F. Reid Shippen Mixing Ingrid Michaelson
04h 01min
(29)
In this pureMix.net Exclusive, F. Reid Shippen opens the multitrack of Ingrid Michaelson's "Afterlife" to dissect the choices he and the producers made during production and remix the song in front of you to explain his thought process, workflow, and techniques that have helped him achieve success as a first call mixing engineer.
Learn how Reid:
- Sets up his sessions before he starts mixing
- Adds multiple layers of drum samples to craft powerful tones that cut through the mix
- Blends multiple outboard compressors and eq chains as well as plugins in the box to sculpt the perfect lead vocal tone
- Maintains perspective throughout the mixing process
- Manages headroom
- Explains the collaborative process with Jacquire King for this song
- Checks Mono Compatibility
- Creates contrast between sections of the song
- Uses his pop shine trick on the lead vocal
- Uses 2bus processing
Once Reid has the mix at a place where he feels it is ready to present, Co-producer, Jacquire King, stops by Robot Lemon to listen and add some final tweaks with Reid.
Watch F. Reid Shippen mix Ingrid Michaelson's "Afterlife". Only on pureMix.net
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- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Start
- 00:29 - First Steps
- 00:58 - Rough Mix
- 05:22 - Session Setup
- 06:25 - Working Off A Template
- 07:42 - Listening Through Previous Settings
- 08:46 - About The Mixing Process
- 09:30 - Vocals
- 12:55 - Listening To The Compressors
- 19:45 - Printing The Vocal Blend
- 25:34 - Syncing The Printed Audio
- 26:50 - Vocal Parallel Effects
- 28:30 - General Balance
- 31:28 - Drums And Percussion
- 35:42 - Diving In The Mix
- 39:23 - Back To The Drums
- 44:32 - Toms
- 45:26 - Snare
- 50:18 - Overall Drums
- 56:46 - Stomps And Sample Layering
- 59:20 - Percussion
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Bass
- 04:59 - Tweaking Drum Levels
- 06:07 - Additional Production
- 08:48 - Listening To the Rough Mix
- 09:35 - Session Optimization
- 10:49 - Building From The Chorus
- 13:53 - Acoustic Guitars
- 19:55 - Getting Perspective: Listening From The Top
- 20:50 - Pianos
- 24:43 - Verse Guitar
- 27:15 - Back To The Drums
- 28:15 - Clack Sound
- 31:26 - Snare Samples
- 37:03 - Mono Compatibility
- 38:28 - Cymbals And Transitions
- 39:40 - Juno Bass
- 40:57 - Bridge
- 43:30 - Creating Constrast
- 52:30 - Down C
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Last Part Sheningans
- 02:29 - Changing Speakers
- 05:41 - Managing The Headroom
- 07:54 - Focusing On The Hook
- 12:43 - Cleaning Up The Session
- 14:15 - Vocal Processing
- 19:05 - Pop Shine Trick
- 24:02 - Vocals Effects
- 30:55 - Background Vocals
- 36:35 - Tweaking The Mix
- 43:12 - Vocals Automation
- 56:21 - Blending Background Vocals
- 1:05:57 - About Fades
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Listening From The Top
- 16:21 - Boosting The Transition
- 31:48 - 2 Bus Processing
- 35:26 - About The 2 Bus Processing
- 36:25 - Listening With Jacquire
- 58:41 - Shortening The End
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |
00:00:00
Hi! I'm F. Reid Shippen.
00:00:03
We are hanging out in my personal mix room
in Nashville, Tennessee, at Robot Lemon,
and we're going to...
00:00:10
we're going to do a mix of an
Ingrid Michaelson song called "Afterlife"
that was produced by Jacquire King
with a little bit of extra futzing
with me on the end.
00:00:28
The first thing I will always do
when I'm doing a mix
is to listen to the rough mix
because I want to see
where the artist and the producers
and everybody was when they left it off
and they sent it to me.
00:00:42
I also want to make sure
and my assistant Dan
also listens to it to make sure
that we're not missing any tracks
or missing anything special.
00:00:49
So the first thing I'm going to do
to acclimate myself to the song,
since I've never heard it before,
is to just sit down and run the rough mix.
00:04:59
Okay. What I always do is I sync
the rough mix up to the Pro Tools session
that I'm working in because then
it's really easy to snap back and forth
for a quick reference
on what the producer was working on.
And it also lets me figure out real quick,
like, am I missing a guitar
in that section?
Am I missing a little piece?
So that's very helpful.
00:05:18
I run that on two separate
buttons on my Dangerous
so I can just pop back and forth
really quickly between the two.
00:05:23
What happens when a song comes in to me
is I'm really fortunate enough to have
a great assistant named Dan,
and his responsibility
is to take all the tracks
and make sure that there's nothing
crazy wrong with them,
and to do a little bit of cleanup
and to go through the vocal
and take out pops and ticks,
and to organize them.
00:05:38
And as you can see, we organize by color.
00:05:42
I do drums, then percussion,
more percussion,
then bass, bass is always pink.
Guitars are always orange,
acoustic guitars are always blue,
keys are always yellow.
00:05:54
Vocals are down here in dark blue, and
then background vocals are at the bottom.
00:05:59
And after that are some Effects Returns
which we can probably actually turn off.
00:06:04
This is a song I did a little while ago
that did pretty well for Ingrid.
00:06:10
My favorite part about this tune
I got to actually
do co-production on this track.
00:06:14
And my kids, who are
Ingrid Michaelson fans,
they got the record without knowing
that I had worked on this song.
00:06:20
Specifically, this was their
favorite song on the record,
so, dad win!
I have a template that essentially
we bring in from whatever song I did last
or whatever song was somewhat similar.
00:06:35
If I did a rock song
the day before or whatever,
I'm not going to import it
into a pop song template.
00:06:41
We're going to find something
that's kind of in the ballpark.
00:06:43
But one of the reasons why
I love doing this
is because back in the day when you were
mixing everything on a console
and you would pull up a new song,
there would be Sends
and there would be EQs
and there would be
all kinds of weird stuff,
and most of the time it didn't work,
but every once in a while
it led to something that was,
like, super-cool.
00:07:01
So I love the element of surprise
that can kind of happen
and maybe just give me an idea like,
I would never think to put
a weird effect on something
but it was on there from the last time,
and then you hear it
and it gives you an idea
and maybe it takes you someplace
that you wouldn't have thought of going.
00:07:16
So I like the unpredictability
of pulling things into a template
and starting from there.
00:07:21
So the next thing I do
after I listen to the rough
is I'll just switch back over
to what's literally just coming out of
the template without changing anything,
and just play it for a little while
and see if there's anything interesting
or anything bizarre.
00:07:36
Or, you know, if it's just like...
I don't know.
00:07:39
So this is what it sounds like
the first time I play it.
00:08:45
Jacquire will remind us of this, maybe.
00:08:49
I did this a little while ago so I
don't remember what exactly happened.
00:08:52
It's entirely possible
that I mixed this song twice.
00:08:55
It's possible that there was a version
that was done while we
were doing the record,
and later on in the record they decided
to do a different version with Jacquire.
00:09:04
Jacquire did a version and then I think
they came back to me and said,
"Hey, we like certain things from the
first version," of course, right?
"and certain things
from Jacquire's version.
00:09:14
Do you think you can help
bring those two things together?"
We should check with him. I'm nearly
certain that's what happened
because he and I ended up
co-producers on this track.
00:09:25
I don't remember exactly, hopefully he'll
have a better memory than I will.
00:09:29
That being said, I'm just going to
start mixing.
00:09:32
What I usually start with on most vocal
records is the actual vocal.
00:09:36
Ingrid is down here,
I will turn the vocal on
and see what we got going.
00:09:42
I like to get just kind of
a ballpark sound on her.
00:09:44
Again, this is the second or third
record that I've done with Ingrid,
I'm really familiar with her voice,
I know what she likes,
and I know, like, where it's going to fit,
so I'm going to mess around
with her vocal a little bit
and then I'll probably shut it off
and work on the track a little bit
and then bring the vocal back in.
00:09:57
So let's just see how it sounds flat.
00:10:16
So if you see here, all of these
edit points that you see
was Dan going through the vocal
and taking out pops, clicks, mouth noises,
you know, edits, stuff like that,
anything that's going to get amplified
when we compress the vocal
and put it way upfront in a pop mix.
00:10:33
So I'll go through here and this is just
an old habit from old Pro Tools,
is making sure that everything
has a crossfade just in case.
00:11:09
When I pulled the vocal up
it was already running through
a fairly complicated chain.
00:11:13
The vocal is running out of Pro Tools,
it's being multed to multiple
compressors on the console.
00:11:21
The Outputs of those compressors
are being summed together into a Bus,
that Bus is going back through
a channel in the console
where it's getting some console EQ
and compression.
00:11:32
The console EQ is actually
a specialized Maselec EQ card
in the SSL console for the vocal,
and it's got an Insert.
00:11:38
And on the Insert we've got
a couple of pieces of gear over here,
a Pultec EQ, a Retro 2A3 EQ,
and a Millennia Origin,
also just for EQ and for character.
00:11:50
That all goes back into Pro Tools
and when I get the vocal to the point
where I really like it,
all of that stuff gets printed
into Pro Tools and preserved
because I want to make sure
that I've got a copy the way I want it,
and I also don't necessarily trust
Pro Tools Delay Compensation
so I want to make sure that the vocal
is in exactly the right pocket.
00:12:09
When I first played the vocal
it had some effects on it
because it looked like some of those
effects were imported from a template.
00:12:14
I'm just going to shut those off for now.
00:12:17
And then what I want to do
is play the vocal
and mess around
with the different compressors
and the different EQs to try and get a
character on her vocal that I really like.
00:12:28
All of those compressors
have different tonal characteristics,
different timbre characteristics.
00:12:33
Some have more attack, some have more air,
some have more body.
00:12:38
I got into this a long time ago
and always had really great results.
00:12:41
Everybody was really happy
with the way the vocal sounded,
was to mix and match the compressors
to try and find a blend
that complemented the vocal.
00:12:50
We can go through the compressors
one by one
just to kind of get an idea
of what they sound like.
00:12:54
The first one is a vintage Langevin AM-7A.
00:13:03
I like that one, that one sounds
kind of intimate,
and, you know, a little bit close.
00:13:08
The next one is an 1176 Rev B,
blue stripe,
that I call Obi-Wan because
it's a little bit bright.
00:13:23
That has a little more air on the top
and a little bit more articulation,
and then there's another 1176 blue stripe
that we call Darth because he's darker.
00:13:43
Although they sound pretty similar
on Ingrid, so, you know.
00:13:47
And then the last one is a Retro 176,
just a super-high quality
awesome compressor.
00:14:02
I'm just going to mix and match
and see if I can get a blend
of those compressors
that gives me the sound
on Ingrid's vocal that I really dig.
00:14:12
And keep in mind that we're
monitoring this through EQ,
some of the outboard EQ
and some of the board EQ,
so if I bypass that
it's going to change it a lot.
00:14:30
So I'm going to mess with the different
compressors and see what we get.
00:15:08
Now I'm going to...
take that compressor blend
and mess around with some
EQ choices on it too.
00:16:07
So, that's me fiddling around
with a couple of different EQs.
00:16:13
Overall, the Pultec gives like a silky
kind of open, smoothing thing to it.
00:16:17
It sounds... I don't know if you heard it
when I kicked it on and off,
but it sounds just like quality.
I don't know how to describe it,
it just has kind of
a magical quality on vocals.
00:16:27
The Retro, I use the Retro
to open up top and bottom.
00:16:32
In fact, I don't even know
if we should say this on camera,
but Phil modified my 2A3 EQ
to give me a 22 kHz thing on the top
which is awesome for, like,
lifting air on vocals.
00:16:43
It's really killer, it's a fantastic EQ.
00:16:46
And then I'll use the other side...
It's in series.
00:16:49
I'll use the other side
to push in some midrange
if it needs a little bit of midrange.
00:16:53
The tube stuff just sounds different
than the solid-state stuff
or anything In The Box,
especially on vocals
where you're concentrating the most.
00:17:00
That's what everybody's concentrating on,
so the most amount of gear
in this room is dealing with vocals.
00:17:07
Let's look at some of
the vocal EQ settings.
00:17:09
On the SSL I'm using the console EQ,
but it's got a Maselec mastering card
built into it.
00:17:15
This EQ is different than a lot
of the other EQs on the console.
00:17:19
It gives me 30 kHz on the top,
which I'm using to open up
her vocal a little bit.
00:17:23
And I'm putting a little edge in
at around 15 kHz
and taking a little bit of midrange
out on Ingrid.
00:17:30
She can kind of get a little bit piercy
in the midrange
so it looks like I took a little bit
of midrange out, around 1.5 kHz.
00:17:37
And there's almost always a filter on.
Actually, there's always a filter on,
so pretty much anything under 50
is having an analog filter
trying to get rid of that stuff.
00:17:47
Let's go to the racks!
All right, on Ingrid we're getting
3 dB at 100 Hz
and wide open at 16 kHz on the Pultec.
00:17:59
That gives, like, a really nice,
silky, open thing.
00:18:02
On the 2A3,
about... 1.5?
I don't know how to read the boost
on the 2A3.
00:18:11
15 at 100 Hz, giving it more of that,
and opening it up at 22 kHz.
00:18:16
That was the special thing that
I had mentioned that Phil had done.
00:18:19
And then on this one I'm getting
a little bit of boost at 4 kHz
to push the midrange forward.
00:18:24
Also, if you have one of these,
this subsonic filter switch
is kind of a secret.
00:18:29
I don't know why, you can mess around
with the different settings,
but the one on 40 Hz
always sounds better to me
and it actually sounds like it has more
bass, even though it's taking bass out.
00:18:38
So this is a fun little thing
to mess with.
00:18:41
The Millennia Origin pretty much
never moves, it's an EQ that I keep set.
00:18:45
And again, I'm getting a little bit
of high end boost around 21 kHz
and one click of midrange around 1.5,
which is ironic because I think I'm taking
that off on this vocal on the console,
so I'm, like, canceling out
what I'm doing.
00:19:01
And one click of low end around 180.
00:19:05
There is a tube circuit in this unit
that gives a really nice character.
00:19:10
Sometimes I would kick it out
into the solid-state circuit
and sometimes I would kick it on the tube.
00:19:16
The tube circuit sounds really nice,
it stays in there almost all the time.
00:19:21
Some of this stuff seems like department
of redundancy department.
00:19:25
This is stuff I've been using
for a long time,
and once you get used to having it,
and because I've got it, it just happens.
00:19:31
I could probably make do
with taking one of these EQs out,
but I've gotten used to the way
the character works
and they all kind off add, like,
certain colors and characters.
00:19:42
So it's fun to have all of these
options available.
00:19:45
When I'm happy with the vocal
what I will do is just go ahead
and print it into Pro Tools
because I want to make sure
that we've got it.
00:19:56
Usually on the vocal one of the first
things I'll do is pop this guy up
and just make sure
that there is no subsonic stuff.
00:20:05
The FabFilter EQ is awesome for this
because you can see
what's going on down there
and you just basically...
00:20:11
if you've noticed, I actually have
a starting template for this thing
that gives me the low end roll-off.
00:20:17
It gives me a peak right here,
it gives me a tilt EQ here,
it gives me another peak here,
and then a shelf and a high end roll-off
so I can really quickly just make
some basic EQ changes.
00:20:28
But almost always on vocals
I'm going to look for low end.
00:20:47
And as you can see here
where you see the waveforms,
it's taking off 10, 20 dB of muck.
00:21:12
Now, sometimes you'll find
even at this process
there'll be 1 or 2 frequencies that are
kind of pushing a little bit in the vocal
and I might as well get rid of them
at this point in the process,
so I'm going to experiment with just
ducking a few of these little guys.
00:21:48
And maybe use a little bit
of the high end shelf
just to kind of open things up a tiny bit.
00:21:53
Another plug-in that is
super great on vocals,
especially vocals that are
really peaky or really harsh,
is this: Soothe.
00:22:02
I'm not particularly worried about Ingrid.
00:22:04
Sometimes when she goes high
she'll get a little forward,
so I'm just going to look at a few spots
on this vocal and see if it needs it.
00:22:11
It might be something
that I'm going to do later
because I want more control over it
on a section by section basis.
00:23:03
I like what that's doing on the vocal
so I'm just going to go ahead
and print it, leave it there.
00:23:08
At this point, like we said, the vocal
is going out through the console,
through the compressors, through
the EQs, and back into Pro Tools.
00:23:14
Now I'll just print it back
into the system
to have the vocal tone the way I like it.
00:24:03
Okay, there's two vocals on this song.
00:24:08
I'm going to print them both.
00:24:13
I'm going to listen first
to make sure this wasn't recorded
someplace different.
00:25:16
All right, I'm going to go ahead
and print that to this channel.
00:25:34
This is a step that I do because I do not
trust Pro Tools Delay Compensation,
I'm sorry to say.
00:25:42
So let's look to see if what it printed
was accurate.
00:25:50
I just go find a nice transient
that I can Tab to
and I do it on the print, and as you
can see, it was not in the same spot.
00:26:01
Delay Compensation
did not compensate correctly,
so I snap the vocal to the same spot
just because I want to make sure
that everybody's happy.
00:26:25
This is a little bit of a laborious
process, but I find it necessary.
00:26:29
I'm sure that there's
a better way to do this,
I'm sure that Fab will tell me a better
way to do this in about 12 minutes.
00:26:35
But as you can see,
those two things did not line up.
00:26:39
I like to make sure
that everything is lined up,
and since I'm printing it anyway
I just double check manually.
00:26:44
And then I can turn these guys off
and head to vocal land.
00:26:50
So at this point the printed vocal,
as we monitor it right here...
00:27:00
...is going back into my console, the SSL,
going through the Mix Bus.
00:27:05
It's also splitting out to a parallel,
the parallel is going to a couple
of pieces of outboard:
a Calrec parallel compressor,
a Dolby-A unit,
a Bedini Audio Spatial unit
that kind of moves the vocal
forward a little bit,
and my Roland Dimension D
that just gives it a little bit of effect.
00:27:21
It's very subtle, you'll hear it
as more volume than anything else
but I can give you the before and after.
00:27:26
So, with those things shut off
the vocal sounds like this.
00:27:36
And here it is with it back on.
00:27:45
Again, this is stuff
that I've used over the years
and come to like and come to realize
that I just always use it the same way,
so it's just set up on the console.
00:27:54
When I put the vocal out
through a certain Output,
that's just what will happen
on that Output.
00:27:59
I'm going to turn the track back on,
kind of push the vocal up
somewhere in the ballpark
and just kind of see what we've got.
00:28:28
At this point I will start generally
messing around with the tracks,
usually starting with the drums,
although there's a couple things on this
song that I want to look at specifically.
00:28:38
The first one is the hook
at the top of the song
and then the second thing is, there's
a couple of different piano vibes on this.
00:28:47
There's one that's more sustained
and there's one that's more choppy
and I think we got to make a decision
on which one of those we want to use,
so let's just listen.
00:29:17
This is kind of cheating
because these plug-ins were on this!
Again, because this is a song
that I did before.
00:29:23
It's actually possible that this came
from the very first iteration
of the song that I mixed
and I really wanted to keep
these whistles out to make them a hook,
so there's a bunch of plug-ins on them
and it turns them into this.
00:29:39
Which kind of sounds like too much
until you put it in the track.
00:29:46
Let's see what I did to that.
00:29:48
First a little bit of distortion.
00:29:51
Second, this is a really cool plug-in
called BandPass.
00:29:54
It's a band-pass filter that you can move
in real time, check this out.
00:30:06
So I use that just to shape it down
to the essentials of that song,
the actual character of the whistle.
00:30:12
This is a weird plug-in called Clarisonix.
00:30:14
I don't actually know what it does
but it adds a really cool top end thing.
00:30:26
And then, this is actually a free, really
weird-sounding reverb that PSP made
called PianoVerb, it's based on the
resonance of piano strings.
00:30:36
But I find for stuff like this
it makes a really cool ambience.
00:30:53
For some extra weirdness,
Space Echo reverb.
00:31:02
The final piece of sauce on this is, this
is a Send to something called Accuverb,
which is actually a spring reverb
that I have on my rack.
00:31:17
There's not a ton of it, but it's just
adding a little bit of extra space to it.
00:31:20
So I'm going to call that
the whistle hook for now
and then start working my way through
some of the drums and percussion.
00:31:57
I almost always start on drums
with the overheads.
00:32:00
I like the picture of the whole drum kit
as a whole, so I'll start with the OHs.
00:32:04
In this case, again, the template
has a couple of plug-ins
that I may or may not use
on the drums.
00:32:10
And then it's feeding
into this Insert right here,
which is an Insert on the SSL console.
00:32:15
That comes into a pair of channels
right here where I can do EQ
and some dynamics, and I also have
an Insert that gives me an 1178.
00:32:24
I love using the 1178 on overheads
because it just kind of puts
a brightness and an energy to them.
00:32:29
Sometimes you don't even need EQ
when you run it through the 1178,
it just kind of gives it
a little bit of excitement.
00:32:35
So this is what it sounds like
without that on it.
00:32:46
And then I'm going to add in the 1178.
00:32:55
And a little bit of EQ.
00:33:15
DaD Valve is an old and strange plug-in
that may have just crashed Pro Tools.
00:33:20
I would describe it as thickness,
and then the Maag EQ,
one of my favorite EQs.
00:33:25
So here's a really fun trick
with the Maag stuff.
00:33:28
I discovered this while using
the analog stuff when I was tracking
but it also works for mixing.
00:33:33
There's a Sub knob, black,
and a 40 Hz knob, blue.
00:33:39
You kill one and dime the other,
and then try it the other way.
00:33:43
One of those two ways will usually
sound really awesome on drums,
I don't know why.
00:33:48
Here it is with... just watch.
00:34:03
So in this case...
00:34:06
...I like it with this one dimed
and this one off.
00:34:13
It makes it thick, it makes it
a little more present.
00:34:16
A couple of tweaks, this is something
held over from another song,
sounds fine to me.
00:34:27
A little bit of 10 kHz Air band up on top.
00:34:31
And then that's feeding into the SSL
where I ended up on the SSL...
00:34:35
So it looks like I'm adding some at 100,
taking out a little at 800,
adding some crack on the snare
around 5 kHz-ish,
and a little bit of... that would be
a Bell, the crack on the snare,
and a little bit of top end
around 9 or 10 kHz.
00:34:55
Also, again, on almost everything...
actually, on every channel on the SSL
there's a filter that's taking out
anything below, like, 30 or 40 Hz,
except on kick drum channels
if I use them.
00:35:06
Listening to both options I think
it sounds really cool this way.
00:35:09
These were settings
from probably a previous mix,
a little bit of this,
a little bit of that.
00:35:12
Sounds good, I'll add a little Air band
on the top to open up the cymbals
and make sure later in the mix
that they don't get too splashy.
00:35:26
Which they're not going to
because he's not really hitting cymbals.
00:35:42
At this point I will just kind of go
into technical mix mode
which for me means, you know, I know
where Ingrid is going to go in my head.
00:35:50
I'm going to just shut off a couple things
and mess around with some drum stuff.
00:35:54
Again, some of the plug-ins
that you will see
are stuff that just got carried over
from that other session.
00:35:58
It's like, take a listen, and if it's cool
it's cool. If it's not, we won't use it.
00:36:19
Kick drum, there were
some plug-ins that were on it.
00:36:21
I just went through
and turned them all off
and turned a couple different ones on,
and I like the way it sounds right now.
00:36:26
So what I ended up with is an
API 560 EQ cranking up some bottom,
taking out some 250,
a little bit of tap on the top.
00:36:35
I think the dbx 160 is maybe one
of the coolest plug-ins that UA ever did,
it just nails what 160s do,
which is weird
because to really use this compressor
usefully you almost have to not use it.
00:36:59
I usually use it at 3:1 Ratio
and the needle is just barely moving,
it just does something really
interesting to kick drums.
00:37:22
The kick drum in this case is not going
through the SSL. I'm using plug-ins on it.
00:37:33
And after all that I'm taking out some
of that woobiness in the low mids,
and taking out some of the extreme low
and adding a little bit of tap
right here at, like, 2 kHz.
00:37:46
None of these frequencies
actually mean anything.
00:37:48
I've seen charts where they say "These are
the frequencies you should EQ in a kick."
I've never memorized any of those,
none of those ever worked for me.
00:37:55
I just slide these around
until it sounds cool.
00:38:09
Right now the kick drum
is routed to a Bus,
this is just a holdover
from a template.
00:38:13
Sometimes I'll get 1 kick drum mic,
sometimes I'll get 4 kick drum mics.
00:38:17
Probably on one of the last songs I got
I had 2 or 3 different kick drum mics,
so I had them all bused to this Bus
so that they got an overall picture and
then I was just doing the blends below.
00:38:27
On this one it happens to be
one kick drum mic.
00:38:30
I suppose if I wanted to I could just
drag those plug-ins down
and not bother with the Bus,
but it's there,
it's working, I'm not going to change it.
00:38:36
What I'll do now is usually go fairly
quickly through the rest of the drums
and just try and get an overall picture of
the drum kit happening the way I want it
and see what else Jacquire sent to me.
00:38:46
I noticed that he's got a couple
of snare samples on there,
there's a fairly big tom part.
So I'll mess around with that
and then I'll describe
where everything is going
as we go through the individual stuff.
00:40:22
This tells me that they had fun
cutting drum rooms
and that this track was cut at Blackbird
Studio D because I can hear the chamber.
00:40:28
So it looks like we've got a couple
of different vibes on drum rooms,
kick/snare, mono compressed 1,
an R88 out in the room.
00:40:36
This sounds like something that's really
fun that's going through a guitar pedal.
00:41:13
Again, these room mics
are going through the template layout
which goes to two channels on the SSL.
00:41:18
That gives me the option
to do more EQ if I want to,
which I don't right now,
actually I'm not adding any.
00:41:23
It's also got an Insert and those Inserts
are some old PIE limiters
which are really fun drum room limiters.
00:41:29
There is also an emulation of them
right after the SSL Insert,
a Waves version of a PIE limiter,
it's actually kind of the same one.
00:41:36
If I want to go super-crazy on drums
and just push it, I'll kick that on.
00:41:40
Occasionally I also use this
which is the elysia nvelope.
00:41:44
It's a form of their transient shaper
and you can do really fun things
with drum rooms and this.
00:41:57
A lot of times that's stuff
that you will experiment with
once you get the song going
and see how much ambience you want
in the drums and in what section.
00:42:15
So I want to be careful. I just heard
that overtone coming out of this thing,
which, while it's cool
I don't want it to get too crazy.
00:43:07
A little extra tom vibe here.
00:43:09
Okay, toms, same kind of thing.
00:43:12
Per the template they are
going through a Bus,
this Bus is coming up on the SSL,
it's going through some EQ
and another Insert.
00:43:19
That Insert actually has
two Aphex 204s on it.
00:43:23
They have a thing called 'big bottom' that
sometimes sounds really cool on toms.
00:43:26
I also add a couple other plug-ins,
and they'll always pop up
on the tom thing
and it's either too little or too much,
so I'll just turn them on and off
just to see.
00:43:35
Here's an example,
this is another DaD Valve instance,
it's just kind of a thickness thing.
00:43:40
Here are the toms with nothing on them.
00:43:47
They sound pretty good
so I'm going to try not to screw it up.
00:43:51
This is going through the SSL.
00:43:56
Adding a little bit of low end
with the Valve.
00:44:03
This Sasquatch Kick Machine plug-in
is a sub frequency generator
and that obviously is way too much
so we're not going to use that.
00:44:15
I don't think the toms
need that much attack.
00:44:18
Again, you know, working in solo
is a tough way to work.
00:44:21
If I was doing this
without being on camera
I would be running through this
really, really quick,
just getting a general basic sound
and then tying it all together,
tweaking all of those sounds
and trying to make a cohesive picture
of the drum kit.
00:44:31
The other thing that we do is we always
lay in tom samples underneath the toms.
00:44:35
Sometimes they work,
sometimes they don't.
00:44:37
It's easier to just have them done
so that if I want to use them
I can just turn them on,
so let's see if they add or subtract.
00:44:50
I think that just makes mud,
unless we need him here.
00:44:59
Maybe we could turn them on later,
I'm just going to get rid of
the tom samples. I don't need them.
00:45:06
What is that?
Okay, another weirdness.
00:45:22
Some fun drum overdubs, so I'll just
leave them running through the Tom Bus.
00:45:26
So that's snares,
snares are what's left,
so the song came with a snare track
and a couple of samples.
00:45:32
Let's see what the snare sounds like.
00:45:43
That's the snare on its own.
In my template, with my setup,
what it does is it routes through
the SSL again.
00:45:48
It actually splits out into three
separate channels that I use.
00:45:51
The first channel is a Neve 33609
and a Drawmer gate,
it gets the attack of the snare drum.
00:45:57
The second channel is a Distressor,
that just gets the regular
snare drum sound.
00:46:04
And the third is an Inovonics 201 limiter
that does a weird thing
where sometimes it will kind of,
like, pick up the ghost strokes.
00:46:10
It almost sounds like an underneath mic
when you don't have an underneath mic.
00:46:13
We'll listen to those all individually.
00:46:15
The EQ that I've got on these
is actually fairly extreme,
like 15 dB cranks on high end
and high mid and stuff.
00:46:22
We'll look at that too here in a second
but let's just see how the snare sounds.
00:46:33
So that's the Neve,
that's just the impact gated.
00:46:38
That's the regular snare sound
just through a Distressor and some EQ.
00:46:44
And that's the compressor that picks up
"the rattler," the under snare mic,
or, you know, kind of creates it.
So I just blend those to taste.
00:47:01
That overtone is still bothering me
so I'm going to track it down.
00:47:24
Maybe it's this,
there's a little bit in there.
00:48:03
That is a super-weird overtone, so we have
to figure out where that is coming from.
00:48:09
Where was that? Verse two?
There we go.
00:48:36
So that's annoying me,
I'm going to kill it.
00:48:47
The producer actually sent some snare
samples, so I'll check those out too.
00:49:19
One thing I always end up doing
that I think is really important
is checking the polarity
of the snare and the kick
with the overheads and the rooms.
It can make a huge difference.
00:49:28
Jacquire cut this so I know
that they're probably right
but it never hurts to check.
00:49:37
And you can feel the snare impact
is so much better
with the polarity one way
instead of the other.
00:49:53
I think it changes the entire
character of the kick,
it's amazing how much difference
that can make on low end.
00:49:58
It's really important when
you're adding in samples
and we'll probably do some of that later,
to make sure that the samples
match polarity
with the real drums
if you're using a kick drum.
00:50:06
I never actually erase a kick drum
and just use samples.
00:50:09
Most of the time I'm adding to the
kick drum, just trying to augment it.
00:50:14
So let's see how the drums sound.
00:50:46
All right, cool, and now I'm going to
check out some of the programming.
00:51:27
This guy sounds a little dry so maybe
I'll add a little bit of reverb to him.
00:51:30
There's a reverb that I've got set up,
this old Sony DRE 2000
that I use on drums.
00:51:38
It just adds a little ambience.
00:52:19
That's just a straight drum loop,
it sounds a lot more fun
with the 'all in' setting on this CLA-76,
so let's try that for a while.
00:52:31
I'll tell you what else can be
a really fun plug-in on drum loop stuff.
00:52:36
This guy, Goodhertz,
makes this compressor called Vulf.
00:52:41
It's got some strangeness
and it's got some noise
and some weirdness, but sometimes
it's really cool on drums.
00:53:16
That sounds better
so I'm going to use that one.
00:53:19
I'm just going to work through
the rest of the programming
and just see what else we've got.
00:54:10
When there's this much
programming on a song
a lot of times I'll just go through
on a field basis
and just grab stuff, put it where
I feel like it should be really, really
quick, and then kind of ignore it.
00:54:22
I'm going to work that back
into the song later as I need to,
but what I'm trying to do
is just trying to get everything
into the perspective of the drum kit
with percussion around it.
00:54:46
This obviously has some weirdness on it,
which I'm just going to go ahead
and get rid of right now.
00:54:51
Something like low midrange,
low end weirdness.
00:55:03
Then this is a fun trick,
this is a preset that I use.
00:55:05
It's a delay where one side is delayed
10 ms and the other one isn't,
and it's a way to take something
that's stereo
and just move it out beyond the speakers.
00:55:17
And you can do different things
with it, with the polarity.
00:55:26
So I know because that's like
a high end percussion thing,
and I know that I'm going to want
vocals and kick and snare
and bass and stuff in the middle,
that I'll get that out to the sides
just to begin with
because I want to hear it as some space
but I don't want it to clutter up
the midrange.
00:55:40
I don't want it to step on the vocal
or anything like that.
00:55:54
One of my favorite plug-ins to use
on percussion is this plug-in.
00:55:57
I'm reasonably certain that this
is just the factory default
with the Gain down a little bit.
00:56:03
I'm not sure, but I'm relatively sure
that there's EQ built into this plug-in
because every time I put it on percussion
it makes the high end
stand up a little bit.
00:56:12
It just seems to work
on handclaps in particular,
so it generally ends up on handclaps.
00:56:25
It really brings them forward
in a thick mix.
00:56:29
Let's see what else we got going on here.
00:56:45
One of the things that
was a holdover on this song
from the first time that we did it
was some additional programming that
I had done which was some stomp stuff.
00:56:56
This was something that I brought in
from the original session,
and in keeping with trying to merge
the two sort of feels
I'm going to bring this
into this session now too.
00:57:12
So these are just foot stomps,
these are samples that I copied
and duplicated the triggers from,
and then I'm triggering it
with the SPL DrumXchanger plug-in
which is a fun plug-in
because it basically gives you
a Transient Designer to shape
the Input signal, to trigger it.
00:57:28
And it gives you a Transient Designer
to shape the Output signal.
00:57:39
And it gives you something that I
really like which is a Phase button
and a sample start Delay
that you can use when you're lining up
multiple samples really easily,
so I really like this
as a trigger plug-in.
00:57:54
What they ended up being
was one live one,
one tight one,
and then this one with a fair amount
of bottom end to kick in in the choruses.
00:58:08
So I'm just going to throw these in
and pocket them.
00:58:29
You'll notice that a lot of this loop
stuff, a lot of this percussion stuff
is just going out of this Output.
00:58:35
This stuff is sample-based,
which means it already has
a fair amount of processing on it
and I'm actually not running it
through the SSL,
I'm not running through the
parallel compression on the drums
or the SSL Mix Bus, I'm running it out
to a sidecar mixer
where it's coming independent
of the SSL's Output
and its 2-Bus processing.
00:58:53
Mainly because a lot of it is percussive
and I want to let the transients go
through without affecting them too much.
00:59:00
I also don't want all of this programming
to mess with the drum compression
and the parallel compression that the SSL
is doing on the live drum kit.
00:59:08
So this is part of the
hybrid setup that I use,
the stuff that I don't want affected
by the SSL sound
or by the compression
or the parallel compression.
00:59:16
I can go out the Clean Out
and just skip all of that.
00:59:20
The green stuff that we see here
is stuff that I spent a little time
adding to this track,
mainly transitions, some percussion,
some high end stuff.
00:59:31
We'll go through this
as I blend it into the track.
00:59:35
And this...
00:00:00
Well, there is enough rhythm going on
that it's time to turn the bass on.
00:00:04
Again, in my template, what happens
with the bass is a couple of things.
00:00:08
If you can see, this whole
bass channel imports, again,
settings from somewhere else.
00:00:13
The bass guitar goes through a Group,
through some plug-ins
before it goes to the SSL.
00:00:20
Once it goes to the SSL, it's going
to two channels of the SSL
where it gets a little bit of EQ
and it gets two different Inserts.
00:00:27
One of the inserts is a black 1176.
Again, the settings have never changed
because I found over the years I just kept
coming back to the same settings on bass,
so I just left it there.
00:00:36
I can vary the way it reacts
by feeding it more or feeding it less.
00:00:40
That's on one side, that gets kind of the
articulation and the pure bass tone.
00:00:46
And the other side is an old UTC
passive EQ with the bass just dimed,
and that's getting gain make-up
through an old dbx 165 compressor
which is probably just because I had
the dbx 165 compressor right there.
00:01:01
That gives like a warm and organic...
like thickness on the bottom.
00:01:07
So when you hear those two
they sound like this.
00:01:10
Here's the 1176.
00:01:16
And then here's the UTC.
00:01:24
And then I blend them together.
00:01:32
But that's just the start of it, there's
all kinds of stuff on the bass, so...
00:01:36
One of the big things is this parallel.
00:01:39
This is a parallel to an old
RCA BA-25 tube limiter.
00:01:43
Again, it's parallel compression
and just some old funky tube tone.
00:01:56
And yeah, it adds noise,
and I don't care because it sounds cool.
00:02:01
And then I've got a couple of plug-ins.
00:02:03
So a lot of the times... Again,
these things I'll either use or not use
depending on what kind of tone
I want on the bass.
00:02:10
This is EchoBoy but it's in a mode
that is not using any delay.
00:02:14
I'm just using the Saturation on this
from the 'Cheap Tape' Style,
the Saturation knob.
00:02:20
You notice all the high end is gone.
00:02:22
And then when you dig
into the depths of this
you've got some Saturation here,
the Output Saturation is dimed.
00:02:28
There's a little bit of EQ
going on over here.
00:02:38
It gives it some fun distortion,
and then SansAmp.
00:02:40
You can do almost anything
with this plug-in
as far as shaping the bass tone.
00:02:54
PSP Vintage Warmer
allows you to add saturation
to different parts of the spectrum,
so there's a tiny bit of Drive on this
but it's basically some Low
and High saturation.
00:03:03
The High is around where the pick is
and the Low is down in the 140 range.
00:03:15
Let's see what else is on here.
00:03:16
Sometimes I use this on bass,
it's an Aphex Aural Exciter.
00:03:20
Again, just for tone.
00:03:26
Sometimes it can bring articulation out.
00:03:28
This particular bass thing,
depending on how hard I push it
it could get distorted.
00:03:51
And I don't think I will use
those plug-ins right now.
00:03:55
I may end up turning them back on
later, it's hard to tell.
00:03:57
The last thing is there's a couple
of effects in parallel.
00:04:00
One of them is a little MicroShift
to give it a little bit of spread
and the other one is taking
the muck out afterwards.
00:04:08
This is Saturn, a really cool
distortion plug-in.
00:04:10
I'll see if I can push it
so you can hear it.
00:04:29
So I just use those to add
a little more character,
a little more depth to the bass.
00:04:32
Salt to taste, and I reserve
the right to go back
and radically change all of this
once the song gets going.
00:04:56
And those stomps are super annoying.
00:04:59
So at this point this is going to be me
just messing around with some
basic levels on the rhythm section.
00:05:09
And maybe getting a different perspective
by just switching speakers.
00:05:12
I started on the ATCs and moved to the
ProAcs now. Maybe I'll move over here.
00:06:08
Some of this stuff, just like
the stomps that I put in,
this is an aggregation of some
various and sundry transitions,
percussion, other stuff
that I added to the track
just to kind of help a few sections along,
so I'm just going to work that in.
00:06:52
So a lot of these are just some flavorings
to get the chorus to lift a little more,
some tambourines like this guy.
00:07:01
And then a hit.
00:07:06
It's going through an old Lexicon PCM 60
that I love for just room sounds.
00:07:16
Very natural-sounding reverb,
very easy to use.
00:07:20
A little shaker...
00:07:23
It's the cymbal.
00:07:34
As the song builds at the end
some of this stuff builds too.
00:07:37
Piatte, some reverses.
00:07:50
Some swells up here.
00:08:17
I hear a kick drum bleeding over.
00:08:24
So I need to find that. This is
everybody's favorite part of mixing.
00:08:35
Maybe I'll get rid of that.
00:08:47
This is another convenient time
to have the rough synced
because I can just pop over
and remind myself what's going on
in that section with a button push.
00:09:05
I really want that chorus to hit, so maybe
I'll drop out some percussion stuff there
and put in the swell and let that chorus
hit a little bit harder.
00:09:26
You know, stuff like this,
I just do it as I hear it.
00:09:28
The beauty about working in this medium
is we can always undo it,
we can always fix it.
00:09:34
Oh, I should mention this.
00:09:36
This is something else that we do
when we set up songs.
00:09:39
If you look at every track
that is in this session,
underneath it is a playlist.
00:09:47
The playlist is what originally came
with the session.
00:09:52
We get the song ready to mix
and one of the last things we do
is we duplicate all of the playlists.
00:09:57
I work off the duplicate playlist.
00:09:58
That way, if you're with the client
and they say, "Hey man,
I don't like what you did
with that bass part.
00:10:04
I don't like the mutes
so let's just get rid of them."
Instead of me trying to figure out
what I did,
I can just switch back
to the playlist underneath it
and that's the original stuff
that came from the producer.
00:10:13
It saves tons of time
because it allows you to jump in
and do some edits and move some stuff
wherever you want
without worrying that, "Oh man,
how am I ever going to get back
to where I was if someone says,
'I don't like that'?"
For me, I can just pop
to the bottom playlist
and either copy it over
or just run the bottom playlist,
and it's a really elegant and fast way
to get back to what you originally had.
00:10:35
It makes for no fear editing,
it's a really good habit to get into
and it has saved my butt
a couple of times.
00:10:48
Okay, so now I'm just going to
roll through some of the other tracks.
00:10:51
Maybe in the chorus because the chorus
is usually the biggest part of the song,
and I actually know in this song
at the very end it builds
and it builds and it builds
and it gets really, really big.
00:11:00
So at some point I'll start
working on the very end
to make sure that that doesn't go crazy
before I work on the first part.
00:11:05
But let's see what else the chorus has.
00:11:17
Another example of something
coming in from the template.
00:11:20
This guitar came in
with these two plug-ins on it.
00:11:23
This is a really cool reverb called BX20.
00:11:39
It sounds really awesome on guitars.
00:11:41
It's a big furniture box,
it's like this tall.
00:11:45
And when you open it,
if you get it open,
it looks like there's a nuclear
weapon inside of it.
00:11:49
It's a big spring suspended
in a cylinder, it's a really cool reverb.
00:11:53
This is a Cooper Time Cube.
00:12:09
Which is another old contraption
that has a length of garden hose
and it's essentially like a 14 and a 16 ms
delay, I think, on either side,
that can sometimes do
cool things with guitars.
00:12:20
On some guitars like this one
it doesn't seem to add a whole lot
and when you push it too far
it starts to distort,
so I probably won't end up using it
but I like the way the BX20 sounded.
00:12:33
All of my external effects
I actually bring back into Pro Tools.
00:12:37
The reason why I do that
is because this analog gear...
00:12:40
it's just better safe than sorry.
00:12:42
When we print the song we go ahead
and just print the analog reverbs.
00:12:45
That way if something breaks
or if a plate starts to get noisy
or crackles or whatever,
we have the original one
from the session that we can use.
00:12:52
It's just kind of a safeguard.
00:12:54
When you bring it back in the session
you can do really fun things like,
one of my favorite things
about the hybrid of digital and analog
is that digital, I think,
can help you bring some of the best
characters of analog out when you get...
00:13:05
Like a really great
compressor on a vocal
or a really cool piece
of gear on a guitar,
and then the digital kind of lets it be...
00:13:12
it's like a microscope
where you can zoom in
and see the really great details
that analog brings.
00:13:18
Also, it's really fun sometimes to...
00:13:21
Let's see, I'm probably doing it here.
00:13:24
It's really fun sometimes to take plug-ins
and put them after stuff coming in.
00:13:28
I'm not using it on the BX20
but on some of these things...
I'll put distortion on Reverb Returns,
I'll take some EQ and shape them down
so they don't get in the way of stuff,
they don't clutter up the top end,
they don't muddy up the low end.
00:13:39
Sometimes you can do really cool things
like putting a tremolo
on a reverb or a delay.
00:13:45
There's all kinds of stuff you can do
and the fact that digital plug-ins
make some of the cool, old analog stuff
like springs and pedals even that
much more useful is really awesome.
00:13:55
So let's see what else we've got.
00:14:29
Acoustic guitar is usually...
00:14:30
we have a Bus that they usually
go through right here.
00:14:34
It's got some plug-ins on it,
and again, the other thing.
00:14:36
Sometimes I'll leave them,
sometimes I'll turn them off.
00:14:39
It just depends on how it sounds.
00:14:45
This is a cool Massey distortion plug-in
that sounds cool on acoustics.
00:14:55
This is a really cool plug-in
that I just got,
it's a Transient Shaper plug-in from
iZotope, from their Neutron package.
00:15:02
Just the Transient Shaper part of it.
I don't know how it works
but my good friend Tony Castle
sent me an acoustic guitar one time
they had this on it
and it sounded really cool,
so I saved the preset and now
I use it all the time. Thanks, Tony!
Tony is a fantastic engineer,
his tracks always sound amazing.
00:15:18
So I basically just stole this preset from
him and ended up trying it on acoustics.
00:15:33
What I hear when that kicks on
is just a little bit more articulation,
especially on this right guitar.
00:15:39
A little bit more articulation on the
actual strings, a little bit more clarity
which is going to help it
poke through the mix more.
00:15:47
This is the Shadow Hills Compressor.
00:15:50
It just sounds cool.
00:16:04
So sometimes that's a little
too aggressive on the guitars.
00:16:08
Again, we'll have to see
once it gets into the mix.
00:16:10
At this point when you've got something
soloed, you're kind of just guessing.
00:16:13
I'm just going for a ballpark thing
and seeing what all these plug-ins
were doing.
00:16:17
This is another one I use
on acoustics sometimes,
it's PSP MixTreble2.
00:16:22
It does a little bit of transient shaping
and a little bit of harmonic excitement
and sometimes it's really cool
on acoustics.
00:16:42
As you'll notice, most of these things
are just little subtle things
that kind of add up over time.
00:16:47
And again, I may decide
that this sounds good,
and once it gets into the mix it could
be terrible and I'll shut them off.
00:16:53
This one bears mentioning.
00:16:55
This is a really cool trick that came out
of the actual Neve console.
00:16:59
I don't know why it works like this
but it does work like this in real life,
and what you do is...
I love this on acoustics.
00:17:07
I take the high-cut
and get rid of high frequency energy,
and then add it back in with the EQ.
00:17:16
And it sounds really interesting
so check this out. This is without it.
00:17:26
Then this is with it.
00:17:33
And if you pay attention
as I move the knobs,
when you take the high-cut out
it gets really, really bright.
00:17:39
If you put the cut-off in
and then add the EQ in,
it kind of... it's weird,
it adds high end brightness
but not too much high end brightness.
It kind of offsets itself.
00:18:04
So it makes for a really good articulation
on stuff like mandolins
and acoustics and stuff like that.
00:18:08
Again, a little can go a long way.
Sometimes it's just too much,
you won't know until you
get it in the mix,
but these are just a couple
of really fun tricks
that I use on acoustics
that sometimes work really great.
00:18:39
On this song, just the way
it's feeling right now,
I'll leave that high end thing off.
00:18:43
But who knows, we may
come back to that later.
00:18:45
The acoustics in this case
are coming out of Pro Tools
and going into the SSL, and there's
another little trick going on on the SSL
which is a...
00:18:55
something called AN-2 Stereo Simulator.
00:18:58
It puts a little bit of depth, a little
bit of spread into acoustic guitars.
00:19:03
I've used it on a couple of things
and one thing it really seems
to excel on is acoustic guitar.
00:19:09
So here it is with.
00:19:17
And without.
00:19:30
It's really nice and subtle,
kind of opening the guitars up
a little bit out of the stereo field.
00:19:38
It's something that I use sometimes,
again, just to get them out of the middle
so there's more room for the vocal,
more room for the key basic stuff.
00:19:46
I just like the way it makes
acoustics sound.
00:19:48
That lives in a rack over there,
same deal,
the setup never changes,
it's always the same.
00:19:54
I just, you know, send to it or don't.
00:20:52
So there's two different kinds of pianos
going on in the song
and I'm going to mess around with them.
00:21:45
A lot of times I'm just experimenting
with stuff.
00:22:00
This can be a really cool
piano compressor sometimes.
00:22:05
Dyna-mite.
00:23:52
So there's another example
of something weird you can do,
like put an extreme amount of EQ in there
until you start to hear
artifacts coming out of it,
but in the mix it kind of cuts through.
00:24:25
Maybe we'll throw
that weird piano reverb on it.
00:24:59
I'm trying to find elements
in the song where, like,
if the piano is playing a right-hand part
and it's leaning a little bit to the right
I'll take the acoustic and try
and offset it a little bit.
00:25:22
I got to show you a really cool trick
with the Helios,
something fun that this plug-in does.
00:25:27
There's two, like, little
secret things in this thing
that the real actual EQ does.
00:25:32
I think the first iteration
of this plug-in didn't have it,
and I want to say Richard Dodd
called them on it
and said, "Hey, this is how
it actually works."
As soon as you kick the low end on,
even with no gain on it,
it adds low end to the source.
00:25:46
Let's see if we can hear it
on this guitar.
00:25:52
A thickening, a fullness thing.
00:25:54
And another thing I love on this is...
and it probably won't work on acoustic,
but this EQ works best
somewhere between 10 and 15.
00:26:02
It really, like, gets a Neve character
going, especially on electrics.
00:26:04
It's probably going to be overkill
on acoustic but let's try.
00:26:15
I probably don't need it on that,
but some fun ways to use the Helios EQ
that maybe not a lot of people know about.
00:26:30
This may have actually started at the top.
00:26:35
It does not need to
because it makes a mess.
00:27:17
All right, let's play with the drums
a little bit more.
00:27:18
One of the things that I do
is I run a bunch of samples,
I just import a bunch
of different snare samples
just to have them here triggering.
00:27:26
And I'll mix and match,
and play around and see what fits.
00:27:29
The snare on this song
sounds really kind of amazing already,
but I want to maybe add a little bit of
character to it to get it to poke through,
especially in the choruses.
00:27:38
I'll play the chorus and audition
a couple of different snares.
00:27:51
All of the samples that I use
are my own library.
00:27:54
That's not true, there is a
Steven Slate kick drum that I use,
a certain sample with some ambient tone
that shows up from time to time.
00:28:03
There's probably one or two other samples
in here that have been around,
but most of them are of my own making.
00:28:11
And I use the DrumXchanger
plug-in to trigger them
because it's really easy to tweak.
Let me see if I can show you.
00:28:16
This is another trick that I use,
I have a 'clack' sound.
00:28:21
This is just like an 808 clack.
00:28:24
Something fun to do
is to take the snare drum
and layer a transient impact in
underneath the snare drum,
and it will give it a lot more attack.
00:28:32
But it still sounds like he's just hitting
a rim shot on the snare drum
as he hits the drum, so check it out.
00:28:47
Here's a perfect example
of checking the phase on this.
00:28:49
As you see when I kick it in
and out of phase,
you'll hear the drum be thick
and full and nice
and then you'll hear it kind of get thin.
00:28:56
I always check the phase and the sample
start time on stuff like this.
00:29:05
With the Phase flipped it sounds
way more natural to me,
it sounds like a real snare drum.
00:29:09
The other thing, it just sounds
like a transient sample
and the low end goes away
so I don't want that.
00:29:15
And then I'll just go through and try
a couple of different snare sounds
and see what works in the song.
00:29:37
And again, I always check polarity,
I always check sample start.
00:29:52
Also, a nice thing is you can tune it.
00:29:54
Sometimes when there's a tone in the drum
you can match it to the key of the song
or the key of the original snare drum.
00:30:20
We'll be geeky and match it
to the key of the song.
00:30:33
Here's a sample that puts
a little excitement in the back,
kind of gives us some character,
and I push it through that same
DRE 2000 reverb to give it a long tail.
00:31:27
So I'll spend a little bit of time
messing around
with a couple of different
snare samples that I have
just to see if I can bring
some extra character
out of the snare drum
that's already there.
00:31:39
But I never really want to replace it,
I just want to add some crack,
or add some tail
or add something that will help me.
00:32:06
There was a company way back
in the day that did samples,
and one of the samples
was a Bob Clearmountain thing.
00:32:17
I'm pretty sure it's this.
00:32:21
A really kind of distinctive
airy and papery kind of thing,
but it works really well
sometimes on snare.
00:32:32
So here's another example.
00:32:34
With it out of phase
it's taking the transient away.
00:32:39
And then in phase it puts it right back.
00:32:59
The 'clack' and the rest of it
are my snare samples.
00:33:02
As you can tell it's not a ton.
00:33:16
Just a little bit of augmentation,
a little bit of space in the back of it,
just something to kind of help
the snare push through.
00:33:40
There are two other things you have to be
careful of when you're doing samples,
is a lot of times you don't need them
as loud in the verse
as you do in the chorus, so I'll actually
trim back a little bit in the verses.
00:33:58
Then you have to be really careful
of stuff like this
where the drummer is articulating up.
00:34:09
Slow ones are easier than fast ones
but a lot of times what I'll do
is I'll just use Volume Trim
to trim the samples up.
00:34:32
Otherwise it starts to sound
a little bit like a machine gun.
00:34:35
I used to play drums
and that drives me crazy.
00:34:47
So you go in and you can ride or you
can draw some articulations in there
just so it follows the natural
dynamics of the drummer.
00:35:04
You can do this in the plug-in as well,
there's a thing that will tell it
to follow the dynamics,
but especially on the fills I find
I need to go in and tweak the volume.
00:35:27
And by the way,
I do this in Volume Trim mode
because then I can go back
while the song is playing.
00:35:33
And if I need to move my samples
up or down overall,
I can do that without having to fight
the volume automation.
00:35:39
So it's just an easy way to do
some overall rides on something
and then still be able to
move it globally.
00:36:44
This thing sounds like it's a little bit
in the middle of things for me,
so I'm going to try
that little delay trick...
00:36:52
...again, to move it outside.
00:37:04
At some point somebody may ask
a question about mono compatibility,
which is a decent question.
When I'm mixing for records
I don't particularly care about mono
because who listens in mono, really?
But there are certain things that I do,
some stuff for Disney
actually does get used in mono
and they'll use things out in the park
or they'll have a...
00:37:28
something that's going through
a parade route or something like that,
so you got to be careful when
you're throwing things out of phase.
00:37:34
If you're working on a project
that has some mono compatibility issues,
just go ahead and check it
with the Dangerous,
it makes it easy,
there's a Mono button right here
and you can see if it's going to
sound comb filtery or phasey
when something is thrown out of phase.
Let's check this guy.
00:37:57
Sounds fine, but when
you put it back in stereo
it throws it way outside
the speakers which is cool.
00:38:01
I wanted it out of the middle.
00:38:28
Do you know what we need on this?
Crashes.
00:38:31
They're probably somewhere.
00:38:49
Let's see, maybe I'll try that there.
00:39:21
I'm a big fan of: when you hear
something, just go and do it.
00:39:24
You know, don't say, "Oh yeah,
I'm going to change that later,"
because you'll forget to change it later
and then you won't remember it
until your client sits down
and as soon as they press Play you'll
be like, "Oh, I meant to change that!"
So, as you're mixing,
if you hear something just do it.
00:39:41
And also don't forget to listen
to things like this Juno bass.
00:39:51
Sometimes a fun thing to do is to do
things that seem like they make no sense,
like lots and lots of distortion
on something.
00:40:06
This is just an Analog Synth
setting, it's nice.
00:40:11
Here's a fun plug-in GUI!
This is the Analog Synth setting
on the DaD Valve thing
and I just copied it five times
to make it change from this...
00:40:27
That kind of sounds cooler
as a synth bass.
00:40:47
And I'm assuming that's what it's in there
for, so we might as well use it, right?
All right, let's see what else
is going on here.
00:40:57
A little bass piece.
00:41:07
There's a plug-in sitting on the track.
00:41:09
Let's see what it sounds like,
if it works.
00:41:12
Maybe it sounds cool.
00:41:25
Or maybe it's annoying.
00:42:09
All right, this is the weird
guitar section, hang on.
00:42:24
I swear to God I've never seen
that plug-in in my life.
00:42:43
So, a little Beatles.
00:42:55
Sometimes, again, it helps to
just hop back to the rough
and try to figure out
what they were going for.
00:43:31
So there's a scene change here.
00:43:54
Okay, this is a weird section,
so sometimes you just say,
"Maybe we should try this,
maybe we should try that,"
and you just sit and experiment.
00:44:55
All right, let's see what this is.
00:45:05
There's a scene change in this bridge
and what I'm doing is going through
and just kind of picking and choosing
different elements
to see if I can leave them in
or leave them out.
00:45:13
I'll listen, I'll go back and I'll turn
some stuff on, turn some stuff off
until it sounds right to me.
00:45:18
So right now I'm killing cymbals,
killing swells, anything rhythmic.
00:45:22
I may actually take these loops out too
for the first half.
00:45:25
I'm just experimenting
with how radical it can be.
00:45:38
And this is literally just
experimentation and guesswork,
these are the parts
that you get fired for.
00:46:02
Let's see.
00:46:10
Yeah, I don't know if I want this either.
00:46:30
So what would The Beatles do?
Maybe they would do that,
and maybe they would do this.
00:46:59
So, worth the try. I'm just going to
automate this plug-in
for that section.
00:47:05
I'll automate the pan,
so the piano is going to change.
00:47:27
And maybe since it's kind of
a string thing,
maybe we would Mellotron it
or something. Let's mess with that.
00:47:45
Since I only want that in that
one section, I can automate it
or I can just duplicate the track
and drop the audio down.
00:47:54
And that way it's going to happen there.
00:48:04
That probably needs a little bit of sauce,
so there's a weird reverb plug-in
called SpringBox
that does some really nice springy pingy
spring reverb stuff.
00:48:49
Maybe I'll move the piano a little in.
00:48:58
I always forget which one of these works.
All right, there we go.
00:49:10
I'm going to find those bells
because they're really cool.
00:49:18
Let's throw them in some spring reverb.
00:49:26
Let's try something interesting on them.
00:49:29
I discovered this EchoBoy setting
by accident,
it works really well on vibes.
00:49:35
Sorry, mom.
00:49:57
I like it without the pingy delay.
00:50:01
Basically a ping-pong delay,
but I just decided I didn't like it.
00:50:05
Let's see what else is this.
00:50:16
A really cool Wurly thing.
00:50:25
I wonder what that would sound like
in like... a really big hall.
00:50:39
Let's try to do something weird.
00:50:55
That thing is always fun!
Okay, so that's interesting.
00:51:08
That's my EMT 140 stereo plate
that sits in the back of the room.
00:51:12
Let's hear what that sounds like.
00:51:35
I don't know about that!
All right, sometimes when
a section is frustrating
you just leave it alone
and move on to the next one.
00:52:37
We'll come back and see what happens.
00:52:44
Since this is really, like, out and open
I'm going to split off
a piece of that piano...
00:52:54
...just to make sure I have
all the control I want out of it.
00:53:11
This I'm going to have to...
00:53:13
I kind of feel like that needs to be
a little more different in the middle.
00:53:32
I don't know,
let's see what else we got.
00:53:34
Greg Wells did some really cool
piano thing that works sometimes,
it's called PianoCentric.
00:53:54
Obviously, this piano was on purpose
old and creepy-sounding, but...
00:53:59
...maybe this will work.
00:54:32
One of my favorite distortion plug-ins is
this Massey distortion, it's super-cool.
00:00:00
Now I'm thinking that this part
in the song
we may actually need
just in the last chorus,
we may actually need
some additional kick help.
00:00:08
So I'm going to turn on
some of these kick samples
and see what's rocking.
00:00:49
Again, that's the big difference
in a kick that's in phase,
a kick sample that's playing with
the kick in phase and out of phase.
00:00:55
To me, it totally changes
the sound of the low end.
00:01:13
If you listen real closely
you can hear the plate
in the back of the room
vibrating with the low end.
00:01:19
It's probably not the best place for
a plate, but it's the only place I have.
00:01:46
I don't know, I'm not decided
on that kick drum yet
but I'm going to table it for now.
00:01:52
We'll see what comes to me later.
00:02:08
I turned the chamber on
just for the marching snare thing,
to give a nice little ambience to it.
00:02:28
I'll switch to another pair
of speakers now
to just try and force myself to have
a different perspective.
00:02:58
What happens if we turn the stomps off?
I want a little more articulation
out of the snare drum.
00:03:33
I don't know where it's coming from
but I'll play with the loops
and then the snare.
00:04:56
This is iZotope Alloy, it's a cool plug-in
that has a bunch of different fun things
and I'm just messing around
with a little harmonic...
00:05:40
I'm watching my headroom a little bit,
just making sure I'm not clipping
anything too badly.
00:05:44
I tend to get lost with what's going on
in the music,
and sometimes I'll push the board too hard
or I'll push my converters too hard
and start to clip it,
so I'm kind of trying to keep
a little bit of an eye
on the global overall gain levels.
00:05:57
And if I feel that stuff is starting to
get a little clippy or a little crunched,
then I'll just back off.
00:06:03
I have a Group called 'trim', which is
the trim of all the Analog Outputs.
00:06:07
I can trim them up and down
and they're all assigned
to a VCA fader up at the top.
00:06:12
And you got to be a little bit diligent
to make sure everything is assigned,
because if you forget one...
00:06:18
Where is that tom thing?
Then you'll trim everything down except
that one, and it's not going to move.
00:06:35
So I got to go looking...
00:06:39
We assign everything
to the 'trim' fader in advance
and we make sure that it's working.
00:06:44
Fab Dupont has a much better way
of doing this
and I'm sure he can explain it
in his next pureMix video.
00:06:53
So that way I can control
all my Analog Outputs.
00:07:03
If I'm starting to push it
a little too much...
00:07:15
...I can just bring them down
a little bit overall.
00:07:54
All right, let's look at this hook
a little bit.
00:08:28
Okay, this is really cool.
When Jacquire cut this guitar,
he also cut it with the chamber
at Blackbird on,
so it comes with a little bit
of real reverb.
00:08:44
It sounds super-cool.
00:08:46
One thing that you can do with the chamber
that is sometimes fun
is use a Transient Designer
to mess around with the shape of it.
00:09:51
I tend to like hard pans,
left, right or center.
00:09:54
I don't have a ton of use for stuff
that's in a little bit or in a lot
or whatever, except for certain uses.
00:10:00
Probably 90% of the stuff I pan
is hard left, hard right, or center.
00:10:26
Let's see how badly we can f*ck this up.
00:11:09
I don't know if that's going to fly
or not, but sometimes
it's fun to just leave something in
that's purposefully annoying
because it gives somebody
something to turn off
and then they'll ignore
the other 12 things that you did
that were also purposefully annoying
because they feel like they did something.
00:11:44
Let's see what we can do with that.
00:12:07
This is just a delay. For some reason,
whenever you open this delay
it comes up on a setting
that's not really in time,
but it always seems to work
in the session. I don't know why.
00:12:17
It's not locked to the session,
it's just some random time
and it always seems to sound cool
so sometimes I just leave it.
00:12:42
Another thing you may have noticed
in the session
is that we spend a lot of time
making sure everything is cleaned up,
because when all the tracks
look like this in a full session
it's hard to jump to the little piece,
and where is that playing?
And to get attention that fast.
00:12:56
So if you use the Pro Tools
Strip Silence feature,
which is Apple+U, or Cmd+U,
you can really quick take this file
which just has one little bit on it
and...
00:13:07
and say, "Look, I just want to deal with
this one little bit of audio."
Make sure it doesn't cut off
any of the ambience at the end,
make sure it doesn't cut it
into pieces or whatever.
00:13:19
And boom, now it's really easy to find
that one little piece of audio.
00:14:00
Again, always taking low end stuff out,
just clearing the muck out.
00:14:14
So at this point the basics of the track
are kind of getting there.
00:14:18
It's probably time to get Ingrid in there
because her vocal is going to dictate
what gets moved,
what gets changed.
00:14:25
She's going to be
the most important thing,
so at this point I'll start
playing around with the vocal.
00:14:30
Now, I've already got
some vocal processing on this,
but I'm going to mess around
with a couple other options.
00:14:42
And I'll show you a couple of tricks too.
00:14:44
A lot of times in the template
we'll have something imported
from another song,
like the previous song,
and sometimes it's really fun to just
turn that on and see what happens.
00:14:51
This was a vocal session
from a different artist,
this is the same theory of leaving the
template up and seeing what happens,
so I'm going to drag Ingrid into this.
00:15:05
Oh yeah, you got to get rid of
your automation too.
00:15:07
Everybody knows that triple-clicking
and then hitting Control
and the Delete key
removes all automation
from a track in Pro Tools.
00:15:14
Everybody knows that?
Cool. I didn't know that for years.
00:15:16
Fab read the manual,
Reid did not read the manual.
00:15:19
You read the manual!
I like a lot of this stuff
and I was cheating
because I knew I was going to like it
because I've it used before.
00:15:32
But let's look at some of these plug-ins
that we're using.
00:15:35
We talked about the Soothe plug-in,
I don't know that I'm going to need that.
00:15:38
There was an EQ plug-in here
that I just bypassed
because I don't know
that I'm going to need that either.
00:15:42
This Nectar, we'll talk about this
in a second, I'll show you a trick.
00:15:49
This is a UAD LA-2,
a really kind of cool plug-in.
00:16:01
This little Emphasis thing
changes the character of the vocal.
00:16:35
Right there are some of the notes
that pop out on her.
00:16:43
So I'm going to open that Smoothe plug-in
and see where that's going to grab it.
00:17:11
This plug-in does a really good job
of just finding some of the peaky
multiband stuff that comes out in a vocal
and doing the exact opposite
in real time.
00:17:20
It's a really fun plug-in, it's basically
a much more flexible variation of this,
which is a multiband compressor
where you might take some of her midrange.
00:17:30
I make sure it doesn't get
too crazy, like this.
00:17:36
I'll find the range
where she's a little peaky.
00:17:43
And give it a little multiband
compression so it tames it.
00:17:50
You don't want to erase it
because then it gets really dull,
but this kind of helps give an overall
taming to the parts of the vocal
where the singer is a little bity.
00:18:00
Or perhaps the microphone
or the microphone chain
had a little bit of a resonance
or just grabbed a certain note,
or the EQ grabbed a note.
00:18:19
Metric Halo Channel Strip, this is
something that I use a lot of times
at the end of a vocal chain
just because I like
to put a little bit of limiting
on it sometimes.
00:18:26
And also, their EQ sounds really good.
00:18:28
So this is just a little bit
of overall EQ.
00:18:41
And a little bit of limiting right here.
00:18:55
This is a de-esser. It's going to
just sit on the vocal,
but I'm not going to use it
until the end of the song.
00:19:01
And if the 'esses' are killing me
I'll knock them down with the de-esser.
00:19:04
Here's a fun trick.
00:19:06
If you want to get more air out of a vocal
or a little bit of a pop sound,
try this.
00:19:12
Duplicate the lead vocal,
and I'll take these Effect Sends off
because we don't need them.
00:19:17
So this is exactly the same.
00:19:20
I'm going to put an EQ
where nothing's going on
on this thing.
00:19:29
And I've got this plug-in,
iZotope Nectar.
00:19:32
It's an all-in-one vocal plug-in
but I rarely use it for that,
I use it for something different.
00:19:36
So this plug-in right now is at 0,
nothing is engaged,
there's nothing going on,
it doesn't mess with the sound at all.
00:19:44
But on the duplicate
I use a preset I made
that has a really stupid name.
00:19:53
This is the 'nootchie bootches'.
00:19:54
This basically is an extreme EQ cut
so only the top end EQ
is coming through,
and a heck of a lot of limiting.
00:20:02
When you listen to it by itself,
it sounds like this.
00:20:11
What you do is you phase-invert this
from the actual vocal,
and then you blend it back in.
Let's see what happens.
00:20:37
And it puts this pop sheen,
this, like, really fun little buzz into it
that can be really cool for pop vocals.
00:20:45
You just mix it to taste
and then you group the vocals together
and ride them together
as if they were one sound.
00:21:01
This is also a really good trick
for when you have a vocal
that has some distortion on it,
maybe they sang too loud or something
clipped on the microphone.
00:21:10
You can use this to bring
some clarity back in
and get rid of the attention
going to, like,
that distorted midrange thing
on the vocal.
00:21:17
I'm using iZotope Nectar just because
it happened to have an EQ
and a limiter in the same plug-in.
00:21:23
I wish I had a phase-invert
in this plug-in,
I'm sure there's one here somewhere that
I just don't even know where it lives.
00:21:30
It should be easy to find.
00:21:34
We can replicate this with EQ,
maybe give it a little high end boost,
and a limiter.
00:21:51
So here you have your EQ
with your phase-invert,
or polarity-invert rather.
00:21:55
It's all high end, no low end.
00:21:57
And then a limiter, and let's see
if it plays nice.
00:22:11
So that works too.
00:22:13
I used Nectar because it was convenient
but you can do it with any EQ
and any limiter.
00:23:00
There you have it.
00:23:22
I don't know, maybe the new way
to do it is cooler.
00:24:02
All right, so let's play around
with some vocal effects on Ingrid.
00:24:07
One of the things I use
is another outboard piece of gear
called Marshall Tape Eliminator.
00:24:13
It was invented back in the day
by the same guy who built
the Marshall Time Modulator
which gave us the voice of Darth Vader
in Star Wars, I think, and C-3PO.
00:24:23
This was his attempt to make
a replacement
for using a 1/4" machine
for slapback delay,
and it was a really good attempt.
It sounds really cool.
00:24:35
I use it sometimes just to give
a little character to a vocal.
00:24:38
If you hear it soloed
it sounds a little bit like slap,
but in the track it just kind of gives
a little extra something to the vocals.
00:24:44
Again, vocals are games of inches,
you know? Once you get a great singer,
well, your job is three quarters done,
but all the little things that you add
just kind of all add up
into something to make
the vocal special.
00:25:06
So I'll use a little bit of that.
Maybe we'll try another slapback
from another external
delay box, Mo-Fx.
00:25:12
It doesn't have to be
external analog delays.
00:25:15
I like them because they
distort a little bit
and they just have settings that I like,
but you can do this with EchoBoy too.
00:25:29
Then, usually when I import
my vocal setup
there's a couple of things down here
that come in from another session.
00:25:37
I'll just start messing around
with vocal effects
and seeing what seems right to me
for the song,
or seems right to me for sections
of the song, and just see what pops up.
00:26:04
So here's a cool little delay, 1/4 note,
1/8 note delay, Valhalla.
00:26:08
This thing is fun because you can do
things like change it from Dark to Bright.
00:26:19
It gives you a little bit of
a different character for the delay.
00:26:22
Really great little delay plug-in.
00:26:31
Here's another fun thing that I do,
I use the RE-201
with a little bit of reverb
and a little bit of delay panned more
into the center of things
just to give an interesting character.
00:26:48
I'll crank it up.
00:26:58
And I've got a couple
of plug-ins on this channel.
00:27:01
Because I don't want 'esses'
through that reverb,
because it's springy already,
I'll de-ess it.
00:27:06
Compressing the vocal.
00:27:12
I'm doing my little 10 ms trick.
00:27:14
It spreads out the input
into the Space Echo
so the delay and the reverb aren't exactly
the same. It kind of makes space
for the lead vocal in the middle,
it kind of spreads them out.
00:27:23
And then there's a little EQ at the end
just getting rid of any
of the bottom end muck,
the low mid stuff I didn't want to
build up underneath the vocal,
and that gives me kind of a cool effect.
00:27:32
These are a couple of cool vocal effects,
and then I just see
what happens in the song.
00:27:46
The other thing I like to do is kick on
some extra stuff in the chorus,
so this chorus gets kind of big
and bombastic.
00:27:55
Right there I'm going to see
what happens if I just kick on...
00:27:59
...this. This is a D5000,
an external delay. It was actually
a favorite delay of Bob Clearmountain
from back in the day.
It's just a really cool-sounding delay
and it sounds like this in the chorus.
00:28:24
Which doesn't sound like much,
but to me it helps the chorus lift.
00:28:57
You know, I think that's fun.
I use that delay a lot
but you could use just about anything,
you could use EchoBoy, you could use...
00:29:03
I'll tell you who makes some really
cool delays, this D16 Group.
00:29:07
They make a thing called Sigmund
and Tekturon,
and these delays are really, really cool.
00:29:12
There's a lot of different things
you can do with them.
00:29:15
I'm going to go through it now
and add that same automated delay
in all of the choruses,
because why not?
And I also realized that
my vocal is split into two pieces
because she recorded
two things separately,
so if we're saying
we like this vocal sound
I'm going to go ahead and duplicate that
and add the vocal in it.
00:29:43
So now we've got that guy.
Let's see.
00:30:23
So I'm going to make sure
that delay automates.
00:30:54
Let's see, a bunch
of background vocals too.
00:30:57
They get all loud at the end so let's see
what happens when we turn them on.
00:31:37
So there's a host of background vocals.
00:31:42
The way I deal with background vocals...
And it may be different on this song
because there's so many,
but usually they all just go to a Bus.
00:31:49
It comes with my template.
00:31:50
And as you can see here on the Bus,
there's a little bit of EQ,
a de-esser if we need it.
00:31:58
The Time Adjuster is there
just to balance left and right.
00:32:01
The Soothe plug-in,
again, it's there if we need it.
00:32:04
I'll turn it off.
00:32:06
And this is just some overall high end EQ
and a little bit of Saturation
which sometimes I use
and sometimes I don't.
00:32:14
There's a Send that feeds
a stereo widener effect,
that's going through the Cooper Time Cube.
00:32:22
This is a delay
if we need some effects
on the backgrounds.
00:32:27
I'm actually just going to
turn that off for now.
00:32:30
We'll deal with those later as we dial in,
but at this point I'll try and get
an overall picture of where we were
as far as the song goes
and see if we need to start pocketing
some vocal stuff
or dealing with some
background vocal stuff.
00:33:23
And again, the philosophy of
"Grab it while you're thinking about it."
What if there was a delay right there?
I like to keep a track down here
under the vocals that I call 'throw',
it just sits there with the delay on it
so I can do this really easily.
00:34:57
Sometimes on crowd stuff
I use this really obscure plug-in.
00:35:03
This is definitely a secret weapon, it's
VST only, it's called Crowd Chamber.
00:35:07
And I don't know how
but it turns the gang vocals
that you just heard
into a crowd.
00:35:25
That's really cool.
00:35:49
Just adjusting the Mix there
on those guys.
00:36:01
I always move unisons out.
00:36:04
Sometimes individuals don't work well
hard panned, so I'll move them out.
00:36:07
Just out of the center to keep them
away from Ingrid's lead.
00:37:03
'Hook gtr' is already a Group,
which is good because it needs to come up.
00:37:42
What else can we do to that piano?
There's another weirdo plug-in
that I like to use,
it's called Oilcan Echo. Sometimes
a slap delay on a piano is kind of fun.
00:38:21
Maybe what I'm going to do
is try that in the second verse.
00:39:46
I wonder what that would sound like
with this Crowd Chamber thing on it.
00:39:50
Sometimes it works on percussions,
sometimes it doesn't.
00:40:34
So, obviously we're going to have
to do something to this thing.
00:40:38
She needs some kind of craziness there
so let's mess around with
maybe throwing off that "woo hoo" thing
into a strange reverb
like Valhalla.
00:41:38
The Beatles' section is fun,
so just on a whim
let's put a lot of slap on her,
on The Beatles' section.
00:42:14
Added a little low end on her.
00:42:55
I need a little more top end on the kick
drum, trying to get it to poke through.
00:43:10
Ingrid is kind of getting in my way
a little bit in some of these sections,
so I'm going to kick over to
vocal ride land real quick
to try and pocket her a little bit
so I can move some other stuff around.
00:44:20
I don't like that delay,
what if it was a little longer?
The piano is too loud!
Right there, that will be really fun.
00:45:33
Let's just go ahead and get rid of
all the vocal effects.
00:46:44
There we'll try that delay trick again,
we'll see if it still works.
00:46:59
Oops, that's not the vocal delay.
00:47:02
That's the vocal delay.
00:48:27
So, that snare fill...
00:48:32
maybe that needs a little...
00:49:06
Those guitars are totally mugging Ingrid
so I'm going to roll them back a little.
00:49:10
By the way, the trick that I'm doing
right here is Clip Gain,
which, if you hold Shift+Control,
and on this mouse if you swing the...
00:49:18
the outside thing, it'll turn
the Clip Gain up or down.
00:49:42
These guys are a little high too.
00:50:25
I'm just messing around with the bells
and the keyboard levels behind Ingrid,
and then I'm going to ride her vocal.
00:51:48
This whole thing, same deal,
it's intimate,
let's just get rid of all
the vocal effects.
00:51:54
Maybe I'll leave a little bit
of the slap on this one.
00:52:48
All right. Now, what else is going to
launch that chorus over the top?
Maybe a little more of this will.
00:53:25
Let's see what else we can do.
00:53:50
Just bringing a little more crack
out of that snare drum.
00:53:53
I'll check earlier
if it's a little too much
but I'm concentrating
on the end right now.
00:54:08
Sometimes on the end it's fun to boost up
some individual drum samples.
00:54:54
Everybody who is singing down here
just needs to be quiet.
00:55:33
I know I did this already
and I don't remember what I did,
so I'm going to go back and look.
00:55:41
Sometimes this stuff is just Tetris.
00:58:01
This is obviously a stack that
I'm just trying to get blends on.
00:58:04
So, what I did was...
00:58:13
Kicked on, I got rid of a lot of low end.
00:58:16
There was some low end buildup, and again,
I don't want muck in the background vocals
because especially at the end
of the song, like, it's all escape.
00:58:22
Everything's going on at the same time.
00:58:24
I'm trying to just take off
any of the low end buildup
that will happen on the vocals,
and then kicking up some high end shelf
just to kind of open up the articulation
and the words that they're singing.
00:58:34
And to make them feel a little bit airy
so when they get back in there
they rise up above some of the
high frequency energy in the track.
00:58:57
I'm not necessarily happy with those
but I'll table them for now
and look at what else is going on
because other things
that might be going on in there
might be covering
what I'm trying to EQ out.
00:59:06
And if you just keep boosting and keep
boosting you'll end up with harshness.
00:59:45
I don't know if the whistles
are necessary there.
01:00:31
This is a good example of when
I would hop back to the rough mix.
01:00:35
I'll make sure that that little
background vocal thing that we heard,
was it an ad-lib?
Was it just a throwaway? I don't know.
01:00:53
All right, so kind of more
of an ad-lib sort of deal.
01:00:56
We need to make that pop out somehow.
01:00:59
And let's see what else is on that track.
01:01:07
All right, I'm going to try
and make that pop out a little more.
01:01:11
I'm going to use this guy again,
I like this guy on backgrounds.
01:01:18
I'll loop that vocal a little bit.
01:01:38
And then maybe we'll give it
a little bit of...
01:01:42
I swear I talk like a chef.
01:01:44
They say, "We're going to do a little bit
of this, a little bit of that,"
and they put in 1.5 cups of olive oil,
"here's a little bit of olive oil."
Sorry.
01:01:59
One of the nice things about this delay
is you can freak out the Returns.
01:02:32
What if we just gave that some high end
and some spring reverb?
Turning down the time,
turning down the Wet/Dry ratio,
which, on this plug-in it's really cool.
01:02:52
Wet and Dry are different,
instead of a Mix.
01:02:54
It's pretty awesome.
01:03:04
It's still too much.
01:03:27
I wonder what would happen
if I made that sound even weirder.
01:03:31
Here is another fun little trick,
H-Delay can also be
a really cool telephone filter.
01:03:46
Now it's singing with Ingrid.
01:03:58
No, I don't like the way that builds up
mid frequency energy with her.
01:04:10
Hello Ingrid!
All right, and I don't like
that delay at the end.
01:05:34
It's probably the D5000.
01:05:46
Yeah, that's a cooler way to end it.
01:05:56
By the way, and it doesn't apply
to this song,
I never do fades in mixing.
01:06:01
I always leave it for mastering
because of two reasons.
01:06:06
One, when you run an instrumental and
someone will use it live or on a TV show,
it's a real bummer when the track
starts to fade out
if you wanted an extra 10 or 15 seconds.
01:06:14
Or if you wanted to cut from the end of it
to, like, length in a section
earlier in the song,
or for an instrumental or for music.
01:06:21
And secondly, the artist can
mix and match stuff
without doing crossfades
for the full album release,
and if it fades out
then there's no way to control that
so I generally leave that for mastering.
01:06:34
Although the real reason I did it
is because there was one time
I was sitting in the studio with an A&R
guy and he spent an hour and a half
trying to perfect the fade
at the end of the song,
so I decided that I was going to
dump it on the mastering engineer
so I would never have to go
through that again.
00:00:00
New perspective, running from the top,
different set of speakers,
low volume, we'll listen here.
00:00:06
Low end is actually
really, really easy to hear
when you're at a really low volume.
00:00:50
I started playing the song and the kick
drum sounds too hot in the beginning.
00:01:04
I'm noticing a couple of vocal rides
that I want to do,
but I also want to look
at this guitar a little bit.
00:01:20
Maybe I don't want the octave on it.
00:01:29
I want to play around
with this thing a little bit.
00:01:32
I love this plug-in on guitars,
it was built for guitars,
ask Led Zeppelin.
00:01:48
Maybe this may bring up
too much of the ambience
that's already on that guitar.
00:01:53
The LA-3A.
00:01:55
You'll notice it kind of comes up
totally dimed.
00:02:07
That makes it a little too much reverb
that's already on the amp.
00:02:20
Let's try that.
00:02:44
Now I'm in a rabbit hole.
00:03:03
I just made that guy too loud
over the whole song
because I was messing around
with it too much
and now I'm going to have to
go back and check.
00:03:39
It's dangerous when you mess
with one part of the song
and you don't realize it changes, like,
five other parts of the song.
00:03:43
So you have to check that,
otherwise you will assume it's okay
and then you won't realize it's wrong
until it's too late.
00:04:00
All right, let's go back to the top.
00:04:18
Maybe that guitar is better in
a little bit from the side.
00:04:38
I'm going to tweak some vocal rides
while I'm listening here.
00:05:50
That seems
slightly funky.
00:06:20
And I wonder...
00:06:24
What if we did something
strange on that background?
So, quick tweak to that background,
and I'm going to check it here
in the second verse too.
00:07:22
What did we do? A little bit of tuning,
a little bit of delay,
and then just some EQ to make it
cut through without getting muddy.
00:07:42
Back to the vocal.
00:07:55
The piano, piano, piano, piano, piano.
00:08:26
Something about the piano is bugging me
so I'm just looking for something
to shift the timbre a little bit.
00:08:37
This is a filtered delay.
00:08:40
It's not even half blended in,
it's just kind of giving it a little bit
more of a tack piano kind of feel,
maybe that will work.
00:09:01
I think that's more interesting
so I'm going to roll with that.
00:09:19
The bass is too loud
at the beginning of the song
when there is very little playing,
so I'm going to chop it down.
00:09:31
And how often in a session
do you accidentally hit N
when you're trying to hit
the space bar and annoy yourself?
I'll mess with the overheads a little bit.
00:10:18
A little bit of SSL top end EQ
and some channel compression
on the console.
00:10:56
I'm checking my overall gain staging,
making sure I'm not clipping
my analog too much.
00:11:24
Let's listen to that.
00:11:27
Reverse.
00:11:32
Let's crank that and see what happens.
00:12:23
At this point in the song,
probably to my detriment,
what I do is I just start listening
to the music.
00:12:28
There's times when I'll forget to put a
track and/or I'll totally miss a track
because it doesn't feel
like it's missing to me,
so I try and be diligent and go through
and check to make sure
I don't have a track where the level
is so far down that it's non-existent.
00:12:40
That's something that I was just missing.
00:14:05
So I made her stereo and put effects
on her background vocal,
but I do not want her
directly on top of Ingrid
for that background vocal,
so I'll just use this plug-in
to slide her just slightly off center.
00:14:22
She'll lean left.
00:14:25
This plug-in is PSP Stereo Controller,
it just lets you deal with stereo or mono
and move, like, center and balance
of stereo tracks.
00:14:33
I'm moving her slightly left right now
because the piano
is still pumping right hand
and the piano is right there,
so I wanted her a little bit over.
00:14:44
It's a stereo track.
What this does is it will actually
shift the middle of the signal,
but the stereo delay that I've got
going on will still be stereo
instead of, like, moving that delay
over into the side of the speaker.
00:16:21
I wonder if we should make
a slightly bigger deal out of...
00:16:25
...that.
00:16:37
So let's try an experiment
and take all snares
and chop them,
and find that one drum hit on the loop
and snap the snares to it.
Let's see what happens.
00:16:59
And it sucks.
00:18:31
All right, that transition
sounded a little dull to me
so I'm just going to put something
really subtle in there to help boost it.
00:18:51
And back to vocals.
00:20:41
Sometimes when something is too subtle
maybe you should just
purposely make it unsubtle.
00:20:46
I wonder what happens if we just
dime a spring reverb on this part.
00:21:26
It's kind of cool,
three Sends to the spring reverb,
it distorts the Input
of the spring reverb.
00:21:31
The reverb has distortion in it
and kind of turns it
into a different sound. Why not?
Now let's see what it will do
to this thing.
00:21:53
And it's kind of awesome, so, sweet!
A happy accident.
00:23:57
What if we obliterated that?
I'm stealing some room mic tricks,
trying it on a little piece of the loop
to see if we can make it stand out.
00:24:38
That makes me wonder, what would happen if
we turn that on the rooms at the end?
That might be exciting.
00:25:12
Maybe it's cool back here.
00:25:28
Yeah, it's good, I like it.
00:27:04
Let's take a listen from the top.
00:30:15
She gets this breathy thing
where you're like, "What the hell?"
We're going to step through
the 2-Bus processing on this song,
turn it on and off,
and listen to what we're doing.
00:31:53
First of all, let's just take
all of it off, yeah?
And let's see what happens.
00:31:59
This is the mix with no 2-Bus processing.
00:32:11
All right, so the first chain
is my normal 2-Bus stuff
which is the Maag EQ,
a little bit of Air band at 40 kHz,
a little tiny... one notch at 2.5 kHz,
one notch at 40,
and two notches down
on the Sub frequency.
00:32:28
It goes out of that
into a pair of CAPI VP28s
with 'red dot' op-amps in them.
00:32:35
This is just for, like, the line amp
transformer color that these things add.
00:32:40
Then it hops over to the BAX EQ.
00:32:43
I'm cutting everything
below 12 Hz, it's gone.
00:32:48
We've got 1 dB of gain at 74 on the Shelf
and 1 dB of gain at 7.1
on the Shelf, on the top end.
00:32:55
And the last thing is this
DAV Electronics S.I.P.P.,
it's a custom-made stereo box,
it's just one click of stereo.
00:33:03
There's a really cool guy in England
that customized this for me.
00:33:05
Nothing moves on it, nothing changes,
it's just a really nice little
stereoization thing.
00:33:10
Now we're going to listen to that
same snippet with that chain in.
00:33:28
And then the next thing we add
is the Dangerous Compressor
which just puts a little bit
of glue on it.
00:33:33
That pops in on number two
here on the Liaison,
and this just adds a little glue
to the mix, it's very subtle.
00:33:51
The Dangerous Compressor
is in Stereo mode,
I'm using the Bass Cut button,
I'm using the Smart Dyn
which makes the dyns smart.
00:34:01
I have a 1.7:1 Ratio,
the needle is deflecting...
00:34:04
it's not even getting 1 dB
worth of compression on the meter.
00:34:08
The third thing is something that
I've been experimenting with,
it's a little bit of, like,
some distortion in parallel.
00:34:15
So, the Liaison is great because
it lets you actually insert things
and dial in how much...
00:34:21
how much of the mix you want, like this...
00:34:24
you know, parallel compressing into it.
00:34:25
So what I'm running as a parallel
is this old
Ampex MX-72 mixer in Line mode,
and that just gives it
a little bit of tube flavor,
a little bit of, like, midrange
distortion into the mix.
00:34:39
Just a very little bit,
just for some character.
00:34:56
And the last thing that I add
sometimes just for color
are these old Western Electric
111C transformers.
00:35:02
They are 600 Ohm, 1:1 transformers,
they just add a transformer color.
00:35:07
I've got them inserted on the
front panel Insert on the Liaison
and this is what these sound like.
00:35:24
That's it for the 2-Bus processing.
00:35:26
That all goes through the Dangerous
and then goes into a Lavry AD122
MkIII converter.
00:35:35
It's high-res, on this song it's 96 kHz,
we send that to a second Pro Tools system
and print all of our stuff
with the two systems locked
at high-res, 24-Bit / 96 kHz.
00:35:45
That's about it for the Mix Bus.
00:35:48
Honestly, it's been a pretty long day.
00:35:52
This is the point where I would...
to be completely honest,
like, just stop.
00:35:57
I'd go home, have dinner with my family,
do that thing, go to sleep,
come back fresh in the morning,
take a brand-new fresh listen,
take a quick listen,
and then send it out
to the producer and the artist,
and I just make sure I have
a fresh perspective on it.
00:36:12
If we've got the time to do that,
it's always a really nice thing.
00:36:16
A fresh listen in the morning,
and you know, a couple of things
will jump out that you might've missed
after you've been working all day long.
00:36:22
So if you have the opportunity
to do that, that's really cool.
00:36:25
So, Jacquire came by the studio
and we're going to work
through the mix together.
00:36:30
We worked kind of on and off
on this song, back and forth,
and now we're going to be in same
room which is rare sometimes, right?
- Right. It's rare
but it's a wonderful thing.
00:36:40
- All right, so let's check it out.
00:40:42
- I love Ingrid.
Great job! She's great.
00:40:45
- Great mix, man.
- Thanks.
00:40:47
- And yeah, it would be
interesting to hear that...
00:40:49
- Yeah, I think we could even take the...
00:40:51
the "woo hoo hoo," that could go in
half two right before the bridge, but...
00:40:56
- I kind of like that. And actually,
that's one of the things...
00:40:59
I like the way you've got it,
that part in particular with the effect.
00:41:02
Can we bring up a little bit of...
00:41:05
...the effect that you have on Ingrid
there? On the "woo hoo" part.
00:41:08
- Yeah.
00:41:34
- That's awesome. Here I feel
like I'm losing her vocal.
00:41:36
- Yeah, I think so too. I wonder
if she can push up overall to be honest.
00:41:40
I know she'll push it up overall!
- I mean, yeah, we're not going to be hurt
by bringing the vocal up
a tiny bit overall.
00:41:47
- Yeah, I think you're right.
00:41:49
And maybe that one guitar is possibly
mugging her still a little bit,
- I was messing around with that.
- Which one?
- The George Harrison...
- Oh, I like that.
00:42:02
- What if you dry it up just a little bit?
- Yeah, yeah. Hang on one second.
00:42:07
I zig there on effects, let me zag...
00:42:10
sorry, dude.
00:42:13
- Camera obstruction.
- Yeah!
Shhh...
00:42:19
- There are no cameras here.
- Shhh.
00:42:23
- It's just you and me, man.
- Right.
00:43:19
So I was messing with the rooms
right at the very end
and I think that the marching snare thing
was too loud in the room
so I just turned that down.
00:43:26
And I wonder if the back half
of that bridge
was just a little crazy
in the rooms too,
so let's check this out
with the rooms down.
00:43:44
- Maybe pull it back a little bit,
but I don't think it changes too much.
00:43:48
- Yeah, it's fine. Okay, cool.
00:43:49
Now let's go to that marching snare part.
00:44:11
- Did you also raise her vocal overall?
- Yes, I did.
00:44:14
- Cool
- And then...
00:44:18
Top of verse two, I thought
the vocal kind of jumped out.
00:44:21
Maybe. Check it out.
00:44:36
And verse one.
00:44:39
Okay, yeah.
00:44:40
- Right there where you started
on verse 2, the first organ hit...
00:44:43
- Yeah.
00:44:44
- Can you bring that down just a touch?
And then the subsequent...
00:44:48
...bits of it up?
- Yeah, just the bump?
- Yeah.
00:45:12
- Those two maybe don't need to come up.
00:45:14
- Okay, but then the rest down here.
- Yeah, I think so. Let's see.
00:45:36
- I like where the organ level is, but
when she sings where the cursor is...
00:45:40
- This one?
- It needs to pop up a little bit there.
00:45:43
- This one?
- No, right where the cursor was
in the second half. Right before the Pre.
00:46:09
- Make it so you like it.
00:46:10
I feel like you're in the vocal up there.
00:46:40
- Is it all right? The "start"?
- I think now it feels loud to me.
00:46:44
- Okay.
00:46:57
- I'll roll back and check.
- Yeah.
00:46:58
- By the way, that crazy long delay
is the plate in the back of the room
getting excited by the speakers
when we print, but that doesn't...
00:47:07
- Oh, really?
- I think the "start"
is just a little loud,
especially the second half of it.
00:47:28
- Just the word "start."
- Yeah.
00:47:35
- Let's hear that.
00:47:45
- I think... I'll just check
my mental checklist.
00:47:49
Can we...?
I think the only overall comment
I have about the mix at this moment is,
is there a way to make the bottom end
just a little more growly?
- Sure, bass mainly?
- Ahh...
00:48:02
I mean, I like the kick and bass
relationship, so I don't...
00:48:05
- The tom thing, maybe?
- I don't know that it's a part thing.
00:48:08
Is there something that we can add?
You know, the whole mix picture,
just a little bit more...
00:48:14
- Sure. This guy kind of...
00:48:18
- I wonder if I did
a little fun stuff on this,
if it would be...
00:48:37
- I would, yeah. If not, I would ask you
to do some on the bass.
00:48:40
- Yeah.
00:49:02
- Maybe throw a little SansAmp on it
and see what happens.
00:49:04
- Is that in parallel?
- No, it's in the bass channel.
Check it out.
00:49:08
- Cool.
00:49:20
- Let's listen from the top,
right where it's just drums and then bass.
00:49:24
- Yeah, the verse is fine.
- Yeah.
00:49:49
- Can we boost the bass a little bit?
- Yeah.
00:49:55
- Leave the verse and boost
the pre-chorus?
- I'm thinking the verse, before he starts
playing that eighth note time.
00:50:01
- Oh, I'm sorry, like right here?
- Boost this up?
- Before that, yeah.
00:50:06
- Does this all need to be back where...?
- Ahh... I don't know.
00:50:10
- I turned it back.
00:50:11
- When the pre-chorus came in
it felt like it was enough.
00:50:14
I guess it's just the long sustain notes,
I'm not feeling them enough.
00:50:17
- I got you, right here.
00:50:46
- That shaker is just killing me.
Why did I do that?
- The chorus shaker?
- Yeah.
00:50:50
- I took it off my list, but I was
wondering if it was a little loud.
00:50:54
- Yeah, it's too loud.
00:51:03
- Can you dirty it up
with Lo-Fi or something?
- Yep, yep, yep.
00:51:22
- I miss the old Lo-Fi.
00:51:25
- Just the way it looks, or...?
- Yeah!
- It's too sidelong, man,
I miss the old school...
00:53:26
- There.
- Right there where the bridge comes in,
should the little George Harrison guitar
be a little quieter when it starts?
- Okay. Just when it starts?
- Yeah.
00:53:35
- Let's see, it's these guys.
00:54:06
- Maybe it doesn't need to be that quiet
in the beginning, but I like the...
00:54:10
- The...?
- Do that, yeah.
00:54:12
- Do you think the bass boogie
made this first part...?
- Bass players never get
a solo anyway, so...
00:54:28
- Until you mentioned it, I didn't feel it
was assaulting me or something like that.
00:54:32
- Okay, that's probably fine.
- It's all good.
00:55:39
- Want to try it?
- Well, we should run it by Ingrid,
but can we have a little more gang vocal?
I guess they're on the outro.
00:55:45
- Starting on the chorus?
- Yeah.
00:56:14
- Maybe just bring it back a little bit.
- Yeah.
00:56:38
- How about right here?
The strings.
00:57:11
- In-between.
00:57:13
- Split the diff!
- The way that I would suggest
we handle this
is let's print the mix as the full mix,
and then send them just an edit
before you actually do the multitrack,
unless you want to.
00:58:03
- I was just going to do it for...
00:58:07
- Sort of, "Does this work?"
- Okay.
00:58:10
- I have no idea if it will...
- I think it will totally work.
00:58:13
- I've always thought
it would work, but...
00:58:16
- Maybe you can explain what we suggested.
- Sorry, we were just noticing that...
00:58:20
that the end of the song
was just kind of long
and there's three choruses.
00:58:26
And with the magic keystroke
now there's two choruses.
00:58:40
- Once you know that it will work
as a 2-mix edit,
what we'll probably do
is just print the entire song,
do it as a 2-mix edit in mastering.
00:58:46
If they don't like it we can undo it
and that way we have it both ways.
00:58:49
- Exactly.
- So, yeah.
00:58:50
- I don't know what the producer
was thinking when he...
00:58:53
- I don't know, the mix was...
he didn't fix it!
- I think bringing the vocal up
overall was really good.
00:59:00
- Actually, if memory serves,
when I did this with Ingrid
I did that edit and she was like,
"Nope, I want the whole outro," so...
00:59:08
- That's why I was saying, okay,
I like the idea but we got to
get it past...
00:59:14
- Got to get it past the veto.
- Yeah, so, I'm cool. You cool?
- I'm great.
- Sweet.
00:59:18
- Awesome job.
- Awesome. Thank you.
00:59:20
- Always good to see you.
- Good to see you too.
00:59:22
- And we out!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Software
- Avid Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter
- Avid Mod Delay III
- Crowd Chamber
- DMG Audio Essence
- Eiosis AirEQ
- Eventide Ultra Channel
- Fabfilter Pro-Q2
- Fabfilter Timeless 2
- Massey DeEsser
- Oek-Sound Soothe
- PSP MixGate 2
- PSP Mixtreble 2
- PSP Spring Box
- PSP Vintage Warmer
- SPL DrumXChanger
- SPL Transient Designer
- SansAmp PSA-1
- Softube Focusing Equalizer
- Sound Toys Crystallizer
- Sound Toys Decapitator
- Sound Toys Devil-loc
- Sound Toys Radiator
- Sound Toys echoboy
- UAD 1073
- UAD Cooper Time Cube
- UAD EP-34 Tape Echo
- UAD Fatso Jr
- UAD Helios 69
- UAD LA-2A
- UAD Neve 88RS
- UAD Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor
- UAD Trident A-Range
- Waves C1 Compressor
- Waves CLA Drums
- Waves L1 Limiter
- Waves Puigtec EQP1A
- Waves RVox
- Waves s1 Imager
- iZotope Alloy 2
Hardware
- Ampex Mixer
- Aphex 204
- BASE Bedini Audio Spacial Enviroment
- Cooper Time Cube
- D.A.V. Electronics S.I.P.P.
- DBX "Disco" Boom Box
- DBX 160
- Dangerous BAX
- Dangerous Compressor
- Dangerous Liaison
- Distressor
- Dolby Model 365
- Electrodyne Compressor
- Focusrite Red 3 Compressor
- Maag EQ4
- Millennia STT-1
- Mo-FX
- PIE Limiters
- Pultec EQP-1A3
- Retro 1176
- Retro EQ
- Roland Dimension D
- SSL 4K
- Sony DRE 2000
- Teletronix LA-2A
- Teletronix LA-3A
- Universal Audio 1176
- VP28 Classic Preamp
F. Reid Shippen has made a name for himself through working with some of the world’s most respected artists across a wide variety of genres. Over his extensive career, Reid has mixed multiple platinum and gold records and hundreds of charting singles and albums, including ten Grammy Award-winning projects.
Known for his hybrid analog workflow, Reid has brought his signature sound to records for artists such as Death Cab For Cutie, Cage The Elephant, Neil Young, The Jonas Brothers, Backstreet Boys, Eric Church, Johnny Lang, Chris Tomlin, Dierks Bentley, and the list goes on.
Neil Young
The Jonas Brothers
Cage The Elephant
Death Cab For Cutie
Dierks Bentley
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