Starting every mix from scratch wastes hours of precious mixing time and keeps you from creating consistent sounding mixes. The key to efficient and creative mixing is to create a mixing template system that sets you up for success on every mix.
If you’re an engineer looking for a helpful starting point to use on all of your mixing session Grammy winner Fab Dupont’s mixing template is a great place to start.
Learn how Fab created a flexible and powerful mixing system that is optimized for modern music productions. The routing and effects that Fab uses as his starting point for mixes gives him the flexibility to work both in the box as well as with analog summing with no added hassle.
See how a professional mixing engineer utilizes advanced routing, effects sends, stem aux tracks, VCA groups, and master faders along with default plugin settings that save time and make getting a great sounding mix easy.
Fab shows you his entire mixing template setup using both 3rd party plugins and also the built in plugins. His mixing template is filled with clever tricks and effects presets that give you simple methods to accomplish complex mixing tasks in seconds.
After watching Fab explain his template in detail, you can then download his template for:
Pro Tools,
Logic,
Studio One,
Cubase,
Ableton
.
Use or adapt Fab’s mixing system for yourself and get better sounding mixes every time.
Parts of this site and some files are only accessible to pureMix Pro Members or available to purchase. Please see below our membership plans or add this video to your shopping cart.
00:00:09 Good morning, children! Today I'm going
to show you the secret behind the magic
..just you and me!
No sharing!
I'm gonna share my template!
It's priceless.
00:00:24 In reality there's no magic, there
are no tricks and nothing's priceless,
I'm just gonna give you my template
and show you how it works.
00:00:30 The point here is not to
unveil in the mystery, the point is
to save time when you're mixing. Because
mixing is extremely repetitive and
if we wanted a repetitive job
we'd move to Detroit and
work for Ford!
I noticed that there're lots of
mixing templates floating around
on the internet - that's the one
with email -
and .. they're not very good.
00:00:53 And they're not very good because
you open a file and then
there's a whole bunch of stuff going
on and routing going on, and
plug-ins you don't have and
it's just a mess and there's no
explanations.. so,
I thought it'd be very useful
and fun
to have a template
that makes sense for all sorts
of systems
..in Pro Tools, today..
and also,
that is properly explained.
00:01:15 Templates are tricky
because they need to be very broad.
00:01:18 You definitely not need the same tools
when you mix a jazz trio
or the Red Army choir.
00:01:23 Those are two very different things.
00:01:25 But, there are some common
denominator things.
00:01:29 Most like you're gonna have drums,
most likely bass,
maybe not for the Red Army choir
but you know what I mean.
00:01:35 And, you're gonna need stems, reverbs,
printing tracks, stuff like that.
00:01:39 And instead of doing the same
gesture of creating the stems,
every single mix,
it's a lot easier to import them
or to start
with them in the session, already.
00:01:50 There are two different way to
take advantage of templates
and I'm gonna go over both ways
using this template.
00:01:54 Which is perfect for both ways.
00:01:57 The first way is the old-school
console kinda way,
where you open a session
and you have your template
and then you drag your audio into the
existing template
just like if you had a tape machine and
a console, you just put the tape
remember tape? On the tape machine,
press play and everything is wired
through a console and
all the processing on the console
and the routing is pretty much
pre-defined, except for a few buttons.
That's one way.
00:02:23 The other way is the cherry-picking
dandy kinda way.
00:02:26 You have a session that is sent to you
and has a lot of stuff in it.
00:02:29 And then what you do is import
parts of your template
into that existing session.
00:02:34 That's useful when you're mixing
a full record, for example, and
your template, may be your first song,
and then you import stuff from your
first song into the second song, so it's
continual, and you don't have to start
from scratch
and you have some references and
stuff like that.
00:02:48 It's also useful
if somebody sends you an existing
session
that's a bloody mess,
which is most of the time,
and you need to put
some sense into it, and use your
own routing,
because your routing is your
routing, and you own it
and you share it with yourself!
Before we go to examples
I'm gonna run you through the template
that should now be opened in your
Pro Tools rig, in front of you,
so you can play with it while I
describe it
otherwise it makes no sense
whatsoever.
00:03:13 To make things very simple
I created some sign posts.
00:03:18 These dark blue inactive tracks
are inactive for a reason,
they don't mean anything,
they just tell you
'this is the acoustic drums area'.
Boom.
00:03:28 I know what you're thinking: I said
blue, it looks gray.
00:03:31 It is blue, but it's inactive, so it
looks gray.
00:03:33 You can see the blue up there,
on a little label.
00:03:36 The next inactive track
is here, it says 'this is the electronic
drums area',
and the next one: 'this is the
percussion area', and this is the
bass area, this is the guitars area..
00:03:46 and I use the same color template
all the time, so I know
what's going on, but it's nice, when
you use the import dialog
in Pro Tools, to have something
that tells you:
'oh, this is this area, this is this
area'. You'll see, it's pretty cool,
it'll help you save time.
00:04:02 So, acoustic drums area, right here.
00:04:06 I created three tracks,
Inside Bass Drum, Outside Bass Drum
and a Bass Drum Low
in case you use a sub like a
Yamaha SubKick or something like that.
00:04:14 Those three audio tracks
are routed through a bus called
'BD sub' to this
aux I called 'BD sub'
and that is the sum of
those three tracks.
00:04:25 And then there's a send
on this sub, that goes
to another aux
and that's the crush.
00:04:32 So I can do parallel
compression on the bass drum
just by itself, right here,
in the template.
00:04:40 Next,
if you're wondering what
this very pretty
pink track is, to the left of
the bass drum audio track is,
that is a special trick track.
00:04:48 Sometimes you need to
expand or gate the bass drum,
and sometimes you just can't
get it right
because of timing issues.
00:04:57 So what you could do, and I'll
show you in a minute
is take the bass drum
inside microphone,
copy it to that track,
move it a few samples
to the left,
which now gives your DAW
the ability to look into
the future
because this track,
the pink one,
after you do the copy-paste
and move-to-the-left thing,
will hear what is going on
on the green track
ahead of time.
00:05:22 And that allows you
to actually feed
this track, called 'Bass Drum trigger',
to
the key of the expander. I'll show you
in a minute
because, explaining like this
without seeing it
serves no purpose. Once you see it
you'll go: "Uuh!"
But basically, we're gonna work at
the local level, here,
all things bass drum are happening,
here.
00:05:43 And all that is being sent
and summed
to a bass drum stem, which is
kind of the master
and that stem is
being summed with
the drum stem, the electronic drum
stem, the bass stem, the
keyboard stem, etc. etc.
and that becomes your record.
00:05:56 I'll show you how it's done later, when
we grow up, if we grow up.
00:06:00 Next is, snare drum!
Two top snare, some people like to put
two top snare microphones
and a bottom snare. Those three
audio tracks are routed to this
sub, through a bus,
and on that sub
there's a crush send, which goes
to the snare crush,
so you can now do parallel
compression on the bass drum,
parallel compression on the snare
drum, with like.. one click.
00:06:24 I'm just talking routing now,
I'll talk about plug-ins in a minute.
00:06:27 Then, on the snare, there's a
'snare space'.
00:06:29 Often, because the snare is
so close-miked,
for some kinds of music, it feels too
dry and not right
and it's very difficult to obtain
the right structure,
space structure, over the
whole drum set.
00:06:43 So sometimes it makes sense to
have a bit of a
space just on the snare.
00:06:47 Which is created right here,
so you have a send on the main
snare,
and it's sent to this..
00:06:54 aux,
and that aux allows you to have
a little space just on the snare.
Used all the time.
00:07:00 And of course I implemented the
same
track that's the same trick
as I had
for the bass drum, for the
pre-emptive
gating-thing, which we'll see again,
in a minute.
00:07:10 This whole snare system,
which is..
00:07:12 all this, plus the sub, plus the crush,
plus the space
are being routed to a drum
sub,
along with all the other drum tracks.
00:07:20 So, for drums I will have
a bass drum
that goes to the stem..
00:07:25 and then I have all the drums
except bass drum..
00:07:28 that go to a drum sub, and that goes
to the drum stem.
00:07:31 The reason for this is,
I am able to do
local government and federal
government,
this is my local government, here..
the drum sub
and all the little things,
happening here.
00:07:41 The federal government is over there,
it oversees everybody.
00:07:44 Makes sense? Aye. Let's go back
to the local government.
00:07:47 This drum sub, here, is sent to
a reverb, called drum tail.
00:07:52 Because it's nice to create some
space around the drums
and I always need it, so it's in the
template.
00:07:57 Next to the drum sub,
there's a drum crush.
00:08:00 The way I am addressing
this drum crush is
by using an aux
and I'm choosing carefully
what I'm sending to that crush.
00:08:07 The bass drum,
the clean snare drum,
the hi-hat, which I almost never use,
but sometimes,
the tom sub,
there is a tom sub, the 3 toms are
fed to the tom sub,
that's pretty self-explanatory.
00:08:20 And then the overhead. And so I can
choose my mix, here, in this
fashion,
of what I send to the drum crush.
00:08:29 So if I wanna have my hi-hat direct,
I leave it here, and I don't want it
to go into the crush,
I just mute it here, right?
So I can change my balance
of what goes into the drum crush,
just by changing this mix, without
changing the direct mix.
00:08:43 It's very flexible and is
the fastest way of doing it.
00:08:46 We will talk about the plug-ins setup
later
for now, I need you to understand
the whole routing,
so it's in your head, before we start
talking about plug-ins..
00:08:56 Next to this
whole drum thing is a VCA.
00:09:00 So, that's why there's a little
'V' in front of the name of the track.
00:09:03 So I know it's a VCA when I look
at it in a list.
00:09:06 This VCA allows you to control,
at the local government level,
all your relevant drum tracks, meaning,
the bass drum and it's crush,
and the drum
and the drum crush. Remember:
since we are separating
drum stem and bass drum stem,
you have to go to the
federal government to actually
change the level of the whole kit.
00:09:27 It's complicated so it's nice to have
a VCA, right here.
00:09:29 Also, it allows you to solo
the whole drum set with just
one click, which is nice.
00:09:34 You can't do that with your stems.
Details, details!
And this is my drum tail.
00:09:39 Remember I told you a minute
and a half ago..
00:09:41 that this aux right here is sending
to this
reverb, so that you can actually
have full space on the drums.
00:09:50 So that's the acoustic drums,
fear not: it is the most complicated
so if you got this you're in
very good shape.
00:09:56 Looking at it, while you listen
is very important.
00:10:00 Just abstractly is not gonna work.
00:10:03 This little sign post here tells you:
it's electronic drums time!
Wonderful!
Not that different from real drums
except that
you don't need as much parallel
compression because they tend to
come very thick, those samples.
So,
I have put in this template a couple
mono tracks and a few
stereo tracks and there're a few
sends, let me show you what they are.
00:10:22 First, there's the tail,
and there's a space, those are two
different kind of
reverbs, that are right here..
00:10:30 and there is a crush,
which is in exactly the same fashion
as you saw
in the acoustic drums and is going
to this
crush track, right here.
00:10:38 Very standard, and all this
is being sent to the electronic drum
stem, which lives right here.
00:10:45 Percussion sign post. This is the
percussions section.
00:10:49 I make a lot of records with percussion
so I have a percussion section,
very simple:
There's a percussion space
aux, right here.
00:10:57 And all that is going to my other
stem..
00:11:01 Right here..
00:11:05 If I feel like it,
I'll rename
the stem 'percussion stem' so it'll
be easier to recall, later..
00:11:12 sometimes I get too lazy for that..
00:11:14 Bass! That you can see here.
00:11:16 I have a DI and an amp.
00:11:19 And then those two tracks are routed
to this sub, right here,
this sub goes to the bass stem,
but also there's a send that sends
it to another
aux, right here
that's called the bass crush,
where you can have distortion
that also goes to the bass stem.
00:11:34 I use that on every mix.
00:11:36 Acoustic guitars, electric guitars
for the guitars section..
00:11:40 all goes to the guitar stem,
and they're being fed to a tail
and a space.
00:11:46 Two auxes which also go to
the guitar stem.
00:11:49 For guitars sometimes
you get two acoustic guitars
then I'll create a sub for that
on the fly, because Pro Tools now
has quick
shortcuts to do that
and it doesn't always happen
and I don't want to
cloud the template with
stuff I may not use.
00:12:08 all that goes to the keyboard
stem,
there's very simple routing:
there are 3 auxes
a tail, a space, as always,
and then
a spread which is kind of a
stereo-izer,which I use a lot on some
digital keyboards that sound thin,
and now, vocals: first, lead vocals.
00:12:27 Slightly different way of doing
things:
most often I will park the vocal
on a track, and I will feed that
track
to an aux, and I will put all the
processing on an aux.
00:12:37 The reason for that is
it makes it a lot easier to go
back in versions
to track, without any latency,
all I have to do is
run this through a different aux.
There's lots of reasons to do this.
00:12:48 For example you can have a vocal
track for the verse.
00:12:50 A vocal track for the chorus.
00:12:52 Having them separate, not having
to have twice the processing is nice
allows you to adjust levels between
the two and is
really easy to do inserts and
versioning..
00:13:02 it's a little deep but I promise you
this works. The auxes,
this is the one that has a lot
of auxes,
I don't use all that stuff,
on every mix, but it's nice
to have
in case I need it. A tail-end space,
the office, which is that
back-wall thing that I do,
and an 1/8th delay, a 1/4th delay,
the spread and then some
special effects, some weird distortion
special fx stuff..
00:13:26 So I have a track for that, already
made, good to go..
00:13:29 and all that goes to the lead stem
and then basically, a complete replay
of all that
for the background vocals.
00:13:34 And I keep my effects completely
separate
because when I do stemming at
the end of a project
I don't have to worry about the
lead vocal reverb
ringing when I am printing just
the backgrounds.
00:13:45 Everything is totally discreet.
00:13:46 Of course to be able to do this
you need a fast computer
and a lot of DSP
but,
it works.
00:13:55 Let's move on to masters, as you can
see it's written, here: 'masters'.
00:13:58 If you noticed, since the beginning,
the bass drum goes to the bass drum
stem,
the drums go to the drums stem,
etc. etc. etc.
00:14:05 These are all busses.
00:14:07 Pro Tools has this amazing feature that
allows you to have a master on the bus.
00:14:12 Stay with me:
a bus is a patch cable.
00:14:17 It goes from A to B.
00:14:20 It's just a cable.
00:14:22 Imagine if you had
a master fader here, a fader that
you can take the level
up and down in this cable.
00:14:29 The value of that may seem a little
weird, but
there's value in it because of headroom
and because of clipping.
00:14:35 The master fader in Pro Tools
allows you
to gain stage your entire
session
without worrying of clipping.
00:14:43 And you can do it in the space
that's in-between your tracks
and your stems, so you can actually
offset
using this fader,
how much level you're gonna hit your
stem with.
00:14:54 What I did here is, I created
11 masters for the 11 busses
and a VCA for these 11 masters.
00:15:01 So I can use this VCA to actually
offset my entire session.
00:15:06 Right here.
00:15:06 I can decide from this one fader
right here,
how hard I am hitting my stems.
00:15:11 No matter what happens on my tracks.
00:15:14 So you may see some clipping here,
sometimes,
and you may think: 'oh, no!'.
00:15:19 And you may have the problem
that most people have, which is,
you have a great sound but you
know you're clipping
and you know it's gonna be a real
problem but you don't wanna
change the balance, here.
00:15:28 And you don't have enough safeguards,
I have
put some safeguards in this template,
but
there's never enough safeguard.
What you can do
is just pretend it's not happening
if it sounds right..
and then come in here..
00:15:39 and offset your whole session, here.
Isn't that wonderful?
It's wonderful.
00:15:43 If you do production in the same session
as you're gonna do mixing later
I recommend you have this VCA up
at zero.
00:15:49 Because you're gonna be
crushing the levels like crazy.
And when it's time to mix
*pouf!* you just gave yourself
6, 12,
18dB of headroom with one fader,
without
changing any of your balances.
00:16:00 So let's put this back at 6, 'cause
that's
how I start mixing, if I have to mix
like this, on my laptop, for
something quick and I am not
using summing, that day.
00:16:09 After that, we have the stems.
So the stems
are the receivers
of all your audio.
00:16:16 There's a little trick on those stems.
00:16:17 There's parallel compression at the
stem level.
00:16:20 So no matter what you send
to your stems
it sends through this aux
part of this signal to two separate
parallel compression busses.
00:16:28 One is called 'rhythm' and one
is called 'band'.
00:16:32 A lot of mixers do this.
00:16:33 Andrew Scheps has a Rear Buss, where
he sends a bunch of
non-drum elements to a crush system
that he
you know, mixes with his real
direct path, and that works for him.
00:16:45 Michael Brauer has like 5-6 of them,
and it's on a
SSL, he's using aux sends and
is
..it's really intense.
00:16:54 I personally like to keep
things simple.
00:16:56 So I wanna use the strict
minimum amount of processing
that gives me the maximum
amount of returns without having
to think about it
too much, because thinking is
really painful.
00:17:06 So the way I do it, when I choose
to do parallel compression
is: I have my bass drum, drum,
electronic drum and bass stems,
being sent to this crush bus,
right here,
called 'Rhythm parallel' and the rest,
guitars, keyboards, vocals, horns,
strings..
00:17:21 whatever, being sent to the
'band parallel'.
00:17:24 If my
FX/other stem
is percussion, I'm also gonna send it
into
the rhythm, I just have to change,
right here.
00:17:31 Don't forget to do that!
Ok, and that allows me to do
parallel compression
on the whole mix, very likely
without thinking about it,
because
no matter what I do, if I move
my bass drum
right here, if I do something
to my bass drum,
because it's being sent to the
bass drum stem, which is
here, and the bass drum is being
stemmed to this
compression, this parallel compression,
everything happens automatically.
00:17:53 It gives a certain tone
and for pop music and things that
need to be
loud without being crushed
that have a lot of
density, this is the way to do it,
and it's in the template.
00:18:03 If I don't like, I just mute this and
that
and I don't have to have it.
If I'm gonna mix a jazz record
or a philharmonic record
I'm not gonna do that. If I'm gonna
mix a Katy Perry remix
I'm definitely gonna do that.
00:18:15 Next is the printing section as
is exemplified by this little track,
right here.
00:18:20 So, all these stems
the direct stems, plus the crushes,
the parallel compression,
are being sent to a bus
called
'sum'. This bus is being
fed to an aux called
'sum'. The reason why I go through
an aux
is so I can have processing
on the aux right here.
00:18:36 This is kinda like your 2-bus, right?
These are your individual processing
stem-by-stem processing
and this is your 2-bus stem.
00:18:45 I also have a master on the
sum bus.
00:18:48 Meaning I can offset how hard
I hit the input of this aux, right here.
00:18:54 That's another security, to make
sure that if I go
crazy on the stems, right here,
after a long mix,
or if the drummer is in the room
with me and he's
tone-deaf
and all the levels creep
up, creep up, creep up..
00:19:05 just before I print I can offset
my levels
so I don't overwhelm the plug-ins that
are here, and I don't clip.
00:19:10 So this is a nice little
extra layer of joy.
00:19:14 And then, the sum aux is being fed
to a print track
which I put in record and I hit
'print'.
00:19:21 And that's how the magic happens.
00:19:23 There's also a click track.
00:19:24 For those of us who use clicks.
00:19:27 That's it! That's the template
routing!
I suggest - if you have the
patience -
and you can stand listening
all this all again,
that you rewind and listen to it, again.
00:19:35 There's a chapter marker for you to
do so.
00:19:38 Onto processing!
I hate presets. I think presets
are useless, for most things except
maybe reverbs.
00:19:47 But for EQs, they serve no purpose.
However,
I kinda know which EQ I'm gonna use,
so I might as well have it there, right?
So that's the console approach
where you know that's your EQ and
compressor, you know them and go fast,
that works for me!
So, let's look at what I've done
on the processing side of this template.
00:20:08 Pro Tools has two sets of five inserts.
00:20:10 A-E and F-J.
00:20:13 What I've done here is I've put the
plug-ins I usually use
but you may not have, on
inserts F-J
and then I've put standard
Pro Tools
run-of-the-mill, built-in plug-ins
on A-E.
00:20:26 What you'll find in the folder
associated with this video is:
two templates, one with
just the Pro Tools built-in plug-ins,
and one with just the 3rd party
plug-ins so you don't have to clean up
when you do the importing for yourself,
so you can choose the one you want.
00:20:40 And you'll also have this one,
so you can
look at both, in case it's
entertaining to you.
00:20:45 Basically, here's how it goes:
on bass drums, if they're acoustic,
I'm probably gonna use a gate.
00:20:51 So let me turn these guys on.
00:20:55 Often, depending on who
records the bass drum,
I have to
expand it, or gate it, because it's
not necessarily well
done and there's a lot of leakage
that
is not positive. Leakage can be
great but
it also can suck, bad.
00:21:08 I know that I have a gate.
00:21:10 Or an expander in my template.
And I know
that, no matter what..
00:21:14 the key is set to this
bus called 'bass drum trigger'.
00:21:18 The reason for that is for simplicity
and lower brain-share, meaning:
if I am going to use
an expander or gate on a bass
drum
and the same will go for the
snare drum,
I will copy
the in-bass drum microphone
track
to my trigger trick,
even
if I am not gonna use the
'move-the-track-ahead-to
-fool-the-DAW' into reading
into the future.
00:21:41 Even if I don't do that, I will still
copy the track, so that, no matter what
when I reopen
the session one year and a half
from now,
I know where the gate is, I know
where the key is,
and I know what's happening and
I don't have to remember anything,
I just look at it and I am just:
'oh! Right!
That's what' happened!'
So,
I have three gates,
sometimes you'll want all of them
to be exactly the same so they
open and close at the same time
so you don't have any phase issue
or false triggering
sometimes you want them to be
separate, because one is
really a mess
and another is not.
00:22:10 That's based on your ears.
00:22:11 If you want them to sync up
all you have to do is take this
bass drum track-group,
remove it from the globals, and tell
it to link
insert 2. Boom. Boom.
00:22:24 So now,
when you bypass insert 2, it
bypasses it on all three bass drums.
00:22:28 If you don't want that
you can remove that, from here.
00:22:32 But, it's in the template.
00:22:34 You may wonder why there is
a gate,
an expander, on the trigger.
00:22:39 Because you can do a lot of good work
by actually expanding
the trigger
before you expand the actual
track.
00:22:46 Does that make sense?
So you pre-expand, if you will.
00:22:49 The key you're gonna send to
this expander, right here,
will be cleaner, because you're doing
a little bit of
expansion work on it.
00:22:55 Ok?
For you to be able to do that,
don't forget to assign this
to an actual physical listenable
output
and remove it after, you don't
want the
trigger to be in the mix,
otherwise it makes a mess.
00:23:06 So,
because I've seen many, many
mistakes,
by default, my trigger
is not in the mix.
00:23:14 Reason for that: this gets deep..
00:23:15 you can fast-forward if you're getting
a headache
is: you can listen to the trigger,
right here.
00:23:21 You don't really have the need for this.
Lots of people get confused about this
let it go.
00:23:27 On the bass drum sub,
for the built-in plug-in
I use the Channelstrip, it does
everything you need,
it has EQ, high-pass, low-pass,
and
compression and everything, very nice.
For the bass drum crush,
I am using a channelstrip again,
it's a good idea
for the sub and the crush, to have
at the very least
the same hi-pass if you're not gonna
use
linear phase EQs.
00:23:50 On my personal plug-ins, on the
stuff that I use
with my 3rd-party plug-ins, I use the
Pro Q-2 which
has a linear phase
EQ option..
00:23:58 for my crush, so if I need to hi-pass
the bottom of the bass drum before I
smithereen it, with my 1176,
I will use the Pro Q-2, because
it is
linear phase, and thus I will not
ruin the
bottom of the record by doing that.
00:24:12 Since I haven't found a
linear phase EQ
in the built-in plug-ins, I recommend
you sync up
these two plug-ins at least
for the hi-pass filter
and you'll have less surprises.
00:24:22 This BF76 plug-in
sounds nothing like an 1176
but it does sound dirty and ugly
which is what you
need for parallel compression,
so it's perfect!
For the snare drums.. everybody
with me, still?
Stay with me! Ok!
I promise you, it will save time!
Snare drum is the exact
same thing, basically.
00:24:44 I have the gate, the gate key
is set to the snare trigger,
as you would expect, you copy
whichever the cleanest
snare microphone is,
to the trigger.
00:24:54 You move it ahead if you want
the look-ahead
the super-look-ahead system
or not..
00:24:58 it's your call and it's all the
same thing.
00:25:01 For processing,
I tend to really process
the sum of the three snares.
Sometimes
you need to process
one snare because it's really
badly recorded or
maybe the snare bottom is too
fat or something like that, in that
case I noticed that I forgot to put
a channelstrip here, in the built-in
thing, let's do that..
00:25:21 in my personal template I use the
Oxford..
00:25:23 for most things. It's quick and
I know it.
00:25:25 And the Oxford Dynamics, too.
00:25:27 And I will have the Pultec on my
top snare..
00:25:31 20% of the time, if it's really,
really..
00:25:33 dull, like an old broken 57,
which lots of people use for that!
Me included!
Then you open the top
with a Pultec,
you can do that with a channelstrip
if you are all-built-in plug-ins.
00:25:45 Then, processing-wise
on the
bus and on the crush it's exactly
the same principle,
as on the bass drum so I'm not
gonna repeat myself.
00:25:53 It's not as crucial on the snare
to match the hi-pass filters,
because the phase shifts and
the phase cancellation
at the snare level, is not
that big a deal, compared to at the
bass drum level, where
60Hz is kinda like your life line.
00:26:05 So I wouldn't worry about it, too much.
00:26:08 The snare space, I tend to use
the RMX 16,
because I love it. The actual
built-in AIR
non-linear reverb plug-in that
Avid gives you for free,
works awesome!
So, don't feel like you're less
a man/woman..
00:26:23 Hi-hat, usually just a hi-pass filter.
00:26:26 The built-in EQ3 7-band EQ from
Avid is awesome,
it brews coffee, it does everything you
need, it's free, it's really great.
00:26:35 Toms! I have three toms, going to
the tom sub,
expander/gates on the toms,
you usually have
to stay discreet, so I don't use
the lookahead trick, because the toms
are a mess, you can decide to go and
cut all the audio out of the toms
in-between the hits, I'm too lazy
to do that, I use a gate..
00:26:53 I like the Pro Expander/Gate from
Avid,
but the built-in expander/gate,
the Dyn3 is awesome..
00:26:58 it works great, it has hi-pass
and low-pass filters, right here..
00:27:02 it's really useful and absolutely
not a let-down.
00:27:05 I am just a geek so I like the extra
features of this stuff.
00:27:08 Plus it looks like the Star Trek
Enterprise so you really cannot resist.
00:27:11 Toms are so weird and different
it's very hard for me to imagine
ahead of time what it's gonna
be like, it's really a reaction
so I choose my plug-ins at
the last minute, usually.
00:27:22 And very often there's nothing
on the sub,
I just do all my processing
at the tom track level.
00:27:28 Overhead, just an EQ, I rarely
compress overheads
so I just put an EQ in there..
00:27:32 if I end having to compress
overheads, then I'll choose
whatever compressor inspires
me at that moment.
00:27:38 I never had one in a template and
I never import that.
00:27:42 For the drum sub, same thing,
channelstrip here will do fine for you
if you are in-the-box,
for my personal 3rd party plug-in
I have an Oxford
that I usually use to remove
any obvious problems
that have been created by
all this mess
and a 33609 because,
you know,
that's what people have been
doing. I could use something else
just a habit, it's there,
often I change it.
00:28:02 And then a Pultec, because I like
how soft the high end is on that.
00:28:06 You can find whatever 3rd party
plug-in you have to your
template, if you're in-the-box.
00:28:10 I could do the whole thing with a
channelstrip, works great.
00:28:12 For the crush, the drum crush,
if you remember well,
I have the same exact system,
I have for
the bass drum and the snare drum,
except I'm using a 160 here
because the 160 is delightfully
broken, in certain ways
for drums, so I like that.
00:28:25 On the in-the-box template
I'm using a BF76
because it is dirty as hell
and it is fun.
00:28:31 If you really wanna go over the top,
you Shift+Click on the 20, here
and you go in all-button-mode
and then
it really sounds bad, in a good
way.
00:28:39 Then, drum tail,
D-Verb
D-Verb rocks, people!
Personally, if I have the
luxury I'll use a Lexicon 224
because it has that certain sheen
plus I love playing with that
stuff, because it's not so
obvious, sometimes you make
mistakes that are fun to listen to
and you invent new things. So I like
making mistakes.
00:28:58 D-Verb,
in this case I chose 'ambient
medium' and
it works great on drums.
00:29:03 Many sessions I get have
D-Verb on it because it's free
and I just leave it in! I just
do.
00:29:08 Be careful with D-Verb,
in this particular case
because of all the energy we're
sending into it
you'll notice here that there's a 4dB
pad
on the gain input to this reverb,
that's what they have
by default, I don't understand it.
00:29:18 In this particular case
it was useful because we're sending
a lot of energy to it,
you can play with this over time, see
what works better
for you, gain staging, but I kept
it this way because
it kind of matches the level of
this guy.
00:29:29 For some reason.
00:29:30 Everywhere else in the template,
I change that to
zero, if I remember well,
like on the e-drum.
00:29:35 It's at zero.
00:29:37 Let's move on: e-drums processing.
Channelstrip, I use an EQ and compressor
if I need anything special, I add it
after
everything else is kind of the same.
00:29:47 The space, I use the RMX 16
for everything, because I just like
the grain of it.
00:29:52 And I re-created a preset that's close
on the non-linear.
Perc space
I use a D-Verb
the hall, I like it. I like that
tone, here..
00:30:02 and on my personal plug-ins
I use the 250.
00:30:05 The rest of the processing for
the percussion
is very simple,
channelstrip on the built-in.
00:30:11 Here, for my personal plug-in
I like to use the Studer on
percussion.
00:30:16 Because they tend to be recorded
very close
and very transient-heavy
and the Studer will
do a good job at softening
those transients.
00:30:23 And make them sound a little further
away and a little more
interesting and fun.
00:30:29 Let's move on to the bass
processing.
00:30:31 EQ, compression,
and then, on the sub
I tend to have a little bit of
distortion if I can. So EQ/compression
I like to use TapeHead
for my 3rd-party plug-in. I love
this thing
it's really wonderful. It's a good way
to add saturation
without being obnoxious
it's really easy to use, and it's
super affordable, it's
made by Massey plug-ins,
it's awesome.
00:30:53 If you don't have it, I made a close
very-close knock-off
with the built-in distortion from
AIR, which is super useful,
it does so many things.
00:31:01 It's really good to explore this
plug-in, you can do a lot of
things with it, but this sounds close
enough to this
that it's good enough for jazz.
00:31:09 Here on the bass crush,
if you remember, you access through
this aux,
the bass crush, I usually use
the Devil-Loc
or I use a Decapitator, if I am on
3rd-party,
for the built-in plug-ins, I use the
distortion from
AIR again, and I just went crazy on it,
made it a little heavier, sounds great.
00:31:27 For guitars, I like to use the Studer.
00:31:29 I love that Studer plug-in
for transients, like I just said.
00:31:33 So, especially for guitars, acoustic
guitars..
00:31:35 that go 'clink, clink, clink'
it's really awesome..
00:31:37 It has a little softening
with a sheen for the transients
and I love that.
00:31:42 I don't know of a built-in plug-in
for Pro Tools that has that. So you
have to do without.
00:31:48 EQ/compression, usual..
00:31:49 A tail and a space, it's the same
stuff
as to the left of the template.
00:31:54 If I were not mixing
a pop record, I would probably use just
one tail and one space, and save
some DSP. But since
this is my pop music and my
uber-template,
I separate reverb as I mentioned a
long time ago
but I am gonna repeat it so you can remember it,
so that when I do stemming at the end
of the
process I don't have reverbs from the
snare bleeding into the vocal.
00:32:15 Every reverb is discrete.
00:32:17 Sends.. very simple stuff.
00:32:20 Same tail, same space,
the way I do the stereo is very simple..
this is with the built-in plug-in,
no delay on the left, full wet on the
right, anywhere between,
5 to 30ms delay and a mono
stem becomes stereo,
it's easy, it's cool, you can do
also with a Microshift
from Soundtoys, which is my 3rd-party
plug-in.
00:32:40 This one has a little more
control
but in the end..
00:32:44 makes things wide.
Vocals:
This is my basic chain.
00:32:49 Melodyne, De-esser,
I like the XILS De-esser,
I also love the FabFilter,
not because of the name, De-Esser,
the combination of the two
is lethal,
EQ/compression and then a Pultec
if I need to
enhance things. This is really
a starting point, it changes
all the time, based on
how good or bad the vocal is.
00:33:08 There is no built-in
pitch correction in Pro Tools,
there is a channelstrip, so let's put
it on there.
00:33:14 And you can do most of everything
I do
with the channelstrip, so I'm gonna
leave it at that.
00:33:19 For the Pultec you'll have to find your
own solution.
00:33:21 These are all the vocal reverbs.
00:33:23 I use the UAD
140 for everything, because
it's awesome.
00:33:28 I love the sound of it.
I made a
D-Verb preset that is pretty close,
it feels good and is pretty useful,
so you have it in there..
00:33:36 Space, same thing, I use the Hall,
it really has that
Lexicon-y kinda vibe..
00:33:42 I like that.
00:33:43 For the Office, I made a room preset
that
feels like my Oxford Office,
so you have..
00:33:49 parity now..
00:33:50 if you work in-the-box with
no third-party.
00:33:53 A delay is a delay
1/8th note, 1/4th note.
I like Echoboy,
because I can change the tone
of it, so it
starts with it, in this
position.
00:34:01 I'm never gonna want it to be
fully fat,
and I'm never gonna want it
to be fully bright.
00:34:05 So, I already have that in my
template.
00:34:07 Then the rest I'll play with,
especially the style, right here,
it's awesome.
00:34:12 The built-in delay, is a delay.
It repeats stuff.
00:34:15 You can play with the low-pass filter,
to make it darker, it works great,
I recommend it.
00:34:20 For the spread,
on vocals, the Microshift is great
the delay trick is a little brutish.
00:34:26 So I like the Ensemble in the built-in
plug-ins,
let me turn it on..
there you go.
00:34:32 This works awesome on vocals.
00:34:34 Check it out! It's very
good.
00:34:36 And you can actually play with this
to change the phase, it's nice,
it's nice!
For the extra FX, I usually use
the FX Rack
from Soundtoys, in my personal
stack,
and then I stuff it with stuff I want.
00:34:49 Here, as a placeholder, I put
the Filter Gate because
you should listen to it..
00:34:52 not a lot of people use this,
and it really is insane
what it does. It's really a fun
plug-in to use.
00:34:58 Then,
for the background vocals, it's all
the same.
00:35:01 And here, for the stems,
I am using the Oxford Limiter
as some of you may know,
I created a
preset on the Dyn3
the built-in limiter
of Pro Tools,
that is close, you just have
to lower the threshold, here
and then you can offset
here.. right?
With the sum offset
if you have the Oxford Limiter,
I can only recommend it
and the way it works is,
you just
raise your level into it
or lower your level out of it,
very easy.. for the parallel
compression
as I mentioned before,
on the built-in we're using
the BF76, because
it is crunchy
and of course there's
a little limiter, here..
00:35:43 and here for my 3rd party plug-ins,
I am using the 1176AE because
it has a
2:1 thing and it's nice.. it does the
job, I like the sound of it.
00:35:51 And that's about it!
There's a limiter at the end,
same here.. I recommend, if
you can, to use
a true upward limiter for your
sum,
I don't like Maxim,
so I couldn't bring myself
to put it on the template.
00:36:03 Don't tell anyone!
Now that we know how to use the
template, let me hide
the 3rd party plug-ins..
00:36:11 And let's use only
the built-in Pro Tools
stuff..
00:36:15 and let's show you a couple
examples
of how to work!
Option 1:
old-school console kinda
way.
00:36:23 So I'm gonna open this
so I have some room,
we have this, if you make it big enough
it's easy to read what it is
I recommend grid mode so all the stuff
you drag is in the same spot.
00:36:39 You find the folder with the
stems..
00:36:41 these are the stems for Zelab 14
'Face your fear or die' from the good
people at ViFolly,
you can select your track,
start with the kick,
by the way, in Pro Tools, if you hold
Control it will force-drop
your audio where your play marker
is, which is
really practical for this particular
purpose, kick..
00:37:00 bass drum, I put the bass drum
in here..
00:37:03 I'm gonna copy it here, right?
So that, one is on the trigger,
one is on the bass drum in,
kick out..
00:37:15 'BD low' is the kick sub, right?
There you go! If I press play
in Pro Tools, now..
00:37:22 I have sound right away!
And not just output 1-2,
I have sound going through everything!
The sub, the crush, the stem, the
sum, that's nice!
That's worth all the time I've spent
making you a template!
Here's top snare..
00:37:38 So, I'm gonna do this, so this boring
as hell,
so why don't we just fast-forward
through this..
00:37:49 If you're out of
mono tracks, just duplicate one, make
sure you don't copy the playlist
and now you have an extra mono track for
the snare reverb reverse intro..
00:38:12 Et voila'! It's a good idea
just for entertainment purposes
to rename
the tracks that you have to duplicate
and to get rid of
the tracks you don't use, like for
example there's the
electronic drum tracks
are not there..
00:38:23 So we'll get rid of them.
00:38:25 So we have good feng shui. This
is not exactly percussion music.
00:38:28 So it can go away.
00:38:31 And so on and so forth,
let me save it as..
00:38:34 at this point this is the part where
you remove the template, you
call it a name.. it could go to the
desktop..
00:38:40 call it.. you know, 'ViFoley..
00:38:42 template', for example.
00:38:45 Boom.
00:38:46 And, I'll go through it
rename the stuff that needs to
be renamed and
the thing that's amazing is,
if you press play right now
the tracks are fine, but you can see
that you are already hitting
your sum a little hard,
so you can pad it
6dB here, because you know
that your levels are gonna creep.
00:39:07 So you already give you 6dB of
headroom right at the top
from the raw tracks.
00:39:16 Now all you have to do is, find that
piano, mute it and move on!
Wait! You have questions! Good
questions!
Ok, I'll answer your questions!
Let me show you a couple tricks,
then, if you insist.
00:39:27 Let's go back to the left and talk about
that gating system.
00:39:32 First things first, you have to make
absolutely sure
that in the mixing pane here,
'compensate sidechains' is on!
Otherwise,
thou shalt suffer!
The other thing is
depending on your version of
Pro Tools,
there may be a "feature"
from Pro Tools, right now..
00:39:46 that prevents you from working
easily..
00:39:50 And the feature is, if the track
is not going to a physical output
then the
sends are not delay compensated.
00:39:58 And that.. is wonderful, of course
but..
00:40:01 anyway, so on this rig, I know
it's a problem.
00:40:03 I didn't put it in the template
because if you have a
fully-native rig,
in certain versions,
it works, but certain rigs,
it doesn't.
00:40:11 So if you
set up your sidechain,
and you use the external sidechain
like this..
00:40:17 on the snare trigger,
and you play it and it sounds
like this..
00:40:21 so first: this is the snare..
00:40:27 and then you turn your gate
on and it sounds like this:
you have a delay compensation
problem.
00:40:35 The solution to that problem,
if that happens it to just
assign this to a physical output,
make sure it's muted and then..
00:40:45 and you know it works, because
if you mute this,
no more sound!
Now, let me show you a couple
extra tricks.
00:40:54 By the way, if you
assign to a physical output
and do everything right,
cross all your Ts and it still
doesn't work
close your session, re-open it,
you never know.
00:41:05 So now we have the ability to treat
the sidechain signal separately.
00:41:11 If I click on this button, here..
00:41:13 I hear
what's being fed to my
sidechain, which is this guy.
00:41:22 And so, as I told you before,
now I can expand that. Check it out.
00:41:30 So that is not my favorite
snare sound
but it's super clean and there's nothing
else in it, right?
Great! Now this direct signal
is gonna be able to listen to that
and have a super
clean snare, I'm removing the
sidechain monitor,
I am now actually gating the snare
using this clean signal
that is being processed
as my director for when
the gate opens and closes
and it sounds like this.
00:42:04 If I mute, it sounds like this.
00:42:13 And here's the part that
rocks:
since I have a separate track
for my trigger,
I can remove some
audio at the beginning, so I can edit
the way I want,
I can select it
move it, 1-200 samples to the left,
and now I can basically force
the gate to open
100 samples before the actual
hit.
00:42:38 If you compare the sound,
you get the attack back. Isn't that
wonderful?
I think that's good enough for the
old-school tape-console style
thing, let's look at importing your
template into an existing session, next.
00:42:59 This is the ViFoley 'Face your fear
or die'
raw stems, into an existing session.
00:43:05 There's a little bit of panning on,
everybody's going to Output 1-2,
sounds like this..
00:43:16 This could be the kind of session
you get from a collaborator
who's kind enough to organize
everything the way you like it
or close enough to the way you
like it.
00:43:23 So the first thing I usually do
in those situations
is I import my stem system.
00:43:27 Pro Tools has this wonderful
'import session data'
key command is Shift+Opt+i,
and we're gonna open from the template,
and then, in here, you can choose what
you import.
00:43:39 I want my stems.
00:43:41 So I am gonna import,
say..
00:43:44 and this is where the little
markers are interesting,
stems, are here..
00:43:47 and also I see that masters are here..
00:43:49 I'm gonna import all my masters,
remembers the masters allow you
to pad everything
and the VCA master, crucial.
00:43:57 And then all my stems, including
the rhythm,
the parallel rhythm and the parallel
band,
and then the sum bus master, the sum
and the print,
and then the click, you never know..
that might be useful.
00:44:09 Now, these are all auxes and masters,
they have no data on them, so..
00:44:14 this is not very important right now..
let's keep moving.
00:44:18 So now, I have imported in my
session,
all that good stuff, at the bottom.
00:44:24 But all this is still going
to Output 1-2
without touching any of the stuff
we just imported.
00:44:33 Here, depending on how intense
you wanna be, you can say: 'ok,
my template will work for these
drums.'
So you can go in and go back
to this template-
importing process..
00:44:47 and then say: 'ok, I'm gonna
need the drum trigger,
but the rest, I'm gonna
map.'
Meaning I am gonna say: 'ok,
this is my source, meaning
the template,
and this is my destination,
meaning this session.
00:44:59 I could decide to match tracks and
then Pro Tools
tries to be smart about
figuring out which is which
for example: if this as BD low
is the
same as BD par..
00:45:08 and Snare Top is Snare Top..
that works
50% of the time.
00:45:13 Or you can decide to do it by hand,
which is still a lot faster,
than trying to re-create everything.
00:45:18 So if I do it by hand,
clicking here, on a track,
imports it as a new track
and then I can say: 'ok,
on the template bass drum in
microphone,
should go into my Kick in..
00:45:29 track, in this session.
00:45:31 Template Bass Drum out
to Kick out..
00:45:33 Template Bass Drum low
should go to Kick Sub,
even though the Kick sub
means 'sub-harmonics'
and then I'm gonna import my
busses, the 2 auxes
the snare trigger I'm gonna map
the snare to Snare Top.
00:45:50 Snare Top 2 I'm gonna map
to Snare Side.
00:45:53 Snare Sub, Snare Crush,
Snare Space, the Hi-Hat
I suggest we map to the hi-hat..
00:46:00 Tom 1, 2 and 3..
00:46:02 I'll let you guess.
00:46:06 There you go. Let's not forget to import
the tom sub, map the overhead
to the overhead, which apparently
were recorded with Coles.
00:46:15 Drum Crush, Drum Sub, the VCA
and the Drum Tail. Let's stop here.
00:46:21 So now, I have chosen all the tracks
in my template
that are relevant to the tracks
in this session
and I'm gonna map them, but there's
one more level.
00:46:29 I have to make sure, when I am importing
just settings,
to not import
the playlist, because if I import
the playlist, I'm gonna
basically wipe out
the audio content in these tracks.
00:46:40 Which is not a good look!
So, do not import the main playlist
and also, if you want to keep
your file management tight,
remove the alternate playlist option
and the clips and media option.
00:46:53 So basically what you're doing right now
is you're basically
importing the settings from the
template
but not the audio, not the clips
nothing, just the plug-in settings
and the volumes.
00:47:02 And you press 'ok'..
00:47:05 And it thinks..
00:47:07 And organizes all that stuff.
00:47:09 And unfortunately,
all the busses and everything are
put together
in a row somewhere
and you have to organize stuff,
but it's still a lot faster
than doing it by hand, so I'm gonna
do it quickly, here..
00:47:21 and.. the trigger is here.
00:47:25 And.. the snares..
00:47:29 Boom.
00:47:32 I always re-organize things
in the exact same
order as it is in my template
so that I don't have to think
and I always know where to
go find stuff..
00:47:42 these are the drum tracks we
worked on..
00:47:45 the plugs were deactivated in my template
so that's why they're deactivated here,
obviously, in your template, once you
have it set up for yourself
the plug-ins will be activated so you
don't have to do this
and.. you have to make sure that you have no
tracks that have fallen through the
cracks like, for example:
all these weird
drum tracks that are not in my template,
like crush reverbs and stuff..
00:48:05 you have to take of them manually,
so I am gonna assign them to
drum sub..
00:48:10 and go from there, the beauty
now, of course
is: you have everything set up,
ready to go..
00:48:14 in just a few tweaks you can have
a great drum sound.
00:48:17 If you don't wanna loose your mind..
00:48:19 since you only have one monitor
output
I recommend that you mute everything
that you haven't
already re-assigned, so in our case
everything that's not a drum set
element, should be muted.
00:48:34 And so on and so forth, let's do it
again for bass, I know that my bass
on template, like this..
00:48:40 don't worry about the "source session
start time is earlier than session
start time" unless you're doing post..
00:48:46 Ok, so Bass DI should go to Bass DI..
00:48:49 There you go..
00:48:50 Bass Amp can go to whatever..
Bass SansAmp.
00:48:54 And then the Bass Sub is gonna get
imported.
00:48:57 I do not import all the playlist,
I go for it,
there you go, it's happy..
00:49:03 and I'm gonna assign the distortion
to the bass sub,
nice..
00:49:13 let's turn these on..
00:49:30 A real manly bass sound, really fast.
00:49:32 Another way you could use this,
is..
00:49:35 and I separated this for you, you can
say: 'Ok,
I'm just interested in the stems
and so I made a session for you where
it's just the stems
and just the masters so it's really
quick..
00:49:45 just import all that and boom: you're
good to go!
And one with just reverbs, so I made you
a session that has
nothing but my reverb settings.
But here's the trick!
50% of the work of doing the reverb
setup
is the bus.. so you have to make sure
you stay consistent
and you always use the same ones
from session to session
so that when you import it,
that bus shows up
in your bus list, right here.
00:50:08 So you have to be very
careful
about using the same thing
all the time..
00:50:12 and if you do, things are gonna
magically import
into each other and never
have any problems
and everything will be wonderful
and there will be world peace.
00:50:21 So, if you noticed here..
00:50:22 my preset frequencies are
the starting points of where
I am always looking for trouble.
00:50:27 Right?
But that's not the default for
the Pro Tools plug-in. There's a way
to force Pro Tools to default to that.
It's call the User Default.
00:50:35 I'm gonna show you with a different
plug-in. Let's choose..
00:50:37 Non-Linear Reverb, for example.
All right..
00:50:39 Ok, cool, so that's a certain sound.
00:50:47 But that's not your
default setting, that's not what
you want it to be.
00:50:50 So, the first thing you do, is you
setup
what's your default setting.
00:50:59 Much more useful!
Now, that's what I'm talking about!
You want this
to come up as your starting point,
every single
time you launch the plug-in.
00:51:11 You really want that. I promise.
00:51:13 The way to do that is, first things
first:
save it.
00:51:16 So you save your settings as..
00:51:18 and you call it: 'badass..
00:51:20 bass drum sound.'
So that's saved.
00:51:25 The second thing you do
is, you click up there and you go to
settings preferences..
00:51:29 and you set the plug-in default
to User Setting.
00:51:33 And the third thing you do, is
you set this as User Default.
00:51:39 And now, every time you're gonna
instantiate
your AIR Non-Linear
Reverb, it will call
your 'badass BD sound'!
Automatically.. isn't that wonderful?
Yes! It is super-wonderful
for example,
even if you're not into this particular
sound, in general..
00:51:56 But say for example you're doing
45 tracks of background vocals,
and you want an EQ on all
of them..
00:52:01 and you like the starting point to
be the same, everywhere.
00:52:04 It's worth 2 seconds to do this and
then you can do it everywhere.
00:52:07 For my money, although it's free,
my EQ3 always comes up
like this,
because it works,
and same for my Oxford
EQ and same for my Oxford
Compressor.
00:52:15 My Oxford Compressor comes in with
the Compressor IN.
00:52:18 Because, the factory default is that
the compressor is off.
00:52:21 And if you instantiate,
the odds you're gonna want it to
compress something are really high!
So why it comes up with the compressor
off
puzzles me! So I re-did it so it comes
in
with the compressor on, because
I am a genius!
You now have the templates on your HD,
in a safe folder, somewhere nice.
00:52:37 Great. I strongly urge you to look at
them before you wanna use them..
00:52:40 because, if you start using them
under pressure, they may slow you down,
before they save you time,
which is not a good look.
00:52:48 Use the main one, with the stock
plug-in, if that's what you want.
00:52:51 If you happen to have all the same
plug-ins I have then you can use the
3rd party one, and then you have
the reverb one, if you just wanna import
reverb..
00:52:59 and, I never mentioned it before,
but the template also
has basic markers.
00:53:02 Because it's most likely that you're
gonna have an intro..
00:53:04 and then a verse, and then a chorus..
00:53:07 and then a second verse..
00:53:08 and then pre-chorus, and a second
chorus and all that stuff
and so it's there so you don't have
to type, because typing..
00:53:14 ..you know..
00:53:16 Et voila'!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Fab Dupont is an award-winning NYC based record producer, mixing/mastering engineer and co-founder of pureMix.net.
Fab has been playing, writing, producing and mixing music both live and in studios all over the world. He's worked in cities like Paris, Boston, Brussels, Stockholm, London and New York just to name a few.
He has his own studio called FLUX Studios in the East Village of New York City.
Fab has received many accolades around the world, including wins at the Victoires de la Musique, South African Music awards, Pan African Music Awards, US independent music awards. He also has received Latin Grammy nominations and has worked on many Latin Grammy and Grammy-nominated albums.
Parts of this site and some files are only accessible to pureMix Pro Members or available to purchase. Please see below our membership plans or add this video to your shopping cart.
I cant figure out how to add a section for the chorus vocals. This template only accounts for lead vocal and back up vocals. I need to separate the verse vocals from the chorus vocals and there is no routing for this.. Everytime I try to create the routing myself I lose all the audio routing to the main outs? Ive tried creating new bus, new master, new stem bus with no luck.. Anyone can help with this. I dont want to process the lead vocal with the same processing I am using for the chorus.
marcos.fe
2022 Apr 13
But why are you sending the BD and Snare subs to the Drum Crush, and not to the BD Crush and Snare Crush?
marcos.fe
2022 Mar 27
Oh boy, this is the real thing! Thank you so much, Fab, this course is just outstanding! \o/
rmvstudios2@gmail.com
2021 Nov 17
Anyone knows how to use the limiter, do I bring the threshold down until I get a reduction ?
cash.high
2021 Mar 07
Nevermind after watching all the way through I figured out he was talking about string bass in the bass section. I routed the 808 through the electronic drum section and the rest of the kit through the acoustic drum section and it sounds great! Although I do often get sessions where the instrumental has been purchased as full "trackout" copy (all stereo sems) from the producer & I then have to mix raw vocals to the stems. I would love to see how Fab, Ryan or even one of the other mentors would approach a mix like this
cash.high
2021 Mar 01
Does anyone use this template for hip hop? If so where do you put the 808s? I can't decide if it should be treated as an electronic drum, a synth, or a bass guitar.
Pearlpassionstudio
2021 Feb 23
I use this template on every mix.. Especially having a large drum kit with 16 mics, if needed and the kit never moves. . The stem mixing is the only way to go. Have to try this great template. Fabulous tutorial too.
andrew.sm
2021 Jan 23
Thank you! what's the difference between tail and space?
mintyswirl
2021 Jan 19
Who is this guy? He's really lazy. He emphasizes it many times. ;)
Rap Alliance Productions
2020 Oct 14
I watched this video once, and now am unable to play it again...has anyone else had trouble wit this video??
dong.b
2020 Oct 05
Would like to download the template for Studio One. Thks
Got the Template. It's in the Exercise files
dong.b
2020 Oct 05
Would like to download the template for Studio One. Thks
koen.r
2020 Sep 03
Nice lesson! But where do i download the template for Ableton Live? Thanks
manubuntu
2020 Apr 05
Many thanks for this great explanation ! I have a question - on your template, you have 11 "MASTER" faders each set to -6 for mixing. I'm using LogicX and my template didn't come with these tracks. How do these 11 master tracks differ from the 11 stems tracks?
Merci beaucoup!
benzwerin
2020 Mar 13
Great video, merci Fab!
One question though, I added the "stems" tracks to my template but when I send all my "subs" to the stems (and the Stems go to my Master), I don't hear anything. What am I missing? The Stems are Audio tracks, right?
Benn
2020 Jan 19
This is great Fab. How do I download the template for Studio One?
Thanks much.
Benn
charted-music
2020 Jan 04
In the Cubase Stock Plugin Template. There is a Flanger on the "01 BD Stem" Track. Why ?
JonTangent
2019 Dec 03
Much appreciated. Many thanks Fab!
Hall
2019 Jun 30
Fantastic Stems!
max.i
2019 Mar 29
first 10 minutes already blew my mind. super powerful information. thank you!
twins
2019 Jan 28
Great, super organized, well explained! Thanks!
Manologomez
2019 Jan 21
Really fantastic, thanks
zangiamit91
2018 Sep 19
hey fab! do you stop to using summing box?
gabrielromanaudio
2018 May 09
Fab, what is the difference between your dedicated trigger track and the look ahead setting on the gate itself? I'm probably missing something very obvious.
Thanks!!!!!!
=)
amiracam
2018 May 08
it would be cool to see a template that does use analog summing to e.g. a Dangerous D-Box . It seems a few of the protagonists at PureMix like the analog summing approach and checking out whatever nuances of its use would be great.
duages
2018 Jan 05
Fun fact : In ancient times, the word "fabdupont" meant smartness
ALAIN
2018 Jan 01
Hello great Template tutorial and very smarts explanations how can i get the audiofiles ;However i have put the ones of my own projects .
Sariel Montalván
2017 Nov 09
Excelente, gracias por los subtítulos en español, ahora entiendo mejor todo!
nilton caboco
2017 Nov 06
I Don't Understand Why You're Putting The Bd its Going out on the separate stems then the drum stems
Chrisdmcc
2017 Oct 09
Is there any reason why the kick and snare subs are not sending to the kick and snare parallels or is it just a 'wait and see if it needs it' thing?
JonCar_202
2017 Aug 22
whats the difference on tail and space? Space is reverb but whats tail?
thiago.f
2017 Aug 20
Muito bom!!! Mas vai sair com legenda em Português ??? Obrigado
merrittbooth@yahoo.com
2017 Aug 20
Awesome Video! Thanks!
merrittbooth@yahoo.com
2017 Aug 20
Just curious... why use Aux tracks for the stems? Audio tracks can be printed and the stems mixed later. Is there a reason not to do this?
djplano.p
2017 Aug 02
duro
joethecomposer007
2017 Jul 28
Hello Fab . Words cannot express what you have done for me as mixer and have finally gave me a new happiness towards mixing . I feel less overwhelmed and if I lost , which is often ,ha ,I can watch your videos and others on Pure Mix and know that the answers are on here . Thanks You Tons ,Joe
Sariel Montalván
2017 Jul 20
Is posible subtitles in spanish? Please!
composermikeglaser
2017 Jul 18
Local Government and Federal Government is such a hilarious yet accurate way to explain Fab's routing, lol. Thanks Fab! Great tutorial, looking forward to implementing some of your template ideas into my own mixes.
mataran
2017 Jul 15
Grand merci Fab!
Freihausmusic
2017 Jul 13
Hey Fab! I love the gate side chain trick, will definitely incorporate this one into my template. I wouldn't have needed the whole template as I think every mixer should build his own, but just getting a walkthrough like this from you and Andrew gave me some ideas to implement in my template, like the discrete reverb paths for example. Thanks a lot for the insight!
javierofracchia@gmail.com
2017 Jul 13
Hi Fab!
Great video, thanks!
But, it's possible Spanish subtitles?
Highlands Recording Arts
2017 Jul 13
Well as usual Fab is simply Fahbulous dahlings! What more can I say? Fab is like a fine French wine and a delightful Brie fromage.... every morsel worth its weight in gold! Merci Fab, Merci! Cyn
Vegard Knutsen
2017 Jul 13
Thank you Fab! One request... is it possible to get the Logic Template with third party plugins?
Silver Arch Studios
2017 Jul 13
This is great Fab, thank you!
Just two questions regarding the Logic version you have included..
1 - The two busses at the end of the chain (50 and 51) that the bass drum and snare triggers are sending to, they are set to send to 'Stereo Out'. Should they be set to No Output?
2 - The backing vox send busses are in place (busses 28 to 34) but not on any send channels. Should they be on the Backing Sub 1 (bus 27) channel as sends, or from individual backing vox inputs?
Hope it is ok me asking. Thank you for the video, I enjoyed it very much!
Alex.
bataleo
2017 Jul 13
Fab!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jonathanbminor
2017 Jul 13
Thank you Fab for the template and your work . I appreciate it . Looking forward to more videos
Fabulous Fab
2017 Jul 13
@lutman: Studio One does not offer the master track type. The gain stage has to happen at the bus input level.
lutman
2017 Jul 13
Thanks very much for this Fab! I have a question - on your template, you have 11 "MASTER" faders each set to -6 for mixing. I'm using Studio One and my template didn't come with these tracks. How do these 11 master tracks differ from the 11 stems tracks?
rickstar44
2017 Jul 12
I've been a member for about a year and this alone is worth it. finally Fab giving up a template, but i know he likes to work on the fly so thanks! looking forward to tweaking it for yet another approach to work flow...
Gaetan F.
2017 Jul 12
I just downloaded the templates and it's great to see you took time to make one for each of the well know DAW ! It's wonderfull as I mainly work with Logic.
Thank you so much !
