How To Listen: Reference Mixes
48min
(54)
In general, our ears can be extremely impressionable from day to day. Some days we'll hear a piece of music and think it is dark. The next day, we may feel it's bright. All of this can cause havoc when trying to mix.
Sure, we think we know our speakers and our rooms, but even then it's easy to forget things like "how bright should this be?" "Do I have enough low end in my mix?"
Enter reference mixes. Reference mixes can serve as the roadmap to a great mix, and they can help answer questions when you find your ears feeling confused.
In this pureMix.net Exclusive, Multi Award Winning Engineer, Fab Dupont explains how he uses reference mixes to establish a baseline while he is mixing in different rooms, after long sessions, and as a tool to calibrate his own ears each day.
Fab will explain:
- The importance of using a reference mix
- How to choose a reference mix
- How to use a reference mix
- Reference mix workflow
Learn how to find and use your own reference mixes from Fab Dupont, only on puremix.net
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
- 00:0 - Start
- 00:17 - What Is A Reference Mix?
- 02:33 - How To Apprehend A New Track
- 06:06 - Mixing With No Reference
- 08:52 - Tweaking The Mix
- 13:07 - Comparing With Another Mix
- 16:40 - Resetting Your Ears
- 18:56 - Absolute VS. Taste
- 23:27 - The Need For A Reference
- 27:06 - How To Choose A Reference Mix
- 29:54 - Traits Of Fab's Reference Mix
- 35:25 - How To Use Your Reference Mix
- 41:20 - Referencing With Spotify
- 44:48 - Plugin Alternatives
- 47:01 - Conclusion
00:00:00
Good morning children!
Welcome to the fourth edition
of the How To Listen series.
00:00:05
This is the Reference Mix edition.
00:00:07
Let's go!
What is a reference mix?
It's a piece of music that you listen to
when you're lost, basically,
or before you get lost
to make sure you don't get lost.
00:00:27
It's something you need because your
brain and ears are utterly unreliable.
00:00:31
Even though you think they are reliable,
they are not reliable at all,
and I'm going to prove that
to you in a minute.
00:00:38
Why are they so unreliable?
Because it's all about perception
and because there are so many variables:
your speakers, your room,
your headphones, the music itself,
what you had for breakfast this morning.
00:00:50
Everything influences the way
you perceive the music.
00:00:53
Why do we get lost?
Why don't we have an absolute hearing?
Nobody... very few people, sorry,
have absolute hearing.
00:01:00
I know a couple of people
who are pretty close to absolute hearing,
but even they make mistakes.
00:01:05
We do not have absolute hearing
because our brain is adaptive
and our brain likes to believe
the things it likes to believe.
00:01:12
You see that in politics a lot,
but it's the same in music.
00:01:15
So, for example,
say you listen to music
that is very bright for an hour.
00:01:21
Your new reference is that music,
which is no longer going to feel bright;
it's going to feel like the new normal,
and that new normal is bright.
00:01:29
And so when you listen to
a piece of music that's normal,
it's going to feel dull
even though the other one is bright.
00:01:34
Do you know what I'm saying?
So the whole point of a reference mix
is to establish some sort of a normal.
00:01:40
It's not to establish a right for wrong,
it's to make sure that you're not
believing in your own bullsh*t.
00:01:47
Over the course of a project
there are many reasons
why we could lose our bearings
and no longer know
which way is up or down;
different speakers, different room,
different music, different breakfast.
00:01:59
Everything could influence
how you feel that day,
how you perceive music that day,
and the decisions you are going to make,
so it behooves you to create some sort of
a reference framework in your head
that you know is what it is.
00:02:11
It doesn't have to be perfect.
00:02:13
It could be very bright as long as
you are very aware that it's very bright
and how bright it is,
or very compressed, or very dark,
or very distorted.
00:02:20
What matters is that you have to create
some sort of consistency in your life.
00:02:25
I'm going to give you some reference
framework building tips,
but before I do that
we're going to look at a few situations
that you may have encountered.
00:02:33
When you first listen to a track,
either for the first time in a room
or the first time you listen to
that track in your room,
or on the radio, in the car,
or in any situation,
there are two basic ways you can
apprehend the quality of a track.
00:02:48
And when I mean quality,
I don't mean good or bad,
I mean the attributes,
the texture of a track;
bright, dark, compressed,
not compressed, loud, soft.
00:02:55
That kind of stuff.
00:02:56
There is the intuitive way:
you use your intuition,
meaning you played your track,
you listened to it,
and you're like, "Oh!
This feels bright.
00:03:04
Hence, it must be bright."
Of course, as we've discussed before,
if you've been listening to some really,
really loud, very, very bright music,
maybe your intuition is going be off
for that moment.
00:03:14
But let's assume that you're fresh,
it's in the morning,
you haven't been blasted yet,
and you press Play on a track.
00:03:22
This gauging
of that music in your room
is still called intuitive
because it's in the air and you
haven't referenced to anything,
so you can trust yourself
because you feel that you have
some sort of a baseline in your brain.
00:03:36
Fair? Intuition.
00:03:38
The problem with intuition,
as I discussed before,
is that three hours down the line,
how reliable is that intuition, right?
If you've been listening to
brighter and brighter stuff,
we can probably assume
that you're going to feel
everything bright feels good
and everything normal feels dull, right?
So you can get loss into your intuition
because of the deficiency
of your human brain.
00:04:01
The other way you can apprehend music
is by this more intellectual knowledge
base that you can build over time.
00:04:08
Now you're going to tell me,
"Ah, yeah, but
if my brain doesn't have permanent memory,
if I don't have any absolute hearing,
how can I build something
based on one track?
I'm going to forget that track too."
Well, the brain is good at repetition,
so if you focus on one track
or a set of tracks,
then you will get some sort of a
self-reinforcing phenomenon
that will allow you to zero in
more and more
on the quality—"texture"—of that track.
00:04:38
Also,
if you're in a situation where
you've been mixing for five hours
and you may have a moment of doubt there,
or maybe you are a little more methodical
and your brain tells you...
00:04:49
Because your brain talks to you.
Weird, but it happens, right?
So your brain tells you,
"Dude, it's been five hours.
00:04:55
Are you positive you want to add
12 dB at 10 kHz on this vocal?
Positive?"
Maybe that's the moment to use
the intellectual side of the referencing
and listen to that reference track.
00:05:08
And that will give you perspective
because now it's solid.
00:05:11
The thing is, for it to be solid,
that reference track
has to be known to you
and you have to have put it
through its paces,
and you have to be able to trust it,
because if you use any other track,
say the latest...
00:05:25
...Cardi B single,
you don't know if the latest
Cardi B single sounds good.
00:05:30
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't,
maybe it sounds good
but it's bright as balls.
00:05:35
You don't know.
00:05:36
So what you need is something
that if you turn it on
and your brain tells you,
"Oh, my goodness! This is dark!"
You have to be able to tell yourself,
"No, that's not dark. That is proper.
00:05:46
I'm just super, super-bright."
See what I mean?
So it's really important
that you build yourself
some sort of a library of songs
that you absolutely know are perfect,
so even if your brain tells you
that they sound bad,
you know that your brain is lying to you.
00:06:05
Let me show you.
00:06:06
I have here a session,
our trusty "Lifeboats" session,
and this is a mix that I did for some
sort of a seminar at Sweetwater.
00:06:13
It was all done In The Box.
00:06:15
I think the point of the thing
was to mix the whole song
in 10 minutes,
or 15 minutes,
like super, super-fast.
00:06:22
I did it in a room I didn't know,
I didn't have time to reference,
with speakers I didn't know,
I didn't have time to reference,
and it was just an exercise in,
you know, speed mixing,
and also showing people
that you don't have to agonize
over the bass drum sound
for eight hours
to get a decent
bass drum sound, right?
I would assume
that it doesn't sound so good,
or maybe not. Let's see.
00:06:43
Let's just listen to what I did
under pressure at Sweetwater.
00:08:09
All right.
00:08:10
So, I'm in my room,
I know my speakers, I know my room,
so within 1/2 bar...
00:08:16
And I haven't blasted myself today yet.
00:08:19
So within 1/2 bar of playing this
I already have my own intuition
of how I felt.
00:08:27
Did you?
So, did it feel bright?
Did it feel dark?
Did it feel just right?
Did you like the balances?
Did you feel it was compressed?
Uncompressed?
Did you feel it was natural?
What did you feel?
The thing is now,
there is no absolute, right?
There is no absolute versus relative.
00:08:47
We're entering the realm of, like...
00:08:50
What's my reference?
Where am I going?
So before I play a reference
I'm going to play with it a little bit
based on my feelings.
00:08:57
I haven't heard a reference yet
here for this exercise
so that I do this pretty naked
in front of you.
00:09:04
So, to me
it felt dark.
00:09:08
Darker than what I expected it to be,
so I was probably mixing
either in a very bright room
or with very bright speakers.
00:09:15
Let's see. What would I do?
I would probably
take a look at what I did here
and cheat. Ah!
See? I can see that nothing
was done on the high end,
so I was happy with this high end
back then,
which means what I was hearing
back then either...
00:09:30
I was drunk, which doesn't happen
when I mix, usually,
or I was really not hearing
what I'm used to.
00:09:36
See? I'm removing some bottom
here on the vocal,
and here on the vocal I'm also
adding a little bit of high end,
but not that much.
00:09:43
So I was really happy
with this balance then,
which means my monitoring was...
00:09:47
what it was.
00:09:48
So let's try and fix that. Let's see.
00:10:00
And for example,
right now I feel that maybe
this is unnecessary,
the lower mids and the bottom
added to the vocal.
00:10:08
Maybe it's not dull,
maybe it's a little muddy.
00:10:10
Those are two different things, right?
So let's see if that works for us.
00:10:18
That's better already.
00:10:19
And then let's try and see
what we have on the Pultec.
00:10:22
I'm going to add a little more
high end on the Pultec.
00:10:32
Let's check out that snare.
00:10:38
See? I'm lowering some...
00:10:40
...high end here on the snare.
Let's remove that.
00:10:50
That's just a duplicate
of the snare that I'm
gating like crazy
so that I can send just the snare
to some reverbs.
00:10:57
It does that.
00:11:01
I don't like the way
it sounds today, so...
00:11:05
I know it's not the purpose of this video,
but I just can't help it.
00:11:08
An obsession is an obsession.
Here we go.
00:11:12
That's more interesting.
00:11:25
That's pretty good.
Now question yourself:
do you remember what it sounded like
when I played it exactly 4.5 minutes ago?
Nope.
00:11:35
Nobody does, right?
So, how can you tell
if this is good and that was bad?
That is based on your intuition
because you are here and your brain
is seeing what you are doing
and you tell yourself, "This is good,"
because this micro enhancement
of removing the bottom of the vocal
and adding a little bit of
high end on the vocal
felt good at that moment, so your
brain says, "Oh, this feels good."
So this is your new normal, right?
But I was still in a good place.
Let's see.
00:12:06
You know? I'm tempted to remove
a little more of those lower mids.
00:12:18
That may be a little too much.
00:12:20
Now I know that it's too much
because I just did it
and my intuition tells me, "Argh...
00:12:25
Don't do that."
I feel that this really
holds together very nicely.
00:12:41
Let's see.
00:12:56
I'm okay with this.
00:12:57
It's not necessarily the best mix
in the history of modern music,
but it's functional
and I can hear the lyrics
and I can hear every instrument
and nothing feels offensive to me, right?
So now I have another mix here
and I'm going to compare
this fantabulous mix we just did
with another mix.
00:13:15
This is now.
00:13:27
And this is another song.
00:13:39
Let's listen to a place where
there's drums in this other mix.
00:13:55
So now what happens?
This is obviously much brighter, right?
And we can tell
the vocal is much brighter
and we can tell that the snare
is very different,
so it's difficult to get
a reference on the snare,
but the vocal feels
much brighter, right?
So
our previous mix feels much better.
00:14:15
Now let's do something really fun:
let's listen to this wonderful song
for an intro, a verse,
a chorus, and a verse.
00:14:22
Bear with me.
00:16:27
Now let's listen to the other mix
right away.
00:16:40
Okay. So now that feels dark,
so which is which?
Is our current mix dark?
Is "Immigrant Hands" mixed bright?
Which is it?
We don't know!
Well, you don't know, unless you've
listened to the Will Knox record.
00:16:54
I know because
"Immigrant Hands"
is one of my references.
00:16:58
I know it very well. I know
everything that's wrong with it,
and I know everything
that's good with it,
so I used it not because it's badass
—although I really like it.
00:17:07
I used it because I know its faults,
and I know where it stands,
and I know it intimately
because I've listened to it
in 800,000 different places.
00:17:15
So I know, for example,
that our mix today,
because of my reference work
and because of this relationship
I've built with this track,
I know that our mix today is dark.
00:17:24
And the vocal mostly is dark
and it could use some love,
and everything could be
opened up a little bit.
00:17:31
I also know that the 'esses'
on "Immigrant Hands"
are a bit much,
and that's a mistake
I made at the time.
00:17:38
But that allows me to check
on speakers, for example,
to make sure that the speakers
are actually showing me
the real transients
and not just compressing everything
and making everything sound good,
like some speakers.
00:17:48
This is a typical example of...
00:17:52
You mix for a while,
it feels good.
00:17:56
If you didn't have a reference,
or if you didn't have some sort of
other way to figure things out,
you would probably deliver
a dark mix to your client.
00:18:04
Then you listen to
your reference for a while
and then it feels perfectly fine,
and the stuff you've been doing
now feels dark.
00:18:10
Well, what if your reference
were corrupted?
What if your reference
were not a really good reference?
What if you made a mistake
building your reference?
So it is really important
that you spend time
educating yourself
on some sort of a baseline.
00:18:25
And we're not talking about taste,
because on "Immigrant Hands", for example,
my taste is these 'esses' are too much,
and if I were given the opportunity,
I would remix it with more de-essing,
but you have to just know where it's at.
00:18:41
A little later in this video I'm going to
listen to "Immigrant Hands" with you
and I'm going to show you
everything that's wrong about it
so that you can learn that
and maybe use it for yourself,
or you can do the same process
with another track,
but at least you'll see how I do it
and that may inspire you
to do it for yourself.
00:18:56
Let's look at a slightly
different situation,
in this case, in the spirit of
absolute
versus taste,
meaning,
is something right or wrong?
Or is something
just a decision by the mixer?
In this case, these are
two records that came out,
mixed by someone,
and
both of those records have been
scrutinized like records I've scrutinized,
and both of them were decided to be
as good as they were going to be.
00:19:27
Fair enough?
So I'm going to play the intro,
verse and chorus of the first one,
and then intro, verse
and chorus of the second one,
and then we'll talk.
00:21:04
That was Alev Lenz,
the amazing Alev Lenz,
and this is Amy Regan.
00:22:36
We're in the absolute here, right?
Both these records
were scrutinized to the point where
me as the producer and mixer,
and the artist,
and the artist's boyfriend,
and the artist's dog's boyfriend
all decided that this was it,
and they are so different.
00:22:56
They are so different.
00:22:57
Now let's listen to...
00:22:58
One of them is very bright
and one of them is a lot less bright.
00:23:01
One of them has the vocal very forward
and one of them has the vocal
deeper into the track.
00:23:07
If you listen to Alev singing here,
she's deeper in the track.
00:23:17
Hear Amy.
00:23:25
It's like it does this, right?
So,
are either of these things
right or wrong?
No, they're a question of taste.
00:23:35
But how do you know if something is
to be considered pretty loud,
or not loud enough?
Because as you've probably experienced,
the vocal level is one of the
hardest things to nail, right?
So when I was working with Amy
I was following Amy's references
and Amy's desire to be very forward.
00:23:54
And then when I was working with Alev,
she really wanted the vocal tucked in.
00:23:59
After a while you no longer know
what's going on,
so in this case my reference
is going to be
the elder statesman of folk music:
David Crosby.
00:24:07
Here is "Things We Do For Love."
This is a master, but check it out.
00:25:11
So in this case our baseline
happens to be kind of
in between the two, right?
So if we listen to Crosby...
00:25:48
So Crosby sits right in between
Alev and Amy,
which I'm sure he would enjoy,
but what does it mean for us right now?
It means that even though at this point
my reference may be Crosby,
and that's my baseline,
even if I'm mixing with Amy,
again, with this baseline of Crosby,
I'm probably going to err
towards this sound
because that's where
she wants to push it,
but I know and I'm conscious
that that's what it is,
which means I'll be able to rein in
a little bit how far I go.
00:26:21
And then, same with Alev. I was, like,
"I'll tuck it in and I'll tuck it in,"
and if I feel like, "Wow! This is too much
and it's not going to read well,"
I can reference Crosby and say,
"Ah, you know, it's not that far
and I'm good."
You don't have to be completely
absolute with your reference;
it's a matter of taste.
00:26:38
And it's difficult to balance,
especially when you have
the artist's dog's boyfriend
pushing on you to tuck the vocal in
or push dog up, usually.
00:26:48
So it's really difficult
if you don't do this all day,
every day.
00:26:53
What's your baseline,
and how far can you stray from it?
So what I propose to do
is I help you build your baseline,
and then show you
a few techniques on how to use it,
and then send you on your way to have
some sort of a reference ground
so you don't freak out
when you get lost.
00:27:09
How does one choose a song
to turn into a reference mix?
Well, my number one advice
is to make sure that you really,
really like the song
because you will listen to it
eight million times
and you don't want it to get old too soon
because you have to want to listen to it.
00:27:22
So it has to be great
or at least it has to be
something you think is great.
00:27:26
Number two:
it would be a good idea
to make sure that the track
sounds good by default.
00:27:32
And that's hard to do
because you don't have a reference,
and you are building a reference
out of nothing.
00:27:38
However, you can ask around,
or you can use this track
we're going to give you
as your first baseline,
and then you can grow it from there.
00:27:45
But the idea here is to choose
a track that's fairly even,
and that has predictable flaws
so you can use the flaws
to your advantage,
unless, of course,
you decided you wanted to be the brightest
mixer in the world, which you could be,
and in this case the reference
has to be very bright, right?
Makes sense?
You have to choose the track
that's going to push your mixes
in the direction you want them to be.
00:28:06
For example,
if you want to learn
how to tuck vocals in,
make sure that your reference track
has vocals tucked in
and you'll get used to that,
and that will be your baseline.
00:28:16
And then, if you need vocals louder
on one project,
they will feel louder but that's okay
because you'll know that your reference
has the vocals tucked in.
00:28:23
Makes sense? Okay.
00:28:25
So in this case of Will Knox,
for example,
it's one of my own mixes.
00:28:29
I've found that a lot of the people
you see on this site
and a lot of my friends and peers
tend to reference their own stuff
and not somebody else's stuff.
00:28:39
The reason for that, I think,
is that we know what we did,
and also, we know where we screwed up.
00:28:46
And so we know what happens
and we know why it is the way it is.
00:28:51
So, on top of building the reference,
of knowing what it is,
we'll also know why it is what it is,
which helps a lot reinforcing
the sense of security of knowing,
"This is what it is, I'm not making
a mistake, move forward."
So, Will Knox.
00:29:07
"Immigrant Hands" off his first record,
The Matador & The Acrobat,
which was entirely produced
and mixed and mastered
here at Flux Studios in New York.
00:29:18
And it was done 100% live
with him playing guitar
and singing at the same time,
which greatly compromises
both the sound of the guitar
and the sound of the vocal,
but that's okay.
00:29:33
Also, we had Chris Anderson on bass,
who is a really great player
and a very even player.
00:29:38
And the room sounds great here.
00:29:40
It's one of my favorite rooms, not because
it's mine but because I love it,
so the combination of all those things
makes it a really cool track
for me to play around.
00:29:48
It has become so much a reference for me
that I actually use it to check speakers
in rooms I don't know.
00:29:52
Let me show you why.
00:29:54
I'm going to play it, and then
I'm going to point things out.
00:29:57
So for example,
the intro with the bowed bass
is pretty perfect.
00:30:01
There are no peaks,
there is no note sticking out,
there is no frequency sticking out.
00:30:07
It is dry,
and it is fat,
and it is just right.
00:30:55
The guitar is super-even,
there's nothing catching.
00:30:58
If your playback system is good
you should hear a little bit
of hiss at the top
—just a little bit of hiss.
00:31:04
It's not as clean and transparent
as it should be
because of the tape plug-in
I used at the time to soften things.
00:31:11
That's so far, and now
we will get into the vocal.
00:31:14
The vocal is well-recorded
and it sounds good,
but you'll notice—you should notice—
that there's a little bit
too much action on the 'ess',
the transient is a little fast
on the 'ess'.
00:31:24
So if you listen to it
and it feels dark,
or if you listen to it and you feel that
the 'esses' are perfectly fine,
then your speakers or your headphones
are not rendering the vocal properly
and you should do something
about that. Check it out.
00:31:57
But the rest of the vocal was perfect,
and the tone of it
really suits my personal taste
for my reference track.
00:32:03
Next, check this out.
00:32:08
Listen to the word "flags."
On the word "flags" there is
a little bit of a peak at 3 kHz-ish,
like a little bit of a shine.
It's a little too much.
00:32:23
A lot of speakers don't play that back,
so I know if I want to mix
on those speakers,
or if I'm comparing it to another mix
and I don't hear that,
or I hear that too loud,
then I know I'm in trouble.
00:32:35
I know that those 'esses' on the vocals
are a little much on some words,
and I know that that 3 kHz thing there
is a little bit much,
and if I hear all that,
I feel very safe.
00:32:45
Let's keep going.
00:33:19
Here is the bottom
of these toms.
00:33:38
It's perfect.
It's basically a cliff:
it has to go all the way down,
you have to feel this fullness.
00:33:44
And of course,
I know what it should sound like.
00:33:48
You, over time, if you use this
as your reference track,
will learn how deep it should be
because one day you're going to
hear it in three different places
and you will be able to
infer what it should sound like
by the difference of those
three different places.
00:34:03
Or if you have a pair of Focal Sphear S,
this track sounds great on there.
00:34:09
Or if you have a pair of Solo6,
also Focal, they sound great on there.
00:34:12
Or Dynaudio BM6As,
it sounds great on there.
00:34:17
But basically
there's a natural sound to it
with no peaks,
no valleys,
no dips. It just is.
00:34:25
And that's why I picked this
as my reference track,
it's because I can compare
anything to this
and this just is my baseline,
my natural baseline.
00:34:33
Except for that shine at 3 kHz
on that one word
because he leaned into the mic
and because of those 'esses',
because there was just
some phase relationship
between the vocal mic
and the guitar mic and the room,
and it was as good as I
could get it at the time.
00:34:48
So that's my reference track,
that's what I use.
00:34:50
These are the things that I know
are wrong and good about it.
00:34:54
We're going to select the intro, verse,
chorus, and a little bit of the 2nd verse,
and make it a file,
and make it downloadable
as an exercise file
so that you can maybe use this
as your first building reference track
and then check it out
against other things,
knowing than this,
in my personal opinion,
sounds good enough for jazz.
00:35:14
And then you can go from there
and find something that sounds better
or that sounds closer to what you need,
but you have to start somewhere
and we thought it may be nice for you guys
to have something to start with,
and this would be it.
00:35:25
Next we're going to look at
some techniques on how to use this
in the context of mixing.
00:35:31
I reopened the session
that we started with,
Will Knox versus Will Knox,
to see who is going to win.
00:35:36
Here's our original mix.
00:35:37
I didn't keep the changes.
00:35:47
In Pro Tools there's a really easy way
to A/B between two tracks;
it's called Input Monitoring.
00:35:52
The way it works is...
00:35:55
It works like an old tape machine.
00:35:56
On an old tape machine
you had an Input button
where you could listen to
what was being fed to the tape machine,
and then you could also listen to
what was already on the tape
with the tape monitor so you could
compare between what was on the tape
and what was coming into the machine.
00:36:09
It is the same here.
00:36:11
This little green thing here,
when it's not green you're listening to
what's on the track already.
00:36:19
"Immigrant Hands."
And then, when it's green, you're
listening to what's coming into the track.
00:36:28
The number one thing
you must pay attention to
is to level match your reference
to your mix
and not the other way around.
00:36:36
Here's why:
if your reference mix
is a mastered track,
which is fine, you know?
Let's just say that it's the genetic
of survival of the fittest.
00:36:46
If people keep referencing
properly mastered tracks,
then hopefully their mixes will keep
getting better and better and better
if the master is any good.
00:36:53
Okay. So here's the deal:
if you take a mastered track
and you leave it at that level,
what's going to happen?
You're going to want to push
your mix to match that level,
which is dumb because you're
guaranteed to ruin the bottom,
overcompress everything,
and that's not how you do it.
00:37:08
What you should do
is bring your reference mix down,
especially if it's mastered,
so that you match the level of your
reference to the level of your mix.
00:37:17
Check it out.
00:37:18
Here.
00:37:23
That's my mix.
Here, that's my reference.
00:37:29
It's so loud. Check it out with the vocal.
00:37:32
Ow!
So,
use Clip Gain down here
to bring it down.
00:37:37
I'm estimating 10 dB, maybe a little more.
00:37:40
Let's just be squared because we are OCD.
00:37:42
Everybody is OCD to some extent.
00:37:45
12.
00:37:54
Now I've lowered my mastered
"Immigrant Hands" by 12 dB
using Clip Gain in Pro Tools
to be more or less at the same level,
and I can go back and forth between my mix
and my master by just clicking here.
00:38:06
That is incredibly useful.
00:38:08
Also, you have playlists,
so you can have
as many references as you want.
00:38:13
I suggest not going crazy
with many references
because that screws with your brain,
so pick one, or two,
if you need two different things.
00:38:20
Maybe one has a great vocal sound
that you want to reference
and one has a great bottom
you want to reference,
but if you could find
one track that does both,
it's better for your blood pressure.
00:38:30
So,
the playlist in Pro Tools lets you
choose what you're listening to,
different references if you have to,
and maybe different versions
of the same mix,
and do Input Monitoring this way.
00:38:42
It works amazing.
00:38:44
Now,
not every DAW
manages Input Monitoring this well.
00:38:50
Some of them are doing
a pretty good job,
some of them are doing
an ever so slightly lesser job,
and sometimes it makes
absolutely no sense
to use Input Monitoring on some DAWs
because they have these weird rules where
you can hear actually what's coming in
and what's on the track at the same time,
which is totally surreal to me.
00:39:07
But a way to go around that
in any DAW,
and actually, it also works
in Pro Tools,
is to just create a new track
and drag your reference onto that track.
00:39:18
Now we're going to call this 'REF'.
00:39:22
Okay.
00:39:23
And we'll send that track
to a separate pair of Outputs,
say Output 3-4. Okay.
00:39:28
Now if I press Play...
00:39:33
Here, on this track,
I want to call it 'Lifeboats Mix',
and now I'm going to have
my Lifeboats mix,
and then on this track
I have my reference mix.
00:39:45
And for this to work
you need a monitor section,
and then you can assign Output 3-4,
which is the Output that you sent
your reference to,
to another Input
on your monitor section
and now you can A/B
between the two tracks
by just switching two Inputs.
Makes sense?
And the other thing
that's amazing about that
is you don't have to use
any kind of Clip Gain stuff,
you can just use the fader
to adjust the overall level
of how much level is going from this track
to your monitor section.
00:40:12
So if your Input Monitoring
doesn't work so well,
you could use two tracks
with two sets of Stereo Outputs
and a monitor section
to switch in between the two.
00:40:23
It's kind of nice to be able to do it
physically like this
without having to look at the screen and
make sure you click that little 'I' button
because sometimes
you click that little 'I' button,
and you have your eyes closed, and
you think you're clicking the 'I' button,
and if you're listening between
two versions of the same mix
as opposed to a reference and a mix,
sometimes you kid yourself into thinking
that you're listening to the new mix
when you're listening to the old one,
and then you make mistakes,
and then your family is doomed
for seven generations.
00:40:48
If you don't have the monitor control,
you can use the other track
and set it to the same Output
and make sure that it's muted.
00:40:56
And then when you want to use it,
you solo it.
00:40:58
So, I'm listening to my mix.
00:41:03
And then,
here's my reference.
00:41:10
And then here's my mix.
00:41:13
It's not super-elegant,
it's not one click,
you can't really do it
with your eyes closed,
but close enough for jazz.
00:41:20
Here's another way to reference
which is actually very useful,
but it involves the devil.
00:41:25
Let me launch Spotify.
00:41:27
Some of your music is going to be
on Spotify, right?
And some of your music is actually
going to be leveled by Spotify
—and this is the subject
of another video—
but Spotify levels your music
for you, as a feature.
00:41:40
I created an Ear/Speaker Test playlist,
which is a bunch of tracks
that I listen to all the time.
00:41:45
"Infatuation,"
one of my mixes for Colette.
00:41:48
"Immigrant Hands" for Will Knox.
You know that one.
00:41:50
And then a bunch of stuff
that other people have done,
whom I have much respect for.
00:41:54
Selah Sue, "This World,"
amazing bottom, super-rich bottom.
00:41:58
Grace Jones, probably one of my
favorite-sounding records of all time,
this track, "This Is."
Not very punchy, but unbelievably
intricate and beautiful.
00:42:06
"Limit To Your Love"
is a great way to check
that your sub is not going to explode
when you play some bottom,
because if it's going to explode, it's
going to explode when you play this track.
00:42:14
And then St. Vincent's "Smoking Section."
That's a new one that Tom Elmhirst mixed,
and I really like
how loud and dry the vocal is,
and I really like how the bass drum
on the second verse comes in,
and it's a very tall mix.
00:42:28
And for me it's interesting to check
my stuff against that from time to time
when I want to make sure
that my mix is very tall,
that it has a lot of range this way.
00:42:37
For referencing, what I do
if I'm not referencing
my own tracks from time to time...
00:42:43
Oh, this is the last time
I referenced my own tracks,
but say I would put "Immigrant Hands"
into one Spotify playlist called REF,
and I would press Play,
and then I would just
have it loop down here.
00:42:56
And now I have Spotify playing
"Immigrant Hands" on loop at all times
no matter what I do,
and all I have to do to listen to it
is hit the button that I have
the Output of my Mac on.
00:43:07
Of course, for that you also need
a monitor section,
but let's be real:
you need a monitor section.
00:43:14
So basically I'm using Spotify
as my reference track
—the trick I showed you
with two tracks.
00:43:21
The thing that's good about that
is that Spotify has leveled the music
to where it's going to get played.
00:43:27
Eventually your mix
will get played on Spotify
until Spotify goes out of business,
but until then,
your mix will get played on Spotify,
and so it's really instructional
and interesting
to compare where your mix is at
with a Spotify mix.
00:43:42
The reason for that is
Spotify is not crushing things;
Spotify is actually leveling things
in a semi-reasonable manner,
so you can compare
your mixes with masters
at the same level
without having to destroy your mix.
00:43:58
That's because Spotify
will take the loudest mastering
in the history of universe
and bring it down
so that everybody plays
more or less at the same level,
which means
in the case of Spotify
you can actually check your mix
against masters on Spotify
without having to lower
the Spotify master most of the time.
00:44:16
Sometimes, because of album rules
and because of the morphology,
the look of certain tracks,
they play a little louder on Spotify
and you don't want to get fooled by that.
00:44:27
But when you find your references,
and if it's "Immigrant Hands,"
it's "Immigrant Hands,"
it plays just fine on Spotify,
then you can just let Spotify
be on stun
and check against it,
and you'll know you'll be
in the ballpark,
and you'll know that when
you deliver your mix
it won't play any louder or softer
on Spotify, it will play exactly the same.
00:44:47
Isn't that wonderful?
For those of you who don't have a reliable
Input Monitoring button on your DAW,
don't have a monitor section,
and are physically allergic to Spotify,
there's a solution
in the shape of plug-ins.
00:44:58
I bought a few, I bought
Sample Magic Magic AB,
quite good.
00:45:03
There's Reference by Mastering The Mix.
00:45:06
And my favorite is by
the good people at Melda
—they're really awesome people,
so I always favor good people.
00:45:13
It's called MCompare,
it's part of the bundle.
00:45:15
I'm sure you can buy it solo.
00:45:17
They've got so many plug-ins,
it's really difficult to learn them all,
but MCompare is dope.
00:45:23
This is what MCompare does:
the first thing you do
is select your reference.
00:45:27
"Immigrant Hands"
to keep with the theme.
00:45:30
And it's going to think about it
for a second.
00:45:32
That's it, you have
"Immigrant Hands" here.
00:45:35
It's a very simple principle.
00:45:37
If the plug-in is bypassed,
you'll hear your mix.
00:45:42
If the plug-in is enabled,
you hear your reference.
00:45:48
Okay? Now it gets deeper.
00:45:51
First, you can sync them,
because at this point right now,
if I go deeper into the song,
it will always play
wherever it left off,
as opposed to Synchronize,
and now, if I go to the top,
it plays the top.
00:46:09
If I go deeper into the track,
it plays deeper into the track,
which is pretty nice.
00:46:14
The other thing it does very well
is you can actually use
the automatic level setting,
meaning you can play your source...
00:46:25
It will listen to what's coming in,
listen to your reference,
and try and match levels
the best way it can,
or you can set up ALC
and it will continuously try to match
the level as your record goes.
00:46:36
I personally have a problem with ALC
because it kills dynamics,
so I'd rather find a spot in the song
that's representative.
00:46:52
Voilà! And you don't even need
the plug-in anymore.
00:46:54
Now, if you want to switch
between your mix and your reference,
all you have to do is bypass
and unbypass this.
00:47:00
It's pretty nice.
00:47:01
The difficult part about this
is to build trust between you
and that track or those tracks,
and that takes time.
You can't really accelerate it.
00:47:09
What you can do is watch videos like this
and be aware of it at all times.
00:47:13
That will accelerate it a little bit
as long as you are aware of a problem
and aware of the solutions.
00:47:18
That puts you on the right path,
but you have to pay the dues
and you have to take that track
and you have to listen to it so many times
in so many different places
with a critical ear and a critical mind,
doubting yourself at all times
until you no longer have to doubt.
00:47:33
Does that make sense?
Now,
are you going to use
the Will Knox track as a reference
if you do deep house?
Why not?
I mean, if you want to be
style-appropriate,
maybe you'll want to take
a Derrick Carter track
and pick one that you think
sounds great everywhere,
and that becomes your new reference,
and that will push you to mix
in that realm, in that direction.
00:47:56
It will help you choose
your amount of reverb,
it will help you choose
your amount of compression.
00:48:01
You have to make sure that that's
what you want to do though.
00:48:03
That's your thing, and that's going to
stay with you for years.
00:48:06
If you switch to a more neutral track
that just shows you, not style,
but evenness,
and tone,
and maybe a certain neutral balance,
then that could be used
for many different environments.
00:48:23
And you could be listening to Will Knox
for your reference for the whole day,
and then when you listen to
your mix at the end,
you crushed the hell out of the vocal
and it's swimming in reverb,
but at least you know
that that's what it is
and you know it was done on purpose,
not because you lost your way
along the way,
because it's easy to lose
your way along the way,
because that's what ways do.
00:48:43
Et voilà!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
- MeldaProduction - Mcompare
- Dangerous Music - Monitor ST
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
Jennifer Lopez
Mark Ronson
Les Nubians
Toots And The Maytals
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.
