01h 51min
(31)
In this full-length mixing tutorial, Grammy winner Darrell Thorp teaches you all of the tricks and techniques he uses to help enhance dream-pop indie rockers Future Elevators from a creative and raw production to a finished and exciting mix.
See how Darrell combines bold decisions and simple tweaks that stay true to the artist’s vision and also add a layer of details that give the mix the perfect amount of polish.
Darrell explains his unique mixing philosophy and unorthodox techniques that help him create killer sounding mixes including:
- Extracting the maximum amount of tone from the drums to support the guitars and other instruments
- Adding low end and fixing a flat kick drum sound
- Fixing a wooly and boomy sounding bass tone with an innovative EQ plugin
- Metering and maintaining headroom in a dense mix
- Applying in-the-box mix bus compression and EQ
- Working with multiple layers of keyboards and guitars and getting a clear and punchy sound from each instrument
- Tweaking his listening volume for the ideal monitoring at each stage of the mix
- Fixing harshness with multiband compression
- Session setup and how to begin each mix with an open mind
- Gain staging tracks to optimize for later adding automation and plugins
Watch and learn as Darrell works on the mix from start to finish and then download the complete multitrack stems and practice mixing the song for yourself!
Darrell Thorp is a Seven-Time Grammy Award Winning (OutKast, Radiohead, Switchfoot, Molotov, Beck) Producer, Mixer and Engineer with over 18-years of experience under his belt and many multi-platinum records to his discography.
After finishing 4 years of service in the U.S. Navy, he moved to Los Angeles in 1997 and started interning at smaller studios where he eventually worked his way up to an Assistant Engineer at some of L.A.'s prestigious studios such as Track Record, Conway, and finally, Ocean Way Recording. It was at Ocean Way Recording that Darrell met famed Radiohead producer, Nigel Godrich. Shortly after meeting Godrich, Darrell became his full time engineer and ended up recording Beck “Sea Change”, Radiohead “Hail to The Thief”, Paul McCartney’s “Chaos and Creation In The Back Yard” and many others.
Beck
Radiohead
P!nk
Paul McCartney
Switchfoot
Nigel Godrich
Michael Shackelford first wrote down the words “FUTURE” and “ELEVATORS” a few years ago on a rough instrumental demo. Recorded at his home studio outside of Birmingham, Alabama, the music never grew into a finished song, but that simple, surprisingly evocative phrase stuck with the multi-instrumentalist. It’s an apt phrase for one of Birmingham’s most original musical acts. Like Roald Dahl’s fictional creation, Shackelford—the group’s founder, mainstay, and guiding creative force—is something of a pop confectioner who thinks up impossible sounds and makes them a reality. His self-titled debut as Future Elevators expertly mixes whimsy and gravity, the fantastical with the everyday. Even as he grounds his lyrics in real-world issues, Shackelford fills his songs with new and improbable combinations of familiar sounds: the jagged pastoral folk of “Alabama Song,” the Rube Goldberg blues riffs of “Machine Maker,” the retro-futuristic r&b of “Modern World,” the warm drone of the ten-minute instrumental closer “Aphrodite.”
