I don't know if I need it but it never
seems to hurt so I'll leave it in.
00:14:02 Then that goes down 2dB
just in case I've got a bunch of
tracks making up my lead vocals.
00:14:07 Then that goes to
the lead vocal combiner
which is the 3rd
of our three Auxes
which then goes off
to the mix Bus.
00:14:13 The lead vocals' Bus
also hits the lead vocals' Pultec track.
00:14:18 which in the template is muted.
00:14:19 I start off not using it.
00:14:21 This has a chain
which I've explained in quite
a few mixing videos
but I'm gonna do it
one more time here.
00:14:28 which is basically a copy
of a vocal mixing technique
that was used a lot 80's, 90's, probably
70's given the gear that it was used in.
00:14:38 And it's basically using
the tools available at the time
to mimic what a multi-band
compressor can do.
00:14:45 So, you've got an EQ
into a compressor into another EQ.
00:14:49 The EQ going in
takes away low-end.
00:14:53 So, we're attenuating
4 of 10 at 100.
00:14:57 So, it's basically a very wide bell
sucking out a bunch of hundred Hertz.
00:15:02 Then we're boosting
quite a bit of broad 8k.
00:15:06 So, this is an EQ curve that
will take out any boominess,
or anything like that and it will
boost all of the presence
in the beginning of the air of a vocal.
00:15:14 And it's wide enough
that it's going all the way down
into the intelligibility range
which is that sort of
2.5k to 3.5k range.
00:15:22 It's boosting much more at 8k obviously
but it is boosting some of that range as
well as up into the 10k and 12k air range.
00:15:28 Out of there you go into an LA2A
and you could use
any compressor for this
that has a hi-pass filter
on the side-chain,
but we're in compress mode we're
set for quite a bit of peak reduction
and the key is we've got this knob
which is normally in the back
of the hardware on the LA2A
turned up.
The high frequency knob..
00:15:50 what this is, is saying
I want the detector circuit
to look at more high frequencies.
00:15:55 It's actually a hi-pass filter, so it's
getting rid of low frequencies.
00:15:59 And what this was
originally built for was
to allow you to use an
LA2A as a de-esser.
00:16:04 I don't know that many people
these days who can afford an LA2A
to just use as a de-esser.
00:16:09 But that's why they
did it back in the day.
00:16:11 But what the combination of having this
hugely boosted top end coming into it
is it is crushing the vocal.
00:16:19 The gain reduction meter on this
will most likely be pinned down at -20.
00:16:23 Then you come out of this compressor
and you add back in, quite
a bit of that hundred Hertz.
00:16:29 So, we took out just over four,
whatever that means.
00:16:32 I don't think that's dB
but it's 4 of 10.
00:16:35 And we add back
6 of 10 at 100.
00:16:38 So we're trying to get back most
of the low-end we took out.
00:16:41 And then we're attenuating
a little bit of that 8k.
00:16:44 We don't want to get rid of all of it
because the whole point
was we've now crushed it.
00:16:48 So that 8k isn't as loud
but it's super, super,
super compressed.
00:16:52 What this gives
me is a vocal
that I would never ever
wanna use on it's own.
00:16:57 But it's kind of like having
a three band compressor
with a crossover point set somewhere
around 1k between the low and the mid.
00:17:05 and maybe 8k or 9k between
the mid and the top.
00:17:10 By-passing the compressor
on the high and the top
and compressing the
heck out in the middle.
00:17:16 I did say heck, which is strongly than
hell because I don't use it very often.
00:17:20 So, this is a super-super squashed
mid-range vocal.
00:17:24 On it's own, it sounds terrible.
00:17:28 If you blend it in by unmuting
at -17, all of the sudden,
your vocal sounds more mixed.
00:17:36 It's much easier to understand.
It's much easier to hear in a mix.
00:17:41 So, if I get to the chorus of a song
and the vocal is starting to get lost,
the initial reaction will be:
"Well, turn you vocal up".
00:17:48 But when you do that, let's say you've
got a really quiet verse in the song,
you probably have decent amount
of low-end left in the vocal..
00:17:54 it's present.
If you just turn it up
that low-end is gonna start
fighting with things now.
00:17:59 But if I just pop in this Pultec,
all of the sudden,
I've got this beam of vocal
that is added to the more
natural-sounding vocal
and it's much easier to hear.
00:18:09 So whatever the balance is
of those two tracks
get sent off
the lead vocal combiner
which comes down to this Aux.
00:18:16 This Aux has almost no processing
on it whatsoever.
00:18:19 There's an L2 just set to
keep the top from clipping
but that's all it does
on the way through
and again this is a hold over from
when I was mixing on the console.
00:18:29 because this would normally
feed the D/A
that would come out
to the console directly
You definitely don't want to be clipping
as you go into a D/A.
00:18:36 You're much better off using a limiter
and figuring out how loud you
can be and taking care of it there.
00:18:41 If you send it to the D/A you've
got a super-clipped square wave
whereas with the limiter at least you
have some control over the clipping.
00:18:48 So, that's leftover.
00:18:50 There's also as a placeholder
FabFilter Pro DS,
which is awesome.
00:18:55 I've also been using the new one
that came out through Slate.
00:18:58 It's the Eiosis E2deeser.
00:19:02 So this is, I believe, based off
his original de-esser
but it gives you this
great kind of histogram
of what's going on, the same way
that the FabFilter one does.
00:19:13 The reason I like this is that
the factory default setting
works 99% of the time.
00:19:20 That's when I like a de-esser.
00:19:22 I used to use the Waves deesser all the
time. That also worked really well.
00:19:25 I just cycle through it.
00:19:26 So, pretty soon I probably put
the new one in my template
but at the moment
I'm fine with the FabFilter.
00:19:32 The only thing that
I would sometimes do is
bring this lower
frequency down a bit.
00:19:36 to get more of the "tcha" sound
to trigger the de-esser.
00:19:38 as well as the esses themselves.
00:19:40 But otherwise this just
worked as advertised.
00:19:42 Here is where the sends are
to all of the parallel compression
as well as the vocal effects.
00:19:47 So I start off with a send
to the stereo vocal crush
down about 6dB
(and again "about" 6dB).
00:19:54 It's not that critical.
It just doesn't matter.
00:19:58 That's on, as well as the send
to the Rear Bus.
00:20:00 because this is the vocal sound so this
is what I want to go to the R ear Bus.
00:20:05 As we as the send to the Aphex.
00:20:06 Because I'm almost always
gonna want a little bit of Aphex.
00:20:09 Now it's down pretty far.
00:20:10 Then muted I've got sends
to the vocal verb
which we've just swap out
to be that EEMT250,
to the spread which is our Dual910s,
which could or could not have a
massive amount of distortion on them
and to our slap which is our
Bucket Brigade delay.
00:20:25 Again, this send is down 6
this send is down 10
'cos that's usually
what I wanna use.
00:20:33 It's just level that
I've settled to those points
as I tweaked the template over and over.
00:20:37 and again the slap
that send is up at 0
that's way too much of it because
I wanna remind myself to tweak it.
00:20:43 Then that track goes out to the Mix Bus
and that's it. That's where
it goes to the mix.
00:20:49 Now, I've got other automation
lanes showing.
00:20:52 because I hoped that when you've imported
this track into another session
the track view in terms of
automation lanes would be recalled.
00:21:00 It isn't. So, that's a drag.
I can close these up now.
00:21:04 The reason they're there is because I
will quite often be automating the send
to the spread and the slap if
I've got huge changes in dynamics.
00:21:13 When I'm very very quiet I won't
want the spread or the slap
because they sound a little bit
unnatural when they are exposed.
00:21:19 But as soon as the band kicks in I need
them to give some weight to the vocals
so it keeps up with the track.
00:21:24 But I just have to open up these
automation lanes separately myself.
00:21:28 A reason to have them in a
separate automation lane, though,
is 'cos I wanna see
if it's automated.
00:21:33 I don't wanna have to
look at the send itself
or change a way from volume
to that mute automation because then
I can't see the volume automation.
00:21:41 I wanna know exactly what's going on in
a session just by looking at the screen.
00:21:46 Then I've got my VCA
for my lead vocals.
00:21:48 Then I've got in sort
of an inside-out order
the background VCA
and the background vocals.
00:21:55 The straight one, the Pultec with
the LA2A and then the combiner.
00:21:58 These are identical.
00:22:00 Levels are the same,
everything's the same
except what Buses feed them
and what Buses they go to.
00:22:05 Then they make their
way to the mix Bus.
00:22:07 This brings us to the final
chapter of my template:
The Mix Bus.
00:22:12 I have a Mix Bus master just like I have
for the Fatso and
I have for the Rear Bus.
00:22:18 This is to allow me to take
my beautifully balanced
yet way too loud mix
and fit it through the whole
that is my Mix Bus.
00:22:27 I can turn this down and because
it's a floating point mixer
I'm preserving my balance exactly
and I'm recovering the top of
the waveform as I pull it down.
00:22:36 How much this comes down will
be different on every single mix.
00:22:39 I do it by ear
but when I start show you
the individual plug-ins
I will tell you that I use
the gain reduction meter
on the 33609,
which is first in the chain,
to kind of let me know
"yes, I am in that sweet spot",
because there's a range in
that meter that I'm usually in.
00:22:56 But this is just a placeholder
so that I can do this quickly
and also I don't have to go up and use
let's say a group of all of
the VCAs to turn the mix down.
00:23:05 That would actually change
the sound of the mix
because as the audio tracks come down
the amount of level being sent to the
parallel compressors gets turned down.
00:23:14 The balance would be the same
but the overall level will be different
so the amount of compression
will be different.
00:23:19 I don't want that to happen.
00:23:21 If it feels good,
I want it to continue to feel good.
00:23:25 but just be a small enough
wave form to fit.
00:23:27 That's what that
master fader does.
00:23:29 Then we start hitting the processing.
00:23:31 Like, I said, first Neve 33609.
00:23:34 I use it because I used to use
over here on my console two 2264As
which technically are
the same as the 33609
my experience, they sound
different. I have a feeling
it's because of the power supply.
00:23:47 I'm sure the compression circuit is
the same, 'cos everybody tells me
is exactly the same. But they
tend to sound a little bit different.
00:23:53 The limiter is out.
00:23:54 The threshold is at +10, so
I'm compressing as little as possible.
00:23:59 The ratio is at 1.5 to 1
so I'm compressing as little as possible
based on both
the threshold and the ratio.
00:24:05 My recovery time
is as fast as possible.
00:24:08 100ms and I have got 2dB of make-up gain
just because otherwise it's
really hard to make sure
that the compressor is right for the
song because I loose so much gain
when I pop it in.
00:24:19 This 100ms recovery time is just
what sounds really good
to me on this compressor.
00:24:25 If you go into the auto modes
then you start to sound more
like lots of other compressors
and if you go into these
longer release times
it just doesn't sound good to me.
00:24:34 It's just holding on too long,
it sounds too crushed.
00:24:37 This 100ms has a character to it
that is unlike every other
compressor I've ever used.
00:24:42 I like it, I use it.
00:24:44 I keep expecting that I'm gonna end up
getting rid of this in the template.
00:24:47 but it keeps hanging around,
hanging around and hanging around.
00:24:50 That's my mix compressor.
00:24:53 It's follow by another 670
that is very similar to the drum crush
in terms of getting the
harmonic distortion out of it
but the difference is the
threshold is all the way down.
00:25:05 This is not compressing at all
and I've got the mix
control at 50%.
00:25:09 So you're only getting a little
bit of the harmonic distortion.
00:25:14 I try to get rid of it completely
but I actually like what
it does most of the time
So this stays in, is right
after the compressor.
00:25:20 Very simple.
00:25:21 After that we've got some stereo
processing going on.
00:25:24 both in terms of a mid-side EQ
and it defaults to having
a shelf on the sides
which is 80% or 90%
of your mix
almost everything is in
the sides portion of the mix.
00:25:36 1.3 at 8k
It says 8.01k because again
I just wasn't exact.
00:25:41 I'm never gonna hear the difference.
00:25:42 So, just a little bit of top end
to keep me from having
to make everything brighter.
00:25:46 And then the other thing is
there's a stereo width control.
00:25:49 and it's at 141%, which
would seem quite wide
but that's just what sounds good to me.
00:25:54 Every once in a while
I'll come in and tweak it
but usually this will actually stick
and I kind of work
my mix into the mix bus
'cos I'm always listening to this stuff.
00:26:05 So, that my panning is all set with
that stereo width like that
and it keeps me from having to
hard-pan quite as much maybe
but it also takes care
of that weird ear-pole
when you listen in headphones
to something that's hard-panned
'cos you get some of the out of phase
signal being added back into the right
to make it sound even
further to the left
which gives you a little
bit of level on the right.
00:26:24 More pleasant to listen to.
00:26:25 The only other thing that I sometimes
use on this plug-in is the Bass Shift
It just scoops your mix
it takes out low-mid energy and
adds low frequency energy,
so your apparent levels
stays exactly the same.
00:26:37 But it gives you a bit more sub.
00:26:39 Next in the template is actually
that's relatively recent
I got sent something to mix
and they had this Virtual Channel
and I found that this particular setting
made the kick drum, on
a really dense mix, sound better.
00:26:54 It was actually...
it had a little bit more impact.
00:26:57 So, I just went ahead and
put it in my mix bus template.
00:27:00 I've used it most of the time.
I've almost never used this lift thing.
00:27:05 And I'm not using this
the way it's supposed to be
where you have virtual channels then a
virtual console that you're feeding so..
00:27:10 Not that at all. It's only
in the mix Bus.
00:27:13 And on the other settings it doesn't
really do anything for me.
00:27:15 But this particular setting
so far, I kind of like it
and I keep it around.
00:27:21 Then we have a
happy face EQ on my mix.
00:27:24 Boost at a 100.
Very, very wide boost at 10k.
00:27:27 No attenuation anywhere.
00:27:29 Again this is to keep me from
individually EQ'ing tracks.
00:27:32 This make my console
have a lot of low-end
and be nice and bright.
00:27:36 And that's why on a lot of
my mixes you'll see especially
once you've get passed the drums
there's very little processing
on anything.
00:27:43 The guitars come up
and they are what they are.
00:27:45 I might add a tiny bit of
mid-range or something like that
to bring out the tone
but I'm not having to add
a bunch of top end to stuff
and I really like that.
00:27:54 Last but not least is the limiter.
00:27:56 At the moment the Oxford
limiter is in my template.
00:27:59 The output level is set
to the highest it can be
without the red light coming on,
so that's makes me look like
I know what I am doing.
00:28:05 Slowest attack, fastest release,
that almost always stays the same.
00:28:08 Soft-knee... I don't know. That was just
like a random thing that stayed.
00:28:13 The input gain is down
a quarter of a dB.
00:28:15 Auto-gain is off.
Safe mode is on.
00:28:18 You can read about this plug-in
to see what those do.
00:28:20 Basically, this is just
what sounds best to me.
00:28:23 The reason I'm using the Oxford limiter,
though, is because right here
is a one fader version
of the Oxford Inflator.
00:28:30 For a while the Inflator
was on my template
but then there was a mix where
I thought: "Oh, I want the Inflator".
00:28:35 I said: "Well, let me
put in the Inflator"
and then it goes into another limiter
and then I realized:
"Well, hold on a second"
"The Oxford limiter actually has
it built-in. Let me try that instead."
It worked, it sounded great..
so now that's in.
00:28:48 So, this is the final limiter for my mix
but it's also the Inflator
and 47% enhance curve.
00:28:55 So, this is what corresponds
to the curve knob
on the Inflator plug-in that's
stand-alone.
00:29:01 And that's it, the only
other thing on here
is a placeholder for
a different limiter,
and this is actually
a tape emulation plug-in,
and it has a soft-clip limiter built in.
00:29:10 The limiter itself it sounds fine,
there's nothing wrong with it.
00:29:13 But the reason I leave
this in the session
is because this settings are tweaky
and I can never remember it.
00:29:19 It did start from this preset and
then it got turned into something.
00:29:23 and I did save the preset
but it's less work
to go like this
and bring up a plug-in.
"Ah, switch limiters."
Any other limiter I might wanna hear
I would just go and get it
from the menu, because the settings
themselves are no big deal.
00:29:36 I mean, over the years I've used L2,
I've used the FabFilter Pro Limiter,
I've used the Massey, I've used all
kinds of stuff but at the moment
Oxford is the one
I'm using and who knows?
Talk to me in a week,
that could change.
00:29:51 That is the template.
Alright.
00:29:54 Here's a session that I prepared
earlier by recording it
and it means that I can skip a couple
of things about setting up.
00:30:00 So, basically I was tracking
into the session
No plug-ins at all.
I don't think.. though we'll see
once we get my
mix template imported
and we start to look at the session
in a way that I'm used to looking.
00:30:12 So, this was tracked
in a studio on a console
so you can see that all the tracks
are going to individual outputs. So,
the very first thing I would do
is I would say "save as" and
I've already got a mix session in here.
00:30:23 So, I'm just gonna save it, whatever
but I would normally save it as 01 Mix.
00:30:29 and then I save as 02, 03, 04,
and then if I do anything, like I print
a version to send to the band,
I would call that 05 R1,
there you go, or 05 Mix R1.
00:30:40 Then when I do revisions
it becomes 06 R2.
00:30:43 And then when I actually print
I leave that R number
in the session names
so if let's say R5 is the final mix
then, I would have a session
that was call R5 print.
00:30:54 In that way I know that
R5 is the main mix.
00:30:58 And then now I actually leave the
R number in the mix names themselves,
so I call it R5 main mix,
R5 instrumental mix, R5 whatever.
00:31:06 Because if they make me
do a recall later on
then it becomes 06 main mix,
and there's no question which
main mix is the final main mix.
00:31:15 Never call anything final
and it's always good to have a revision
number that goes along with it
that let's you back track.
00:31:22 There's no reason not to. It's easy.
File names can be long.
00:31:25 So, looking at the session we've
got talkback and click at the top.
00:31:28 which I don't need,
so I'm gonna go ahead
and... I'm actually gonna keep one
of these tracks around
for a reason I'll tell you
about in a second.
00:31:35 So, I'm gonna hide
and make inactive here
I'm gonna make
this click track inactive.
00:31:40 The reason I do this is because
I use an alpha track,
which is a one-fader controller,
most of the time.
00:31:47 I also use the Pro Tools dock
every once in a while
When you enable a controller
or open a session
you're automatically defaulted
to having the first track in
the session be on that fader.
00:31:57 The Alpha track is really small,
and it moves around
and sometimes it's laying on it's side
and sometimes
I bump it with my elbow.
00:32:03 I don't wanna bump the kick track.
00:32:06 So, I leave an inactive track at
the top of the session, these days.
00:32:09 It's just something I started doing
'cos I don't get myself in trouble.
00:32:13 Before I import session data
the only thing that's really important
is that I look at the Buses
I can go ahead and
get rid of unused I/O
if I have let's say 30 tracks
of background vocals
that were all
panned to a stereo output
because they were using a summing amp,
or something like that...
00:32:29 I don't want to loose
the panning information
when I get rid of the Bus
going to the output.
00:32:36 Now, I could just leave it
but I tend to like to clean things up.
So, let's go and clean up.
00:32:42 I'm gonna go ahead and take all of these
guys that are going to other outputs
and get rid of them. That's fine.
00:32:48 I'm gonna rename the bus
that's feeding my main output,
which is 1 and 2.
00:32:53 And I still get something going
to 1 and 2, which isn't ideal
but that's OK, it's probably
something that's hidden.
00:32:59 And there are a lot of Auxes I can see
in the session that are hidden.
00:33:01 I don't really care about those.
00:33:03 So, what I need to do
is fill up the Bus menu
to have 128 Buses
before I import from my template.
00:33:09 Because my used Buses will come in
but at the moment they would
start at around Bus 25.
00:33:14 I don't want that.
00:33:15 I wanted to be where I have 128 Buses
in the first part of the Bus menu
and then I've got all of my
Buses in the second part.
00:33:23 So, I say new path,
new stereo Buses.
00:33:27 Auto-create sub-paths.
00:33:28 And I know that I need to
create 52 new stereo Buses
because I need 104 to make 128.
00:33:35 So, 52 stereo Buses.
00:33:37 Boink! And I can see right here
that I've got 128 active Buses.
00:33:41 This number only shows
internal Buses, which is great
because let's say you get a session
where everything's going
to stereo output
'cos they were using a summing amp
You can come into the I/O setup
and uncheck this output routing box.
00:33:54 Now, all of the sudden those
become internal Buses
and you'll see: "Oh, now you've got
140 internal Buses down here."
Go ahead and get rid of some unused ones
until it's down to 128.
00:34:05 Now you're all set.
00:34:07 So, this is all I need to do
in the I/O setup to be ready.
00:34:11 Say OK.
There's no rough mix.
00:34:14 So, I need to come down here
I'm gonna select my last track
just to make sure
this stuff comes in just
at the bottom of the session.
00:34:20 I'm going to say import session data.
00:34:23 I've saved the template folder
on the side bar of my finder window.
00:34:27 I'm going to use this most recent one.
00:34:30 Select all.
00:34:32 It's all Auxes except for
the one stereo audio track
that has nothing on it.
00:34:36 I need that track
because I don't have
a rough mix in the session.
00:34:39 I don't need any of
my placeholder here.
00:34:42 I'm gonna import everything
'cos there is no play-list to import,
therefore there is no audio.
00:34:46 Nothing is gonna get sample rate
converted. It's fine.
00:34:49 It's all Auxes, masters and VCAs.
00:34:51 Then the only other thing I'm gonna
bring in is the window configuration.
00:34:54 I have one saved window
configuration in my template,
which you'll see
how that works in a second.
00:34:59 Say OK.
00:35:01 Here come all of the tracks that you've
just watch me explain for over an hour.
00:35:06 So, this stuff will import..
00:35:08 and boom! Here are all of the tracks
that you know and
love from my template.
00:35:13 Right?
So, now that everything's imported
the very first thing I'm gonna do
is make use of the one
thing in the template
I didn't actually mention before,
which is a window configuration.
00:35:22 Mention it as we import it.
00:35:24 It's the only one in the session.
It's call "mixing".
00:35:26 And all it does is it sets up
the edit window the way I like it,
which is all 10 inserts,
all 10 sends, comments window
and the I/O pane showing.
00:35:38 It also scrolls the divider between
the groups and the tracks up a bit
so I can see all of the groups.
00:35:43 Because quite often there are a lot
of groups in the session already
and I'm about to create a bunch
so I like to see them.
00:35:48 The basic idea
of the mix configuration
is it just makes the top of
the edit window here show
absolutely everything, which I like and
it makes it show all
of the inserts and sends,
which is how I mix without
ever going to the mix window.
00:36:00 So, I've imported everything
from the template
and it lives all the way down at the
bottom of the session for a little bit
because there's one more thing I need
to do before I disperse this stuff,
is I need to make new groups
that will then get assigned
to the VCA.
00:36:13 So, the first thing I'm gonna do is
bypass groups while I'm doing this.
00:36:16 And I've got the edit window
and tracks selection linked
so that when I select anything
in the edit window you
can see the highlight
for the track name coming.
00:36:25 This is the quickest way for me
to select all of the tracks
I want to assign to a group.
00:36:29 Make a new group called All Drums.
In this particular case
because there's most likely
a group called Drums already
but that's the group that
was done while recording
so it has something to do with recording
or the rough mix or something like that
and I want a brand new group to
be what's assigned to my VCA.
00:36:47 So, I put the word "All" in front.
00:36:49 All Drums assigned to Drums.
00:36:52 Done.
00:36:52 I don't have any programming,
so the next thing down is bass.
00:36:56 All Bass and assign it to
my VCA called Bass.
00:37:00 Done. There's also no percussion
so I skip that
and I will get rid of it in a second.
00:37:04 This is such a simple little
session, which is awesome.
00:37:07 Group
All Guitars
Guitars.
00:37:15 Alright, so here are all of our keys..
00:37:21 and assign that to "keys".
00:37:24 Then I'm gonna do something
which may seem counter intuitive.
00:37:27 Because I'm gonna make
group of one track
called All Lead.
00:37:30 Well, that's because I need the
VCA to control the lead vocal.
00:37:34 The only way to do that is to
have the VCA assigned to a group.
00:37:36 You can't assign it
to something individually.
00:37:39 What's good about this also
is it creates a group in case
let's say I wanna make a vocal effect
by copying the vocal track
and having a little bit of audio on there
sent off to a reverb
or something like that.
00:37:50 Then I can just add it
to the old lead group
and it's affected by the lead VCA.
00:37:55 And we do not have a background VCA. So,
coming down here to everything
that came in from my template
I've got the programming,
percussion, that can go away.
00:38:05 We do have bass and keys.
00:38:07 We don't have background.
00:38:08 So, I'm gonna select all these tracks
and just hide them
and make them inactive.
00:38:13 Leave them in the session just
'cos it doesn't cost me
anything to do it.
00:38:17 Then the next thing I do is
I actually take these tracks
and distribute them because
what that's gonna do for me
is give me visual dividers
as I'm actually working on the mix.
00:38:25 So I will drop this below the groups
of instruments that they control.
00:38:30 So the drums pick up all at once.
00:38:32 These guys I will disperse this way
so, leave the keys behind here.
00:38:40 Leave guitars there.
00:38:42 Bass here.
00:38:43 And then my vocal is sitting
on top of the vocal track
which is exactly how I like it.
00:38:47 So I don't have to move anything there.
00:38:48 What this gives me is as
I'm scrolling through the session.
00:38:51 I find a yellow thing
it's got a name that's easy
to read from far away
and I know all of my drum
tracks are above this.
00:39:00 Now I'm gonna further
disperse the drum stuff.
00:39:02 and I'm gonna do this while
I actually start assigning outputs.
00:39:05 So, I'm gonna take my kick Aux
and put it below my kick track.
00:39:09 I'm gonna take this "talkback"
track and move it down
'cos I don't like that being first.
I want my kick first.
00:39:15 Now I can actually start assigning
stuff. I'm gonna assign...
00:39:18 Uh look, it's all my Buses
in the Bus B menu.
00:39:22 Kick stuff to the kick Aux.
00:39:25 Take my snare drum, bring it up here.
00:39:29 Snare tracks to the snare Aux.
00:39:33 Super exciting, I know, eh?
Then all of the rest
of my drum tracks.
00:39:39 Directly to the drum Aux.
00:39:42 Not only have I just
assigned my audio
so it goes through here in case
I want to EQ the kick over all
or the snare overall, whatever.
00:39:49 It also now have active sends
of the kick and the snare
to the kick-snare crush here,
and the drum crush and the Fatso here,
and then those go off to the mix Bus.
00:39:59 I don't have sends to Devil-Loc active
or the snare reverb
or anything like that.
00:40:04 What I'll do is if I decide later
to use the snare reverb
that is when I will drag
the snare reverb up
and put it in the mids
of my snare tracks.
00:40:14 'Cos that way I know
whether is used or not
just by where it lives in the session.
00:40:18 So, for the moment I'm not using it,
I'm gonna leave it.
00:40:21 Toms is the same way.
00:40:23 I'm gonna go ahead and move the toms
because let's assume that
I'm gonna use the tom Aux
if only, just for the send
of the reverb.
00:40:31 And I'm gonna re-assign
my rack and floor to "Toms".
00:40:37 Now, the toms go into
the toms' Aux here
and they come out into the drums kit.
00:40:42 So, the send off to the drum
crush and the Fatso,
is done by the drum kit Aux,
which the toms eventually make it to
it just happen to do a round
through the toms' Aux on the way.
00:40:52 But I know I'm using it because
I've dragged the toms' Aux
and the toms' verb
right below the toms.
00:40:58 Which makes me be able
to find them quickly too.
00:41:00 If I need to re-edit the toms
and do something to them,
there they are.
00:41:03 So, now my drum stuff is distributed
and my other VCAs are distributed
and that's it. I'm actually
ready to mix now.
00:41:11 The only other thing
I would usually do
is: let's say I've decided the bass
is gonna go to the Rear Bus.
00:41:17 I'll just select all the other tracks,
assign them to the mix Bus,
'cos that's where they're
gonna go eventually
and it's always on the top of my B menu,
and then I'm gonna take the last send
and assign it to the Rear Bus.
00:41:34 Done.
00:41:35 I'm now listening through
all of my 2-Bus processing.
00:41:38 I have all of the instruments except for
the drums going into the Rear Bus.
00:41:42 I have the drums except the kick
and snare going into the Fatso.
00:41:45 And the drum crush and I have the kick
and snare going to the kick-snare crush.
00:41:48 I've now done 90% of my audio routing
and this will sound like my mix.
00:41:54 Now, you might also be thinking:
"Wow, you're doing
a whole lot of processing...
00:41:57 ...off the bat without
listening to anything."
That's OK.
00:42:01 My template has been tweaked
to the point where
I'm going to use the kick-snare crush
on the kick and snare.
00:42:06 So, why EQ the kick without hearing
what it's gonna actually sound like?
Let's have it go through
the kick-snare crush.
00:42:12 Let's have it go through
the 2-Bus processing.
00:42:15 Even though I'm gonna start off
by listening to one track
I'm listening to it through my console
and my console happens to
have a lot of stuff going on.
00:42:23 That's it. At this point I would
actually start listening
and I would be mixing listening
through this track at the bottom
which is routing my 2-Bus
out to the monitors.
00:42:33 Et voila.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Equipment & Software
Avid BBD Delay
Avid Dyn3 Expander Gate
Avid Dyn 3-Revibe II
Avid EQ3 7-band
Avid Lo-Fi
Brain Worx bx Digital V3
Eiosis E2 Deesser
Fab-Filter Pro-DS
iZotope RX 5 Connect
iZotope RX 5 Monitor
iZotope Trash 2
McDSP Filter Bank F202 EQ
Phoenix III
SansAmp PSA-1
Slate Virtual Mix Rack
Sonnox Oxford Limiter
Sound Toys Devil-Loc
Sound Toys Little Micro Shift
UAD EMT 140
UAD EMT 250
UAD Fairchild 670
UAD Fatso
UAD H910 Dual Harmonizer
UAD Neve 33609
UAD Pultec EPQ 1A
UAD Roland RE-201
UAD UA 1176 AE
Waves Aphex Vintage Exciter
Waves CLA 76
Waves CLA_2A
WavesDBX 160
Waves L2
Waves Puig Child 670
Waves PuigTec EQP 1A
Waves Rvox
This template is available for Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, Ableton and Studio One.
Andrew Scheps is a music producer, mixing engineer and record label owner based in the United Kingdom. He has received Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album for his work on Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium, Album Of The Year for Adele's 21, and also Best Reggae Album for Ziggy Marley's Fly Rasta.
Andrew started as a musician, but found that what he enjoyed most was working behind the scenes. This led him to study recording at the University of Miami. After graduating, he spent some time working for Synclavier, and then on the road with Stevie Wonder (as a keyboard tech) and Michael Jackson (mixing live sound). But he found his home in the studio, and he honed his craft working for producers such as Rob Cavallo, Don Was and Rick Rubin.
Andrew collaborated with Waves in order to create his own line of plug-ins which include the Scheps 73 EQ and the Scheps Parallel Particles.
Andrew is one of the best known mixing engineers in the world, well-known for his Rear Bus mixing techniques that he developed working on his 64 input Neve 8068 console and his love for distortion of any kind. If you are watching pureMix videos you will see that he managed to carry his analog sound signature over to a fully portable digital rig. These days, Andrew mixes completely In The Box as it allows him much greater flexibility and the ability to work on several project simultaneously.
Andrew has collaborated with Waves in creating his own line of plug-ins which include the Scheps Omni Channel, Scheps 73 EQ and Scheps Parallel Particles.
Parts of this site and some files are only accessible to pureMix Pro Members or available to purchase. Please see below our membership plans or add this video to your shopping cart.
is there a way to rewind or see what time in the video you are at currently?
Carlos67
2018 Aug 02
Hi - template looks great, but i cannot find any tracks - shouldn't there be some?
Please advise!
many thanks!
isra.m
2018 Jun 13
There will be translation in Spanish for this video?
deguello
2018 May 31
I found them...
deguello
2018 May 31
Nice work! Very informative. Where can the template be downloaded?
Plantroot
2018 May 25
@AScheps - Hello Andrew! Firstly I would like to thank you for sharing this routing logic; I am finishing my new album soon and its all because of how much this logic improved my mixes! I have some fast questions: 1- how hard do you usually hit the REAR BUS compressor (GR wise - an aproximation); 2- how hard do you usually crush the vocals with the vocal crush compressor (GR wise - this is probably a stupid question - I personaly adjust it until it breathes, combined with the dry one, but I am really curios about the Rear Bus one). I can't thank you enough for all your shared ideas!
shanegrush
2018 May 11
@AScheps — Thanks for sharing your concepts. Between yourself and M. Brauer I really enjoy the creative brainstorm behind processing mixes.
[Q] I’m curious how you process stems for final delivery. I imagine the rear buss and any shared parallel compression change when doing stems for a label, etc. Could you elaborate on how you do your final file delivery?
Thank you, Shane
bbilstrup
2018 Mar 27
What an awesome video. A big question I have is the the various “Master” bus/faders you have that you use to control how hard audio hits a bus with plugins - are they just an extra bus then routed to the actual FX bus? I’m using studio one and when I loaded the Scheps template they weren’t there. So am I right to assume to creat them manually and reroute stuff.
ZachV
2018 Mar 26
Beginner here, I'm confused. how do you mix without audio files? Where are the audio files supposed to go in the template? working in Logic
dnelpuremix
2018 Mar 17
Incredibly helpful video. I feel my mixing has improved dramatically already. One question: Do you send your global effects returns to the rear buss as well? It looked to me like you didn't have them sent there, but could be wrong. If not, is there a reason for this? Thanks.
fddeschened
2018 Mar 11
Fantastic video! For me it was like the lights coming on. Been through it several times and trying it out on old mixes from ground up.... incorporating my own "go to" routing & processing into creating my own template. Suddenly mixing feels three dimensional! Question: Do you assign the Snare and Kick Auxes to your All Drums master fader group? If you don't then you can't solo your drums with the Drums master fader unless you set them as solo-safe. Which of your template tracks do you add to the fader groups you create? Enjoyed this video immensely!
elmano
2018 Jan 26
I would like to see an update on the template after brining out the scheps omni Channel.
Rymsha
2018 Jan 16
I am using the logic pro template and I have imported a number of audio tracks and the meters obviously show there's sound but it's totally muted. Is there something I need to do?
Plantroot
2017 Dec 27
Have a quick question. I see that the Lead Vocal Combiner is sending to the Rear Buss with +12 db. Is that intentional and if yes, what is the rational behind it?
mic stein
2017 Dec 19
I double the question that was asked weeks ago: In part2 at 16:43 regarding the Lead Vox Pultec chain, you say that you attenuate 8K after it has been boosted in the first instance of EQP-1a. Afaik the attenuate knob on the Pultec works only together with the attenuate select switch to the right of it, which is set to 10K in the vid. As a result not 8K is attenuated as selected on the KCS-knob, instead 10 K gets attenuated. as selected on the "Atten sel"-switch.
merrick3
2017 Nov 14
Great tutorial . My question is when you print your track you are using the sonnex limiter but if you are going to have a track mastered should you not run a limiter while printing the track to the print track?
powerchord
2017 Oct 23
@ASheps Awesome tutorials and template, so useful. Question: I’m using the ProTools stock template and there appears to be some level distortion on few of the EQ plugins on the Master Buss. Is that intentional? Thanks in advance :)
andré.m
2017 Oct 05
@J.k..l looks like you did a better job than me.
j.k..l
2017 Sep 26
Has anyone who uses Sonar determined what would correspond to a VCA. I have everything else fairly well translated, though it has taken some time, but everything I have tried so far actually runs audio through a buss or aux when trying to get a master volume type control. Thanks.
Rockfish
2017 Sep 25
Hi Andrew, I managed to translate the template to Cubase and it all works fine, there's just one thing I don't completely get: if you route your audio tracks to the corresponding VCA's and adjust those VCA's to make your final balance, aren't you changing the sound as a consequence of the changing level of the audio tracks being fed to the parallel buses?
merrick3
2017 Sep 08
My question is do the instruments get bused to the AUX channels and still have out put or is the output of the audio going directly to the appropriate buss?Another question would be do you individually process each track with EQ compression or what you like ?
andyliszewski
2017 Sep 06
@AScheps Thank you for this and Ziggy tutorials! Regarding the mix bus, some plug-ins recommend -18 dB as the sweet spot for input level. In order to follow that rule, I'm tempted to use a gain staging plug-in (equivalent to your router track) before my master bus chain to get signal down to -18 dB, not increase the output at any stage between mix bus plug-ins, so signal passes through each plug-in at the sweet spot, and then use another gain staging plug-in after to increase the overall output. You seem to hit the mix bus at -10dB, then your chain boosts up to -6dB. Should I worry about it?
jay.s
2017 Aug 13
I like the idea of the Mix Buss Fader... which is on Protools. Is it possible to have the same on Logic X?
tvpnyc
2017 Aug 07
I still don't see how the "Rear Buss" is properly being used... as a random send here and there? I'm a bit baffled... I thought everything went thru the "RB" except your drums... Did I misunderstand?
Thanks of your assistance in advance.
TV
Graeme K Hodge
2017 Aug 01
Hi, I'm using Logic X and I'm trying to drag Audio files from the Audio Bin into Andrew's template. The files will NOT drag. I'm at a loss here. I can drag them into my normal template but not Andrew's. What am I missing? BTW I've only used Logic X for a couple of hours so it's probably Operator Error... Thanks to any kind soul for heading me in the right direction...
Hindscarl
2017 Jul 22
Hi Andrew. Great stuff! I was curious how much gain reduction you tend to use on the Neve 33609 on the master buss router?
AScheps
2017 Jul 18
@Smcner12, it all depends on your DAW, but a very important part of the gain structure in Pro Tools is the “Mix Buss” Master Fader in the template. This allows you to take your really loud, great sounding balance with all the parallel stuff and change the level going into the mix buss processing without affecting the sound at all. For me that can be down as much as 10 dB to get the sweet spot through the master chain.
Smcner12
2017 Jul 17
Hi Andrew, this video was incredible. The only issue I’m having is that when I apply the template and follow the tutorials such as “Bang Bang” and “Young and Wild”, I’m hitting the rear buss at the right level but my mix seems to hit either the digital V3 or the Puig Child in the wrong way (even though the levels seem on point with the tutorials) and I’m hearing audible clipping. Any suggestions?
TCawoski
2017 Jul 08
Thanks Andrew for another great video!!! Can't wait to apply what I've learned to my mix projects.
TRP777
2017 Jul 05
Thank you Mr. Andrew for sharing your well organize workflow!
Animesh Raval
2017 Jul 03
Dear Andrew, thanks so much for that walk through it very enlightening! I was wondering about the limiter on your 2-buss? Is this to give clients a loud mix to listen to? Would you pull down the overall level to something like -6 dBfs before sending it to mastering?
mbautista
2017 Jul 01
Does anyone know why the master faders in the Pro Tools template aren't replicated in the Logic template? Or did I miss something?
Mattso63
2017 Jun 13
This is fabulous! Though I had to create my own template for the Reaper DAW! But can anyone tell me if Andrew's rear bus is simply used to provide parallel compression for the whole mix (excluding drums which are on their own bus) which goes to the mix bus, or is it used as a single aux going to the mix bus together with drums, and the remaining tracks and aux's are funnelled through it?
cmw@grapevine.com.au
2017 Jun 01
Ha! To be honest I had no effing idea what the hell he was on about - and yet I do mixing - how is this possible - well I just do very basic simple stuff of course - But this just opened my eyes to a whole realm of possibilities, so I loved it and learned a lot just by the few bits I did catch on to - thanks !
TheHardrockeur
2017 May 29
Bonjour, à quand un version sous titrée en français? Merci.
G.MICHAELHALL
2017 May 25
@ASheps- Thanks mate. That's kind of where I arrived at with it, and it does feel like the right thing to do [at times]..
Implementing your approach has remarkably improved my work and confidence, it's really not possible to thank you enough, I'm really enjoying my mixes for the first time ever. If anyone is interested, I tried very gentle, sharp kiss of the oek in front of the rear bus compressor and that felt like it cleaned any harshness build up quite transparently. YMMV
Be well Andrew and thank you to Ben and PureMix for all they do , regards, gene
AScheps
2017 May 25
I will sometimes High Pass before the compressor or suck out nasty mid range after the compressor, but only if it's bugging me.
G.MICHAELHALL
2017 May 25
@ASheps - Hi Andrew, I'm curious if you ever find a need or desire to make any EQ moves at all on your Parallel bus ? Thanks again for sharing all this information with us, be well-Gene
benlindell
2017 May 18
@johnlandi - There aren't supposed to be any audio files included, it's just a template session. I believe the files it's looking for were ones used to test the routing and sound of the translated session done by the pureMix Staff
johnlandi
2017 May 18
Hi Everyone, Andrew, when I open your Template in Logic Pro X, it says that there are audio files e.g. a guitar, etc. but I can't find them and they didn't download with the Template. Any idea of how to download them? Thanks, Emerson
joshcharles
2017 May 17
How do you apply the template step by step in LOGIC PRO X?
HideNseekProductions
2017 May 16
That's why he's a pro!
owenlt
2017 May 16
For a channel to be called a "drums crush", shouldn't it, you know, *crush* the drums? Think the Fairchild channel, with its "about 4 dB of reduction" should be relabelled "tasteful drums buss"! (All kidding aside, Andrew's tutorials are among the most insightful, instructive videos in existence. )
kaufmanne
2017 Apr 25
Et Voilà !! ! Merci, Thank You :-)
DarkLorD
2017 Apr 24
Hey Andrew, you are the man! Thank you so much for taking the time, explaining everything so well. Great learning experience. One question: Is there any other tape emulation plugin that you would use if the Phoenix II would not be available anymore? UAD Oxide or any of the other two UAD tape simulators for example? Thanks in advance for any advice on this!
STNKNMNK
2017 Apr 23
Last night I set up the same plug ins and settings on UAD Apollo Twin / UAD plugs in Logic and ran one of my sessions through it. It was really great to see what that Pultec "smiley" face adds to the end result.
Rather than immediately rush to using the templates provided I would suggest watching re-watching the video and building your own up step by step will allow you to assimilate the concepts and ideas being presented. I love the transcript and Chapters features btw. Top work everyone involved. Great video and sound. Great information clearly dispensed. What more can you want?
Slowlearner
2017 Apr 22
What a phenomenal man! Question: did I understand correctly, Andrew uses the Master Buss fader to turn down a mix when it's getting too hot? I was always told that the 2 buss should remain at unity gain and left untouched. Any clarification on this would be much appreciated!
mhammond@cdassembly.com
2017 Apr 21
Interesting video, but it seems odd that there are no audio stems with this product. Also, I'm a Cubase user and the video seems really more for Pro Tools users (ie routing, configurations, etc.). Because Cubase is a different animal, I'm not sure how some of this translates to my DAW. The Cubase template that comes with this (using stock plug-ins) is meh. Relatively speaking, this is kind of expensive for what you get. YMMV.
Han Luis Cera
2017 Apr 20
Any chance a Logic 9 version of the Template is added to this? I've now paid for the video, but cannot use the template!
benlindell
2017 Apr 19
Heads up everyone - The template files do not contain audio files, the logic template may accidently reference some audio that we used to test the template but otherwise these are blank sessions for you import into your projects
holcombe_gd
2017 Apr 19
Should we be expecting some audio files? The Logic template is looking for 9 wav files in /Users/fab/Dropbox (fab)/**pureMix Online/Sheps Template Project/Logic Template/Andrew Scheps Template for PM.logicx/Media/Audio Files
LuLuMaster
2017 Apr 19
Salut à Tous,
J’ai un petit problème avec le template A. Scheps pour Cubase. Une partie des fichiers du template sont manquants et lorsque je tente d’ouvrir une session, j’ai ce prompt de Cubase :
Fichiers manquants :
/Users/fab/Dropbox (Fab)/**pureMix Online/Sheps Template Project/Cubase Template/Audio/Bass.wav
/Users/fab/Dropbox (Fab)/**pureMix Online/Sheps Template Project/Cubase Template/Audio/BGVs.wav
... ???
melohead2
2017 Apr 18
template ...no stems??????
AScheps
2017 Apr 18
Hi rvoznyuk, The reason there are no SPP plugins (or Scheps73s for that matter) in the template is that I generally use them as inserts directly on individual audio tracks. They are added on a case by case basis as I'm mixing. The mixing videos show my process in using those types of plugins, keeping in mind that the mixes we shot videos for were done before SPP was finished. Thanks, Andrew
rvoznyuk
2017 Apr 17
Andrew, this is beyond awesome, because I've always wanted to adapt your mixing approach!! So, thank you so much!!
However, I'm not seeing you use any Waves Parallel Particles plugins in your template.... and in a recent Q&A video with Ben Lindell, you answered "of course I use it..." to a question whether you use your own WPP plugin. So, was this plugin meant for folks who want to adopt your parallel processing approach without the hassle of setting up routing? Maybe you don't have it in your template because you're used to the way you have it setup?
Just wondering :)
olamas
2017 Apr 11
Over the top video. Thanks.. Are there Audio files missing for the Cubase template?
Glaca
2017 Apr 07
This is why I love internet. Watched and implemented a few things to my hybrid set up. Huge thank you Master ! Simplicity is the key. Logic Pro here...I wonder why I used the fuckin mixer. Being in arrange window is way more efficient.
JoiAsm
2017 Apr 06
Incredibly generous and helpful insight into this artists workflow. Thank you very much.
Chrisdmcc
2017 Apr 06
On second viewing this is a guy who can do amazing mixes in his sleep and this is really just cutting down on timescales.
The key is to make quick and good decisions!
TalusT
2017 Apr 06
Q for Andrew or Fab: with the rear buds parallel compression, won't this get screwed if you have any processing on the Mix Buss? Should you not send it straight to the main out and bypass the Mix Buss in case you want to do any processing there?
TalusT
2017 Apr 04
Totally awesome. I'm going to build these principles into my own Cubase template tonight. Thanks puremix thang.
That last word should've been "team" but I left it because it's a funny autocorrect that sort of works.
lukanofficial
2017 Apr 04
Great Video but please help with this confusion:
I'm trying to transform this into ableton but am confused as to what would a VCA equate to in ableton? Will it be a group? If yes then do certain aux's like the Kick or Snare or Drum Kit Aux comes inside that group(VCF) or outside the group?
JonCar_202
2017 Apr 03
Was wondering if their was gonna be an Ableton Temp.?Many thanks!
mike_strong
2017 Apr 02
This Video is probably the "A Brief History of Time" of Audio Engineering.
LazyOldSun
2017 Apr 02
I was hoping you would offer something like this as I've been experimenting with different routing/template ideas. Big improvement now that the videos are in HD, much easier on the eyes. Keep up the great work!
composermikeglaser
2017 Apr 02
This is such a useful tutorial! Having a working template makes setup fast and systematic, thank you everyone at PM and thank you Andrew for another killer video.
bataleo
2017 Apr 01
Thanks Fab, thanks Andrew!
Chrisdmcc
2017 Apr 01
Video is great and very informative - the tracks however appear to be missing from the download?
G.MICHAELHALL
2017 Mar 31
@zoffmeister My apologies for being so abrupt..I guess I was so stoked to have the ethos behind the template and saw that as the crown jewel of the tutorial that was so valuable, any effort to transpose to a different DAW seemed a small price to pay in return. I will say, I think it is of great benefit to manually go through the process of re-creating the template, it helps lock in the thought behind the ideology that fuels the template. it must have taken years to settle on his own core template, even if it gets modded periodically based on content mood or pushing for more from his core temp
G.MICHAELHALL
2017 Mar 31
@Fabulous Fab- Though it is a shame that you don't have staff that know these other DAW's really well, your'e so correct that it would be near impossible to transpose templates across every DAW when they do not all share EG: identical signal flow/routing. Some of those DAW's do not implement d/VCA 's for example, and the differences between DAW's range from subtle to bizarrely different. I transposed this template to Sonar/Reaper but the differences make it difficult to share w/o it's own tutorial, it may have taken me 6-7 hours but it was easily doable, the philosophy of flow was the key.
jkerr
2017 Mar 30
This video is outstanding. The template download puts it over the top. Being able to download the exact template used is vey helpful. It is nice to be able to open it up and look at settings, plugins and routing. I think this is one of the best videos on the site. Great job!
mataran
2017 Mar 28
Thank you so much Andrew! Not only you provided us with a fantastic template but sharing your experience on how you came to all this is so great! Hats off Master Scheps!
guillaume92
2017 Mar 28
Hi; I was wandering about the use of the limiter at the end of his master buss. Does it mean that its mix is supposed also to be a master? Or is it set for a kind of mix polish?
zoffmeister
2017 Mar 28
Can someone tell me regarding the Vocal Pultec trick. Andrew uses the Waves LA-2A with it's sidechain filter. I have the UAD LA-2A which doesn't have this feature. Is the sidechain filter essential for this trick to work and so will my attempt to emulate this fail?
Crusty
2017 Mar 27
Please.. Italian subtitles!!!!! Thanks.
thechaseryan
2017 Mar 27
For years Ive seen and worked with mix engineers like Andrew who record mixes internally instead of using the bounce to disk option. Everyone seems to have the same answer when I ask why. They say "It just sounds better". Is there a technical reason for doing this?
moreau_david
2017 Mar 27
Quick questions: What makes you/him use sometimes the UAD version of a plugin vs. the Waves. You've explained the DBX160. The 1176, you like your Rear bus with the 2:1 ratio which doesn't exist on the CLA-76, but why switch to the Waves one instead of just recalling the same plug and changing the ratio. Same for the EQP1A, or the Fairchild/Puigchild 670.
Is it just to get different vibes from the modeled piece of hardware?
Thanks!
Fabulous Fab
2017 Mar 27
Also, as far as 'every major daw' is concerned. We made templates for DAWs that we use, own and see in action everyday in pro-studios around the world. We are not personally familiar with Sonar, Reaper, Pyramix, Bitwig, DP, Samplitude, Tracktion, Acid, Ardour, FLStudio or the many, many others.
It does not mean that they are not great, I'm sure they are, it just means that we not able to make a template that is worth its salt in those daws and be authoritative on how to work with it. If you are and you want to share your template with the pureMix community, please do so. It'd be badass.
Fabulous Fab
2017 Mar 27
Hi guys. Just a couple clarifications: we debated whether or not to include other daw templates or even a protools stock-plugin template with the tutorial since the whole point of the the tutorial is for you to build your own template based on Andrew's principles. We went ahead to save you time. It took a while and it cannot be perfect. The daw's various implementations make it almost impossible to achieve, let's not even discuss plugin selection.
So, these daw templates are to be considered examples of how Andrew's template could be adapted.
bgrichting
2017 Mar 27
Fantastic stuff, lots of experience in this vid, thanks so much for sharing.
I do have a question: In part2 at 16:43 regarding the Lead Vox Pultec chain, you say that you attenuate 8K after it has been boosted in the first instance of EQP-1a. Afaik the attenuate knob on the Pultec works only together with the attenuate select switch to the right of it, which is set to 10K in the vid. As a result not 8K is attenuated as selected on the KCS-knob, instead 10 K gets attenuated. as selected on the "Atten sel"-switch. Or did i misunderstod something?
moose666
2017 Mar 27
oh oh. It's on the way :-D
moose666
2017 Mar 26
Great stuff but sadly no template for cubase :(
leojobst
2017 Mar 26
please reaper guys here
chris.massa
2017 Mar 26
Super. A ton of info at lightning speed. I will defiantly watch this one again.
owenlt
2017 Mar 26
Ah ha! So, would I be right in thinking that the parallel vocal chain of: high-boosted/low-cut EQ into an LA2A into a low-boosted/hi-cut EQ is very much the same as the parallel vocal Fab did in the recent live-stream mix using a ProQ2 into an LA2A and back to a ProQ2, with similar settings? (I wondered about that when I watched the live-stream; I'm guessing the twin appearances of this technique, previously unseen on Puremix, is not a coincidence?)
zoffmeister
2017 Mar 26
Hi G Michael. Looks like you missed the point of what was being said here. We are not whining about the template not being available for our DAWs, if you see what I said you'll notice i said it is better to study this tutorial and build yours from scratch rather than having it handed out on a plate. My point was merely based on the fact that the promotional email for this tutorial clearly stated templates for ever major DAW. It should have said 'several major DAWs'. Besides, there's a clear issue with receiving somebody else's plugin filled template. We all have different plugin collections.
Willdrummoore
2017 Mar 26
Great tutorial so far. I have a huge question about the Snare Verb track. I notice the mono busses don't show up when trying to assign to a stereo track. During the I/O setup Andrew had the snare verb set as a mono bus. The snare verb return, which is stereo, is shown having the Snare Verb as it's input. I am having issues with this input as it isn't appearing for me due to it's mono nature chosen in I/0 Bus setup. I would appreciate any feedback.
Thank You!
G.MICHAELHALL
2017 Mar 25
Fantastic tutorial Andrew, I'm not getting why some people are whining about not getting a template for their favourite DAW handed to them. IMHO, if you really want to take on board all that this guy is trying to share, harden up [you sissies] and make it yourself. It might take a day but FFS, he is handing it to us, all one needs to do is transcribe it into a preferred DAW.
Thanks Andrew, for sharing this template which no doubt took you a lifetime to arrive at.
xx
zoffmeister
2017 Mar 25
Hi Steve2K2
Not getting the template for SONAR, which was never going to happen, is not a problem. It's a blessing. Creating it from studying this video will be a great learning process rather than having it handed on a plate and then not really knowing why things are set up as they are.
jedrickj
2017 Mar 25
That was super interesting and BAD ASS!!!!
steve2k2
2017 Mar 24
Hear hear, Zoffmeister. Sonar always gets the shaft. Thanks for the tutorial though, it's really good. Just wish I could use it with Sonar.
benlindell
2017 Mar 24
Hey guys just a heads up - the Ableton and Cubase templates are on their way, give them a few days. Unfortunately no one in the pureMix crew owns or knows how to operate Reaper, if someone wants to adapt this to Reaper we can add it to the downloads :)
Anthonylnavarro
2017 Mar 24
Love this tutorial! I been wanting to update my old template for ever and I found the perfect template to start with. Great job Andrew! Frontloading all the hard decision making stuff early on to focus on what really matters is an amazing work style to practice. It definitely helps to stay focused and in the flow when working. And with mixing especially, this is going to speed up my work time!
SofaKING
2017 Mar 24
Great tuto, like always....! There is just one thing that I'm troubled with, since his mix hit 0dB, if it has to go to a mastering engineer, what do we have to do ? Bypass the maximizer/oxford and just lower the last eq/pultec output to hit -6dB, or it just doesnt matter since it's just a level issue, so it's the mastering engineer that will do it himself ? Sorry if it's stupid questions ;p
Rusty Falcon
2017 Mar 24
Awwwww no love for the Reaper!
RichieF
2017 Mar 24
I got excited when I saw the ableton live file in the video thumbnail, but it looks like there is no template available for Live users.
adyonline
2017 Mar 24
This is Fantastic! Not only a first class video but a copy Andrew's template. Many thanks Mr Scheps and Puremix.
zoffmeister
2017 Mar 24
ProTools, Logic and Studio One. That's a very strange definition of "all major DAWs". :) As a 20 year user of SONAR I am more than used to what I believe to be the best DAW being constantly ignored (if it ain't on Mac it don't exist, right?). Always bewildered to see how such a feature lacking DAW as ProTools is still the industry standard. Only kidding. I shall very much look forward to watching this and introducing more of Andrew's workflow into my already busy template, some of which I picked up from watching Andrews's other videos. Keep this great content coming guys. Love it.
