Chris Lord-Alge Mixing Rock In The Box
02h 23min
(76)
Watch CLA Recreate His SSL Workflow In The Box
Chris Lord Alge is one of the most renowned mixing engineers in the world. His style can be heard on records from legendary artists such as U2, Aerosmith, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, The Who, Green Day and dozens more.
Those who study his work, know that Chris Lord-Alge is a champion of the famous SSL 4K console. He has mixed thousands of songs in the analog domain and amassed a literal wall of Grammys in his studio, Mix LA.
However, he has also created some of the world’s most popular plugins in the digital domain and has never been known to fear a digital workflow.
In this pureMix.net exclusive, we take CLA off of his SSL 4K and park him in the box, where he shows you how he:
- Translates his analog workflow with familiar routing and plugins
- Simplifies sessions for lightning fast mixing
- Maintains focus and perspective on the song and the story it tells to support the theme with the mix
- Sets up his 2bus chain inside of Pro Tools for the same feel of his hardware
- Adds creativity to the mix and explains his theory on artistic mixing
Once you have seen how CLA does it, download the stems for the full song and practice your new tricks.
Watch CLA replicate his sound in the box, mixing the song “Indestructible” by Vifolly.
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.
Once logged in, you will be able to click on those chapter titles and jump around in the video.
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:48 - The Session
- 01:29 - Mix Bus Processing
- 08:49 - Organizing the Drum Tracks
- 09:56 - Translate Analog Workflow To Digital
- 25:57 - Listen To The Drums
- 30:12 - Listen To The Rough
- 33:52 - Drums
- 43:56 - Drum Reverb
- 51:15 - Bass
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Guitars
- 13:48 - Toms
- 19:41 - Keyboards
- 26:48 - Background Vocals
- 38:12 - Lead Vocals
- 47:02 - Vocal Processing
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Making Adjustments
- 02:00 - SSL Bus Compressor
- 03:03 - Balancing The Mix
- 10:50 - Renaming The Groups
- 11:55 - Bridge Vocals
- 17:25 - Using The SSL Transport
- 18:08 - Automation
- 30:52 - Distractions
- 31:56 - Print The Mix
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |
00:00:00
Welcome! I'm Chris Lord-Alge
and you have entered The Twilight Zone,
so the only way out of this zone
is with a final mix,
and it's going to be created by me,
here today at my studio, MIX L.A.,
so, welcome aboard!
So I'm here with PureMix
and we're going to show you what we do
inside of Pro Tools, Inside The Box.
00:00:27
I'm in front of my console but that's
just so I have something to lean on,
and I have my monitors,
and I'll be looking at my screen
and working on this track.
00:00:35
The track is called "Indestructible."
It's by a duo from Dayton, Ohio,
named ViFolly.
00:00:42
So I've heard this song maybe...
00:00:45
...for 20 seconds,
and I like to go into the unknown
and make it happen from there.
00:00:49
So here we are with "Indestructible."
When I get sessions delivered to me,
I prefer them at 48/24 or 96/24.
00:00:57
That's the rate we use
because since we mix to 96/24,
I prefer the master to be at 48/24.
00:01:04
Most people send me stuff that's at 48/24.
00:01:06
If we get something at 44.1 kHz,
which doesn't really happen that often,
we up-convert it to 48
rather than change everything to 44, okay?
That's what we have to do here,
so we're going to save a session copy as
a 48 kHz/24-bit session.
00:01:24
So as soon as I get the session
at the value I want,
which is 48/24,
one of the first things I'm going to do
is put my bus in.
00:01:33
The reasoning why is I want to put
my bus compressor in,
I want to get a sound for the 2-track
as a start point.
00:01:39
I don't want to do the 2-track
bus compressor thing later, okay?
I want to have
the CLA MixDown bus in there.
00:01:46
I'm not going to mix with zero thing
on the bus compressor
because I already want to have
some colorizing to my mix,
so the first thing we'll establish
is an Aux, and then a Master Fader.
00:01:57
The reason we use an Aux
is because the Aux is Pre-Fader.
00:02:01
The Master is Post-Fader.
00:02:03
The Master Fader in Pro Tools,
being Post-Fader,
if you put a compressor in there
and you fade it,
well, guess what happens.
00:02:10
The threshold drops, and then
the compression changes.
00:02:13
By putting an Aux, Pre-Master Fader,
no matter where you ride those faders
for your final level,
your compression stays the same,
so that's what we want.
00:02:21
That's what I'm used to,
and that's what works for me.
00:02:24
We have our Aux and our Master,
and we're just going to put
in the middle spot the CLA MixDown.
00:02:29
The CLA MixDown is my emulation
of my 2-track Mix Bus of my console.
00:02:35
Right there at the preset,
we're going to start with that,
and then, as we look at this session,
I will arrange this session
exactly how I'll arrange
an analog session, okay?
Which is very simply,
which will be vocals,
guitars,
drums,
bass,
and I'll kind of hinge it
with the keyboards.
00:02:57
Now, since we're straight Box,
I may go all keyboards,
vocals,
guitars,
and drums and bass,
and, like, percussion will be
the last thing on the screen.
00:03:06
Why I do this is really simple.
00:03:09
Some guys want drums first,
some guys want
the glockenspiel first, okay?
I prefer the tuba first,
but, the reason why we put it first
is you want to know
when you look at the screen
what's top, what's bottom.
00:03:21
So, organizing your session for mixing
is completely based
on how you like to lay it out.
00:03:27
Having a vertical mixing routine
makes it so you park
certain things certain way,
like, I want the vans here,
the cars here,
and the motorcycles here.
00:03:36
If you're always putting it
in the same vertical routine,
that takes a bunch of the guesswork
out of it, all right?
And you don't want to be guessing
when you're mixing
because you're trying to make art.
00:03:48
So, anyway, we're going to look
at what's in the session.
00:03:51
I don't even have to hear it.
I don't care about hearing it.
00:03:54
I just care about where it's parked
so I can manage it, right?
The first thing we'll do is we'll group
the audio together.
00:04:01
That's common, like drums,
guitars, whatever.
00:04:04
Nik is my assistant,
and has been since 1922.
00:04:08
We look young still, don't we?
So we're at it, we're at it for a while,
so yeah, we mixed Happy Birthday,
the original version.
00:04:16
And Bing Crosby's White Christmas
was done in here,
I mixed direct to 78.
00:04:21
But here today, it's "Indestructible"
by a duo from Dayton.
00:04:25
I'm looking at the screen,
right now I'm looking at drums,
so, Nik, let's scroll down
and see what else we got.
00:04:31
There is our bass,
there are our guitars,
there is Guitar Clean,
there is something that says Audio 2,
that's an Intro Synth.
00:04:41
Some synths. Okay. Bridge Synth.
00:04:45
Let's take all the vocals
and slide them up,
and put them above the drums right now.
00:04:52
We will park everything first,
and then we will color-code them
in our color.
00:05:01
Organizing it makes the most sense.
00:05:05
In this scenario, we might even do
some commit comps,
which makes it so my vertical screen
isn't the World Trade Center,
it's more like,
"Wow, if it's 20 stories, I can see it."
If your session is the tallest
building in the world, vertically,
that is really hard to navigate.
00:05:23
If there are situations
where you can make some comps
that are
kind of "Indestructible," hah?
Then it makes more sense
when you try to navigate the session.
00:05:33
If you have 100 tracks of backgrounds
that are going to be a stereo pair,
well, let's just make it a stereo pair
and get rid of those 100 floors, okay?
So I kind of look at this vertical
session as a building,
and taller is not better.
00:05:46
The shorter you can make it is better,
so if I can make it to be,
like, 40 faders, even better.
00:05:51
So here's our vocals.
We'll look at that, okay?
Nik will color them our color-code.
00:06:00
For me, I want to make it so,
okay, the lead vocals, we put those first,
and then we line up the backgrounds
in order of how often they sing.
00:06:11
And line them all up,
and I like blue for vocals.
00:06:15
Blue for vocals,
green for guitars,
red for drums,
purple for bass.
00:06:21
There might be a few shades in between
so you can differentiate
if you have a lot of stuff.
00:06:27
I leave it up to you.
You can all have your own colors.
00:06:31
There's a bunch of colors up there,
so I just try to pick the basic color
so it's easy to spot.
00:06:36
And once you've done 10, 2000 songs
in a certain color scheme,
it's easy to know that anything
green is a guitar,
anything red is drums,
and anything purple is bass.
00:06:46
Have I perfected it? No.
00:06:47
Do I get into all the shading?
You know, it can get confusing,
so I'd rather have less is more.
00:06:53
So Nik is just moving
all the keyboards above the vocals,
and we'll see if we have to comp
any of that.
00:07:00
Then we have the vocals, right?
I see a lot of backgrounds.
00:07:04
Even before hearing it,
I look at the waveforms
and I look at similarities.
00:07:09
A lot of what happens here is,
the more you hear it,
the worse it gets, okay?
So keep your listening minimal
so you don't lose what the song is about.
00:07:18
So we look at the files,
look at how we can park them,
and look at how we can make
the vertical challenge.
00:07:24
To me, the vertical challenge is:
when I'm done, I want to look off the roof
and not be really scared
when I see the ground.
00:07:30
Then, when I scroll up
and down the screen,
it's like, "Wow, this is a lead vocal
and some stereo backgrounds."
There's no advantage
to having stuff spread out
that you're not going to
manipulate individually.
00:07:40
That's the secret.
00:07:41
And if it's something you're going to
manipulate, set it and forget it,
then, hey, build it in and it's over.
00:07:46
I don't want to struggle with this song.
00:07:49
- How we got there, Nik?
- [Nik] I'm sorting.
00:07:51
All right! Look at that. Okay, let's go
top to bottom and see what we got.
00:07:55
We got the Intro Synth,
audio one, all right.
00:07:58
Why don't we just name that Intro Synth?
That audio file, just for us.
00:08:03
There you go!
Let's scroll down.
There is our synth pile.
00:08:06
It looks like we have...
00:08:07
...Chorus Vocal, Verse Vocal,
with no overlaps, right?
And the double, right?
[Nik] I guess. Yeah.
00:08:14
So it kind of looks
like a double thing, and the Bridge.
00:08:17
And then,
we have the BV stack.
00:08:22
Let's scroll down there.
00:08:24
And then we have some guitars. Okay.
00:08:27
And then we have Chorus Tasty.
00:08:31
Isn't that nice?
Then we have Kick Drum,
Snare Sample.
00:08:36
Then we will make the drums
how we like them, right?
Bass Drum In, Bass Drum Out.
00:08:43
Bd Par, like John Parr!
Kick Sample.
00:08:48
[Nik] It looks like some parallel stuff.
00:08:49
We'll start by organizing our drums.
00:08:51
The way they have it laid out
is different than how
I want to have it laid out.
00:08:55
Let's just make Kick Sample,
and then Snare Top.
00:08:58
So we're just going to organize
these drums,
and do it kind of like I normally do, so,
Kick Sample, Snare Top,
and then the Toms.
00:09:06
They've got some three toms
and a whole party of toms.
00:09:12
We will put those there,
and then we'll look for...
00:09:17
...Overheads.
00:09:20
They got them in there.
00:09:25
We have the Overheads,
and then,
we'll put the Room tracks.
00:09:30
I'm going to organize the drums
the way I like to see them.
00:09:33
I'm so used to having them a certain way:
Kick, Snare, Toms, Overheads, Room,
then, from that point,
it can be some samples,
or Hi-Hat/Ride,
then we start spreading out
the extra stuff.
00:09:45
So we just go through, and then,
if there are tracks
we're not going to use,
Hide and Make Inactive.
00:09:51
So, we're going from here down...
00:09:54
as much as we can, right?
What we're going to do now
is translate how I work analog
into a digital world,
so we're going to create
some internal Auxes.
00:10:05
We'll start with the Keyboards.
00:10:06
Now, I'm going to use Aux numbers
that correspond to what I'm used to,
because as I said,
routine is important here.
00:10:14
You can use whatever Aux numbers you want,
but for me, I'll use Aux numbers
I'll know when I think of is Keyboards,
I'll know this is Drums, this is Guitars.
00:10:22
So, Nik, my assistant here,
will help me with that.
00:10:24
We're going to take the Keyboards
that look like they can work together.
00:10:28
This is without hearing it.
00:10:29
It looks like the first three pairs up top
will go to 9-10.
00:10:33
[Nik] Okay.
00:10:34
And we'll send those to an Aux,
because we may treat them the same.
00:10:37
And if we do, and if they work,
guess what they become? A pair.
00:10:42
In a perfect world,
we could pair this thing down
where you could almost
walk off the top floor.
00:10:48
So, below it,
below what says Trippy Synth,
we will put an Aux, 9-10,
and then feed it back to 1-2.
00:10:56
[Nik] Comping that with Trippy then?
It looks like all that
could become a pair, right?
God knows it can probably all
become a pair, does it?
If you look at it,
the only comp here
is this Rip Synth,
and this Bridge Synth.
00:11:13
[Nik] I'm assuming Low and Trippy
are playing the same thing.
00:11:15
In the two choruses, the Synths
are doing the same thing.
00:11:18
Let's just start
by outputting them to 9-10,
and the ones below, 11-12.
00:11:24
[Nik] Do you want me to use
'SSL' in the name?
Yeah, of course! We're going to use 'SSL'
because it's good voodoo!
[Nik] Okay.
00:11:35
And we'll do the same thing for that
next batch, because it looks like...
00:11:39
[Nik] These four?
Actually, check and see...
00:11:42
Rip and Bridge look like they could go in
with the 9-10 pack.
00:11:48
Part of what you're doing
is you're just taking puzzle pieces,
and you're looking at waveforms,
and if it says Keyboard,
you say, "Okay, if this plays here,
and that plays there, and this plays here,
if there's no handoff,
if there's no overlap,
then let me just park them
all together." Okay?
So if there are no overlaps,
we can output it to the same pair,
and then, if there are sonic changes,
we can do it internally, right?
So, visually, it looks like
these guys will work, right?
- [Nik] So these are 9-10?
- Yep.
00:12:14
[Nik] Cool.
00:12:19
And then maybe,
just for visual, we just...
00:12:22
See the thing that says Bridge Synth?
Make it just the region for the bridge,
and not that... There you go.
00:12:27
I love that!
And even the Rip Synth,
you can get it out of the Bridge
so that we know it's only
playing in that section.
00:12:35
Okay, so we've gotten
that together. Perfect!
Now we have another bunch of Synths,
we're going to make those 11-12,
so, same pair.
00:12:41
We select the four,
we create an Aux below it,
we call it '11/12 SSL'.
00:12:47
Why does it say 'SSL'?
Because, what is this? An SSL.
00:12:50
So, for me, I'm emulating
my Auxes that I use
in the console, In The Box.
00:12:56
We're going to output all of my Auxes
to one Stereo Bus in the desk.
00:13:01
And then, also, what we do
in our Comments window,
we mark what's going to what Aux.
00:13:08
So, what Nik does right here, see?
He marked that all those tracks
are going to a Stereo pair, okay?
This way, I can literally
only grab that one fader, okay?
And then, if I get a comp I like,
I'll commit it,
and then I'll have one pair,
and then I've gained a few tracks, so,
I think you're getting
this part of the conversation.
00:13:27
Then we scroll down to the vocals.
We have the Synths done.
00:13:31
There are some Comments that exist there.
What do you think those are?
[Nik] Tracking notes, it looks like.
00:13:36
Since we're not tracking,
we're mixing, we can ditch all that.
00:13:41
Just by looking at it,
Nik will do the same thing:
we'll create some Auxes for our vocals.
00:13:45
This way, I can process them as a group.
00:13:48
You could sit here and put plug-ins
on every one of these tracks,
and before you know it,doo dop do doo,you've run out of power!
We're going to try to use the least amount
of plug-ins we can get away with
to accomplish the same goal.
00:14:01
If the lead vocal is on six tracks,
and it only is on one track at a time,
why use six limiters?
I have one great limiter in my rack
that I love for vocals,
so why have all these multis?
We will take everything lead vocal,
everything that looks like a double,
and put those out to their own Auxes.
00:14:18
I use 17 for the lead vocal,
18 for the double.
00:14:21
For all I know, these could be
the two singers separate.
00:14:25
Just visually looking at it,
it looks like those parts are separate.
00:14:35
That was quick, Nik!
He is quick, so you just got to watch out.
00:14:38
He was quicker than lightning.
00:14:40
The only thing faster than him is,
well, an act of God.
00:14:42
Then we have that Vocal BV, which looks
like a verse harmony, doesn't it?
[Nik] Yeah.
00:14:49
So, is the verse a single voice?
Yeah. The verse
is a single voice, correct?
[Nik] Yeah.
00:14:54
So let's move that verse harmony
up into the 18 pocket
because my Lead Vocal
is panned up the middle,
my Vocal Double
is panned up the middle.
00:15:03
I have a mono verse harmony.
00:15:06
That's going to go
on my Vocal Double output
because I'm used to that
and it's up the middle.
00:15:11
And then, after that, I have pairs
for backgrounds that are Stereos.
00:15:15
So after my Lead Vocal
and Lead Vocal double,
then we figure out how many pairs
of vocals I'm going to need.
00:15:22
[Nik] I just found two more Leads
and Doubles here.
00:15:24
Oh, okay. Those look like Leads
and Doubles. The Chorus Hook, yeah.
00:15:30
And then I see something else follows it
down the Vocal BV duplicate also.
00:15:36
One very important thing that we're not
going to spend a million years doing,
but naming the tracks to make sense.
00:15:46
Verse,
Bridge,
Chorus.
00:15:51
How about Chorus Low, or BV Low, okay?
or BV Low Chorus.
00:15:57
Name it so it's obvious.
00:15:58
Name it so it's simple, okay?
Not 'Guitar 20-074'.
00:16:03
What Nik and I do
is we go through the session,
we look at what's our Lead Vocals,
we look just visually.
00:16:08
We're not even listening to the song,
but we can visually kind of figure it out.
00:16:12
What about that 'Vocal BVs.dup1'
down there at the bottom?
[Nik] It's the third mono track
for that answer part in the chorus.
00:16:20
Oh, okay.
00:16:21
[Nik] They're a harmony, or a triple.
00:16:23
Oh, okay,
because it looks like it's happening
in a different place,
so it's not going along
with the thing you moved, right?
[Nik] It is going along
with the things that I just moved.
00:16:31
Yeah, right.
But it's the third track, right?
[Nik] I grabbed these two.
00:16:35
So, it's a triple?
[Nik] Or a harmony. Yeah.
00:16:38
Okay, so that's going to have
to go up the harmony hole.
00:16:41
Look at how many
backgrounds we have.
00:16:42
Now we've thinned it out.
We have two, four, six,
and then, eight,
and we have some 'Uh Ohs',
so let's make these Chorus Vocals,
let's make them all 19-20.
00:16:55
- [Nik] These here?
- Yep. And we'll balance that internally.
00:16:59
Let's take that whole chunk, right?
That looks like 19-20 here.
00:17:03
And even the Pre-Chorus backgrounds
3 and 4 go in that bundle too.
00:17:08
[Nik] Okay.
00:17:11
And then these 'Uh Ohs' can be...
00:17:17
...21-22.
00:17:21
The reason I'm using these numbers
is because of routine, okay?
Because on my console,
lead vocal is 17-18,
19 through 24 can be backgrounds,
25 through 32 is guitars,
drums start at 33, up to 48...
00:17:36
I mean, up to 56.
00:17:37
Keyboards are 9 through 12.
00:17:39
It's going to vary a little bit here today
because I'm not going to have to output
the drums to Outputs, right?
But I'll create a Subgroup for them.
00:17:50
[Nik] 'Uh Ohs' on 21-22?
Yeah, let's do that.
00:17:58
We'll figure out where to put
this one little oddball BV.
00:18:07
By knowing that you have it
set up for pairs,
it actually starts to de-stress you
on the whole
"Oh my God!
There are so many channels here!"
because then you can actually
solo the parts,
make a balance individually,
and then, once you do
some individual balances,
then you can start working
on the global balance of the whole record.
00:18:23
We have all the vocals
kind of parked at a start point.
00:18:26
Let's scroll down further.
00:18:27
[Nik] Just this one.
00:18:28
Oh, yeah. I think that dingle berry
might be best served on the 19-20 bucket.
00:18:33
[Nik] Cool.
00:18:37
Dingle berry means an odd man out.
00:18:43
So then, once that's done,
we scroll down the guitars.
00:18:46
See? We got some green guitars.
00:18:49
So the first pair, 25-26.
00:18:54
Look at that Middle Guitar.
I wonder if that's a triple.
00:18:57
It kind of looks like a triple,
doesn't it?
We may just want to LCR it then,
so we'll make all three of those 25-26.
00:19:08
We have a Melody, we have a Tasty,
we got some Clean.
00:19:17
This is matching up parts,
like parts that will work.
00:19:22
We got 3 into 2 now, and we'll see
if there's anything in between.
00:19:27
The only thing to be in between is if
there's an Intro one, which there isn't.
00:19:31
Then we have another set of pairs
where we have that
Clean Melody, don't we?
That's going to be best served
in the next pair,
so let's take the next bunch down, right?
Guitar Rhythm and the Clean Melody, 27-28.
00:19:53
But you know what? Verse Tasty might be
a better match. What do you think?
Because we could put Guitar Melody
with Chorus Tasty as a mono track, right?
[Nik] Put all those three up?
Yeah, we'll put Verse Tasty up there.
00:20:05
I haven't used the word 'tasty'
in a while, except 'tasty cake'.
00:20:08
That's a New York thing.
00:20:10
Verse Tasty,
and our Chorus Rhythms
look like they don't overlap, right?
[Nik] [Inaudible]
Yeah, blow up the waveform
so it looks a little bit bigger.
00:20:21
So it looks like our Cleans
could be our 29-30.
00:20:31
It's all about piecing the puzzle together
and saying, "Okay, where is the hole?
And, is something playing in the hole?"
Because, when you make music,
why does everything
have to be so separate, right?
As we're scrolling through,
we're making another set here.
00:20:45
How about that Pre Guitar?
Does that fit in with the...
00:20:52
the 27-28 bucket?
Is that in the hole?
- [Nik] It looks good.
- Let's pop it in there.
00:21:00
Okay, so we found parking,
so that's now 5 to 2.
00:21:04
That will be a mono,
I'll probably stereoize it.
00:21:07
Then we have one more pair,
the 29-30 will be the Guitar Clean, right?
And then I guess we could put
Chorus Tasty in that bundle also.
00:21:16
So I guess the guitar amount,
all of those will become...
00:21:20
Those, 6 to 2 again.
00:21:26
[Nik] These other two as well?
Yeah. Do they have an overlap there?
[Nik] Yep. These two here,
and then these three here.
00:21:33
Right. It's clear in the front,
but not in the end.
00:21:36
But Chorus Tasty is fine though, right?
[Nik] Chorus Tasty
and Guitar Clean look good.
00:21:41
So let's put Chorus Tasty
up with it, and then...
00:21:43
We'll put Guitar Melody
at the bottom of that list
and just see if those work together.
00:21:48
[Nik] So, starting at 29-30?
There you go. Perfect!
And then, yeah, put the Tasty 2 in that.
00:21:57
[Nik] Tasty 2 as well?
Yep. Tasty 2 will be 29-30
with those guys.
00:22:03
We'll see if that works.
00:22:05
You know, obviously,
you do a visual thing, right?
And then, when you hear it, you're like,
"Oh, okay, that's not going to work,"
or, "Oh! It could be even less!"
I love it when it's less, okay?
So we've gotten that sorted.
That's great! All right.
00:22:19
Then,
we will just do the Toms.
Bus 35-36. Right, Nik?
[Nik] Sure!
I'm not sure what this
extra set of toms are,
but I have a funny feeling that they
probably could all work together.
00:22:37
If they're the same, we could probably
paste them to the other tracks.
00:22:42
[Nik] Do you want me to just paste them?
Or see if they're the same?
Let's paste them.
Let's get rid of the three faders.
00:22:54
We'll leave the grayed out stuff in there,
because if it's a mistake
that gives us some room.
00:22:59
All the other stuff we leave.
00:23:00
Now, if we scroll down past Room,
let's see what else we have
in the drum department,
let's see everything drum.
00:23:10
So we have some DRUM PAR.
00:23:13
I wonder what DRUM PAR is.
00:23:15
[Nik] I think it might be kick,
snare and drum parallels.
00:23:18
Right. Okay, we're not going to want
to use any of that.
00:23:21
It doesn't look like it's
different parts, so,
I would take all the parallel stuff
out of there
because that's their opinion, not mine.
00:23:27
And we're all about my opinion
here with the drums, not theirs.
00:23:32
I wonder what that Room duplicate is,
or the OH duplicate.
00:23:35
[Nik] It's some kind of overdub thing
happening with the cymbals.
00:23:37
It's just OH and Room.
Something happens down there too.
00:23:40
Right. So we have like a little pocket
of fruit going on there, don't we?
[Nik] It looks like cymbals.
00:23:45
So, let's see. After the Room,
let's go Hi-Hat, Snare Bottom.
00:23:50
[Nik] Room is mono, for what it's worth.
00:23:52
Oh, they made Rooms mono?
- [Nik] Yeah.
- Okay.
00:23:55
Good to know, because
the other Room isn't duplicated.
00:23:58
So then,
after the Snare Bottom
we will go to Snare Sample,
we'll hide the live kicks,
and probably we don't
even need them, right?
And then we have those three things,
which is a Reverse Splash,
OH.dup,
and we'll just leave those as sitting.
00:24:16
Then we have a whole bunch
of Bass going on here,
and the DI is muted.
00:24:19
[Nik] Deliberately deactivated.
00:24:21
Okay. Oh, and we have an overdub, too?
- [Nik] Two. They're called Overdub.
- Right. Okay.
00:24:25
[Nik] Unless this is overdrive.
This seems to be the same performance.
00:24:28
- Yeah.
- [Nik] Must be overdrive on the first.
00:24:31
So it looks like a separate
bass part, right?
[Nik] The bottom one does.
00:24:36
Oh, the Overdub. Right.
00:24:37
[Nik] This might be overdrive.
00:24:39
So we're going to take those four basses,
and, let's just run them through a Stereo.
00:24:44
Let's make it 13-14.
00:24:47
This way I can put one plug-in for all
and then balance into it.
00:24:57
Beautiful!
And the Bass Overdub
we will just leave as a solo guy.
00:25:03
And that's the bottom of the mix?
There is no percussion?
[Nik] There's those cymbal overdubs,
Reverse Splash, Snare Reverse.
00:25:09
- Oh, that's it? All right.
- [Nik] That's the non-drum kit stuff.
00:25:11
Why don't you just
color that another shade
in between red and purple?
Just the last.
00:25:16
There you go.
00:25:18
Why don't we output that to...
00:25:23
Let's just output that to 47-48.
00:25:27
[Nik] You want to have the Reverses in
with the presumably crashes?
I mean, we can leave it separate.
00:25:34
You know what?
We're not going to a console.
00:25:36
- We're going to see what they do first.
- [Nik] Sure!
It may not even be a problem.
00:25:41
Yeah, the Reverse...
Is there a Snare Reverse? Got it.
00:25:44
- [Nik] I guess so. Yeah.
- All right.
00:25:46
We'll leave that, and we'll scroll
back up to the top of the screen.
00:25:50
Okay.
00:25:51
Now we've pretty much gone through it
and visually put some
puzzle pieces together.
00:25:57
The next thing we're going to jump into
is seeing what the drums sound like
because I'll start there
with my foundation of the record,
and seeing what else I have to do.
00:26:06
[Nik] Do I pull all the faders down?
I think we'll just have
all the faders at zero,
and we'll just mute
everything but the drums,
and start there.
00:26:18
And then we'll look at our panning, right?
I think your panning has been done
because you did the Bus, right?
[Nik] Toms are panned.
Everything else is mono.
00:26:29
I'll have to listen to see.
00:26:31
Based on the way one pair
of the toms is panned,
I guess it's drummer's.
00:26:34
There's currently Hi-Hat in the middle.
I haven't listened to the OHs yet.
00:26:37
Well, we'll look and see
if it's audience or, you know,
audience or drummer's perspective.
00:26:42
So, is Tom 1 left for them?
[Nik] For this group, it was. Yeah.
00:26:47
This group had 3
in the middle or something.
00:26:50
All right, we're going to go with that.
00:26:52
Since it's Tom, we'll put the Hi-Hat left.
00:26:56
And then we'll...
OH is stereo, obviously, right?
And everything else up the middle?
[Nik] Yeah.
00:27:03
We're going to check our Stereo Bus
because a lot of this
has to do with gain structure.
00:27:12
We could play just the drums.
00:27:14
I want to see how hard it's hitting
the Bus before we even do anything to it.
00:27:41
Let me just solo the Kick Sample.
00:28:04
I just want to hear what their live kicks
sound like for a second, before...
00:28:08
Just put their live kicks
next to the Sample right now.
00:28:11
I just want to hear if it's salvageable.
00:28:14
Basically, before we not use something,
we pick a reason why,
so we're going to check out
the live kicks.
00:28:41
So, for this, we will leave them in there,
we'll leave them like that
and see what happens.
00:28:45
Let's put some SSL plug-ins.
00:28:48
I like the Channel Strip.
00:28:49
This is what I know in my head
sonically and visually,
what I like it to sound like.
00:28:54
We're going to put the SSL E Channel Strip
across all the drum tracks.
00:28:59
So, then I'll just start going through
and doing some EQs.
00:29:05
The Bus looked good,
so you can close the Bus window.
00:29:09
We'll play it one more time.
00:29:11
Play what we have and we'll see what's
coming back to me, what it looks like.
00:29:16
Just bring the Master down -3.
00:29:41
So what I'm doing now is I want to set up
my gain structure for monitoring.
00:29:46
Since the output of Pro Tools
might be hotter than what I'm used to,
I want to make sure that I'm seeing, like,
0 VU or less on my meters.
00:29:54
If it's pounding, then...
00:29:56
then I'm not hearing what I should be
hearing to these speakers, level-wise,
so I kind of want to get
a frame of reference.
00:30:04
We might be adjusting
the Master Output level as we go,
and it might get hotter and hotter.
00:30:08
How it's feeding my Bus compressor
I'm okay with right now.
00:30:12
Okay! Part of the process here is,
before I start manipulating everything
and think it's a different song,
let me hear the rough
of the song I'm actually mixing.
00:30:21
This will give me a frame of reference
on where I'm going here,
because right now
I got the bus filled with passengers,
I need a destination,
so let's find out where we're going.
00:32:07
So, by looking at the rough
and looking at the audio files,
I see, okay, here are some questions
that are getting answered right away.
00:33:34
Big hole there!
You could talk a whole
conversation in that hole.
00:33:39
Okay, so it continues with what we think,
with what we heard in the other choruses,
so we're good with the rough.
00:33:44
Take a brief listen,
get an idea of what's happening.
00:33:46
I see a couple things
I want to change right away,
so we'll stop that and go back
to our regular session.
00:33:52
Let's just go to, like,
whatever, Chorus 1,
and play our drums in solo
and see what we've got.
00:34:07
Now, let's see,
is this Room track even sexy at all?
Clip Gain that Room track about 12 dB up
so I don't have to push the faders
through the roof.
00:34:24
Let's look at some levels here
and see what needs to be gained.
00:34:39
Nik will use the Gain plug-in
to look at some of these things.
00:34:42
It really helps ballpark and spot on
what I want these levels to be.
00:34:46
It helps get our levels
to be able to track a situation.
00:34:50
So back to the drums again.
00:35:09
What we'll do now,
let's see how quick and dirty
we can just put the samples in there.
00:35:13
We have a sampled kick
and a sampled snare.
00:35:17
Let's just do a little sound replacing
and put a couple of my samples
in there to help it.
00:35:22
Since there's already samples in there,
adding samples to it is a little quicker.
00:35:27
We just took a slight pause
to do a little bit of housework there
by adding some samples.
00:35:33
So, next, I will be assigning my drums,
just reconfiguring
a little bit what I have.
00:35:37
I've put my CLA Kick in,
the CLA Kick Room,
a CLA Snare or two in there
to help it out,
so we'll look at laying out our drums.
00:35:47
We will go with my dry kick,
and then we'll move the Room
out of the way.
00:35:58
So dry kick, dry snare,
and we'll move the snares
out of the way also.
00:36:02
We'll find some places for those.
00:36:05
Just out of force of habit
I always put my Snare Drums
after the Room.
00:36:16
I'm okay by doing it just how you have it,
so we can go Kick Room, Snare Room,
and then Snare and Snare 2, right?
[Nik] Okay. And then Hat and Bottom,
or do you want Bottom after the...
00:36:26
And then we have Hat and Bottom,
just how you have it.
00:36:30
That's perfect!
I've eliminated their live kick,
now that I've realized it,
and I'm not going to use their sample.
00:36:36
Since you know I work on a SSL,
everyone knows that CLA
works on a SSL 4000,
"Well, when he is mixing In The Box,
wouldn't he try to emulate that?"
Well, yes he does.
00:36:46
As you see in this session,
what's the plug-in across every channel?
An SSL Channel Strip.
00:36:52
I put that there because I'd rather
have it on all of them to start with
and then I can delete
the ones I don't want.
00:36:58
It's because it's a go-to sound I like,
it's ease of operation,
it gives me a compressor/gate/EQ
very simply,
so,
even though there's another
100000 plug-ins I can use,
I'm going to start with these
because crafting a song
and making it sound good
is more important than scrolling through
a list and trying plug-in after plug-in
until you forget about what the song is.
00:37:19
I'm going to get my drum balance here now.
00:37:22
[Nik] Do you want to see your MixDown
for metering while you build your balance?
Yeah, okay.
00:37:27
Perfecto!
Oh, nice! Okay.
00:37:36
These both say 'S01', so...
00:37:39
Make a wide mix. Wide mix is fun.
00:37:44
Extra-wide mix. There you go!
That will work.
00:37:46
I'm just going to pull these down
a little bit and we're going to look.
00:37:49
And play that chorus for us.
00:38:16
We look at the kick and snare
dry versions first,
before we add the seasoning.
00:39:40
I'm done with the dry kick and snare,
so what I'll do next is I'm going to start
feathering in the Overheads,
I'll see what the Room sounds like.
00:39:48
Once I get the regular kick and snare,
which is the dry kick and snare,
I'll see what my additional parts do
adding around it.
00:39:56
This is just a rough start point,
because once I get the track, I'm like,
"Oh, I'm going to have to get bigger,
or meaner," or whatever with it, right?
Rather than explain every track,
if you watch, you'll see
with the Overheads
we're going to try to do some compression,
and maybe do a little EQ,
so what we're going to do right now is
we're going to season in the other parts
after our kick and snare dry.
00:43:56
Getting the basic balance, I realized
that we want to use a reverb Send here,
so we're going to set up
a quick drum reverb.
00:44:02
I'll use Send 2.
00:44:09
I'll create an Aux Return
with a drum reverb.
00:44:12
Oh, one that I like is Manny's reverb,
Manny Marroquin, his verb is very good.
00:44:17
Very easy to use, very simple.
It sounds great.
00:44:19
We'll set that up so I can do
some individual Sends from the drum kit.
00:44:23
Now, this reverb also may get
some other things in the record,
so it will be like our number 2 reverb
in the record.
00:44:29
100% Wet, and we'll make it Medium Room.
00:44:33
We'll just flip over to the Room spot.
00:44:35
Let's put an SSL EQ after that,
just so I can modify it.
00:44:46
Cool.
00:44:48
Beautiful!
So, let me bring the Return level down
over here to -10.
00:44:54
If I'm going to add reverb to drums,
I'm not going to do the dry kick,
I'm not going to do the dry snare, okay?
Maybe the toms a little bit.
00:45:01
Not the overheads either,
because then it's washy cymbals, right?
So probably just the rooms and the samples
because I don't want the cymbal wash
and the hi-hats getting all messy,
so, I just want the samples
to get hidden and feel like they're...
00:45:14
I just want it to sound like the greatest
drum room track ever, right?
So that's what we're going to try here.
00:46:08
And one more time.
00:46:09
[Nik] I'll fix one thing I saw.
This mono was panned because I copied it.
00:46:13
Where is the Send?
I'll get that up the middle.
00:46:30
So now we're just looking to see
what drum reverb is working.
00:47:03
I'm just trying to get
the character of the reverb
and the length of the reverb
to feel right with these drums.
00:47:08
We're not even going
by what Preset makes any sense,
what we're doing is just kind of
fishing around and seeing
what's reacting
off my drums better, right?
I'll make sure I have Sends, all right?
Actually, I only have a Send
from the one right now,
so I'll send from my Samples, right?
And then... this one, right?
So those are all being sent, correct?
And the same with this, all right?
Now we're all good, everybody is going.
00:47:37
And since I know, I'll probably
have these back a little bit.
00:47:40
I'm still fishing for what's going to be
my reverb sound here, so play it.
00:48:20
I'll try some EQ on it.
00:48:46
So, right now I picked
the drum reverb I liked.
00:48:49
If you see on the screen,
it's Manny's Large Room,
which I just made a little bit shorter
because this song is pretty open
and I wanted to have
a little more decay time.
00:48:59
So just an EQ and rough that in,
no Predelay.
00:49:02
So this is kind of a short Room emulating
what I like here, what I use in my room,
so I'll start with that
and see what that does.
00:49:10
We'll check our hi-hat,
which is really ugly.
00:49:12
I just noticed how dark and crappy it is.
00:49:14
When you close-mic a hi-hat,
there is so much proximity
and so much low end
because there's so much pressure
coming off of it.
00:49:40
So we thin it out considerably
because it's...
00:49:43
it's just there to season
to taste with the kit.
00:49:53
As I listen, I'm trying to notice where
the hi-hat is coming from in the OHs.
00:50:01
The hi-hat is coming from the right,
so we pan it back over here
and feather it in.
00:50:20
We found the orientation with the hi-hat.
00:50:22
Let's just make sure
our tom orientation is the same,
so we're going to just play that spot.
00:50:36
[Nik] So, reversing the toms now?
- Yep. Reversing the toms for sure.
- [Nik] Great.
00:50:43
We have our drums kind of temped in,
the panning is right.
00:50:45
That's always the first thing
to check, so it's...
00:50:48
it's audience perspective,
which, to be honest with you,
if you're mixing live drums,
audience perspective is kind of
the only way you should go.
00:50:57
Have I made it a 'drop dead' rule
that I do it that way?
Not necessarily, but,
if it comes drummer's perspective,
maybe the drummer wants to put his
headphones on and feel like he's playing,
so, I always ask.
00:51:09
If it came a certain way,
it's there, it's how they liked it,
but if there is no option,
then just use audience perspective.
00:51:15
Now we're going to go right to the bass
and see if we can move him in there,
but as I'm doing that,
I'm just going to start with what
I would do on a Bass Subgroup,
which is what that is, so let's put
my CLA Bass plug-in on there.
00:51:28
I'm kind of doing this
because I've been getting a lot of songs
where people are already using it,
and I'm like,
"Oh! That does work pretty good."
I'll probably take the Chorus off.
00:52:14
I guess they like distortion.
00:52:16
It's working for us
by just feeding it to my plug-in.
00:52:19
I get a balance on their mics,
and then I add it to my plug-in,
and it kind of helps a lot doing that.
00:52:26
So, let's play it some more. Same spot.
00:52:59
And then, while we're thinking about bass,
let's just double-check
where this Bass Overdub plays
and find a home for him.
00:53:05
Oh, it's playing in the
same spot, isn't it?
[Nik] Looks like it's through
this section. Yeah.
00:53:09
Okay, so back to that.
Let's see what that does.
00:53:18
Let's get funky now!
It's a disco record!
The secondary bass
is kind of playing an upbeat,
so obviously, with that kind of sound,
I have to gate it because his finger
slides are going to pop out a lot,
so I'm trying to avoid
too much finger-sliding coming out,
so I just feather it in.
00:54:09
He's not going through our Bass Bus,
he's by himself,
so he just needs to be this accent.
00:54:15
We figured that out pretty quickly.
00:54:17
What about those other crashes
that are going on?
Let's figure out that.
00:54:23
In Chorus 3, are they busier?
This is theirs, right?
So we do a little Fast Attack on it
so it takes some of the front off
if he gets louder.
00:54:58
- Oh, it's a mono Room version of it?
- [Nik] Yeah.
00:55:00
All right. Hide and Make Inactive that.
00:55:03
We're not going to need that.
00:55:06
There was a mono Room
going with the stereo Overhead
for a crash overdub.
00:55:11
In the scope of things, it's just
taking up room we're not going to need.
00:55:16
Let's just Clip Gain that up,
like, 3 dB more.
00:55:25
Play that spot. Let's see.
00:55:27
We can maybe go 3 more.
00:55:34
And...
00:55:38
Let me unsolo that.
00:55:54
How about this Reverse Splash thing?
Is it just a three-timer?
[Nik] Into the chorus, and at the end.
00:55:59
Let's just check that lead-in.
00:56:08
Put him out to the reverb,
the same setting.
00:56:10
Copy one of those Buses over to that,
and let's Clip Gain him up 6 dB.
00:56:17
It's never a bad idea to Clip Gain it up
and put the fader at 0, or -5.
00:56:21
Clip Gain it up until it feels
like it's the right level
so your faders aren't all
scattered over the screen.
00:56:30
6 dB more.
00:56:40
Beautiful.
00:56:54
We'll copy that reverb setting
over to the Reverse Snare Drum also
to kind of make it all sound
like it's in the same planet.
00:57:23
We have generally a bass thing going on,
and let's look at some of the drums.
We're getting closer here.
00:00:00
I'm just going to put the guitars up
and see what they're doing.
00:00:04
I'll start with Verse 1.
00:00:05
I'm going to push some of these
faders up on the other window,
and see what they do.
00:00:42
I can hear the guitar for one second
and say, "Okay, I know what it needs
because I heard the rough,
and it was kind of sexy," so,
what we'll do is put
my Guitars plug-in on the Subgroup
and feed those three in.
00:00:55
I figured out it says
Guitar Left and Right, those are low.
00:00:58
Middle Guitar is the higher octave.
00:01:00
So we'll feather that in.
00:01:02
I was, like, this is kind of a go-to,
I may not go that '80s with the Chorusing,
but I'll hear the same section again now.
00:01:20
I have made a few plug-ins
and they're kind of cool,
and they're really great
for this kind of stuff exactly.
00:02:13
There is the Pre Guitar!
In this section it gets on, okay?
After hearing this,
I'm going to glue this together,
so let's put my Guitars plug-in
across the other guitar Buses.
00:02:30
The same setting I'm using
on the first Bus.
00:02:34
And then we'll sort that out.
00:02:53
Let's click zero across those
guitar feeders except the middle one,
the one that says 'Mid'.
00:03:00
I'm just going to zero out my levels
because it's a little easier
with the keyboard
and I'm only using
a mousepad here, right?
I'm mostly just using this touchpad.
00:03:20
So what else does 27-28 get?
Let's go to the Chorus Rhythms,
let me just play that.
00:03:58
But first, I'm going to do this:
I'll get them to sit a little bit better,
and I'll quiet them down.
00:04:04
I'll put a little bit of compression
and gating on it.
00:04:08
All right.
00:04:10
The old Verse Tasty!
Tasty cake! Here we come!
Pop that on there,
a little bit of this guy.
00:04:20
I can't turn this green.
00:04:22
Let's put some EchoBoy, mono,
on each one of them.
00:04:26
We'll just start with one, and once
I get a setting we'll copy it to both.
00:04:30
I don't want to add more delay
to the whole package,
but I want to make these guys
a little bit cooler.
00:04:35
I use the EchoBoy plug-in,
which is great for delay.
00:04:38
I created my own default Preset
to start with,
which at least gives me a balance,
so what I'll do differently here is,
it's only a mono track, so Single Echo.
00:04:48
The Mix is the same, we're just
going to make this 1/4 Note.
00:04:52
And let's just play
that Tasty number 1 there.
00:05:16
Copy that EchoBoy to both channels
and we'll hear that one more time
just to get a little bit more spin
out of those little sustain guitars,
a little more atmospheric
because it's like a moody verse.
00:05:28
Let's try that one more time.
00:05:42
Let's copy that.
00:05:44
A little more sustain.
00:05:48
I can't hear the sustain!Let's just check the second verse.
Is this Verse 1 or Verse 2?
[Nik] This is Verse 1, here is Verse 2.
00:06:04
Let's just see if the Tasties
are going the same route.
00:06:14
Great! So let's look at our Pre Guitar.
00:06:16
I've heard the Chorus Rhythms,
there's one B section guitar
which probably needs to be
Clip Gained up 6 dB.
00:06:24
It's a little bit of a mini mouse.
00:06:38
So let's put my Guitars plug-in on him.
00:06:41
Copy it to him also, and that will
make him stereo going into it.
00:06:43
We're going to double the Guitars plug-in.
00:06:46
- [Nik] All the guitars?
- We're going to double down on him.
00:06:48
We're doubling down on this guy!
Right. He's using this, and he's going
to another Guitars plug-in, right?
- [Nik] Doubly.
- Doubly. So, play that.
00:07:11
And we'll just look at that plug-in
one second.
00:07:33
That's good for that.
00:07:35
So, what I've done here is I've heard...
00:07:38
I think I've heard all the guitar parts,
except maybe...
00:07:42
Oh, Chorus Tasty.
00:07:44
The old Chorus Tasty!
So let's go to a spot in the song
where the guitar part
I haven't heard plays.
00:07:49
- [Nik] In Chorus 2?
- Yeah.
00:09:03
Cool! So let's check the Clean guitars.
00:09:05
So I got a little balance
and the extra parts are missing,
and I want to pan them harder
left and right
so they poke out of the song.
00:09:12
There are some Guitar Cleans
I haven't heard yet,
we're going to check
those little three guys.
00:09:16
So Clean Melody is first up, right?
[Nik] Yep. It's in the Intro and Bridge.
Here is the Intro part.
00:09:42
On this one we're going to try
something different.
00:09:45
Put the Blackhole on them.
00:09:46
We're going to put them deep
into southern hemisphere
with a little weird reverb
that right off the bat sounds cool.
00:09:53
Let's hear that.
00:10:03
He's a little too bright for me.
00:10:17
One more time.
00:10:40
One more time.
00:11:03
Now we'll check
the other Guitar Cleans out.
00:11:06
So, you know, a little atmosphere.
00:11:08
Be creative.
00:11:09
That's why we're here: to make music cool.
00:11:11
There's a couple other Cleans,
we'll check what they do.
00:11:14
Let's see if they can do something sexy!
[Nik] Here is the Bridge. That will be
the 2nd instance to your 1st Clean,
- and the 3rd instance to your 2nd Clean.
- Cool!
We'll just bring those guys up.
Clip Gain them up 6 dB.
00:12:04
Maybe they look good there,
but they sounded lower to me, right?
- [Nik] Just 5.
- Okay.
00:12:31
So, the Guitar Clean Melody,
let's look at that real quick
because I think in one section
it was considerably louder.
00:12:37
So, back to the waveforms.
00:12:39
Guitar Clean Melody, right?
In the Bridge, considerably lower.
00:12:43
Let's reverse the concept on that:
let's Clip Gain the one to the right
like 9 dB,
and Clip Gain the one to the left -3 dB,
because the one playing there
in the Bridge is the leader of the pack,
so let's max him to the roof, right?
That little harmonic thing
is more of an effect, right?
[Nik] Yeah, that was the Intro
with the Blackhole.
00:13:03
So play me that Bridge one more time.
00:13:18
Play me the first things that he plays.
00:13:26
And bring him down 6 dB more in that spot.
00:13:30
That's not too pokey, is it?
Beautiful!
Now, while I'm here in this section,
this is the Bridge, right?
[Nik] I'm back to the Intro right now.
I'll go to the Bridge if you want.
00:13:48
Is that where the tom fills were?
In the Bridge?
[Nik] The Intro had the extra toms
that we had added, that were in the kit.
00:13:54
All right.
00:14:01
Is that pattern in the Bridge also?
[Nik] There are toms, but I think
it's just one tom doing double hits.
00:14:13
Got it. So I think that these
toms that you have,
- the tom Intro ones that do that fill.
- [Nik] Yes.
00:14:20
Those are non-kit,
those are the fake ones.
00:14:22
- Right?
- [Nik] Yes.
00:14:23
Let's do some separate treatment.
00:14:24
You can duplicate
the whole thing you have,
and we'll give them a Bus.
00:14:28
[Nik] Have these revert?
Yeah, we'll give them a Bus and...
00:14:33
- [Nik] They'll get their own Bus?
- Yeah. We'll give them 37-38.
00:14:37
This is... You can call the Bus, like,
'Intro Toms',
'Intro T'.
00:14:44
The short version, right?
So, you know, actually,
when you're unfolding the stuff,
you hear, "Oh, I hear this.
Let's deal with that right now,"
because it's like,
"Wow, that's not working."
And I think we'll make the Pans...
00:14:59
We'll probably make the Pans less extreme.
00:15:02
We'll go 50% on the Pans,
which means, if it's out here,
it's going to go here,
because it was like,
"Okay, this is so freakin' separate."
And then on that Bus,
what we'll do is we will put an SSL EQ,
an L1,
and then, the old Manny.
00:15:24
So, I'll do an EQ.
00:15:26
It's a hard limiter, right?
And then also into a reverb
just for this moment on the toms.
00:15:38
And just hearing them,
just hearing the toms as they are,
I can go like this,
I can stamp it a little bit
with this vibe.
00:15:51
And we'll probably go down to here.
00:15:54
We're going to go here,
we'll go into a Large Hall.
00:15:58
This is, you know,
just starting with something, right?
So let's just play those fills
there for a second.
00:18:19
That's funny with the Phaser, man!
Why not?
Cool! That's good.
00:18:55
So let's explain what I'm doing here.
00:18:57
I find that there's a couple of...
00:18:59
There's just one tom moment
at the beginning of the song
that is separate from the live toms.
00:19:04
We separate that off
and create something interesting.
00:19:07
So we're kind of EQ'ing them,
and since they're machine-y,
they're really kind of, like...
00:19:12
...boring-sounding, so,
we drive some EQ into compression,
and use a little bit of hard limiting
to just make it more flatline-sounding,
and then feed that into a reverb.
00:19:23
Now, the reverb, you know,
I'm just using my own brains here.
00:19:25
You know, what's going to sound cool here?
Pick the right decay time,
add a little EQ,
it's got a little bit of a Phaser in it,
a little Distortion.
00:19:33
So we come up with a sound
with Manny's reverb
to just, hey, make that moment
a little bit more special.
00:19:39
We finished with that,
we'll close all those windows,
and we're going to look
at some of the keyboard parts here.
00:19:44
Now that I've got a little bit
of the basis here,
we'll look at what they're doing.
00:19:48
We'll just put all those faders
up to zero on the keyboards.
00:19:51
And we have two Buses, right?
Let's look at what we can put on the Bus.
00:19:57
Let's try using my Guitars plug-in
also on them.
00:20:00
We're just going to modify it a bit more.
00:20:06
What the Guitars plug-in does
is it gives you some of the chains,
some of the EQ, a little compression,
and a little bit of reverb and delay.
00:20:13
It gives you like a channel strip
of everything you'd want,
so, it actually is like an automatic...
00:20:19
it will take any sound
and kind of auto-correct it.
00:20:21
So in this scenario, once you start
using it across a couple of things,
you kind of want to marry
a few other things with it,
so we'll just see what it does
to the keyboards.
00:20:29
It might be over the top.
I don't know.
00:20:31
Play that spot.
00:20:54
The next victim.
00:21:35
So play that Trippy Synth part again.
00:21:59
It's good! That's good.
Let's see what the next victims are.
00:22:02
[Nik] Did you get the Low Synth
in that section?
Let's see what all those guys do
besides being this [inaudible].
00:23:01
Something tells me
that pattern doesn't change.
00:23:03
[Nik] Those four tracks just do that.
That Bus is just this.
00:23:06
Okay, cool.
00:23:07
Play it one more time
and I'll just do a little more tweaking.
00:23:40
Let's hear the other synths
we haven't heard yet.
00:24:17
Cool! Bridge Synth,
let's just check that out.
00:24:19
Cool!
That synth has a bass thing.
Why don't we just channel that out?
The Chorus Synths
are just doing bass parts, right?
Let's just drag it over there.
00:24:51
It's kind of basically doing
with those tracks are doing,
but only on one track.
00:24:57
How exciting for them.
00:25:57
Now, what I just did
is I wanted to look at my overall
and see how hard it was hitting,
and since I'm adding more things...
00:26:04
You know, I'll be fine-tuning it
towards the end,
but I'm just seeing if I pull it down it
lets it breathe a bit more, and it does.
00:26:10
How it reacts.
00:26:11
And now,
I went through the keyboards,
so what I did is I made sure
that like keyboards
are going out one Bus,
and all the other keyboards
are going out another Bus,
so I'm able to see what they do
and it all makes complete sense, right?
And the great thing about it,
I was able to maintain
the character of those keyboards
by just adding my plug-in,
which just gives it a little bit
of a channel strip effect:
EQ, compression,
a little reverb, and a little delay.
00:26:37
And then the marriage between
the keyboards and the guitars,
they actually seem
like they're part of the same band,
so that's part of using my plug-ins.
00:26:45
You tend to want to use them
on almost everything, right?
We're going to check the vocals next
and look at that,
so we'll take a look first
at the backgrounds.
00:26:53
We have a lot of faders
of backgrounds here, don't we?
We're just going to check
what they do in the Chorus,
so let's look at that.
00:27:01
So what do we do on the Bus?
Let's put my Vocals plug-in to 19-20.
00:27:09
And let's just put it after the EQ,
after the SSL.
00:27:13
And let's play the backgrounds into that
and see what happens.
00:27:22
So let's solo them.
00:27:38
We're going to separate that one.
00:27:56
What we'll do here now is,
okay, it looks like...
00:27:59
...3, 4, 5 and 6 are the same,
so I'm going to just solo
the one pair, right?
And I'll probably see if I can EQ those.
00:28:08
So, keep the Chorus going
and let me hear the first bunch.
00:28:12
[Nik] I'm going to loop
the section for you.
00:28:14
You got it! Yeah, let's loop
that Chorus. It would be great.
00:28:26
They're in tune.
00:28:28
I'm just going to top them off.
00:28:46
What we're doing is we'll just do a little
compression to take off the front,
and a little gating
so we're not building up noise.
00:28:56
Well, the transient,
it's a little sharp on the transient,
on the attack of the vocals,
so I'm just going to take
a little bit of the front off.
00:29:03
When these guys record vocals
and they have a slow attack limiter,
the attack of everything
starts to build up really hard.
00:29:08
Let's copy that EQ setting
across the board
on all those backgrounds.
00:29:17
So, Option+Click across.
00:29:21
[Nik] Including the B section?
No, not the B section, just those.
00:29:27
The B section was one of those Vocal Bs?
Got it.
00:29:31
[Nik] I'm looking for it myself right now.
It's actually in the Bridge.
00:29:34
Yeah, I just want to get
that Chorus bundle,
and let's make that into two pairs.
00:29:38
It might have been that...
00:29:41
Okay, so I'm going to solo
the rest of them.
00:29:44
They all do the same here, right?
Now, what we'll also do here...
00:29:56
Let's see how many octaves we have here.
00:30:00
So we got two octaves,
and it looks like six highs, right?
So we got six highs and two octaves.
That's good, that balance felt good.
00:30:07
Let's hear that. Let's continue.
00:30:20
So then, what we'll do up here,
let's put an 1176 up there.
00:30:26
I think I have one.
00:30:28
Oh, that guy!
Let's put him on there and
let's not pummel him so hard.
00:30:34
I'll go over here and just make it
a little bit less.
00:30:42
And then unsolo those backgrounds.
Let me hear them in the track.
00:31:58
So let's just put an L1 after my plug-in.
00:32:02
I'll put the L1 in there to take
some of the peak out of it
so it's a little bit smoother.
00:32:10
Let's just lower this, right?
That's a great start point,
and this is hitting too hard.
00:32:37
So let's recap the background vocals.
00:32:39
Let's look at the approach here.
00:32:40
The approach is really simple, right?
Of what we're doing, the approach, right?
I'm trying to take...
00:32:47
make them larger than life,
make them sound really loud
at a very low level,
so, for me, I want to send them all
down a Bus, right?
And I want to treat them all as a package.
00:32:57
So, in this package,
I like to use 1176s on vocals.
00:33:01
The blue one is my favorite,
especially the one I made,
so I'm going to use that, okay?
Then, I have an SSL Channel there,
I'm not sure if I'm doing anything
with that at the moment.
00:33:13
No, it's just in the chain
because I just put it there to have it,
so I have my 1176, and that's feeding him.
00:33:18
The 1176 is feeding my Vocals plug-in,
so the vocals are pretty compressed
going into the plug-in,
and I'm kind of using the Vocals plug-in
more for reverb/delay/chorusing.
00:33:29
More as an effect device, as a shaper.
00:33:32
Just a little bit of top and the effects.
00:33:34
Then, after that,
because I'm making it
kind of peaky for my plug-in,
I put a limiter on it just very slightly
to take any of those points out of there
so when I pull the backgrounds
into the track
they feel like they're in your face
without jumping out and hitting you.
00:33:50
Now I'm going to continue further
and see what other backgrounds
are going to work in this scenario.
00:33:55
Let's take that background vocal
that's a rogue one right there.
00:33:58
Should we just check the Pre Chorus ones?
Let's see where they play
and see if that's sexy.
00:34:19
Okay, let's take that little ad-lib part
and see if we can
shoehorn him back in there.
00:34:25
[Nik] The Bridge ones
are flat SSLs, if that matters.
00:34:27
Oh, okay.
00:34:28
Copy my setting to those guys.
00:34:31
And then we'll play that one more time.
00:34:41
Nice!
And then we have that rogue track
that we're moving around
and trying to find its...
00:34:47
What if they're the same thing?
Let's see what he sounds like
in that package.
00:35:04
So we're just going to make this guy
a little bit more interesting.
00:35:07
On him, let's get rid of the SSL
and let's put some distortion on him.
00:35:13
Let's glue it with the
Echo Farm distortion,
and let's go to our...
00:35:43
And then, for him also,
let's put an L1 after the Echo Farm.
00:35:48
Let's make him even smaller.
00:35:50
I want him to take up
a little less real estate.
00:36:15
One more time.
00:36:50
Then also, to make him
a little bit more exciting,
let's put an EchoBoy on him, mono.
00:36:54
I'm just going to put
a little delay on him also.
00:36:58
Crafting a masterpiece!
One more time.
00:38:00
Cool! That's working.
All right, I got a vibe on that guy!
Close her down.
00:38:03
So, adding something else,
you know, another layer of effect there
so it's not all the same, right?
So, piecing together the puzzle of vocals!
Let's see what we're going to do
to the main characters in this story.
00:38:16
Let's set up our Lead Vocal Bus with...
00:38:20
We'll leave the EQ first,
we'll do an 1176 second,
and we'll do the Vocals plug-in,
and then we'll do the L1.
00:38:33
And let's see if this treatment
becomes different.
00:38:48
So let's play Verse 1, right?
Let's just try something
a little more aggressive.
00:39:14
Let's try the Devil-Loc
on the channel itself.
00:39:18
So what I'm going to try here is,
this vocals seems like it was probably cut
in someone's bedroom
with no compression, no vibe,
nothing overdriving,
as plain Jane as can be,
so let me just see if I can use
something a little bit hard
just to kind of give it
a little analog sound.
00:39:33
This plug-in is really aggressive
so I only want to use it as...
00:39:38
It's almost like Sriracha sauce,
it's like a hot sauce, so,
it's really easy to burn
your tongue on it.
00:39:45
Let's just hear that same stretch.
00:40:51
Let's do the same thing
across these vocals.
00:40:55
Let's move the Devil-Loc,
and then do the same thing
across his partners in crime.
00:41:06
So what we're doing here is,
I mean, really...
00:41:11
His vocals need to have
the most attitude possible,
so we're almost giving him
like a guitar amp treatment
by this aggressive compressor.
00:41:20
So put all those faders at zero
and let's just see
what these guys are doing,
his partners in crime.
00:41:26
So let's hear the top of the song again.
00:42:54
Since I'm going through vocals,
I want to be able to get
a handle on it easier, right?
Can we put the vocal Subgroups
next to each other
like they're the channels on the desk?
Let's find the best spot.
00:43:05
What's the easiest spot
for you to put them?
[Nik] Do you want them to the right
or to the left of all the vocals?
Let's put them to the left
of all the vocals.
00:43:16
So what I'm doing now is that
since you have vocals, Subgroup,
vocals, Subgroup,
it's a little staggered
and I'm trying to see what the actual
inner balance of the record is,
so now I can just look at,
for me, vocal, vocal double,
and then the two background
settings, right?
So play the top of the song again.
00:44:48
So, my question is...
00:44:50
[Nik] Is the answer a duplicate?
I think so! Because that keeps
getting louder, right?
- [Nik] It's really loud, yeah.
- It looks like a duplicate, doesn't it?
[Nik] It sounds like it
by the way things are working.
00:44:59
Try flipping the phase on it
with the plug-in and see if it's...
00:45:05
Oh, all right.
00:45:12
It's a duplicate. So, that's the one
we're looking for a home for, right?
[Nik] No, that's just a...
00:45:18
ostensibly a double that is
actually a duplicate, it looks like.
00:45:21
So what about the one we put
into the 19-20 bucket?
[Nik] That's the harmony of that line.
00:45:26
Ah! So, got it!
So instead of the harmony...
I mean, instead of the...
00:45:31
Why don't you replace
the duplicate with the harmony
in that same Output.
00:45:36
You got to fish around
for duplicates, right?
So that Chorus Hook answer,
one goes to 17, right?
And one goes to 18?
[Nik] It's what I believe so.
I'm confirming.
00:46:19
You can play that same spot again
if you want.
00:46:35
- Right?
- [Nik] I confirmed that. Yeah.
00:46:36
So let's give it the same treatment, so...
00:46:38
[Nik] Take the harmony treatment
to the lead?
You know it.
00:46:42
When you open up sessions
and start getting inside of it,
you see what's working and what's not,
and you come across duplicates,
so you have to reconfigure
once in a while.
00:46:52
Can we just put this SSL Channel
before the 76?
Even though it's not doing anything.
00:46:57
Just for the voodoo of it, right?
Yeah. There you go.
00:47:02
So let's explain why I'm using this.
00:47:05
Here is what I'm using, right?
With the 1176, obviously,
Input is input, Output is output.
00:47:12
Input drives the compression, right?
Input makes it more compressed.
00:47:15
The Attack is 3,
the Release is 7, okay?
And it's fixed at 4:1.
00:47:20
This is a setting I've been using
since I worked with Dan Hartman
back in the day when we were
producing Tina Turner,
Joe Cocker and James Brown.
00:47:30
Dan Hartman was the one that showed me
what an 1176 was.
00:47:34
He said, "Chris, you got to use that."
I'm like, "Dan, what's that? I've seen
those before. Are they any good?"
Literally. I said: "Dan, I've seen
those before. Are they any good?"
"What do you mean 'Are they any good?'
That's what you got to use!"
So from that day forward,
that became the limiter I used.
00:47:48
He showed me that vocal
on a Joe Cocker song
called "Unchain My Heart"
that he tracked, and I was mixing.
00:47:55
So,
Dan said, "Put the 1176 on Joe's vocal."
He said that to me, and I said,
"Well, Dan, I've never used that before."
"Just watch! Watch what it does."
And when I realized
the excitement it added,
I said, "Okay, well,
I'm sold on this for life!"
Hence
my collection of a few here.
00:48:15
So, that's the setting.
00:48:17
The Input and Output is only how much
compression versus how much gain output.
00:48:22
It usually is 30/18.
00:48:24
If you look at the unit,
I have it at 36.
00:48:27
A little bit after 18 because
I'm getting a little gain into it.
00:48:31
30/18.
00:48:32
If it's compressing 7 dB,
that means that you're
at the optimal level, okay?
And if you have to pull the Input down
this much, it's okay.
00:48:41
I wouldn't want to pull it down
one click more than that.
00:48:44
That means you're hitting it too hard,
so then lower what's going into it.
00:48:47
So that explains...
00:48:48
Anything besides this setting
is up to you,
but this is what I use.
00:48:52
And these Analog switches only create
noise and hum, which you don't need.
00:48:56
Then, obviously,
this is being used to create character
and delay and reverb,
and this is there
to actually keep it in control
so it doesn't run away.
00:49:08
And it's not moving that much, right?
00:00:00
So that's kind of the head space
on those plug-ins and what they're doing.
00:00:04
Now, at this point,
we're trying to untangle it
and trying to make sense
of these faders,
so that's where we're at,
and now we're going to continue playing.
00:00:11
Play it from the top.
00:00:36
Copy that setting off to the second one.
00:00:38
Now that I see what it's doing, I might be
doing too much with the delay here.
00:00:54
Okay. Ditch the EchoBoy.
00:00:56
So, why do I say, "Ditch the EchoBoy"?
Because...
00:01:00
...since through this chain
I'm already having a 1/4 note delay,
why add more? Now it's just building up.
00:01:06
Let's hear that.
00:01:54
So let's do this just to add
some more excitement
because it's still feeling
like not driving it up.
00:02:01
Let's put in front of my Bus — let's just
affect the whole mix for a second —
let's put an SSL compressor
in front of my MixDown.
00:02:12
We'll just see if this is,
like, too much pummeling.
00:02:15
And just...
00:02:17
...play it from the Chorus or something,
and we'll see what we get.
00:06:18
Play the Intro again with those toms.
00:06:41
One more time.
00:08:30
Just copy that one over one.
00:08:34
Let's talk about what you've just seen,
or what I'm doing.
00:08:37
Once you put it all together, okay?
Once you put it all together, you say,
"Okay, I got a drum sound,
I got a guitar sound,
I got a keyboard sound,
I got a vocal sound," okay?
That's all freakin' fine and dandy,
but it doesn't work together. Okay?
You can be as good as I am
and you can get a start point,
but the key is: how is it working
inside the whole picture?
So what did we do? We put a little bit
more compression on the whole Mix Bus
to get it to feel
like there's a bit more glue.
00:09:05
That's just topping off
before my MixDown plug-in, right?
Then, I'm going back and I'm finding stuff
that's poking out
and not feeling balanced, okay?
And then going after each one
of them inside the balance.
00:09:17
And I'm looking at the drums
and I'm like, "They sound too plain,
so let's EQ the reverb,
let's compress the reverb." Right?
Let's find the stuff
that's boring and not...
00:09:27
Make it unboring.
00:09:28
If I have a peaky guitar, let's take
some of that off with a little limiter,
let's just clip it off.
00:09:32
And let's just look at our balance and see
how this thing is going to be treated.
00:09:35
When you put it all together,
how it reacts as a package
is really what it's all about, right?
We have a start point with the drums,
with the bass, the guitars,
so how can we make this thing
a freakin' song, right?
So now I'm realizing,
okay, I need to now organize it
in a way that I can manage it, all right?
Obviously in Pro Tools,
when you're using a mouse,
it's not as intuitive as playing a piano
because you're hitting
one string at a time,
so we're trying to make these
individual things react properly.
00:10:04
So that's what you see,
and that's where we are at this point.
00:10:07
I'm using some great start points
and now I'm refining the start points,
and maybe backing off on some
of the things I thought were too much.
00:10:15
Like, there's a reverse snare effect,
it's got some weird transient at the end,
so what am I going to do?
Do a little quick compression
so it clips that off, right?
Compress him more.
00:10:23
Put some more reverb on it
so it kind of smears into it.
00:10:26
Give it the effect that's looking for.
00:10:28
I don't want to feel these bits
isolating themselves, all right?
I don't want to see heads
pop out of the crowd,
I want to see a nice, even crowd
that kind of ebbs and flows
with the song, all right?
That's what we're doing here.
00:10:39
So now we're going to look at
just playing it again
and seeing who is popping out,
but,
the problem I'm running into is that
I really just want to work off my Groups.
00:10:50
So let's just try this: let's hide
all the feeders, I call them, right?
I want these named
so I can know what they are easier,
like, you know, 'V', 'BV'...
00:10:59
[Nik] Whatever you want.
Do you want me to rename the Aux shorter?
Like this?
Except that wouldn't be that,
that would be this.
00:11:06
Yeah. I mean,
is that confusing for you? Or...
00:11:10
Because you can see what it is, right?
And then 'BV 1', 'BV 2'.
00:11:13
I'm a creature of habit here, so,
if it looks the way I am used to it,
I know that that's
a handicap parking spot,
it's always going to be
a handicap parking spot,
so whoever is going to limp on in here
is going to that parking spot.
00:11:27
So, if it says 'V' on it,
I know that's the lead vocal.
00:11:29
If it says anything else, when I go
to grab it, I'm like, "What is that?"
So I really don't want to see
anything else,
just Vocal, Vocal Double, BV 1, 2, 3.
00:11:38
I want to be able to do this blindfolded,
so how it lays out in front of you
makes it a lot easier.
00:11:45
And then, if I just basically see
all the audio I'm dealing with
in front of me, it's a lot better.
00:11:49
What a mess I'm making.
00:11:54
Let's do the Bridge lead.
00:11:56
You want to just start with...
00:11:58
Let's start with the default, right?
Do you want to just try
the Bridge vocals on our default setting
with the Devil-Locs on them?
It might've been when I first heard
the rough that it needed to be different.
00:12:15
Maybe with my EQ feeding it
it will be different.
00:12:17
Don't overcomplicate it.
00:12:19
Start with your basic layout,
and then if you want to change
something inside of it,
change something,
but go with the common setting
rather than make everything complicated.
00:12:29
We're going to check that part here.
00:12:50
No. Let's just use one.
Let's use the top one.
00:13:05
So, to make it interesting,
you know, there's a bevy
of tools in the toolbox,
you can get a wrench out and turn it
around his neck if you want,
but I know there's one thing that's going
to help him feel like he's got a duo,
so why don't we put the ADT
on him for that section.
00:13:22
The old Reel ADT!
Look at that fretty thing.
00:14:25
That's working! Okay.
00:14:27
You can delete the other
middle eight vocal track if you want.
00:14:31
So we find a part that's missing,
and make it happen.
00:14:45
So we found the last piece
in the vocal chain.
00:14:47
We had a middle eight vocal,
we found a duplicate track,
figured that out.
00:14:53
I thought, well, another special moment
is the Abbey Road vocal doubler.
00:14:57
That's really cool.
It makes a really special effect.
00:15:00
So, you know,
trying things to make it interesting.
00:15:04
So now what we're going to do
is give me faders I can look at
and look at a better balance, right?
And hide all the feeders.
00:15:12
What I mean by feeder is
whatever track that is feeding a Bus.
00:15:15
We're going to hide those
so all I'm looking at is the Buses.
00:15:18
Then, the horizontal
real estate will shrink,
and I have it labeled so I have Vocal,
Vocal Double, BV 1, BV 2,
Guitar 1, Guitar 2,
Guitar 3,
and then right to my drums, right?
Since we know the name of the audio track,
can we just call it Kick and Snare?
'Sn'. The 'Sd' is, like, "What is 'Sd'?"
Snare Drum? Really?
Just call it 'Ft'. There you go!
I call the kick drum 'Foot', 'Ft'.
00:15:44
I have been marking
the console with 'Foot'
since I was 13 years old, okay?
Steve Jerome, who trained me...
00:15:52
I had just turned 13,
and just got my first full-time job.
00:15:56
He wrote it as 'Ft', as 'Foot',
because it's the foot, okay?
And that's what he called the kick drum.
00:16:03
And ever since then
I always write 'Ft'.
00:16:06
It's the only thing I can understand
as the kick drum, it's 'Ft'.
00:16:09
If I see 'Kick', it looks alien to me,
and with the snare drum, unless
it says 'Sn', I don't know what it is,
so I don't know what 'Sn T'
or 'Sn B' or anything is, just 'Sn'.
00:16:20
Everybody has their own way
of looking at this stuff,
so if you want a 'K' as your kick drum
or an 'S' as your snare,
well, make it so!
The less letters, the better, because
I don't care about the history lesson.
00:16:31
Perfect!
Now that I've kind of condensed,
it's even better.
00:16:37
Foot 2, 'Ft 2'.
00:16:43
Oh, yeah, that's the Room. Right.
00:16:47
Snare Room, right?
We'll call that one...
Just call it 'Sn 2', right?
Because Snare 2 is just the second snare.
00:16:59
And Snare 3, right?
Just Bottom is fine.
Drum Reverb, yeah!
Just call it 'S...'
Yeah, there you go.
00:17:09
And then 'Rev Cym'.
00:17:13
And then 'Crash'
on the Overhead duplicate.
00:17:17
You know, when you name this stuff,
you look at it and say,
"Oh, it's a crash! Okay."
I don't care what the history was.
00:17:23
Since I need to drive it, okay?
Since I'm sitting here
with just a touchpad,
another keyboard,
what I'm going to do
is I'm going to just use
the transport of my computer here
just so I can drive...
00:17:36
just so I can have some transport control,
so we're going to set up
a quick Title and some Cues
on my computer
just to run the Pro Tools.
00:17:45
This helps me just be able
to stop, go back,
and not rely on having my assistant, Nik,
constantly saying to him, "Okay, go back,
go forward, go back, go forward."
We will do a bit of that
for you here in a second.
00:17:57
So, I can go...
00:17:58
There you go! Hey!
I'll go to zero, right?
Now I can drive! Hey!
Take the wheel, Lord-Alge,
you pain in my ass!
Okay! Here we are back.
00:18:10
I've installed the Artist Mix
to my Pro Tools system,
because, as you know me, CLA,
I need to touch faders, okay?
This is my instrument, this is my piano,
this is my guitar, okay?
So as many faders
as I can touch, the better,
but for this, 8 is perfect
because usually I have
8 Groups in front of me,
so this is basically my Groups session
now connected to Pro Tools.
00:18:30
So we're ready to go with that,
back with our dynamic duo from Dayton
with their song, "Indestructible."
I have the mix exactly where I want it
so it's just a matter of me
doing my automation pass,
all my sounds are dialed in,
and just fine-tuning the balance
and making the final mix happen,
so let's see what happens
when I cue this thing up.
00:18:50
Yeah, I'm happy to have faders
because mixing with the mouse
was just not doing it for me,
so let's see what happens!
There you go!
All done in one pass.
00:22:48
The whole secret to this
is figure out the song,
find out what happens,
figure out the cues.
00:22:55
It's real simple!
It's all about paying attention.
00:22:57
If you kind of listen to what the song is
and listen to what it's about,
you know where the cues are, okay?
It's all about paying attention,
so if you can just focus on,
"Okay, what's the arrangement?
What does this chorus do?
What does that chorus do?
What's coming up in the bridge?
Who's leading the charge?"
Then, mixing it is easy
because it's all memory, right?
So, that's the secret:
just learn the cues,
and then you can be creative
and put some emotion into the moves,
because
if you perfect it, and sit there
with your automation and go,
"Oh, I did a dB here, a dB there,"
you know what you get? You get
a big stinking polished turd, okay?
What you want to have
is some happy accents,
some overshoots, some undershoots
where something goes out of a corner,
pulls out of a side.
00:23:39
You don't want this whole thing
to be like a cut-and-paste job, you know?
A lot of people will mix,
and Chorus 1, Chorus 2 and Chorus 3,
you can actually copy them
next to each other
and they're the exact same thing.
00:23:50
That really sucks!
Music is not that way, okay?
Music is not created
in a cut-and-paste fashion,
so why should you mix that way?
Mix with some emotion, so,
whether it's right or wrong,
put something in there so it has a flow
and creates a vibe the whole record,
so that's what we did here.
00:24:09
Aside, let me just hear that...
00:24:11
I think aside from just my...
00:24:13
...first verse opening line
being slightly low,
which I can probably just tag up,
if you want to put it in just Trim,
I might just top that off.
00:24:20
[Nik] Okay. And then
you want Touch, right?
Yeah, just...
00:24:23
[Nik] And then we'll watch...
You'll have to refine your Bank.
00:25:15
I mix super-quiet, because you know why?
If it doesn't sound good super-quiet,
it's not going to be good loud.
00:25:23
The more exciting it is
at the lowest volume,
that's a true sign of a great mix.
00:25:33
I turn it down to the level
of just above a fly farting.
00:25:44
That's good.
00:26:38
One more, just a touch-up pass here,
and then we should be good,
we should be indestructible at that point.
00:28:04
Just... just punching there.
00:30:49
There you go!
We're going to check that back.
00:30:52
So, when it's sitting in front of you
and you hear something, you're like,
"Yeah, let's just make that bit a little
pointier, let's make that pop out."
The only rule is
that you follow your ears,
follow your vibe,
follow your emotion to the song.
00:31:04
You have to connect yourself
to the song, okay?
You have to be connected. This is not...
00:31:08
This becomes a personal connection
when you mix music.
00:31:11
You personally connect
yourself to the song
and everything around you
is not even existent.
00:31:16
That's how you have to have
that kind of focus.
00:31:19
Without that kind of focus, you can't mix.
00:31:21
You can't be a distracted mixer.
00:31:23
The way I began and the way I started
and the way I've been doing it
my whole time is that
I was so used to having
a crowd of people making noise
and trying to distract me,
but I would focus myself on the song
and it wouldn't matter what they would do,
what flare guns, popcorn,
silly string, whatever.
00:31:40
I'm not going to stop
until the song is over,
and then I'd be like,
"Oh! What are you guys doing back here?"
So the most thing is: don't be distracted.
00:31:47
You know, put your heart and soul into it,
whether it's 3 minutes, 4 minutes,
5 minutes, whatever.
00:31:52
Your focus makes all the difference
because you can hear
inside of it at that point.
00:31:56
So now I'm going to
check back what I did
and see if I'm good
with my final mix here.
00:32:02
All right! "Indestructible"
from the dynamic duo from Dayton.
00:32:06
And everybody wants some!
What I did with this
is I basically took what I know here,
put it in here,
and kind of addressed it the same way.
00:36:04
I created Subgroups
that kind of follow
what I'm used to on my console,
and put it in here.
00:36:10
It took a bit of time to put it together,
and there was a bit of anxiety
in how quick it wasn't
because it's a mouse,
but in all reality, once I got my chain,
once I got my Mix Bus
sounding the way I wanted it,
it kind of felt the same;
the way I ride the Groups here,
riding the Groups here.
00:36:29
I'm always going to get a mix
that has the CLA sound, right?
I'm always going to get that,
no matter what device I use it on.
00:36:38
Fun times! Mixing Inside The Box with CLA!
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Software
- Eventide Blackhole
- Line6 Echo Farm
- Sound Toys Devil-Loc
- Sound Toys EchoBoy
- Waves SSL E-Channel
- Waves CLA Bass
- Waves CLA Guitars
- Waves CLA Vocals
- Waves CLA-76
- Waves L1 Limiter
- Waves LA MixDown
- Waves Manny Marroquin Reverb
- Waves Real ADT
- Waves SSL Bus Compressor
Chris Lord-Alge is an American mixing engineer based in LA where he owns the studio Mix LA.
His extensive use of compression earned him the name of the "Lord of Compression". His impressive collection of compressors were modelled by plug-in companies such as Waves Plug-ins with whom he collaborated to create his own line of plug-ins.
Chris is one of the most renowned mixing engineers in the world and his style can be heard on records from legendary artists such as U2, Aerosmith, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, The Who, Green Day and dozens more.
Chris mainly mixes analog on his SSL console. Chris uses Pro Tools as a playback engine in the back of the room then focuses on what he hears, sitting at the console, patching vintage pieces of gear, making SSL EQ and compressor moves and pushes his levels through the console for great sounding results.
On pureMix, you can see how Chris mixes Daughtry on his SSL, explaining every move he makes.
U2
Green Day
Smashing Pumpkins
Muse
James Brown
Bruce Springsteen
Formed in 2010 by Matt and James Prather (twin brothers from Eaton Ohio), ViFolly is a national touring band for hire and played approx 100 shows in over 20 states in 2011. All songs are written, recorded and pre-produced by ViFolly at Ash and Dust Studios, built and owned by Matt and James Prather.
indestructible
CLICK_HEREMusic Creditsindestructible
By ViFolly
Formed in 2010 by Matt and James Prather (twin brothers from Eaton Ohio), ViFolly is a national touring band for hire and played approx 100 shows in over 20 states in 2011. All songs are written, recorded and pre-produced by ViFolly at Ash and Dust Studios, built and owned by Matt and James Prather.- Artist
- ViFolly
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