Chris Lord-Alge Mixing Rock In The Box

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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.

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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.

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The track is called "Indestructible." It's by a duo from Dayton, Ohio, named ViFolly.

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So I've heard this song maybe...

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...for 20 seconds, and I like to go into the unknown and make it happen from there.

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So here we are with "Indestructible." When I get sessions delivered to me, I prefer them at 48/24 or 96/24.

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That's the rate we use because since we mix to 96/24, I prefer the master to be at 48/24.

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Most people send me stuff that's at 48/24.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I don't want to do the 2-track bus compressor thing later, okay? I want to have the CLA MixDown bus in there.

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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.

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The reason we use an Aux is because the Aux is Pre-Fader.

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The Master is Post-Fader.

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The Master Fader in Pro Tools, being Post-Fader, if you put a compressor in there and you fade it, well, guess what happens.

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The threshold drops, and then the compression changes.

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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.

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That's what I'm used to, and that's what works for me.

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We have our Aux and our Master, and we're just going to put in the middle spot the CLA MixDown.

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The CLA MixDown is my emulation of my 2-track Mix Bus of my console.

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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.

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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.

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Why I do this is really simple.

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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.

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So, organizing your session for mixing is completely based on how you like to lay it out.

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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.

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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.

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So, anyway, we're going to look at what's in the session.

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I don't even have to hear it. I don't care about hearing it.

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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.

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That's common, like drums, guitars, whatever.

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Nik is my assistant, and has been since 1922.

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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.

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And Bing Crosby's White Christmas was done in here, I mixed direct to 78.

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But here today, it's "Indestructible" by a duo from Dayton.

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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.

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There is our bass, there are our guitars, there is Guitar Clean, there is something that says Audio 2, that's an Intro Synth.

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Some synths. Okay. Bridge Synth.

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Let's take all the vocals and slide them up, and put them above the drums right now.

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We will park everything first, and then we will color-code them in our color.

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Organizing it makes the most sense.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The shorter you can make it is better, so if I can make it to be, like, 40 faders, even better.

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So here's our vocals. We'll look at that, okay? Nik will color them our color-code.

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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.

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And line them all up, and I like blue for vocals.

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Blue for vocals, green for guitars, red for drums, purple for bass.

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There might be a few shades in between so you can differentiate if you have a lot of stuff.

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I leave it up to you. You can all have your own colors.

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There's a bunch of colors up there, so I just try to pick the basic color so it's easy to spot.

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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.

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Have I perfected it? No.

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Do I get into all the shading? You know, it can get confusing, so I'd rather have less is more.

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So Nik is just moving all the keyboards above the vocals, and we'll see if we have to comp any of that.

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Then we have the vocals, right? I see a lot of backgrounds.

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Even before hearing it, I look at the waveforms and I look at similarities.

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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.

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So we look at the files, look at how we can park them, and look at how we can make the vertical challenge.

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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.

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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.

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That's the secret.

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And if it's something you're going to manipulate, set it and forget it, then, hey, build it in and it's over.

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I don't want to struggle with this song.

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- How we got there, Nik? - [Nik] I'm sorting.

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All right! Look at that. Okay, let's go top to bottom and see what we got.

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We got the Intro Synth, audio one, all right.

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Why don't we just name that Intro Synth? That audio file, just for us.

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There you go! Let's scroll down. There is our synth pile.

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It looks like we have...

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...Chorus Vocal, Verse Vocal, with no overlaps, right? And the double, right? [Nik] I guess. Yeah.

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So it kind of looks like a double thing, and the Bridge.

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And then, we have the BV stack.

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Let's scroll down there.

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And then we have some guitars. Okay.

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And then we have Chorus Tasty.

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Isn't that nice? Then we have Kick Drum, Snare Sample.

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Then we will make the drums how we like them, right? Bass Drum In, Bass Drum Out.

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Bd Par, like John Parr! Kick Sample.

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[Nik] It looks like some parallel stuff.

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We'll start by organizing our drums.

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The way they have it laid out is different than how I want to have it laid out.

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Let's just make Kick Sample, and then Snare Top.

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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.

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They've got some three toms and a whole party of toms.

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We will put those there, and then we'll look for...

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...Overheads.

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They got them in there.

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We have the Overheads, and then, we'll put the Room tracks.

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I'm going to organize the drums the way I like to see them.

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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.

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So we just go through, and then, if there are tracks we're not going to use, Hide and Make Inactive.

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So, we're going from here down...

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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.

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We'll start with the Keyboards.

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Now, I'm going to use Aux numbers that correspond to what I'm used to, because as I said, routine is important here.

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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.

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So, Nik, my assistant here, will help me with that.

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We're going to take the Keyboards that look like they can work together.

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This is without hearing it.

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It looks like the first three pairs up top will go to 9-10.

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[Nik] Okay.

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And we'll send those to an Aux, because we may treat them the same.

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And if we do, and if they work, guess what they become? A pair.

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In a perfect world, we could pair this thing down where you could almost walk off the top floor.

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So, below it, below what says Trippy Synth, we will put an Aux, 9-10, and then feed it back to 1-2.

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[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.

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[Nik] I'm assuming Low and Trippy are playing the same thing.

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In the two choruses, the Synths are doing the same thing.

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Let's just start by outputting them to 9-10, and the ones below, 11-12.

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[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.

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And we'll do the same thing for that next batch, because it looks like...

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[Nik] These four? Actually, check and see...

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Rip and Bridge look like they could go in with the 9-10 pack.

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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.

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[Nik] Cool.

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And then maybe, just for visual, we just...

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See the thing that says Bridge Synth? Make it just the region for the bridge, and not that... There you go.

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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.

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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.

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We select the four, we create an Aux below it, we call it '11/12 SSL'.

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Why does it say 'SSL'? Because, what is this? An SSL.

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So, for me, I'm emulating my Auxes that I use in the console, In The Box.

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We're going to output all of my Auxes to one Stereo Bus in the desk.

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And then, also, what we do in our Comments window, we mark what's going to what Aux.

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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.

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Then we scroll down to the vocals. We have the Synths done.

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There are some Comments that exist there. What do you think those are? [Nik] Tracking notes, it looks like.

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Since we're not tracking, we're mixing, we can ditch all that.

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Just by looking at it, Nik will do the same thing: we'll create some Auxes for our vocals.

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This way, I can process them as a group.

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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.

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I use 17 for the lead vocal, 18 for the double.

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For all I know, these could be the two singers separate.

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Just visually looking at it, it looks like those parts are separate.

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That was quick, Nik! He is quick, so you just got to watch out.

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He was quicker than lightning.

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The only thing faster than him is, well, an act of God.

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Then we have that Vocal BV, which looks like a verse harmony, doesn't it? [Nik] Yeah.

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So, is the verse a single voice? Yeah. The verse is a single voice, correct? [Nik] Yeah.

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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.

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I have a mono verse harmony.

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That's going to go on my Vocal Double output because I'm used to that and it's up the middle.

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And then, after that, I have pairs for backgrounds that are Stereos.

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So after my Lead Vocal and Lead Vocal double, then we figure out how many pairs of vocals I'm going to need.

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[Nik] I just found two more Leads and Doubles here.

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Oh, okay. Those look like Leads and Doubles. The Chorus Hook, yeah.

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And then I see something else follows it down the Vocal BV duplicate also.

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One very important thing that we're not going to spend a million years doing, but naming the tracks to make sense.

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Verse, Bridge, Chorus.

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How about Chorus Low, or BV Low, okay? or BV Low Chorus.

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Name it so it's obvious.

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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.

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We're not even listening to the song, but we can visually kind of figure it out.

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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.

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Oh, okay.

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[Nik] They're a harmony, or a triple.

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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.

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Yeah, right. But it's the third track, right? [Nik] I grabbed these two.

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So, it's a triple? [Nik] Or a harmony. Yeah.

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Okay, so that's going to have to go up the harmony hole.

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Look at how many backgrounds we have.

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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.

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- [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.

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And even the Pre-Chorus backgrounds 3 and 4 go in that bundle too.

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[Nik] Okay.

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And then these 'Uh Ohs' can be...

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...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...

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I mean, up to 56.

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Keyboards are 9 through 12.

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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.

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[Nik] 'Uh Ohs' on 21-22? Yeah, let's do that.

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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.

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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.

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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!