Fab Dupont Mixing With Pro Tools
02h 32min
(39)
Learn To Mix With Stock Pro Tools Plugins
Learn how a Grammy winning producer/engineer mixes a song using only the tools included with Pro Tools.
This 2.5 hour tutorial features the song "Jealousy" by Brandi Thompson which was tracked by Grammy winner Mick Guzauski and produced by Fab Dupont. See how Fab uses the AVID's standard suite of plugins to create clear and punchy mix.
Fab shows you tips and tricks on how to prepare the session for an easy workflow and then gets to work adding details and life to every element of the mix.
Learn how to bring the vocals in a mix to the front and create an organic balance that adds bounce and enhances the feel of the song.
Then download the raw multitrack files and practice mixing the entire song for yourself
Parts of this site and some files are only accessible to pureMix Pro Members or available to purchase. Please see below our membership plans or add this video to your shopping cart.
Once logged in, you will be able to click on those chapter titles and jump around in the video.
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:30 - Session Setup
- 12:48 - Gain Staging
- 14:52 - Meters and Levels
- 19:55 - Lead Vocals
- 32:03 - Bass
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:1 - Drums
- 06:41 - Checking the Phase
- 17:55 - Creating Groups and VCAs
- 19:39 - Using the iPad App
- 22:59 - Piano
- 28:36 - Drum Space
- 00:00 - Start
- 03:31 - Guitars
- 14:39 - Background Vocals
- 23:29 - Bass Retouch
- 28:49 - Drums Retouch
- 37:35 - Rebalancing the Mix
- 40:55 - Drums Parallel Compression
- 00:00 - Start
- 55:00 - Stereo Bus
- 07:43 - Final Vocal Adjustments
- 10:20 - Snare Drum
- 13:47 - Stereo Bus EQ
- 19:29 - Bringing the Vocal Forward
- 20:59 - Compare the Rough Mix
- 25:48 - Bouncing vs Printing
- 27:32 - Print Levels
- 31:55 - Printing the Mix
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |
00:00:00
Good morning, children!
Today, we're going to play inside
the mouth of a given horse.
00:00:04
..gonna be ok!
Namely we're going to play with
Pro Tools 12 Native
and the plug-ins that come with
Pro Tools 12 Native
and the subscription.
00:00:13
So basically: the mouth is free
but you gotta buy the horse.
Which is fair because it's
hard and expensive to build a horse.
00:00:19
Let's go!
For the sake of transparency
and for you to see the workflow
I'm actually gonna
show you everything I do,
so, first thing I do is
I create a session.
00:00:37
So I'm gonna call it
say something original like
'Jealousy',
probably with a spelling mistake,
that's ok,
put my name on it, number it,
it might take a while..
00:00:46
Then I'm gonna choose
the sample rate.
00:00:49
I'd like to attract your attention
to a potential problem, here.
00:00:52
If you are being sent files
and you're not 100%
ironclad
positive about the sample rate
it will cost you a solid 7
to 8
seconds to check the sample
rate of the files
and save you hours of grief.
00:01:06
Here's a couple quick ways
to check the sample rate of your files
Pro Tools gives you this wonderful
thing, called:
the Workspace.
00:01:14
And the Workspace is a wealth
of information,
The session is sitting on my desktop
right now, so I can
go there,
double click and in the Workspace
I get all the information about all
the files.
00:01:27
Iz nice!
See?
24bit, 88.2 kHz,
I would have made a mistake!
Another quick way to check files,
sample rates, sounds and
other things
in the Finder, is to use Snapper.
00:01:39
Snapper is a 3rd-party tool,
it's paid for, it's worth the money
in my opinion,
it runs in the background
at all times.
00:01:46
You don't know it's there.
Until,
you click on an audio file
in the Finder. Boom.
00:01:52
And then Snapper comes out,
automatically.
00:01:54
Gives you a window that you
can actually
click on,
so you can browse through the file
in the Finder
with a waveform and gives you all the
information, you can turn it into an MP3
..it does many things.
But what I use it for
is to play files in the Finder
and find out sample rates
at break-neck speeds.
00:02:11
The reason why I use Snapper
to play audio in the Finder is this:
I solemnly declare that the MacOS
Finder
sucks at playing audio files.
00:02:20
It's really offensive-sounding
it's offensive in each and every way.
It's just offensive.
00:02:25
So I use Snapper.
00:02:28
Let's get back to Pro Tools..
00:02:30
re-open that, create new..
00:02:32
we remember because we have
wonderful memory: 24/88,
I'm gonna select the standard
stereo I/O setting,
which means, it blanks out
all the I/O setup and all the files
at the best it can.
00:02:45
If you don't take that extra step
of selecting
either one of your templates,
or stereo mix.. you will end up
with
all the names and routing of your
previous session,
depending on the session
that could be really, really annoying.
00:02:58
So, I always select stereo mix,
because I still, for the life of me,
can get a template together.
00:03:04
And then I select Interleaved.
00:03:06
This will force Pro Tools to work
with
interleaved stereo files, as opposed to
dual mono files.
00:03:11
Which is healthier in so many
different ways that we
can discuss over red wine,
for example.
00:03:16
And then, have Pro Tools prompt
for location, give it a name..
00:03:20
so, 'Fabmix 1.0',
Create.. and I'm gonna
break my rules and put this one on the
Desktop to show you something else.
00:03:30
Boom! So now Pro Tools is creating
the session..
00:03:33
Ok! Let's import some files.
00:03:35
We could use this window,
and.. in the Import File window..
00:03:41
and go to Desktop
and go to my stems and import all
the stems like this,
that's one possible, very civilised
way, we're gonna do
the caveman's way. We're gonna open a
window in the Finder,
find all the files..
00:03:57
select them all..
00:03:59
hit them over the head, with a club.
Boom.
00:04:03
This just told us we have 32 tracks!
Isn't that wonderful.
00:04:07
All right, so Pro Tools creates
the waveforms,
gives me an idea of what's going on.
00:04:13
I see that there's a bunch of
background vocals here,
so what I'm gonna do now is organize
all these audio files
according to my system, and it's boring,
so we're gonna skip over right now..
00:04:24
*manly piano music playing*
Sidenote:
the reason why I kept the other folder
on the desktop is to show you this:
these are my source files, that Mick
Guzauski sent me, supposedly,
and this is my Pro Tools session.
00:04:54
Notice that in the Pro Tools session
there's an 'Audio Files'
folder..
00:04:58
and you'll notice that you have the same
exact list of audio files.
00:05:02
The reason for that
is because I have checked in Pro Tools
one preference
that is life saving,
world-changing,
world-peace-creating,
coffee-making,
girlfriend-pleasing, the best in the
universe.. let me show you.
00:05:16
Goes like this:
you go to Preferences,
and here, in Processing,
you have this little nugget,
right here.
00:05:24
'Automatically copy files..'
this preference,
being enabled, means that, whenever you
drop a file in Pro Tools
Pro Tools will make a copy of that file
and store it in the 'Audio Files' folder
in the folder, with the name of the
session, on it.
00:05:39
Think about that for a second!
Which means that next time you want to
back up this session,
you don't have to go over 18 different
drives,
you don't have to miss the lead vocal
because it was on your
thumb drive, from your session and
the other thing..
00:05:51
everything is all put into one
place.
00:05:54
*sighs*
Life is beautiful!
All right, let's listen to the song!
We have 2 options:
we can listen to the raw tracks,
or we can listen to Mick Guzauski's
rough mix.
00:06:05
And while we listen
we're gonna drop the markers in.
00:06:09
Don't skip the markers.
00:09:57
Well, that's badass!
I'm gonna mix this in a very
simple way, because
the music speaks for itself.
00:10:02
The playing is ridiculous and the
raw takes are amazing
so why bother?
The first thing I'm gonna do,
to be able to keep track
of what's going, because
I love the rough mix,
and I don't wanna have to jump
through hoops to check the rough mix,
so I'm gonna send everybody to an
Aux called 'Sum',
well, I am gonna call it 'Sum'.
00:10:22
Then, I'm gonna assign that sum
to the print track.
00:10:25
And I'm gonna call that
..you guessed it!
Print.
00:10:29
And so now..
00:10:30
I wanna solo safe the sum
and the main track..
00:10:34
which means that now, when I am on
Input
I am listening to all my raw tracks
and then when I am not on Input
I'm playing Mick's rough mix..
00:10:46
Good inspiration! All right!
One more thing, you'll notice
here that there are 2 vocal tracks.
00:10:52
One called 'no tuning' and one called
'tuned'.
00:10:55
There was one note at the end,
since she did this in one take,
there was one at the end I didn't like,
I tuned it.
00:11:01
That happened.
00:11:02
I will hide that.
00:11:04
And now we're good to go.
00:11:07
First things first, let's compare
where we're starting
with where Mick left us off
at MSR at the end of the
tracking day.
00:11:15
This is Mick's second verse,
and this is what we have.
00:11:37
Fun afternoon ahead!
Now,
levels are different, very different
obviously,
one of the reasons for that is:
because..
00:11:45
Mick was mixing on a console.
00:11:47
So the levels on a console are
completely different
from the levels inside a DAW.
Also
there's a lot of the stereo stuff
that's not really stereo.
00:11:55
Everything is in the middle,
so that's gonna raise the level
3dBs because of pan laws,
that move stuff down 3dBs when
on the sides, so we can
probably stereo-ize
the background vocals, to start with.
00:12:07
And make sure everything that's
supposed to be in stereo is in stereo.
00:12:11
These are DI plus..
00:12:14
the direct sound, so we can't have
the DI.
00:12:16
I don't necessarily want the DI
and the amp,
I'll only use the DI if there's a
problem.
00:12:21
The overheads are in stereo
so that's good.
00:12:24
Let's put all the kicks together.
00:12:27
Here, maybe give them a
different color.
00:12:30
It's all about visuals, to be able to
find out where you are, at all times.
00:12:34
Usually I put the snare next to the
bass drum,
personal fetish..
00:12:39
then.. there you go..
00:12:41
..and the two toms, rack tom first.
00:12:44
Ride, overhead.. life is good!
So now
every track in the song is going
to this one bus,
that's a lot of energy,
if I go to
say, the last chorus,
hold on to your ears!
I haven't started mixing
I'm already clipping.
00:13:03
Not a good look, considering
you know
the levels are gonna rise.
00:13:07
For those of you who mix
100% in the box,
and need a little help with
gain staging,
in Pro Tools you can set up
a Master Fader,
stereo, because we got used to
stereo, stereo is nice..
00:13:18
and call it, say:
'Sum Master'.
00:13:21
Assign it to the bus, this way,
called 'Sum'.
00:13:26
So what this Master Object/Fader
thing does
when it's assigned to your Sum
bus,
is it allows you to offset the
overall level
of the Sum bus
which, remember: is just a cable,
before it hits
the actual object that's gonna have
processing on it,
so you can adjust
the amount of energy you send
to that object,
which means you can prevent it
from clipping.
00:13:50
And because there is a lot
of somewhat hidden
headroom in Pro Tools, because
you know..
00:13:55
every fader in itself is
you can only give it 12dBs of gain
and then some more gain with
plug-ins, but overall,
you're being kept in a certain area,
but the addition of all those levels,
all the drums and all the vocals and
everything.
00:14:09
That's a lot more of 12dBs of extra
gain
once you put them all together.
So,
for you to be able to function properly
you would have to bring all those faders
down, otherwise you're gonna clip,
or:
you can keep the faders there,
be reasonable,
and use one sum master,
to actually tailor
the response of the entire mixer
to the final receiver
object.
00:14:35
It's legal!
For example, if I play the track now:
As opposed to:
Say no more!
Good trick!
Also, for your personal education,
and enjoyment, Pro Tools..
Avid..
00:14:57
has had the good taste of giving
us actual VU meters,
let's rejoice! So now you can have
VU meters,
on every track,
and you can also have VU meters
on auxes, busses and stuff.
00:15:09
Which is awesome!
Because you can actually force yourself
to be reasonable with your levels!
If you look at Mick Guzauski's
final rough mix,
at the end of a long day
of work, sometimes pretty
loud,
and you go to the last chorus,
look at his levels right here on
the right!
And this is now a VU meter,
actual VU meter, which I
calibrated at
in my case -18, I'm gonna show you
how you can change that,
in this new Pro Tools 10
and after, metering window,
you can actually use the kind of
meters you're using,
and you can choose it on a
meter-per-meter basis,
For VU meters, my personal favorite
for many years,
you can actually choose to
align to
your interface, so that
everything can actually make sense.
00:15:50
I use Lynx and Dangerous
Converts and they're at -18
so mine stays at -18,
If you use Apollos, enter -16 so now
what you're looking at what you're
hearing, and what your interface is
hearing
are in sync. Isn't that wonderful?
I'm at -18 here
in this particular rig
and you can choose when it
turns red, when it turns
green and all that stuff.
It's really,
really nice.
Boom.
00:16:14
So now if you look at
Mick Guzauski's mix
on the loudest part
of the mix..
00:16:27
Miraculously hits just about 0.
Isn't that wonderful?
So our rough mix, right now:
a little loud, but there's no
compression
and there's no processing of
any sort.
00:16:43
So as we start cutting stuff out
I think it should hit just about right.
00:16:48
Let's listen to the whole
track for 4 bars.
00:17:04
Fine..
00:17:05
I'm assuming you adjusted your
volume,
listening volume, to something
that's comfortable.
00:17:09
Yeah? No? Yes. Do it.
Ok.
00:17:13
So now I'm gonna solo the
vocal.
00:17:22
So now you're at the fork
in the road.
00:17:24
If you adjusted your level
for the whole mix
this is gonna feel soft.
00:17:30
And you're not gonna feel
like you can do good work
doing carving and stuff on this,
so what's your option?
Well..
00:17:37
turn it up! Yo!
No!
Adjust your volume.
00:17:42
The idea here
is to try and work at constant
level at all times,
and I know it's difficult because
you have to be very conscious of it
but when you solo instruments,
if you have to solo instruments,
and in this case I have to solo
instruments to show you how it's done,
compensate, so you're always listening
more or less at the same level.
00:18:00
And,
8 people playing together and
one person singing by herself,
is never going to be at the same level.
So for this particular exercise
turn your level up a little bit while I
take care of the vocal.
00:18:11
Just a little bit. I'm doing it,
check it out!
I raised it 6dBs,
because I have a calibrated
monitor section that I know exactly how
many dBs I raise it
and how many dBs I bring it back down
because I am geek that way.
00:18:26
I'm gonna use the Channel Strip.
By the way, you noticed that
Pro Tools gives you the option of
having 2
favorite plug-ins up here,
you can set that up
here in Preferences, Mixing pane,
you have a field for default EQ
and a field for default Dynamics,
the fact of the matter is you can
choose whatever you want,
a distortion, a delay, nobody cares..
but..
00:18:44
I have the Channelstrip here,
and the De-Esser,
because most of the time, it's what
I use in this particular case
Channelstrip.. so you don't have to
drill down all the menus,
you just have this really quick thing
up there, which is cool.
00:19:00
Here is the Channelstrip which is
included with
Pro Tools, very generously, and is
modeled after
a Euphonix-kind of channelstrip,
it's actually unbelievably powerful
and full-featured,
very honestly, if you learn to use this
very deeply,
and you don't need to geek out,
you just
wanna get some basic, cool tones,
this rocks.
00:19:19
You have your input meter,
which is awesome because you can see if
you are abusing it already or not,
you have your output meter
and then you have a bunch of
modules,
EQ modules, filter,
which is different, remember?
Dynamics module and then your
final volume
control..
00:19:39
So, where you're gonna spend your
most amount of time
is probably in the
comp/limit and
filters. You can close these little
panes.
00:19:49
And make everything very efficient,
if you need to.
00:19:52
We're gonna leave them open
so that it's easier to see.
00:19:55
All right, so for this vocal for
example, the first thing I would do
is high pass, so you can grab this
little thing, here
or you can switch to the different
panes here, this is
the number 2 filter,
it's a low pass, which we won't need
today, so you can grab this
or you can go to your pane and use
the knobs
and there's different kinds of filters
here
and you can change the slope
right here.
00:20:19
In this case I don't need the very
bottom of her vocals because
she's a female singer so I don't need
everything at the bottom
and definitely not below
124 or 150
Hz. Let's compare because you
never know.
00:20:33
Without.
00:20:46
Next you have 4 EQ bands.
00:20:49
Right here, which you can organize
in different ways,
the high band and low band can be either
a peak or a shelf
and the 2 mid bands are peak only
you have the Q, it's a full-featured
parametric EQ
be careful when you select
pane
if you hit this thing you're gonna go:
'what happened?'
You're basically soloing the band
so you can
hear what you're doing, I'll show you
in a second.
00:21:09
Clearly we need to open up
the top
or maybe we need to remove a little
mud at the bottom
we're gonna use this guy and I'm gonna
turn it into a shelf
like this,
see how much thicker it is?
And it
feels a little effected, it's
better with just a couple dBs.
00:21:43
I like it better with.
00:21:45
I wanna open the high end
a little bit.
00:21:47
Don't forget to switch to a shelf
if you want to do something
very gentle, like this.
00:22:15
Nice, I can hear the 's' coming out.
00:22:17
That's not gonna be fun but I need
the presence in the high end
so I'm gonna have to fix it somehow,
later when we grow up, if we grow up.
00:22:24
And then I'm gonna add a little bit
of
compression!
Because you can hear in this phrase,
check it out.
00:22:35
Hear that? 'You take your knife'..
check it out:
It'd be nice to be able to not
have that.
00:22:47
So we can have the vocal
very anchored, so I'm gonna
choose a ratio first.
00:22:52
From experience and watching a lot
of pureMix videos
I'm telling myself 2:1 would
be wonderful.
00:22:57
And then I'm gonna lower the threshold
and this is like
a really classic digital compressor.
00:23:02
Ratio, threshold, then knee.
00:23:05
And then you can play with attack
and release, after.
00:23:07
So let's see..
00:23:15
I hear it. Why do I hear it,
I don't wanna hear it.
00:23:18
I hear it because the attack is
100 micro seconds.
00:23:21
Which is really, really fast.
So I'm gonna open the attack.
00:23:25
Which is gonna generate less compression
so I might have to lower the threshold.
00:23:34
I'm gonna open the attack so I don't
eat the transients so
I don't hear it go *plpl*..
00:23:38
then I'm gonna lengthen the release
so that it's
slower so it stays in compression
longer.
00:23:42
To give more of a centered feel.
00:23:45
Then I'm gonna have to lower
the threshold so that it's compressing
earlier into the signal, and so
I have more density.
00:23:52
And of course at this point I'm probably
lowering the level by
4-5 dBs.
00:23:56
The gauge right here tells you
how much.
00:24:00
5 indeed, so I'm gonna raise it
5dBs here in gain.
00:24:03
And this is all happening with this
simple interface, which is nice.
00:24:09
I'm gonna open the attack a little
further.
00:24:16
So now if I bypass the compressor.
00:24:23
With:
It's nice, I think I can actually
lower the threshold more..
00:24:32
and have a little higher ratio..
00:24:35
The reason for that is I want the
compressor to work more often
on the lower signals.
00:24:39
As it compresses the lower signals more
it's gonna compress the louder
signals even more, which is gonna
reduce the difference between
low and loud
or soft and loud, if you're not French.
00:24:50
Now, another way to do that
is also to
soften the knee,
the knee,
here allows you to actually force the
compressor
to start working below the threshold.
So we're gonna lower the threshold..
00:25:02
soften the knee, heighten the ratio
and make a cup of coffee, and
it sounds like this.
00:25:12
Now it's too much but we're
getting there, so I'm gonna
raise the threshold again..
00:25:27
one more time, so you can really
memorize the sound
we've gained a lot,
is it perfect? No.
00:25:41
But it means nothing since we're
listening to it in solo and it has
no purpose in solo, we'll see it
in the track.
00:25:47
This is actually more compression than
I would use
I would rather automate
than use this much compression.
00:25:53
But, let's see what happens.
00:25:55
Let me tell you about one more parameter
on this compressor
that could be confusing to some.
00:25:59
It's called 'Depth'.
00:26:00
This is allows you to decide how much
compression
you will allow the compressor
to have.
00:26:06
It's another layer of complication
but it can be very useful.
00:26:10
This knob allows you to tell your
compressor things like this:
'Yo!
Don't you dare applying more than
4dBs of compression
no matter what settings I have
don't you dare.
00:26:21
Anything over 4dBs and you'll find
yourself
at the bottom of the East River
with concrete shoes.'
Useful button.
00:26:29
Before, if I have infinity,
or 30dBs,
and I have a really low threshold,
when she comes on,
the compressor goes to town.
Now, if I go here and I say
4,
all the settings are the same,
which means you can start
working pretty early on the signal
but now you have a stop,
a limit..
00:26:54
to what the compressor can do.
Which is awesome!
So basically you can use this
to be in
constant compression,
without over compressing.
00:27:16
That was wonderful.
00:27:18
Let's apply the de-esser.
00:27:20
The de-esser is conveniently
located
in my favorites little menu, there.
Boom.
00:27:24
This is a knock-off of an old
dbx 103,
very simple.
00:27:30
You can decide to apply the de-esser to
the entire signal or just the high end.
00:27:34
HF only.
00:27:35
And then you have a button to
listen to what's going on,
so let's go to the beginning of the
second verse.
00:27:41
Which is why these markers are
awesome.
00:27:48
This is the full signal.
00:27:52
I'm gonna listen to it,
find out where the 's' lives.
00:27:55
Maybe lower..
00:27:58
maybe lower..
00:28:00
no, maybe higher..
00:28:03
say there..
00:28:05
ok! Now I know where it is.
00:28:07
I'm gonna listen to the signal,
again.
00:28:09
Probably choose hi-end only,
so I can hit
the vocal sound the least
possible amount
and choose the range
of reduction,
there you go!
A little better! That's what we
needed.
00:28:31
Now I'm putting the de-esser
after the channelstrip.
00:28:33
Which is probably not a good
idea since I'm compressing
quite a bit in the channelstrip.
00:28:37
Which means that the difference
between
the actual signal and the 's'
has already been reduced
and it's being compressed.
Hence the name..
00:28:44
'compressor'. Wonderful
nomenclature!
So maybe if we move the de-esser
before the channelstrip, we'll get
better results.
00:28:51
This is after the channelstrip:
Yeah! A little better.
00:29:01
It's subtle, I'll do it again.
Check it out.
00:29:13
The 's' are a little darker,
less obnoxious
and also look at the magical
thing it does on
'take', the word after that.
00:29:43
Wonderful!
Then I'm gonna create a little
bit of space.
00:29:47
And to do so I'm gonna use a plug-in
called 'Space'.
00:29:50
I'm gonna create an aux input,
and by the way,
check this out:
you can now, from the actual track
you need to apply an FX to,
if you're not gonna apply the FX
straight on the track, as a
insert plug-in, but you wanna use it
as a send
which is what we're gonna do
here, as we're gonna send a lot
of those tracks to this one reverb,
you can say: 'New track', you can
name it, like for example..
00:30:10
'Space',
stereo, aux input, boom:
it creates the track,
it creates the bus
which remember: is a
cable, correct?
And does it all for you
it doesn't assign to 'Sum' yet, but
maybe later, when he grows up.
00:30:27
I'm gonna make this yellow
as per the United Nations
standard, and put it right here..
00:30:33
solo safe it, so I can hear it
even when
something is in solo, and then
apply
that Space plug-in to it
..Space!
Let's pick a plate, because
this is kind of an old,
R'n'B
track and they use a lot
of plates.
00:30:51
There you go!
I'm going to Command+Click
on the left side
of the send on my send track
so that I can have a view of the send
which is
a very useful feature if you wanna
mix fast.
00:31:16
Not a big fan of the IR
so we're gonna tweak it
obviously it would be better if it was
fatter, right?
10dBs at 100Hz will do
magic.
00:31:35
A little less high-end, maybe
a little darker.
00:31:41
Let's see what they have for
decay.
00:31:44
100%, cool. That sounds cool. Don't
need predelay, I'm happy as it is..
00:31:57
Ok! Good enough for jazz. Let's add
something like the bass to our
equation.
00:32:12
Maybe a little less reverb.
00:32:22
Alright, so a little bit of compression
here would be nice
because if we go to the chorus...
00:32:28
Here...
00:32:34
It's in the lyric: 'you overpower me'.
00:32:37
Let's add a little bit of compression.
00:32:42
Notice the nice design:
I liked it the first time I used it.
They have the threshold
set by default at -24,
the ratio at 1
which means no compression.. so all you
have to do is move the ratio to 2:1
to your liking, and if you're a good
recordist, like Mick Guzauski..
00:33:01
everything kinda falls into place.
It's nicely in tune..
00:33:16
Don't forget now we no longer have
just
the vocal, so it's a good idea to bring
the level back down a little bit.
00:33:22
In a lot of pureMix videos, we actually
compensate
the monitoring volume for you
so you can concentrate on the engineer's
or producer's voice
and the example and not get knocked
out.
00:33:35
So we do that work for you, the reason
why I am mentioning it here, is so that
you learn to do that work for
yourself.
00:33:42
It is important that you should always
pay attention
to your volume
so that you don't blast yourself
and you don't work too soft
- highly unlikely - or too loud
- most likely - and you always work
at constant level.
00:33:56
So, where were we? Oh yeah!
Bass.
00:34:07
I'm not gonna compensate for gain,
because
it's loud, so might as well let the
compressor do its job..
00:34:12
let's see what happens in the verses.
00:34:22
We could have a little more of
the vocal, and then
have a little more gain, on this..
00:34:27
I set the gain to 4 on the vocal
and because the Depth is also
at 4,
so I know it's never gonna get
compressed more than 4dB, consequently
I'll compensate for 4dBs, it's neat.
00:34:37
But we can also just
you know.. gain a couple dBs here
so we can
keep our faders at zero, so it's easier
to see where we are.
00:34:44
Maybe 6.
00:34:53
You can hear the bleed, the piano
bleed in the back. Awesome.
00:35:10
On the bass I feel that
we would need to have a little more
fingers.
00:35:15
Now, I'm compressing, quite a bit.
00:35:21
Not that mad.. so I'll take that back.
I'm not compressing quite a bit.
00:35:30
Here I am, I'd like to have less of
that 90Hz *mmh*
and a little more fingers. So I could
take
90Hz down, here..
00:35:39
and make sure it's a very narrow
curve..
00:35:42
I'm just grabbing the little dot,
but you can, you know..
00:35:46
use numbers if you wanna be super
precise..
00:35:49
overall, there you go.
00:35:52
90Hz..
00:35:57
there are a few frequencies that
work for the devil.
00:36:00
Like 90Hz and 200Hz.
00:36:02
They're not the devil, they work for
the devil, it's worse.
00:36:04
'cause at least the devil gets the
credits for being the devil
but 200Hz is just 200Hz.
00:36:09
But there are some frequencies that
are fun, like 60Hz.
00:36:12
30Hz, or 300Hz, especially on bass.
00:36:15
300 helps really hear that
fatness, check it out, without the 300.
00:36:31
'but why are you playing the bass
with the vocal?!'
Because thats how it's gonna get
played, so I might as well
start listening to instruments in context
and it's just the vocal.
Stop whining.
00:36:55
A little filter at the bottom would help
tightening the whole thing.
00:36:59
As you probably know
high-passing sometimes makes
low instruments fatter
I'll mute the vocal.
00:37:08
This is just the bass.
00:37:16
And then,
without the EQ and the filter.
00:37:35
It's already tighter, obviously
the cutoff frequency of the filter
on the bass
being at 50Hz is way below where
that resonance was
however, you'll find that if you
high-pass bass instruments
in a smart manner
you will get a cleaner slate to start
with
because things align better and there's
more controlled energy.
00:37:53
Then you can EQ stuff out
probably less than you would if
you didn't high-pass.
00:37:58
Check it out. So, this is with the
filter.
00:38:14
The second note is a little too much,
still..
00:38:26
A little higher, 100Hz..
00:38:28
There you go!
That's nice, let's listen in context.
Meaning, with the vocal.
00:00:00
Let's start looking at drums.
00:00:03
Bass drum.
00:00:08
Ok, that sounds like an inside
microphone.
00:00:14
That sounds like an outside
microphone.
00:00:22
And that sounds like a
sub kick. Let's turn all 3 of them on.
00:00:27
So that's really fat. However, it's not
really the kind of sound we want
for this song
at least not in my personal
vision of it. So I'm gonna
lower the sub kick.
00:00:41
Let's listen with the bass.
00:00:59
I'm gonna treat this as one instrument,
make a sub for just that one
instrument.
00:01:03
Keep it mono, call it
'BD Sub',
don't forget to assign that
to the Sum.
00:01:11
And I'm gonna solo safe
so I can still play with the
level
and the solos of the different
microphones.
00:01:23
I think I can do something
with this.
00:01:25
So I'd like to compress it
a little bit, and since
in the spirit of consistency,
let's do this:
Just the bass drum..
00:01:58
The attack is too fast, I'm gonna
slow the attack down,
let the transient through.
00:02:12
Slower.
00:02:16
It's got that *mh!* thing
and lets more bottom through,
pretty cool!
Nice! Then I'm gonna enhance that
by adding some bottom.
00:02:34
Probably a little tighter.
00:02:37
By the way, I mentioned that
you can solo
so if you're confused as to what
frequency you're working on
you can hit the solo and then
you're back into regular mode..
00:02:54
So that's fatter, it's nice.
We started here, by the way:
Maybe - in the track - it would be nice
to add a little bit of this stuff.
00:03:13
With a narrower Q.
00:03:15
For the *pss pss*.
00:03:26
Iz nice! With the bass..
00:03:33
We know that the bass is still
too fat, so I'm gonna
widen the Q, because I know that
there's a lot of stuff
around 100 that is being unpleasant.
00:03:53
I'm not 100% happy with the bass sound
we'll get back to it when we grow up.
00:03:58
Now that I'm happy with how my
bass drum sounds for now,
I'm gonna switch
and I'm gonna solo safe the separate
tracks
and un-solo safe the receiver sub,
which allows me to solo the bass
drum with one click
as opposed to have to click 3 times
or make a group.
00:04:23
Ok, this needs to be opened up.
I'm just copy-pasting..
00:04:28
All right, so: we're here on default..
00:04:31
the snare is definitely gonna need some
compression so let's just
raise the ratio.
00:04:38
It doesn't need compression for level
things because Graham played
this amazing.. it needs compression
for tones..
00:04:43
so that it sounds like that snare that
was compressed that you heard, before.
00:04:47
In your life. If you've been listening
to music if you got to this point.
00:04:55
So now we know that the default attack
for the Avid channelstrip
doesn't fit my mixing style.
00:05:00
I don't like choking transients.
What to do?
Good question, thank you for asking.
Check this out.
00:05:05
If you're on default and you say:
'this default doesn't work for me'.
00:05:08
Why don't we make sure that the
attack is always at 1ms.
00:05:13
And if you want this to come back
every time
that you launch the channelstrip, it's
very easy, so you set up whatever
you want,
in this case we're just gonna open
the attack to 1ms.
00:05:23
And you do a 'Save Setting As'
and you call it say:
'Fab Default'
You also can call it after your mother's
maiden name, that works.
00:05:35
There you go. Channelstrip, boom..
Fab Default.
00:05:38
Then, you go into the Preset menu and
say: 'Set as User Default'
and then, stay with me:
you go to Setting Preferences: 'Set
Plug-In default to user setting'.
00:05:49
Wonderful! So now, when you take this
channelstrip and put it on anything..
00:05:53
boom! Your attack will be at 1ms.
Isn't that wonderful?
A'ight. Let's get back to where we were.
00:06:02
Snare sound.
00:06:10
I could have put the high end band to
be a shelf
in my default - for example -
that would have been nice.
00:06:29
It needs body for me!
The thing is: I know how Graham
plays
and I know that a lot of Graham's
sound comes from the overhead.
00:06:40
So let's start from that.
00:06:42
This is a very classic player
It's not like a kid who's hitting
really hard.
00:06:48
He's got real control, so the
overheads
are unbelievably balanced.
00:06:51
This is gonna allow us to check that
my phase is right between my
bass drum and my overheads.
00:06:56
That's the bass drum.
00:07:01
Sounds great, we spent hours
on this bass drum.
00:07:03
With the overhead.
00:07:17
So there's a phase relationship
issue, between the bass drum,
they way we have it, and whatever
we did to the bass drum
it could be what we did here,
creating a phase relationship
discrepancy with the overhead
which means that some of the bottom
of the bass drum goes away.
00:07:32
So our solutions here are multiple
and the decision we make is
going to influence the rest of the mix.
00:07:38
Which is why it's terrifying, isn't it?
So, solution number 1:
EQ the hell out of the bass drum, to
put the bottom back in.
Solution number 2:
high pass the overheads
to see if we can get
the overhead's bottom
out of the
way of the bass drum, without..
00:07:54
getting rid of the amazing bottom
of the snare drum.
00:07:57
Solution number 3.. aligning
- 3.. three! -
aligning the bottom, of..
00:08:03
the record bass drum tracks
with the overhead's upper part
of the record
in a way that they hit at the same time
so that there's no phase cancellation.
00:08:12
For entertainment sake we're gonna
start with high passing
the overheads to see what it does.
Because..
00:08:17
you know, it's entertaining.
00:08:18
So, here we go, I'm gonna high pass
them at - I don't know -
150Hz, boom.
00:08:24
I won't tell you where number came from.
00:08:31
Just the bass drum.
00:08:36
With the overheads and the high pass.
00:08:42
That's nice.
00:08:44
I'll remind you that this is what
it was, before.
00:08:57
What's going on, here?
Well, several things are going on.
00:08:59
Clearly we're removing some of the
frequencies that are
clashing, fair enough.
00:09:03
But also, we're using a high pass
filter, which means
that we're using a phase rotation of
filter
..alters the phase
and so the phase rotation is actually
helping us in this case..
00:09:11
What happens if we switch from
12dB/octave
to 24dB/octave at the same
frequency?
Check it out.
00:09:28
Not as good.
00:09:40
This is punchier, which means that
the phase relationship
between bass drum
and the overheads is helped
by a 12dB/octave high pass
filter
in this range, and if I move the
frequency by
2Hz it will change again.
00:09:55
So that's one option.
Another option,
which is a lot geekier,
hence more fun,
is to move the overhead track
next to something that
has a sharp transient
like the kick drum track,
the inside kick drum track
has the best
transient, and look at it..
00:10:12
switch to sample mode
here.. boom. Samples.
00:10:17
Now your counter here is in
samples.
00:10:19
And then going to that first hit.
00:10:21
This is your overhead, this is your
inside bass drum.
00:10:25
Boom. You zoom in.
00:10:27
And with your cursor in slip mode
you just go between
this attack and this attack.
00:10:31
These are the same 2 attacks
but that's the distance between
the bass drum
microphone and the overheads, which
is creating
the phase cancellation.
00:10:40
And you read that it's about 300
samples.
00:10:44
So then, armed with this fantastic
information
you can go back
bring this back into the order
of things, because you know
on the 1st day there was the bass
drum, and on the 7th day
there was the overhead..
and then,
delay one of these 2.
Which one?
A-ha! Well, the overhead is
further away from the drum set,
at least from the bass drum,
than
the bass drum microphone,
so you should delay the
bass drum, because the bass
drum has
faster information than the overhead.
Right?
I'll rewind. *blblbl*
The bass drum microphone is next to
the bass drum. It gets there very fast.
00:11:15
The overhead is far. It takes longer.
00:11:17
Consequently you delay the bass drum
microphone.
00:11:19
Yeah? Yeah.
00:11:21
So, you can use Time Adjuster.
00:11:22
Which lives on the Avid, somewhere..
00:11:24
Hello, Time Adjuster!
And put 300 samples,
just for woots and a-ahs.
00:11:30
Don't forget to bypass the
Channel Strip on the overhead
otherwise you're gonna hear 2
corrections and you won't be able to
learn anything..
Ready?
You gain a little bit on the bottom.
I'll do it again.
00:11:55
Listen to the, not the attack,
but
the punch, the energy below
the attack.
00:12:18
See how much more dense
it is?
What would happen if I also
high passed it and a
12dB/octave filtered it?
This would happen:
It's better without.
Now,
which is best? Good question!
(..thank you for asking..)
Let's see. With the Time Adjuster..
00:12:40
or with the channelstrip.
00:12:56
I like the channelstrip better.
00:12:58
But that's just me! You make
your own decision.
00:13:00
And also, I know that
now that I have the channelstrip
I can do other things.
00:13:05
Whereas with the time adjuster
there's very little you can do
with the Time Adjuster.
00:13:08
So, bye-bye Time Adjuster. Thanks
for coming, that was wonderful.
00:13:12
Let's listen to just the overheads, now.
00:13:21
Remember, we were looking
for fatness in the snare.
00:13:24
This is without the high pass.
00:13:37
We don't loose too much, we're ok.
We could actually add some!
Wooo!
Not too much, not too much.
00:14:08
Ok, with the bass drum.
00:14:14
Iz nice! Snare?
So I'm raising the snare, because
I have a nice
snare sound that's right for the
style
in the overheads, but I don't have
the presence.
00:14:31
And even though this is kind of a
period piece
it also, you know, it's happening
today.
00:14:35
And so, I don't want to
really have, personally as a matter
of taste, I don't like
period accurate pieces, I like
impressions.
00:14:43
So,
nothing screams more Motown or
60's R'n'B than a lot of reverb
on a tambourine.
00:14:49
Or a lot of reverb on the vocal.
00:14:52
But as much reverb as they did then?
I don't know! Not my thing.
00:14:58
But it could be your thing!
So we're gonna compress.
00:15:28
I like. Let's see what happens
on the bottom.
00:15:33
Bottom snare drums have a love/hate
in them.
00:15:35
Or hate and hate them even more.
I forgot which one it is..
00:15:38
Let's see.
00:15:47
Let's just do without for now,
let's see if anyone complains.
00:15:50
And then we have a ride.
00:16:02
And the waveform tells me that
maybe here..
00:16:10
knowing the player very well, maybe
on the last chorus
all right, we'll get to it if it's
important.
00:16:24
But I did hear some nice toms
and they sound like the real article.
00:16:29
Actual vintage-sounding toms
This looks like a tom.
00:16:40
So let's listen to the overheads to see
which was where on which side
low tom is over there,
so let's put the floor tom over there.
00:17:02
So the question is: aren't you gonna
gate it?
Mh.. no!
I'm actually gonna raise it.
00:17:15
Because that's the sound. Now,
Just how much is the tom bleed
ruining the rest of the set?
Let's find that out. Then we decide
what we do.
00:17:21
But I don't remember signing an oath
back in the day that said:
'thou shalt not gate toms or
thou shalt be
sent back to the '80s' and, you know..
00:17:45
who likes the sound better with
the toms?
Who wants to gate them and go
back to the '80s?
All right! We'll keep the toms!
What we're gonna do is start a
cool little trick
that will save you a lot of time.
00:17:58
I wanna select all the drums
and create a group that I'm gonna
call
'drums'.
00:18:05
And if you really wanna be over
the top, you
can make the letter that turns the group
on and off:
'D', for drums.
00:18:12
There you go. And then,
I'm gonna turn that off.
00:18:17
And then I'm gonna create
a VCA master
I'll explain that, that I'm gonna assign
to the group Drums, and I'm gonna
call it:
'VCA Drum'. There's a method
to this madness.
00:18:32
Then, I'm gonna probably make
a group for
the bass, call it:
'Bass', assign it to 'B'..
00:18:43
Ok, make a VCA
and assign it to that group
and call it:
'VCA Bass'.
00:19:07
So that happened. Now,
why?
What I'm gonna do now is,
I'm gonna
select all my VCAs
and put them together
and you might be wondering
still
'why would he make a group
for one track?'
For this reason:
I now, have to the right
of my session,
a bunch of VCAs that are actually
controlling the entire song.
00:19:35
Everything in the song is slaved
to these VCAs.
00:19:38
And..
00:19:40
I have this!
Let me show you!
I'm gonna switch to the screen..
00:19:45
so you can see what's going on..
00:19:48
what you're seeing right now is
what I have on my iPad,
you can scroll around, and this is
a new
free app from Avid
and it's actually really useful.
00:19:58
From this screen that's sitting right
next to me
right here, I don't have to scroll
around, so
for big sessions this is a good
trick.
00:20:05
And also, at the end of a mix,
I can massage the entire mix
right here with these 8 faders.
00:20:10
Let me show you a couple things
on this
app that are really great.
00:20:13
I can use the track type selector
to say 'I only wanna see VCAs'.
00:20:18
And I only see VCAs.
00:20:19
Which now allows me to, say:
listen to just the
drums.. and the bass..
00:20:26
or turn the vocal back on..
00:20:30
without having to scroll around,
here..
00:20:32
I can focus here, and this is all
my VCAs,
it's pretty awesome.
00:20:35
Other windows that are really awesome
on this app,
this is the mixer window, you have
the tracks window,
right now I'm only watching VCAs,
but if I'm watching
the whole thing, it's organising
all your tracks, by your colors
and you can look at what's going on.
Which is pretty awesome.
00:20:50
That's great. There's a channel
window, so if I select the kick,
for example, I can go to the channel
and everything related to that channel
is now available
so Inserts, Inputs,
yes, Inserts! For example, if I select
the Bass Drum Sub, right here,
I can look at the different inserts
on it, I can hit the channelstrip
and the controls of the channelstrip
are here,
and a lot of it is actually very
useable
a lot more useable than
any of these apps I've seen before.
00:21:15
And you can change the gain,
stuff like that,
it's pretty cool, like if we want
the high end to be super
heavy, I can do it this way.
And it works!
It works! And it's fast!
Crazy fast..
00:21:26
like, that was a little bit bold.
Let's go back down to 3dB.
00:21:32
Let me demystify this and show you
what I found so far is the most useful.
00:21:37
I showed you the VCA thing,
that's awesome.
00:21:40
The other thing it's great for
is sends.
00:21:42
Because, when you have 4, 5, 6
sends on a channel
it can be really difficult to see
what's going on, especially since
it's gonna make your mix really tall.
00:21:50
With this, you hit on a channel, you can
see all the sends and change
the send amount. So if I go to vocal,
here..
00:21:57
I have her Space send, right here.
00:21:59
And I can change the amount.
00:22:01
It's really quick and it's nice and I
don't have to change my focus.
00:22:03
So that's very nice. And the other thing
that's fantastic is the soft keys
and MemLock.
00:22:10
Because now you have your entire song,
right here:
First chorus. Boom!
Now, that is so good.
00:22:20
You can actually recall the entire
song structure
from here, you don't have to have
this up.
00:22:25
And you don't have to..
I don't know.. it just feels good!
So, let's go back to the mixer and
to VCAs
and listen to our bass and drum
say on verse 2.
00:23:10
The way Mick miked the piano, is..
00:23:14
one mono microphone
near the bottom of the strings and 2
microphones at the top. This is
the top:
nice and mellow, and this is the bottom.
00:23:34
Quite a bit of sub there.
Let's high pass this,
'cause I heard that sub and
that bothered me.
00:23:45
Hear? It went *pfoom*.
I can hear the bass drum bleed.
00:23:52
Get rid of that, there's no interesting
piano stuff, all the way down there.
00:23:59
It's a little better, not great
but better.
00:24:06
For the sake of entertainment,
I'm gonna
copy that filter and paste it
on the stereo one, that way they're in
phase!
Let's put some reverb on this piano!
Oh, we have one!
Boom! Copy-paste is a beautiful
thing.
00:25:00
Notice how it gets into the
pre-chorus,
the quiet, lovely space of
the verse kind of
falls apart, I'll play the
second verse, again.
00:25:07
I wanna do it with the key command
'cause I wanna keep my focus
on the VCAs, but
I could hit 'Verse 2', right here.
It's nice..
00:25:49
See how the piano just
takes over?
I think it takes over because there's a bit of bunching up in the low mids.
00:25:54
That's what I think. So, let's see..
00:25:57
Let's un-bunch up the low mids.
00:26:00
Pre-chorus..
00:26:10
That's kinda better. Let's probably
do this
same thing on the other side,
more or less..
00:26:48
Better. I don't wanna go further
because I will emasculate the piano,
which is not the point, here..
00:26:53
so I'm gonna compress the upper range
of the piano and leave the bottom alone.
00:27:04
It's too high, I'm gonna lower the
threshold.
00:27:11
Further.. it's not catching
that one chord..
00:27:47
That's nice. Let's make sure that
the opening of the song,
the solo piano/voice thing
sounds good.
00:28:22
Obviously, it works.
00:28:23
The piano is a little thin,
a little far away,
perfect.
00:28:26
Because, if I remember well,
in those records, the piano was
kinda thin and far away.
00:28:31
And it gives you the idea,
the impression that you're kinda
there, which is fun.
00:28:35
However, the drums are
way too dry. So let's
add some of that Space on those drums
and see if that works.
00:28:43
So the drums come in at the
pre-chorus. Here you go.
00:29:36
Let's listen to the organ now.
00:00:00
I'm gonna solo the organ..
00:00:06
Again, the organ we have the
bottom part..
00:00:10
That's on the... bass.
00:00:23
Let's see if it's needed.
00:00:27
Not really playing bass.
So maybe we need it,
maybe we don't. It's not because it's
there that we have to use it, and then..
00:00:33
high end..
00:00:50
That's definitely gonna need compression
because he's going all over the place
as an organ is supposed to do.
00:00:55
He's gonna need some space
and a little bit of fat.
00:01:00
But I don't know if this mic
is giving the
fat, this is just the high end
stereo mic,
and then this is with the bottom.
00:01:21
It is nicer, I think we can still add
some more like this.
00:01:44
Without our corrections in the back,
it sounds like this.
00:01:55
Not that pleasant. With.
00:02:01
So you can feel it grabbing,
that's nice.
00:02:04
I like.
00:02:06
Let's see how it feels
with the piano and the keys.
00:02:09
Gonna mute the other two keys.
00:02:29
Probably gonna make a group of
the 2 mics, since I like the balance.
00:02:32
Call it, you know, organ.
00:02:35
Maybe we'll pick an 'o',
there you go.
00:02:39
I'm gonna put it a different color
from the piano so we can really tell
the alternance of instruments.
00:03:27
This is sounding very nice.
00:03:29
Let's see what we have left,
we have..
00:03:33
guitars. Right. Let's hear it.
00:03:48
That's just reverb.
00:03:55
A 121, which is a ribbon.
00:04:02
That's a nice 57.
00:04:05
So let's start with the 57,
add the 121.
00:04:08
That's another cool thing you can do
with the free app..
00:04:11
if you go in the mixer..
00:04:13
and you look at everybody,
you can actually go to those
microphones, you can play it,
you can solo all 3,
because the app is multi-touch
you can actually
you know..
00:04:37
kind of blend like if you had
a real console with faders.
00:04:41
I use it all the time, it's really
quite..
00:04:43
lovely. We won't need a DI, bye.
00:04:46
And then there's an overdub.
Ooh.
00:04:49
What's the overdub doing?
Because I created that group for that
VCA,
when I move a pan,
all the pans move, it's silly.
00:05:02
I wanna turn that group off,
I'm gonna turn all those groups off.
00:05:07
Ah the piano one's nice.
00:05:09
Keys I don't need, voice and
backs I don't need.
00:05:12
Turning the groups off does not
disabled the functionality of the VCA.
00:05:16
That's nice.
00:05:17
So now I'm gonna create another
group
I wanna call it
'Main Guitar'
and it has all the attributes I need
pan is cool, that's it,
so now the main guitar moves
by itself
this overdub moves by itself, but
if I go to my VCAs
my VCA is moving all guitars.
00:05:38
Nice!
Ok, let's see this one guitar, here.
00:05:46
So we did not record
the reverb on that.
00:05:55
Why don't we create a reverb
to match the vibe?
Let's use that Black Spring
because it's quite good!
This sounds like a spring..
00:06:13
*pween pween pween*
A little darker?
Ok that's fun.
00:06:26
And then let's match the tone. I'm gonna
high pass it a little.
00:06:37
A little less mix.
00:06:52
This is good. Let's see in the context.
00:06:55
Let's mute the voice and the background
or now, and have everybody else.
00:07:46
So clearly we have a problem on
the chorus
with that guitar.
00:07:49
So what I'm gonna do is change the
parameters of the group
to include
I'm gonna remove the
'Follow Globals'..
00:07:58
let me explain this to you.
This is super useful:
Pro Tools has 2 group systems.
00:08:04
It has a global group system.
00:08:06
And you decide all your parameters
for that global group system,
which means that everybody who
follows the globals is doing this,
and then you have a group-per-group
attribute, so
I'm gonna remove the Mian guitar
from the globals and now I can decide
what happens just for that guitar.
00:08:23
So I want them to solo together,
I want them to be matched in volume,
keeping the offsets, I want them to
be muted together
I'd like their reverb sends to be the
same,
let's say Reverb Send A is gonna be the
same
and then I'm gonna decide that,
for example,
plug-ins B
and C
are also gonna follow each other.
And then I'm gonna
select all 3
and I'm gonna assign a channelstrip
to all 3. Now, if I have,
because of the group settings
I've just set
if I change something on one
it changes on the other.
00:08:58
So I can make sure that these
3 tracks stay discrete
and get their processing according
to their own levels
with the same settings.
00:09:05
It's different than if you go through
an aux.
00:09:08
Think about it
If you go through an aux you take
that sound
and you put it
all through an aux so it becomes
one sound and the compressor or EQ
sees
one sound.
00:09:18
With 3 discrete tracks ganging
controls
you're
compressing every track
separately, which means
when the direct sound gets
really loud
they're gonna get compressed more.
00:09:28
But not the reverb.
00:09:29
So on the chorus the reverb's gonna
get louder, which is nice.
00:09:33
Because there's so much bulk
in the
chorus that if the reverb gets
louder automatically
it's gonna make me stronger
and better.
00:09:41
Easier than all those things.
So let's see..
00:09:50
lower threshold to make sure that
it compresses when we need it to
we don't need it to compress
on the verse so this should be good.
00:09:59
Let's go to where it gets more intense.
00:10:21
Ok, without.. it sounds like this.
00:10:29
Now check out the reverb.
00:10:39
Nice!
Let's see..
00:10:51
We should turn the vocal back on to see
if there's space for it left.
00:11:14
I'm adding a little 1k to the guitar
because I think it needs a little more
bite
and 1k is good for bite
on guitars.
00:11:20
Usually, especially on 57s.
00:11:31
Lacking presence on the vocal. I'm gonna
slow the attack of the compressor down
We have the guitar on the left
well..
00:12:04
a little bit on the left, let's put the
Wurli a little bit on the right.
00:12:15
By itself it's awesome.
00:12:20
Still a little bit of 200 that are,
you know,
kind of like,
'not wanted here, you're not one
of us!'
And then I'm gonna high pass
because I can't help myself.
00:12:46
Right? Right.
A little space..
00:12:56
So we've looked at almost everything
except
the RS-09 strings
and the background vocals,
let's do that so we can then
shape the whole mix together.
00:13:04
Still pretty dark, we can take
care of that easy
so it seems the RS-09 happens only
on the choruses,
sounds a little bit like this..
00:13:23
It's got a little bit of a 'Thriller'
vibe, I like it.
00:13:30
Space..
00:13:35
Remove some of that
low-mid stuff..
00:13:49
Maybe it would be cool to have
a bit of a
ensemble bite to it..
00:14:04
I like the chorus-y vibe..
00:14:17
this is more Radiohead
this is more Michael Jackson..
00:14:24
Michael Jackson? Ok.
00:14:37
Ok, and let's look at those
background vocals, now.
00:14:39
I'm gonna sum them
to a bus, stereo..
00:14:44
call it 'Back Vox'
and not forget to send that
to my sum
and solo safe
the sub.. so I can hear the background
vocals separately, without fighting..
00:15:01
I should open the VCA..
00:15:21
She is so good!
Why don't we clear some of that
mud that you hear, right?
And see what happens after that..
00:15:34
Let's go, turn it on..
00:16:30
I think for the balance, the background
vocals, the high note..
00:16:46
and less of the super bottom.. which
complicates things.
00:16:54
A little space..
00:17:39
So I was able to adjust it a little bit
here, while listening.. it's muddy
but it's got energy and she sings great.
00:17:47
I wanna preserve that raw quality to it.
00:17:50
I don't wanna make it too bright
or fancy but this is too muddy.
00:17:55
What to do, well, let's start over.
Let's start with the vocal.
00:18:08
So it's important that it should go
over the part that hurts.
00:18:11
Above the part that hurts, like in the
10k range.
00:18:22
That's starting to be a little better.
00:18:25
And a little 5k shine would be nice.
00:18:27
So I want to take this band
and narrow it
like this..
00:19:02
you get the vibe. That's more open.
00:19:04
Now, I kinda dug the space
on the background vocals, check it
out!
That sounds right.
00:19:29
But I don't like it on the lead
anymore..
00:19:36
it's a little metallic.
00:19:37
So what I'm gonna do is actually
rename the send and call it
'Main Verb'
I'm gonna duplicate the Space
everything.. and choose another
send for it..
00:19:53
say.. 3-4 would make more sense..
00:19:55
send the background vocals to it
move it down in case I wanna use
the Main Verb there..
00:20:00
It makes sense! Stay with me!
So, I wanna rename this Space,
so now whatever reverb I choose here is
gonna get applied to what I had before
and so, we're gonna switch to D-Verb
let's see if we can get something
more satisfying.
00:20:28
I already like it better, for this.
00:20:34
It's a little quieter than the
other one, I'll just raise the
overall volume so that our choices are
not affected.
00:20:39
Previous choices.. that is!
I like that..
00:20:54
Also, I'd like to add a little bit
of grit..
00:20:57
I'm gonna create a new aux..
00:21:00
I'm gonna call it Delay..
00:21:02
I'm gonna move that to here..
00:21:06
and of course this should be called
'Main..
00:21:09
Space' or 'Main Verb',
sorry..
00:21:13
Great. And then this one is gonna
get called 'Delay'
I gotta send it to the sum..
00:21:19
of course, if you get tired of
re-assigning
every single track you create to the sum
you could do what the non-lazy people
do, which is
come to the I/O setup
and say 'Default Output Path'
which lives in the bus..
00:21:36
and say, the default output path
should be 'Sum'.
00:21:41
Now, if I create a track,
the default output will be 'Sum'
and I don't have to do it manually.
00:21:46
You decide which one is more energy.
00:21:48
So that's it. Make it yellow.
00:21:52
And there's this new delay,
that I really fell in love with recently,
it's called BB Delay,
it is nasty-sounding in a good way,
of course.
00:22:02
I wanna mute the reverb and just
put the delay on the vocal.
00:22:36
So that's with the 16th.
I love it.
00:22:39
Here's an 8th.
00:22:48
I think an 8th with a filter
would be awesome.
00:22:51
So I'm just gonna use
EQ3
or Vintage Filter.
Let's use Vintage Filter from AIR,
so that way I can darken the returns.
00:23:04
Maybe not that much.
00:23:12
Less feedback..
00:23:15
yeah!
Add the reverb..
00:23:26
So that's nice, I like that.
00:23:28
Let's then add the bass,
again.
00:23:44
There's nothing going on, here.
00:23:45
So what I'm gonna do is use a DI,
nice and clean and let's make sure
it's not that nice.
00:24:00
Or clean.
00:24:01
So, I'm gonna go into
the new Avid
plug-ins and they have..
00:24:06
with the subscription they
have a bunch of
cool distortions. Let's try
this one.
00:24:27
That sounds gnarly. Let's mix it
with the other one, see if that works.
00:24:41
Absolutely not!
Let's move on to another one!
A little overdrive.
00:25:03
That's better.
00:25:23
We have the group for the
two basses, let's just turn it on.
00:25:29
These are not ganged. Let's make
a group just for that
so that we don't have to think about it.
00:25:34
Call it 'Bass Level'.
00:25:38
Oops.
00:25:40
Great.
00:25:48
It's a little too gnarly. It's fun,
but gnarly.
00:25:50
Let's try another one, called
SansAmp.
00:25:54
Which lives somewhere here
close to the "S".
00:26:00
This is great for everything.
00:26:16
Hear the difference, in texture?
Without.
00:26:33
You can hear the fingers better,
it's more elastic.
00:26:35
You get more rubber in it.
00:26:38
The labels 'Crunch', 'Punch',
'Buzz', 'Drive' are their own thing.
00:26:43
So the Punch tends to be fatter
it's hard to listen to the same level,
pre and post
when there's so much gain,
but we can try.
00:27:19
I like this a lot, this is gonna help.
00:27:35
I can open the high end of that.
00:27:51
That's a classic sound, I like it,
I like it!
I had stayed really dark on the guitar.
00:28:04
Let's change that..
00:28:14
So we have the built-in
reverb that Mick recorded, the
actual spring
there.. but we don't have a Space
for the guitar, so I'm gonna copy
the Main Verb on the 57..
00:28:47
This is good. Let's keep going.
00:28:51
I'm thinking that
we should explore the drums, more.
00:28:56
I'm gonna keep the bass as a reference
as I like the bass, now.
00:29:06
I think the change of reverb kind of
you know, was not in the best taste
for the drums.
00:29:34
Let's go below that *poink* thing,
and let's use this band,
narrow,
try and remove some of that
cardboard,
That works.
00:30:14
Let's see.
00:30:20
it's kinda weak, obviously,
but the reason for that is because
it gets louder, later.
00:30:30
What's one to do?
What one can do, is
look at what the drummer's playing.
00:30:38
See when he plays a side stick,
in the bridge.
00:30:55
Duplicate the track,
not the playlist,
and make a special sound just
for the side stick
by copying down
just the parts where he plays
the side stick.
00:31:11
And no, it's not cheating and
yes, you can tell my mom.
00:31:18
Here.
00:31:29
I can go to the second verse.
00:31:56
And then adjust the snare.
00:32:18
There's a little bit of a mess at the
bottom, you hear it,
so we're gonna go here and get rid
of that..
00:32:38
and the reverb is only on the overheads
so I can lower that reverb a little bit.
00:32:51
Here's a little trick I like to do:
on the verses
what would it sound like, if the
side stick went into that delay?
The delay's on time, it's tight to 1/8th
note, maybe it's cool sounding..
00:33:21
so obviously we have a problem:
everything gets delayed
but I like the sound on the actual
side stick,
what's one to do?
Let's be sneaky. Don't tell anyone.
00:33:30
You can say: ok, we're not gonna
use the direct send to
the delay, we're gonna have an
intermediary and call it 'Side
stick send..
00:33:41
trick'.
00:33:43
There you go. And that track
is being sent to the delay.
00:33:49
So now, we can process
what you send to the delay before
it gets to the delay.
00:33:53
It's a little bit like when you send an
international money transfer
and you don't really get the exact
amount of money the guy sent to you.
00:34:00
Which means we have a little
intermediary, in there.
00:34:03
I'm gonna use an expander,
there's an expander in this strip
so let's use it.
00:34:07
There it is.
00:34:09
And I'm gonna turn the send
'pre' so that I can focus on
just that.
00:34:15
I turn the send 'pre' but I mute
the direct sound and now
I hear exactly what's going on
just for the delay.
00:34:21
Especially if I mute the bass.
00:34:29
So now all we have to do
is raise the threshold of the
expander
with a silly ratio and a very
fast attack
so it only opens when the side stick
hits.
00:34:43
Maybe a little brutish.
00:34:51
If you can't get it quite right
you could use
the side-chain! And say:
ok the side-chain is internal
and we're gonna filter
so that the bass drum doesn't freak
out the expander.
00:35:10
That's kinda perfect. So now we can
send that
loud and clear to the delay
and we can play the whole thing and just
the side stick will hit the delay,
not the rest of the kit.
00:35:32
So, remember: if you wanna change the
amount of delay, now,
you can't touch this send because
this will change
the amount of signal you send to
the expander/gate
and thus ruining your setting
you have to change this guy, right here.
00:35:51
I like that. It's a nice detail.
00:35:53
We're happy with this. Let's see
with the guitar and the vocal.
00:36:04
Make sure the snare is as good
as the side stick.
00:36:26
Kinda weak, still..
00:36:34
I hear the compressor and it
bothers me.
00:36:49
What I identified as a resonance
in the bottom
I don't know what it was..
00:36:54
this is not happening.
Let's fix it.
00:37:06
It was the bottom of the overheads
that was bothering me.
00:37:08
I had raised the bottom of the overheads
to enhance the bottom of the bass drum
and that was an entirely bad idea!
Let's see with just the drums.
00:37:33
Let's turn the piano back on.
00:37:49
That sounds pretty bananas.
00:37:52
Let's see with the vocal.
00:38:12
Add the Wurli.
00:39:22
I think the Wurli could use a little..
00:39:44
Let's scrutinise the background vocal
and make sure it's as good as it can be.
00:40:04
Maybe they could use both..
00:40:33
A little too much reverb
is nice..
00:40:55
I think that maybe just maybe..
00:40:58
it'd be a good idea
to do a
little smidgeon of parallel
compression on these drums.
00:41:03
So 'Drum Par' and..
00:41:07
make it mono, simple.
00:41:09
And I'm gonna use it, doing the send
trick so I can control the balance.
00:41:13
The more astute amongst you may have
noticed that I've created
an automatic track and that Pro Tools
did not automatically assign it to the
Sum bus.. the reason for that is
if you really wanna be thorough, when
you assign a default output bus
you gotta assign a different
default output bus for mono and for
stereo..and I had not assigned the mono
so there, for punishment, I'm gonna
do it manually.
00:41:35
Boom.
00:41:37
I'm sufficiently punished,
let's listen to that.
00:41:42
I wanna make the sends pre
so that I can hear just that.
00:41:50
Now I wanna use the supplied
1176 knock-off,
which absolutely nothing like an 1176
but it's
so dirty that it's fun to use.
00:42:08
Really slow attack to let the transients
through.
00:42:11
Fast-enough release that you don't
get the garbage.
00:42:16
Let's get rid of some of the overhead
in there
because it's just un-manageable.
00:42:34
Oh yeah. So this is without
the compressor.
00:42:46
Since I've separated the side stick
and the snare
this is only gonna go on the snare,
not on the side stick, so
the verses can be more metrosexual
and then the chorus can be more like
manly. And then what I'm gonna
do next is
slowly raise the drum parallel, here.
00:43:15
Without.
00:43:38
That sounds gnarly! Let's see how it
sounds on the verse.
00:43:48
Little bit obnoxious on the bass drum
so what I'm gonna do is automate
the send
from the bass drum,
make sure that the send
doesn't send during the
verses
so that way we only get
that parallel drum compression
on the bass drum
during the choruses.
00:44:09
Let's make sure that my markers
are right.
00:44:17
And.. interlude..
00:44:28
aka: boom.
00:44:31
That's the..
00:44:33
fill, there you go..
00:44:34
so, the transition would be
like this.
00:44:50
Send less of that last hit.
00:45:10
And then probably
00:00:00
What's left to do? Let's think
about that.
00:00:02
We have a pretty rocking drum sound,
I like the bass,
guitars are in place out
of the way,
let's listen to the first verse and
make sure the piano is just right.
00:00:26
Now the second verse.
00:00:35
All right, this is all nice,
I'm feeling more and more that there's a
disconnect between verses and choruses
meaning:
the verse is a little quiet
and the chorus is very loud and
the whole point was to make the
chorus grow so we kinda
nailed.. maybe we over-nailed it,
too big a hammer..
so,
there are two options to reduce
dynamics: compression and automation.
00:00:54
Let's use compression.
00:00:56
Since we're here and we're almost done,
we feel like we're almost done
anyway,
let's put a limiter on the 2-mix,
with a little bit of a ceiling,
for fetish reasons,
and then another Channel Strip,
and on the channelstrip
I'm gonna leave Maxim open.
00:01:11
Maxim is a limiter that comes
with Pro Tools and the channelstrip,
look: they're cousins!
What I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna
shape the
overall tone of the track to my
liking.
00:01:21
I could go and tweak individual
instruments, I might still do that,
but, there is something more powerful
to EQ the whole track, like in mastering
but you're not mastering!
you're.. tweaking. Those are 2
different things.
00:01:36
So, for example, if you listen to
any pre chorus:
it's nice, however..
00:01:53
it could be fatter, now..
00:01:56
the bottom of all instruments are
gonna contribute to that fatness,
and so why not do it on the
whole thing
so I'm gonna choose the bottom
filter, turn it into a shelf,
and make it fatter.
00:02:22
Listen to the bass drum, the bass and
their relationship..
00:02:24
Listen to the bottom of the
piano and listen to..
00:02:28
the pedestal of the track if you will,
what's going on below the vocal.
00:02:31
This part, here. So there's something
here and then there's the vocal, above.
00:02:35
And how they hang. First I'll start
without this
2dB at 197 and then I'll turn it on.
00:02:43
On the same passage, and you'll see how
you feel.
00:03:05
That's what I'm saying.
00:03:07
And then I'm thinking - if I make a tight
enough Q, here -
I can use this band
and find a blooming spot,
right there, at the mix of the bass
and bass drum.
00:03:36
I'll do that again: with none of the
corrections..
00:03:49
just the low shelf..
00:03:59
and the peak..
00:04:09
without anything..
00:04:33
A little of bit of compression will
help reign in the chorus
while not touching the verse.
00:04:46
So I'm raising the threshold as
you can see
so that I can have the verse,
be happy,
untouched, or almost
untouched..
00:05:30
the reason why I am still tweaking
even if I felt I was done, it's because
while I bypassed the whole thing
I got some of that bounce from the
bass drum, back. Check it out:
It's just more elastic!
So, what to do? Mmh..
00:05:55
Well, I am adding some bottom
here, but
then I'm compressing it. That makes
no sense..
00:06:02
so I think it would be smart to
change the order:
start by filtering, if we're gonna
filter,
compress, and then EQ..
00:06:09
we do this and now,
the compressor will not try
to compress
those additional
bass EQs I am putting, here.
00:06:20
Let's hear that!
I'll play that again.
So, this is
EQ first. There's no filters
right now,
so the filter thing is irrelevant..
EQ first:
Hear that? Listen to the bass drum.
It sounds good..
00:06:52
but it's not free. Something's not
free. Check it out.
00:07:04
Other way.
00:07:15
Hear that? I'll play it again
with the compressor before the EQ,
and then I'll play it right away
with the compressor
after the EQ. Check it out.
00:07:37
It's pinched, it's not as good,
it's nice to be able to do this.
00:07:41
Great.
00:07:43
If we listen to the top of the song..
00:08:07
One more time, I'm lowering the reverb
to get a more intimate vibe..
00:08:13
and you know, I was a little brutish,
let her sound..
00:08:26
so I have a problem if I go all the way
to 200 it gets muddy,
maybe I can get rid of the 200 problem,
here..
00:08:47
One more time.
00:08:56
That's better.
00:09:19
this feels out of style..
00:10:17
Ok this is all fine, did you notice
something? Check the snare sound here..
00:10:28
and the snare sound, here.
00:10:37
Not cool, right? What's going on?
Well, to provide dynamics,
Graham is playing the chorus
with the rim shot, so he hits the snare,
the side of the snare, the rim,
and the snare at the same time.
Here, on the first pre chorus,
there's no rim shot. You hear just
the snare going *ppt*
without that crack of the side.
00:11:04
As opposed to..
00:11:10
While it's a cool way to play
music, thank you..
00:11:14
it's a problem, sonically because
it sounds like a mistake to me.
00:11:23
Since there's no shame,
I'll make another track, just for
those 4 hits.
00:11:30
Boom, and on those 4 hits..
00:11:35
I'm gonna name it..
00:11:38
and I'm gonna go to the channelstrip
and I'm gonna bring that down.
00:11:46
Probably gonna add some reverb
to just that.
00:12:08
Now it no longer bothers me!
It didn't bother you? Great.
It bothered me.
00:12:20
And this, ladies and gentlemen,
is the reason why
you never finish a mix, you abandon it
when someone screams to go out to dinner
..I think that, now that everything else
is fat and great,
I think that the toms sound a bit
un-fat. Let's listen to them.
00:12:39
So I am adding a truck load,
which is a technical term
of bottom of the one of the left,
which is the rack tom
and a different amount of truck load
on the right..
00:12:53
that sounds muddy, but let's not forget
we're not listening to those in solo.
00:12:57
The other thing that's nice on toms
sometimes, to make them stick out..
00:13:00
is to bring the stick out by
adding some of that 10k
stuff, wherever it is,
above the belt.
00:13:12
Yep, and...
00:13:15
Maybe not as much belt action.
00:13:22
That was a bad idea.
00:13:47
Now, if I remove a little bit of mids,
from the whole mix, like,
a little bit,
300 to 500, just a smidgeon, like..
half a dB,
I got lost in the music let me
tell you what went through my head
and why we're here.
00:14:30
It's fun. It's subtle but it's fun.
00:14:32
While I was focusing on the tom,
consequently no longer
focusing on the whole track
and being obsessed by
the whole track but only
by having cool toms..
00:14:40
there was a little voice,
in English,
in the back of my head, that
said: 'If I were you..
00:14:45
I would check out the mids.'
I am me, consequently I am gonna
go check out the mids.
00:14:50
And by checking out the mids
I noticed that the bottom of the vocals,
middle of the piano and
upper part of the bass, and some
of the bass drum, a bit,
it was a little bit of like..
00:15:00
crowded. Like a Starbucks at 8AM.
00:15:03
Too many people for its own good.
00:15:06
Not a lot, just a few. Check it out.
00:15:29
See how it feels brighter?
Not brighter, I just removed a little
bit of
a little bit of 0.6dB
at 400 and change.
00:15:38
What it does is it
creates a little vacuum there,
which allows the vocal to
soar above the rest a little
better.
00:15:45
Now, could I remove that from the
vocal?
Could I remove that from the piano, from the drums,
and everybody else?
I guess, I could try that.
00:15:54
But my experience says it works
good here.
00:15:57
It kind of like puts everybody
on the same level.
00:16:02
I'll do it again so you have a chance
to
figure it out. Listen to the bottom
of the vocal
middle of the snare, top of the bass,
first without, then with.
See how it feels, more than..
00:16:12
don't try to analyse. See how
it feels.
00:16:45
Now, I feel less the urge
to automate the vocal. Maybe a
smidgeon, but
now it feels free,
it doesn't feel eaten by the rest of
the track.
00:16:55
Just by this 0.5dB move.
00:16:57
I think we're getting close to
having something that we can play
for our mother. Let's see!
I may feel compelled to open the top.
00:17:07
Just a smidgeon.
00:17:09
A dB or so. 8k, 12k..
00:17:13
it would be nice. This is where
we are right now..
00:17:32
I can tame the bottom shelf, a little.
00:17:46
Little less of the bass drum..
00:17:57
I want less of that because it's a
little too present.
00:18:00
This is where we are right now.
00:18:09
It sounds great and it's addictive but maybe
not tasteful. Let's see on
the verse.
00:18:22
That's tasteful.
00:18:23
That means that it's our parallel
that's too much. Let's go in trim mode,
it's gonna allow me to
use that curve I've made,
not have to go back to it,
just
lower the overall amount.
00:18:37
And it's gonna lower
the top amount, this amount,
it's gonna offset
by whatever amount I want.
Let's say maybe
2dB down.
00:18:48
So that has no effect on the verse..
here's on the chorus:
maybe a little more..
00:19:22
Awesome! So that feels good,
and I think that the lead vocal
could be a little more forward.
Now,
That means louder, but I don't want
it to feel louder, just
feel above the snare. A little bit.
00:19:37
I think that half a dB
because there's not a compressor,
here,
pushing that vocal half a dB
is not gonna sound like half a dB
although 0.5dB is not exactly
the end of the world..
00:19:51
but more importantly, because
of the interaction between
the raised vocal and where the
compressor is, it's really gonna feel
this
forward and back a little bit.
Let's check it out.
00:20:11
Before..
00:20:29
That's the trick. It's just a presence
trick.
00:20:32
Just a little something.
00:20:33
And this is something that's hard to
do at the end of the day because
if you have been working on this for 6-7
hours, you have
no idea
if you're just deaf, if you've been
listening too loud,
..if you're just addicted to the sound
of one instrument that you want on the
front, because maybe you played
it..
00:20:50
or maybe because you're in love
with the singer, whatever..
00:20:54
These are moves that are really
important to check in the morning.
00:20:59
Why don't we compare to the rough
mix?
We wanna make sure that we are
in sync with the original intention
of the emotion and the energy of
everybody in the room.
00:21:11
It would be nice if our mix was
better than the rough mix,
because we spent time on it
and we have pride,
but we don't know!
The way to do that, if you remember,
I have
the rough mix on this track, right here.
00:21:23
And I've been on input this
whole time.
00:21:24
If I no longer go to input,
I listen to the rough mix on the track,
so:
Now you have to be careful.
I have a feeling that
we did the work we were supposed to
do. We enhanced the track
and we were able to sweeten what
needed to be sweetened.
00:21:57
However: you don't really
know until you listen at the same level.
00:22:01
Anything: even the most horrible,
crappy mix, will sound better
than a really great rough mix
if the rough mix is 6-8dB softer.
Period.
00:22:12
So, you could raise the rough mix.
00:22:16
By using clip gain, right here..
since there's so much headroom.
00:22:20
So say we raise the rough mix
4dBs
let's put the second verse..
00:22:48
The rough mix is still a little
too soft..
00:22:50
so let's just.. 6dB..
00:23:09
We're doing very well.
00:23:11
If you notice, for example,
the peaks on the vocals are now
smooth, but it doesn't sound processed,
the bottom is fat,
we have space, let's see what the chorus
compares.
00:23:21
Make sure we have everything we needed
on the chorus.
00:23:38
Fantastic. Now, to compare
I'm pressing this little button
and I have to click on it.
00:23:44
And sometimes it's nice to,
say I'm comparing the
bass drum, I wanna be here,
looking at the bass drum, tweaking it,
but I want to also click that button.
00:23:54
If you have the iPad app
and you go to Mixer and you look
at all the
channels, not just the VCAs..
00:24:02
and you scroll all the way to
this track, right here.
You can have your finger and you can
A/B with your finger while you
look, here.
00:24:14
You could also do that in the tracks
display and you could assign
these squares that you see on
the screen, to be a big input button
or you can assign these squares to be
solo, so if I am here
and I wanna solo just the kick..
I can.
00:24:32
Like that.
00:24:33
So, if I choose Input here
and I
scroll all the way through the thing,
it's really..
00:24:39
easy to just turn stuff on and off
and compare!
That's really awesome. I actually
installed
the app in Eucon and learnt how to
use it
for this one feature. Because I use
this button
800,000 times a day
to reference with previous versions, with
production, rough mixes,
or with commercial tracks to make sure
I'm doing the best possible job.
00:25:12
It's always a pain to always have to
scroll wherever you park
your mix, to do the A/B thing.
00:25:17
With this, you can just do the A/B
like this.. iz nice!
So we're done, for now, because we
have to play it for the singer.
00:25:25
If you're used to work on Pro Tools,
logic or any other
DAW in-the-box, you're probably used
to bouncing.
00:25:31
Meaning, you click the button, you go
here, you name it and hit 'Bounce',
if you're really in a hurry, you hit
'Offline' and then it bounces.
00:25:41
You can't do that with this setup,
because..
00:25:43
we have this track that's in input and
Pro Tools won't let you bounce.
00:25:46
So you have several options.
00:25:48
If you really lean on bouncing
you could bounce the Print Bus.
Bounce, Print..
00:25:54
you print it as is. It will bounce
all this.
00:25:57
To do that you have to remove the
Input otherwise Pro Tools will complain.
00:26:01
So, you could do that. But
think about this:
This song is 3':20".
00:26:07
You've been working on it for 6.5 hours.
00:26:09
8 hours, 6 months, I don't know.
00:26:12
There's a certain pressure
to listening to the mix and you know,
because you're printing in real time
to a track, you know this is it.
00:26:22
This is your last resort. That pressure
will make you listen differently, like
if somebody came in the room and
listened with you
you would listen to it differently.
00:26:31
If the singer came in the room right now
your mix would probably not be done.
00:26:35
My mix wouldn't be done because I'd hear
1,000 things that
I no longer hear because I've been there
for 7 hours.
00:26:40
So, although I could bounce
I choose not to. Again:
if you wanna bounce in a hurry,
remove the input of the record on the
print track and just
right click here and bounce-print.
Boom, you're home in 5 minutes.
00:26:56
But, allow yourself the luxury of
spending 3':25"
with a piece of music you just
created
and give yourself the pressure of
making sure it's the last time and
it's so good
and it's so perfect that you won't
stop transport.
00:27:15
So I'm creating a new track,
which I'm gonna call: 'Jealousy
Fab Mix 1.0'.
00:27:22
It's nice to match the name of the mix
with the name of the session..
00:27:27
not that anybody has ever done anything
different..
00:27:30
nobody in this studio! Now,
before I print, let's discuss levels.
00:27:35
Let's go to the end of the record,
You may noticed that I have
slightly exploded..
00:27:44
the VU meters on the masters.
00:27:46
The reason for that is
I wasn't really paying attention
while talking to you and second:
I bet you're still well within the realm
so, if I go to Digital VU
which changes the scale,
it's the same levels,
but it shows me on the scale that
it's a little wider..
00:28:01
if this is all the levels, the VU
gives me this window
I don't see what's going on here,
it just goes *prrr*.
00:28:06
But, if I go to Digital VU,
what do we see?
We see that at about -14-ish,
dB average,
my delivery here is gonna be above
4dB louder than the maximum
self-respect human
United Nations-recommended
level.
00:28:41
14dB of headroom is plenty
for this, however,
if you're gonna deliver this mix to
your singer
or the A&R or to your
mother.. and
via MP3 and they're gonna download
it directly on a smartphone
and it's gonna be in the pool with the
rest of the commercial CDs,
this would be a lot quieter.
So there are 2 schools of thought:
School n.1:
Keep it a lot quieter, so nobody
mistakes this
with the final master and has the good
taste of turning it up.
00:29:14
This relies on the idea that people
know how to turn stuff up
as opposed to just considering that the
track is too soft
hence not exciting.
00:29:21
Number 2: jack it up.
00:29:24
So to jack it up..
00:29:26
we have, here: Maxim.
00:29:28
Why don't I jack it up an extra
4dB?
So I'm gonna take the threshold
down to -4
which means I'm gonna raise the whole
thing up 4dB.
00:29:37
This is a little backwards to understand
but this is how it works.
00:29:39
I'll show you in real time
so you understand what's going on.
00:29:48
I understand that it's convoluted
to
hear..
00:29:52
the level raising when you lower
the threshold is
silly but it is what it is.
00:29:57
Really what it's doing is,
you're pushing 5dB
of level into a brickwall limiter.
00:30:02
Think of it that way. Just like
L2 used to do.
00:30:05
I think L2 still does it.
This is where we were..
00:30:12
And this is where we are.
00:30:21
Now you're officially loud. If you're
really curious..
00:30:24
And you have a lot of time to spare,
you could
lower the ceiling by 5dB
and raise the threshold by 5dB
what that's gonna do is
it's gonna
push your level 5dBs into
the brickwall limiter and then bring
the level 5dB down, so you're gonna be
even
and you're gonna be able to hear the
difference between
limited and unlimited, at the same
level.
00:30:47
And that gives this result.
00:30:49
This is: first bypass and then
with the process.
00:31:16
Again? Again.
00:31:18
Without..
00:31:49
Your choice! I'll let you decide.
I ain't doing it, today.
00:31:53
So now we're gonna print the mix. So you
get to listen to the whole song, then,
we will export the mix and I'll show you
how to do that. See you in 3':20".
00:34:21
That little guitar there on the right,
so awesome, is not loud enough!
Because..
00:34:26
we really didn't scrutinise that part.
So I'm gonna raise it.
00:34:30
Now,
Awesome! That would have been
a big mistake..
00:34:51
record saved.
00:34:53
But it's a bummer we have to start
from the beginning.
00:34:55
But no, we do not!
Because of
this amazing system that
we have here and it works
great: you have to be in quick punch
mode, right up here.
00:35:03
You can change modes by hitting
Ctrl on the Mac
and clicking the Record button..
or you can hit '6'.
00:35:13
Then you have to rewind. How much?
Well..
00:35:15
Just enough for the reverbs to mature.
Meaning that
all the reverbs in your record..
00:35:20
this is not a lot but you can have
very long reverbs..
00:35:23
you have to make sure to play
enough bars
that you'll get to the same point as to
where the reverbs where, if you have a
4-second reverb, make sure you play
4 seconds of that record.
00:35:32
Ok? And then you hit 'Record', when
you feel like, before your splice.
00:37:38
Cool! So now we have to fix that little
cut, right here..
00:37:43
You remove the input mode so you can
hear what's in the track..
00:37:51
So you can hear it..
00:37:57
And you can select the 2 halves and
consolidate, which is
Shift+Opt+3 and then
because we're OCD and it's not a disease
it's a lifestyle, it's different!
We're gonna rename it to remove
that ugly '_03'
to call it 'Fab Mix 1' or
'your mix 1' and then you have
to export that mix.
00:38:19
The way it works in Pro Tools is that
every clip is a virtual representation
of a file on the hard drive.
00:38:25
This is the full audio file. If I do
this,
this is no longer the full audio file.
00:38:30
Even though the background vocals
right now are a clip..
00:38:33
that is an extract of a full audio file.
I can create another discrete file
from this clip. Which is awesome. To
do so, click what you need to export or
create a discrete audio file out of,
you hit Shift+Cmd+K,
and this menu comes up. Or if you want
menus,
you have to open the clip window,
you can select the clip here or here..
00:39:00
but I always select it in the timeline,
for safety, because it's visual,
and you can go here and
'Export Clip as File' doesn't get
clearer than that. Like Cmd+Shift+K,
then you can choose your file type
so, for example 24.. and we said
88.. Remember that?
And then you choose where you export it
to.. our session was on the Desktop,
What I do is always create a discrete
folder called 'Bounces' and in
that folder, I put my bounces.
00:39:30
So, Pro Tools is now doing it in
much faster than real time.
And what I also do
is I always make an MP3 with the Pro
Tools generator, because it's great,
it sounds good, it's the least offensive
of them all as far as I'm concerned.
00:39:45
That's a little sore but still pretty
awesome.
00:39:48
Now, if you go to the Desktop
and you look into your
session folder, you're gonna have
your original audio files in the 'Audio
Files' folder, and then in the
'Bounces' folder you just created..
00:40:02
2 files: one full-res file,
that's 125Mb because it's 24/88k
and then one MP3. And then you can play
it in the Finder.
00:40:11
With Snapper! Remember Snapper?
And then if I press play now I can
check my file in the Finder
and then I can
send it, directly, to whomever is the
person you made this record with.
00:40:21
That's a really good workflow.
00:40:23
Yes, there's another folder called
'Bounce Files'.
00:40:26
I didn't make that folder.
Pro Tools did.
00:40:28
This folder is a more recent addition
to
the Pro Tools workflow because it now
has an automated
stem exporting system.
So I keep that
'Bounce Files' for anything that's
automatically
created by Pro Tools or by
Pro Tools routines.
00:40:43
All right, there you have it!
A real-time mix, done
in the mouth of a given horse!
Download the stems and have a go
at it yourself,
I'm gonna say it's quite fun
to mix a song recorded by one of
the best engineers
that ever walked the Earth.
00:40:57
Et voila'!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Fab Dupont is a 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.
David Crosby
Queen Latifah
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