Inside The Mix: Fab Dupont Mixing 1234
01h 48min
(23)
What happens when you change vital pieces of your rig like computers, converters, and outboard gear, along with OS updates and more over a few years; and then have to recall a mix?
In this pureMix Exclusive tutorial, Multi Award Winning Engineer, Fab Dupont, opens the original session for Ulrich Forman's song, "1234" and takes you through his system for recalling a hybrid mix full of analog hardware to reset, reverbs to re-time, and even a stereo tube-preamp to run the entire mix through.
Once the session is recalled, Fab breaks down how they took the song from a demo to a full production and deconstructs the mix, explaining every step of his thought process along the way.
Watch Fab explain:
- His hybrid analog/digital setup
- Patchbay routing
- His recall note system
- How he ran the entire mix through a stereo analog tube preamp from a spring reverb, and simultaneously created a level matched clean version of his mix "just in case"
- How he used a real EMT 140 plate reverb and an AKG BX10 spring reverb
- How to soften transients using tape plugins
- The process of augmenting the original demo and turning it into an exciting completed production
This video is a unique look at Fab's entire setup, his approach to hybrid mixing, production, and more.
Once you have seen how Fab does it, download the stems, and mix it yourself!
Watch Fab Dupont recall and deconstruct the mix of "1234" by Ulrich Forman. Only on pureMix.net
Parts of this site and some files are only accessible to pureMix Pro Members. Please see below our membership plans.
Once logged in, you will be able to click on those chapter titles and jump around in the video.
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:44 - The Value of Taking Notes
- 02:49 - The System
- 05:32 - Today's System
- 06:09 - The Processing Chain
- 06:56 - The Session
- 12:55 - Patching
- 18:20 - Why The Tubes?
- 21:01 - The Reverbs
- 28:15 - Listening Through The Chain
- 29:41 - Comparing The Mixes
- 31:23 - Level Matching
- 34:37 - The Tubes
- 43:00 - Song Background
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Drums
- 00:29 - Bass Drum
- 06:37 - Processing With Caution
- 08:46 - Snare
- 15:56 - Percussion
- 19:19 - Bass
- 25:59 - Guitars
- 31:11 - Piano and Keys
- 37:44 - Vocals
- 42:54 - Background Vocals
- 47:49 - Overview
| Part 1 | Part 2 |
00:00:00
Good morning children!
Today we're going to dive deep
into the recall
of a hybrid mix involving quite a bit
of analog hardware.
00:00:14
I'm getting quite a bit of calls, texts,
emails, messages on Instagram,
Twitter, messenger pigeons,
Facebook Messenger —no pigeons—
requesting to see the real-time process,
as in "Don't cut out the boring stuff,
we want to see it all.
00:00:32
We want to make sure that there
is no smoke, no mirrors, no Hollywood."
I'm like, "Okay, you asked for it?
Here you get it."
So the first thing we're going to do
is look at the session
and see what we are up against.
00:00:43
This session is for a song called "1234"
by an artist named Ulrich Forman.
00:00:48
I co-produced and mixed this song
two or three years ago.
00:00:53
So here's where the problems start:
two or three years ago
I was a different man
and my system was a different man too,
meaning
I've changed converters in the meantime,
I've changed interfaces,
I've changed hardware.
00:01:08
Some of the hardware
is probably gone or dead,
or rewired differently
with different cable,
maybe different cable lengths,
maybe the converters
are aligned differently.
00:01:17
It's a mess,
so... let's dive into the mess!
The way I keep track of what's going on
is I take as thorough as possible notes
in this plug-in called MNotepad
made by MeldaProduction.
00:01:31
The reason why I use MNotepad
is because it's simple
and because it's going to be
around forever,
because I know the kind of character
that the people who made this plug-in have
and I know that they will take care
of people because they're good people.
00:01:43
So I know that this plug-in
will not disappear,
which means that I'll be able to recall
my sessions from five years ago
five years down the road, which is nice.
00:01:51
But here's a problem:
the problem is,
since I don't have an assistant
because this process
is pretty long-winded,
I don't use an assistant for mixing
because I don't want to keep somebody
here for 14 hours doing nothing
just for them to work
for 30 minutes at the end
to make sure I don't screw up the notes.
00:02:07
The other problem is,
when you've been working
for 14 hours or 16 hours
and you're doing a 12-song record,
sometimes
the urge to get the hell out of here
is stronger than the urge to take notes,
so your notes are not always
very thorough.
00:02:21
Depending on the amount of pressure
that is on me to make sure
that I have to recall this,
then
I may or may not have
the best possible notes.
00:02:31
In this case,
because of the extremely
particular nature of this record,
I think I had very thorough notes
because I felt the need to
recall this exactly.
00:02:41
It's very particular and very different
from what I usually do,
so I probably covered my bases.
00:02:46
And if you see, it is fairly thorough.
00:02:49
Here is a little background information:
at the time, I co-produced and mixed this.
00:02:54
I was using an HDX system
with Lynx converters
with PT HD cards in them.
00:03:02
Basically I was using an HDX by Avid
for the I/O card,
but I was using Lynx converters
tricking the HDX card
into thinking they're Avid converters.
00:03:13
Here's another piece
of background information:
since then
I've changed my system,
and now I use an HD Native card here.
00:03:22
And
I use stock Avid converters
and I use an HD I/O,
or actually, a 192 Digital
to drive Dangerous Music D/A converters.
00:03:34
So we hear we have a change in tone
between the HDX and the HD Native card,
and I know you're not going to believe me,
but they sound different.
00:03:43
Don't tell anyone.They really do.And then there is a change
of converters between the Lynx
to going through a Digital interface
to going to Dangerous Convert-8 D/As.
00:03:58
And then there's all the other stuff
that has changed,
and then these days
I use a Convert-AD+
as my A/D converter.
00:04:06
At the time I used a 2192.
00:04:08
For the purpose of this video
I went up on the storage loft
and pulled my 2192 out
because that's a lot of variables
and I want to be able to get
as close as possible...
00:04:18
if possible, better than the original mix.
00:04:21
Still with me?
If not, rewind, listen to that again,
and then meet me here.
00:04:26
Welcome back!
Why on earth did I not write my card,
my converters,
and all that stuff in my notes?
Good question!
Because
in the last three or four years
I started experimenting
with different cards
and different converters,
and before then
it was pretty much a monolith.
00:04:46
I had an HDX card and a bunch of Lynx
converters for years and years and years,
so that was kind of a constant thing.
00:04:53
And then I started toying with things
and I would write the change
on the baseline.
00:04:58
So for example,
when I just started to do stuff
and I would do something
with just all Apollos,
I would write 'Apollo converters'.
00:05:04
But then,
I never really went back to the baseline.
00:05:07
But this particular thing here
was when the baseline was king
and it was understood
that the baseline was HDX plus Lynx,
so my advice to you is
don't assume any baseline.
00:05:20
Here I was able to remember what it was
because I have all the notes and I also
have pictures of the session,
but in a perfect world
you should write everything down,
including the stuff that you think
is never going to change,
because it will change.
00:05:33
So, to summarize the system
we're using today:
we are using a trashcan
made by a fruit company
as the computer.
00:05:42
At the time I was using a 12-core tower.
00:05:45
We are using a Magma chassis
with an HD Native card in it,
and that is connected to an HD I/O
and a 192 Digital.
00:05:54
The 192 Digital is connected to
a pair of Convert-8s,
giving me 16 channels of D/A.
00:06:01
Those 16 channels of D/A
are going into a 2-Bus+,
and then
all sorts of things happen,
I'm going to run you through that.
00:06:09
So here we are, 2-Bus+,
it's written right here.
00:06:12
There's a little bit of information
missing there, but I'll just explain why.
00:06:16
Our 2-Bus+ is at 0 dB.
00:06:18
Now,
I do not have to patch
from the converters to the 2-Bus+,
that's half-normalled
because that's what I always do.
00:06:25
I made it so that the patchbay
does it automatically
without me patching anything.Iz nice.At the time I was experimenting
with what could be done with the 2-Bus+
because this was one
of the first production models.
00:06:36
After a year or two of experimenting
and tweaking and stuff,
Bob at Dangerous had sent me
the very first production model
for me to use and test it on this record.
00:06:45
So I said, "You know what?
Why don't I try stuff
and see how far I can take it?"
So my idea was to do all my
parallel processing in analog,
and to do so
I set up my session as such.
00:06:56
Check it out.
00:06:57
I have my traditional receiving stems.
00:07:00
If you are confused about this,
you should watch the template video
available somewhere
on this very, very fine site.
00:07:05
Make sure you look at
my template video, not Andrew's,
because otherwise you'll get confused.
00:07:09
The first thing I do
when I open a session for mixing
is I set a bunch of
receiving Auxes stems:
Bass Drum, Drums, Bass,
Guitars, etc., etc., etc., etc.
00:07:20
In this particular case
I have one called Parallel Stem,
so any track in my session
that I want to send to the Parallel Bus,
for example, drums, bass,
and stuff like that,
you see here the Sends
to go to that Parallel Bus, right?
And those Sends go to this,
and you see that this
Parallel Stem right here
is going to Output 15-16.
00:07:42
And if you remember, we said in the notes
that 15-16 was getting special treatment.
00:07:47
So basically what I'm doing
with this 15-16
is I'm using this last stereo stem
on my 2-Bus+,
and I'm using the processing
on the 2-Bus+
to basically crush the hell out of
whatever I send to this Aux,
to this stem.
00:08:00
These two channels right here
have the option of
having the Harmonics and the Paralimit
on those two channels.
00:08:08
On the 2-Bus+
you could have the Harmonics processing
and the Paralimit processing
either on 15-16 or 13-14
on the 2-mix.
00:08:18
Since I've been using the 2-Bus+
I've been using the Paralimit
and/or the Harmonics on the 2-mix,
on the full mix.
00:08:27
Although this trick I just did
worked great...
00:08:29
I don't know why, I keep changing things
so that I don't get bored.
00:08:33
So what I did at the time
was I actually turned
the Harmonics on stun
and the Paralimit on stun,
so that allowed me to use
those two analog processes
to crush the hell out of
whatever I send to that stem, 15-16.
00:08:49
So that is that.
00:08:51
'Clean version is NO tubes',
I'll explain that later.
00:08:54
The next thing we're going to set up
is Insert 1, Insert 2, Insert 3,
Insert 4, Insert 5,
all that is the Dangerous Liaison.
00:09:05
And it's usually Liaison B,
that was my baseline.
00:09:09
This is the Dangerous Liaison right here,
which is kind of like my...
00:09:13
you know, automatable
or recallable patchbay.
00:09:16
And I have all six Inserts on.
00:09:20
I love doing that.
00:09:21
Okay,
Insert 1 is my Fatso
and it says In at 1.5,
Out at 6.5.
00:09:30
And by the way, the Fatso tends to be
close to unity, at least on my system,
meaning that
if I do this and I bypass the Fatso
I don't have a big jump in level.
00:09:41
And it says
Compressor off, Warmth off,
and Transformer off,
which means I'm just using
the tape emulation.
00:09:49
This thing makes everything fat,
hence the name, I think, Fatso.
00:09:53
Insert 2 is my Neumann chain,
and it says everything is off
except +2 dB at 10 kHz.
00:10:00
Done!
Insert 3 is my Chandler LTD-2s,
those are 2254 knockoffs by Chandler.
00:10:09
Wade Goeke designed that stuff,
it's bananas!
Gain at 0,
Threshold at +10,
so basically I'm not compressing.
00:10:19
Attack at 100 ms
and
Release at 200 ms.
00:10:23
So this is going to do very little
with the Threshold so high,
we'll see what the needles say
once we start running audio through it.
00:10:31
That's probably because I like
the sound of the transformers on this,
or at least I did at the time,
and I still do today.
00:10:36
Insert 4 is the BAX EQ,
it says
High-Pass at 36,
it says
+0.5 at 230 Hz,
it says +0.5 at 4.8 kHz,
and it says
Low-Pass at 28 kHz.
00:10:57
Insert 5 is the Dangerous Compressor,
Bass Cut, Sibilant Boost
on the Sidechain,
and
Smart Dyn, Soft Knee, Ratio at 1.4:1,
Gain at -10.
00:11:11
Ooh! I'm losing a lot of Gain here,
there must be a good reason for that.
00:11:15
Threshold at +4,
the Attack is automatic
so I don't touch this one,
and obviously, it's Linked in Stereo.
00:11:22
And then Insert 6 is the Manley.
00:11:24
The Manley has 2.5 clicks at 30 Hz
—I don't know if they are dB,
they are clicks at 30 Hz—
and 2.5 clicks at 16 kHz.
00:11:35
Usually it's 12 kHz, so I don't know
why I'm at 16 kHz.
00:11:39
There must have been
something interesting.
00:11:42
There you go.
00:11:43
So that's my Stereo Bus chain.
00:11:45
It actually is my usual Stereo chain,
but there's a twist!
I can read right here the twist.
00:11:49
The twist says that I'm doing
something very funky.
00:11:52
It says 'Master Inputs'.
00:11:54
So I have here a Dangerous Master and I'm
using it for a very particular purpose.
00:11:59
Let me show you.
00:12:00
Let's just set the settings
and then I'll explain, okay?
The Master says...
Ooh! Lots of exclamation points.
00:12:08
'Master Inputs at -5 dB.
00:12:11
It's the only song like that on this
record, don't forget to put them back'.
00:12:14
That means I probably forgot on one recall
and then I was really upset with myself,
and so I used exclamation points
to make sure that I didn't screw up again.
00:12:21
So, Inputs at -5,
and then it says the Output of the
Liaison B, which is what we just set up,
goes into the Input
of the Dangerous Master.
00:12:29
We'll do that when we patch.
00:12:31
Insert 2 is going to be
our little tube trick,
which I'll explain in a while,
and then
the Input Monitor is Off
for the clean version
and On for the dirty version.
00:12:42
I'll explain again.
00:12:44
And then, Input Monitor Offset is at 0,
and the Output is at maximum.
00:12:50
And the Output of the Dangerous Master
goes to the 2192 converter,
which I'll explain in a second.
00:12:56
So right now would be a good time
to patch everything.
00:12:59
I mentioned before
that the Outputs of Pro Tools
are half-normalled to the Input
of the 2-Bus+ here,
right here.
00:13:06
Cool! Then
we're going to have to take
the Output of the 2-Bus+,
which is here, 2-Bus+ Rec Output,
because there's also a 2-Bus Monitor
Output, but we're not using it today.
00:13:17
And we'll feed that into the Liaison B,
which is that big chain
of stuff over there.
00:13:23
Okay?
And then it says over there,
if you remember well,
if you've been paying attention,
that the Output of the Liaison B
has to go into the Input
of the Dangerous Master.
00:13:34
Boom shaka laka boom!
And then the Output
of the Dangerous Master,
but not the straight Output,
the Monitor Output,
and there's a trick to that which I'll
explain once I can play it for you.
00:13:43
That
goes into the Input of my converter.
00:13:48
My converter,
I brought it back from the dead
for you today,
is the 2192, and because
this room is always changing,
which is...
00:13:59
we
will use the lines that go
to the Crane Song HEDD
for the 2192 today.
00:14:06
That's why it says HEDD instead of 2192.
00:14:09
But it's a lie, and the 2192 is still here
but it's no longer connected,
and this needs to be redone but that's not
the kind of time we have today.
00:14:17
So, stay with me.
00:14:20
The Outputs of my Pro Tools
are half-normalled
to my 2-Bus+ Inputs.
00:14:27
The Output of my 2-Bus+, Stereo,
is being sent to the Input
of the Liaison B.
00:14:33
It's going through all those little
shenanigans internally over there,
the Fatso, the Neumann,
and all that stuff.
00:14:39
The Output of the Liaison B is going
into the Input of our Dangerous Master,
and the Monitor Output
of our Dangerous Master
is going to the Input of my 2192,
and the Digital Output of the 2192
is being fed to Pro Tools,
and then I'm recording that.
00:14:56
If you've been paying attention,
you probably noticed a few minutes ago
that I mentioned a tube trick.
00:15:02
What kind of tube trick could that be?
This kind.
00:15:06
This, my friends,
is called a Spacexpander.
00:15:09
It is the preamp part
of a spring reverb
used a lot by an artist named King Tubby,
but people have been ripping
the preamps out of that reverb,
because the reverb is...
00:15:21
you know, it's a spring reverb,
it goes 'boing'.
00:15:23
It's fun though.
00:15:24
But I'm using the preamp just as itself
to make things dirty,
and
so I'm going to
put this here for a reminder
so it's in the other shots
and you remember it exists,
and basically it's like...
00:15:39
it's pretty hardcore.
00:15:41
It's going from RCA to...
00:15:45
...XLRs to...
00:15:48
TTs.
00:15:49
And it is kind of stereo,
I'll explain that.
00:15:52
Kind of stereo
is a new kind of stereo which is...
00:15:55
...close to stereo.
00:15:56
If you remember, I said
that the tubes were on Insert 2
of the Master,
so the Output of the Master
is going to go to the Input
of the tube machine,
and the Output of the tube machine
is going to go on the Input of Insert 2.
00:16:14
So that's another set of patching.
00:16:16
And then, the last little
piece of patching:
we had decided with Polerik,
who is the mind behind Ulrich Forman,
that we were going to use as much
as possible all hardware reverbs,
so I'm going to patch those now
so that we don't have to come back
to this shot
and go back to our comfortable
sitting shot later, when we grow up.
00:16:36
So, on this show we have
one EMT plate, 140,
one BX10,
and a PCM 42 mono Lexicon delay.
00:16:47
And I want to patch them
in a particular manner.
00:16:49
I want to do the patching now and then
I'll explain when I sit back down,
okay?
The BX10 is on Insert A 7-8.
00:17:02
The BX10 is an AKG spring reverb
that sounds bananas!
We'll use green cables for that.
00:17:15
7 and 8.
00:17:21
The PCM 42
is on Insert 6.
00:17:26
And if you are wondering
why I'm using Inserts for reverbs,
I'll explain
soon.
00:17:36
There you go. 6.
00:17:39
And then the EMT
is on 3-4.
00:17:44
Output 3-4.
00:17:45
And the EMT is in the shop,
so I have to use my tie-lines.
00:17:51
The Send of the EMT is on 5-6,
tie-line 5-6.
00:17:57
And let me find two more red cables,
preferably of the same length.
00:18:03
And the Return of the EMT
is on tie-line 7-8
and Insert 3-4 on Pro Tools.
00:18:12
Voilà!
That's it for now for the hardware,
the patching, the cabling,
and the touching of the pieces of gear.
00:18:20
Let me explain a couple of things.
00:18:22
First,
that Dangerous Master thing.
00:18:26
You noticed that the Input was down to -5
and the Output was at +5.
00:18:32
The reason for that is probably
because this is pretty hot
and I needed to be able to get into
this box right here not too hot,
because this thing distorts
when you look at it,
which is its function,
but you don't want it to distort too much,
otherwise it's unusable.
00:18:47
And why am I using this?
Because
Polerik came to me
to co-produce and mix the record
because he was interested
in the kind of tone I get
and, you know, the vision I have
with the songs and stuff like that.
00:18:59
But he also had a vision of his own:
he wanted the song
to sound pretty vintage
and pretty distorted.
00:19:06
And none of this stuff
was recorded vintage or distorted,
it was all recorded nice
and clean and pristine,
and so I thought, "You know what?
Why don't we do something insane?
Let's just run the whole record
through this tube reverb preamp."
And he said, "That's a great idea!"
so that's what we decided to do,
but then the rational part of me
came back, and as it usually does,
I said to myself, "Ooh!
I better have a safety."
So here's my safety:
this thing
is not designed to take
a whole mix through it,
it's designed to send a guitar into it
and it goes 'boing'.
00:19:38
That's not what we are doing,
we are misusing it grossly,
and the problem with that is that when
you use a whole mix through this thing,
it distorts, but it distorts too much.
00:19:48
So I had to pad the Input into this
and then raise the Output
so that I would not lose too much level
and not get too much noise.
00:19:57
Does that make sense?
Because this distorts a lot
with a lot of level,
I decided to hit it less hard.
00:20:03
But to be able to hit it less hard
and be able to have a clean version
and a dirty version
more or less at the same level
I needed some sort of a
level management system.
00:20:13
These are what we call
first world problems.
00:20:15
So,
to manage what I did
I used the Dangerous Master
Input Monitor Offset system.
00:20:23
The system works as such:
when it's Off, the Monitor section
of the Dangerous Master
just plays what's on the Input.
00:20:30
Clean wire.
00:20:32
I use that for clean,
hence clean wire.
00:20:34
When it's On, you can hear everything,
including the Input, the Output,
and whatever Inserts are selected.
00:20:40
So what I did
is I used the Dangerous Master
Input knobs
to pad how much I was sending
to Insert 2, which is the tubes,
and the Output knob maxed
to gain that level back.
00:20:52
Makes sense?
So now when I hit that button
I can go between clean and dirty
at the same level
without hitting this too hard.Iz nice!Before we start listening to music,
let's look at the reverbs.
00:21:06
As I said, we decided we were going to use
as much as possible hardware reverbs,
and actually, at the time
we used all hardware reverbs,
but
there's always problems
with hardware reverbs:
they break, they get stolen,
they get reassigned to other rooms,
they marry, have babies, and move away.
00:21:22
They're a problem,
so here is my system
to go around that problem.
00:21:26
The traditional way of doing this is you
want to send your snare drum to your BX10,
you set up a Send in Pro Tools
to a physical Output
of your Pro Tools interface,
you connect that to your BX10,
you take the Outputs of your BX10 and you
feed them into a pair of Return tracks,
et voilà.
00:21:42
The problem with that is that
if your BX10 dies —and it will—
then the whole gain stage is gone
because you now have to replace
something that was an external Insert
by something else,
you may not have another
hardware reverb that sounds the same,
you're going to try
and fake it with a plug-in.
00:21:57
It's a pain in the butt,
so what I do is I set up
an Aux in Pro Tools
and I set up an I/O Insert,
meaning I'm using the same Output
and Input pair on the interface.
00:22:07
Here, for example, the BX10 is 7-8.
00:22:11
So on our Interface A, Output 7-8,
I will have
sound going out,
and then it will come back
from the BX10 into Input 7-8.
00:22:20
And that's considered an I/O Insert,
and it's even delay-compensated,
which is bananas.
00:22:25
So, to be able to send, say this vocal
to my BX10, which is a little
noisy as you can see,
I'm going to set up a Bus
to this Aux called BX10.
00:22:36
And on that Aux there's an I/O Insert
which is going to send the audio
to the BX10 and back.
00:22:41
The benefit of that
is, for example, with my AMS,
which is not available today,
I have the Insert here.
This should be going to my AMS and back,
but I don't got no AMS today
so I want to use the Universal Audio...
00:22:56
...AMS. There you go.
00:22:57
Poof!
I don't have to change anything else.
00:23:01
So if my EMT dies,
I can use the UA EMT 140 plug-in.
00:23:06
If my PCM 42 dies, I can use
the PSP PCM 42 plug-in.
00:23:09
And if the BX10 dies, I can use
the UA AKG BX20 plug-in
and tweak it until it sounds
like the BX10.
00:23:18
It sounds fatter than the BX10
because it's modeled after a BX20,but you can make it do things.So the settings of MNotepad right here
tell me that my AMS hardware
was set up as such:
Program 1, fair enough.
00:23:30
Predelay: 10.
00:23:36
10, we said.
00:23:38
You know what?
There you go.
00:23:40
Decay Time: 1.6
Low EQ at 0,
High EQ at -2.
00:23:48
And this thing sounds so close
that I feel very confident
that this will recall just fine.
00:23:53
I have to set up a PCM 42,
which is on Insert 6 right here.
00:23:56
Let me turn it on.
It works better when it's on.
00:24:00
And it says
In at max,
Feedback at +2.
00:24:09
+2 is right around here.
00:24:10
Hi Cut is pretty much always on.
00:24:13
That's always on stun.
00:24:17
Set the Delay, obviously.
00:24:19
The Delay is at 74.
00:24:24
Come on!
There you go.
00:24:28
And then Depth at 0.
There's no modulation.
00:24:30
That's my PCM 42.
00:24:32
The BX10! The thing with hardware
is that it's not necessarily
at your fingertips,
so my BX10 is perched
on top of my storage cabinet
on stilts made by IsoAcoustics.
00:24:43
Why that?
Because it used to be
that it was on the ground
or on a lower piece of furniture
right here without isolation,
and every time somebody walked
in the room it would go [explosion]
which freaked everybody out
and it ruined prints.
00:24:56
So now I put it on top
of the storage cabinet
and I put it on IsoAcoustics stilts,
and now you can dance
the jig here in this room
and nothing happens with the springs
and you don't get the noise.
00:25:07
However, you need a ladder
to adjust the time.
00:25:09
Let's do that.
00:25:11
I'm a trained professional!
Don't try this at home folks.
00:25:15
Of course, I strongly recommend
you learn the settings by heart
before you come up the ladder.
00:25:20
Otherwise it can be frustrating
to have to go back to the computer
to read what it's supposed to do,
but I did that.
00:25:26
So it's on 3.5, it's on stun,
there's no EQ settings.
00:25:30
Everything is cool.
00:25:31
So that happened.
00:25:36
All right! So,
I'm noticing one thing here.
00:25:40
There are no notes about the EMT
in these notes.
00:25:46
Why would that be?
Well, because the EMT
is kind of a set-and-forget thing.
00:25:50
You get in it and you get out of it.
00:25:52
However, there is a length control
but I see no length control here,
and the reason for that
is probably that
I set it at the beginning
of the mix session
and then I forgot it was there
because I import settings from session
to session and I move very fast.
00:26:05
So what we're going to do
to find out what the length of that is...
00:26:09
Let's open a mix from the
Ulrich Forman folder,
let's go to "Today."
That's the name of the song.
00:26:19
January 4, Open.
00:26:23
Let's import just the mixed track.
00:26:26
And here's MNotepad,
and it says...
00:26:30
There you have it,
'EMT Mid Length'.
00:26:34
So let's go switch the EMT
and make sure that it is in mid length.
00:26:40
So this is the beast, EMT 140,
Mono In, Stereo Out.
00:26:45
And
the markings are 1 second,
2 seconds, 3 seconds, 4 seconds.
00:26:50
It's not... Anything that's written on it
has absolutely no bearing with reality,
so I'll just put it in the middle
of what those notes say.
00:26:58
That's about the middle-ish.
00:27:00
Also, while we are here
we should probably patch it.
00:27:03
This is the long-frame patchbay.
They're not 1/4", they're long-frames.
00:27:08
Old-school.
00:27:09
And this long-frame patchbay
actually goes to every room at Flux.
00:27:13
Dangerous,
Revolution which is in the front,
and Fabulous which is mine.
00:27:17
And if you remember...
00:27:19
This is the plate. In and Out.
00:27:21
So, if you remember,
we said
that the Send was going to be 5-6.
00:27:27
Only 5 here because there's nothing on 6.
00:27:31
And the Output was 7-8.
00:27:35
So this allows us to patch the plate
to the Dangerous room
or the Revolution room
or the Fabulous room using the tie-lines
in between the rooms,
or to use stuff from the Fabulous room
and send it to the Dangerous room,
which is pretty cool.
00:27:48
Of course, the grounding
is a phenomenal lot of fun
but that's not what
we're discussing today.
00:27:52
Well, that happened.
00:27:54
We patched,
we tweaked,
we went on ladders,
we came down from ladders, safe.
00:28:01
We patched tie-lines
with old long-frame patch cables,
we changed the length
of hardware reverbs,
we set up the PCM 42,
we did all the hardware,
so now it's time
to listen to what we just did.
00:28:17
So I'm going to set myself
on Input right here
and I'm going to listen to the song.
00:28:22
And this, my friends,
is why some people mix In The Box.
00:28:27
All right! "1234" by Ulrich Forman.
00:28:30
At this point, most of the time
you press Play
and garbage comes out
or there is no sound.
00:28:34
Let's see what happens.
00:29:36
It sounds like music. Miraculous!
All right, so,
now we have to make sure
that our recall matches the original mix.
00:29:43
Let's look at the Playlist here
and
this is '1234 Jan 4th'
and then '1234 Jan 4th.clean'.
00:29:52
So we were listening
to what's going on today.
00:29:56
I'm noticing over there
that my Input Monitor Offset
button is Off,
so I should compare really
to the clean, not to the distortion.
00:30:05
Remember that.
00:30:06
So let's listen to the clean.
00:30:08
As always, when this is green
you're listening to what's going on
right now, your current mix,
and when this is gray you're listening to
the mix that's printed on the track,
so let's go.
00:30:26
Or the original mix.
00:30:39
It's close, but it's not quite right.
00:30:40
Let's listen to the chorus. Today.
00:31:05
First thing I'm noticing,
and I trust you'll notice too,
is that today's mix is quieter
than the original mix.
00:31:12
Why would that be?
That would be because we're not using
the same converters,
they're not aligned the same,
and then there's a little bit of tolerance
in everything that's going on here,
meaning that it's not always
exactly precise and that stuff adds up.
00:31:25
So I personally have no qualms
compensating
because what we're looking for
is to try and be as close as possible.
00:31:33
The easiest place in my chain
for me to adjust
the overall level of the mix
would be probably in analog, the Output
of the Dangerous Compressor.
00:31:42
If you remember, it was
all the way down to -10.
00:31:45
That probably was because
I didn't want to hit this thing too hard,
but I have a little bit of headroom.
00:31:51
It's not that much
of a difference in level,
so why don't I just start there
and see how it feels?
I'm going to start at -10
and I will slowly raise it,
and then I'll compare
switching this button right here
between the old mix and the new mix.
00:32:30
Close enough for jazz.
00:32:31
Also, I kind of like the way
it sounds better today.
00:32:34
That's probably because I like these
converters better. Let's check it out.
00:32:58
That is pretty close. However,
I'm sure you will not have been
without noticing
that we have a problem
with the EMT right here.
00:33:05
Let's solo the vocal and see what happens.
00:33:13
We hear the PCM 42 and the BX10
but I don't hear the EMT.
00:33:16
If I disable the I/O Insert...
00:33:22
This proved that my internal
routing is good
because I have signal
without the I/O Insert,
so now I'll turn it back on
and figure out where I screwed up.
00:33:30
Output 3-4,
A 3-4,
going into tie-line 5-6,
and Output of tie-line 7-8
going into Input...
00:33:43
...3-4 of Pro Tools.
Let's go into the I/O Setup.
00:33:46
The I/O Setup says that
3-4 is here,
Analog,
Analog. This is all looking
very, very kosher.
00:33:55
This, in my opinion,
points to a hardware failure.
00:33:59
I'm going to go check in the shop.
00:34:00
You don't have to come.
00:34:02
And now I can confirm
that an EMT plate,
like most pieces of hardware
and some software,
works a lot better when it's on.
00:34:14
Nice!
So,
we have recalled everything
and patched everything,
replaced to the deceased AMS
by the UA plug-in.
00:34:25
We remembered to turn the EMT on,
made sure that the BX10
had the same settings,
the same for the PCM 42,
everything is working.
00:34:34
We matched levels...
00:34:35
So,
why don't we start looking at the mix?
I don't know about you,
but I'm dying to hear
what the tubes do.
00:34:43
Don't you? Yes.
00:34:45
So let's listen to the song;
verse, chorus.
00:34:48
First we will listen to the verse
because it's quieter,
so it's going to get less tube action,
and then we will listen to the chorus
which is louder, more tube action.
00:34:56
And I want to play it once without
and once with.
00:36:11
See what it does texture-wise?
Let me focus on it, okay?
So, with.
00:36:33
It's a little louder with,
so I'm going to compensate here.
00:36:37
I lowered the Output 1 dB when it's On
to try and match the level more.
00:36:42
So, without.
00:37:00
Focus on
the connection between
the vocal and the guitar.
00:37:04
You'll hear that
there is a certain
saturation, obviously,
and a certain compression that doesn't
really sound like compression,
it's just like density that happens
when you turn the tubes on.
00:37:13
Check it out. This is with.
00:37:33
It's more hi-fi without,
but we're not looking for hi-fi,
we're looking for lo-fi-ish.
00:37:37
This is the chorus without tubes.
00:38:06
I want to do it one more time.
00:38:08
It's not as drastic as you would expect
by looking at the thing,
but it is pretty awesome
for this particular purpose.
00:38:39
Obviously, without
is the kind of sound
that you may be used to hearing from me,
but with is a lot of fun
and perfect for this record.
00:38:49
So I propose we leave it on
while we listen to everything,
plus,
the record that is available,
that's being put out,
is with the tubes On
on this particular rack.
00:38:58
Not all tracks got that treatment.
00:39:00
Some tracks were released clean
and some tracks were released
with the distortion.
00:39:04
This mix differs from other mixes
you may have seen me analyze
in many different ways
besides tubey right here.
00:39:11
One of the major ways is, as you notice,
here I'm using only four reverbs.
00:39:16
Usually, if I'm going to mix
a pop record
—and this falls more or less
into the pop realm—
I'm going to use dedicated reverbs
for every group of instruments
so that when I print stems
there is no bleed from the snare
into the vocal reverb and vice versa.
00:39:31
In this particular case, because
we were using hardware reverbs,
I'm only using four reverbs
and I am using them for everybody.
00:39:38
So you noticed that here
on the lead vocal, for example,
which should be around somewhere...Hi gorgeous! How you doin'?The EMT, the BX10, the 42...
00:39:47
Oh! I'm using a UA delay right here.
Check it out. He he he!
But these three here
are the hardware reverbs
and they're the same reverbs
that I'm sending this bass into
and everything else.
00:39:58
I see a couple extra reverbs here.
I cheated.
00:40:01
There's a snare reverb,
that's an EMT 140.
00:40:04
Anything yellow is a telltale thing.
00:40:06
And what else do we have?
We have that echo right here.
00:40:09
It's a Delay Send,
that's probably a special effect.
00:40:11
And
this 201 right here
which is a slap for the lead,
and then these are my hardware reverbs.
00:40:19
And today one of my hardware reverbs
is replaced by the UA AMS
instead of the real AMS.
00:40:23
Everything else is pretty much ganged up.
00:40:26
So that's one big difference,
so it creates a different sound.
00:40:29
Maybe a little more meshed,
a little less defined
in between the instruments,
which is what we were looking for.
00:40:34
We were looking for
a big rolling mess, but,
the reason why Polerik came to me
is because he liked the way
my stuff sounded.
00:40:40
So,
what I like to do is I like to define
the instruments a lot
and I like to have a lot of separation,
so we tried to get the rolling mess thing
but still some punch and separation
as opposed to maybe something that's
just a big cloud of sound,
which could be cool too, but...
00:40:55
...that's not my thing.
00:40:56
And if that's what he wanted
he would have gone to somebody else.
00:40:59
So we were looking for a hybrid.
00:41:01
Let's listen to the whole record,
let's listen to a verse,
pre-chorus, chorus,
second verse,
just to get ourselves in the vibe
and stop talking for a second, yeah?
Here we go.
00:43:02
Such a good song!
So,
listening to this like this reminded me
that the point of this is music,
it made me feel like sharing with you
a little bit of the process
that got us to this point before we start
nerding out even deeper
into bass drum settings
and stuff like that.
00:43:20
Polerik is a very accomplished
producer and writer,
and he does a lot of music all the time.
00:43:25
He came to me with this demo
and I have it here.
00:43:29
I usually have the original demo
in the session,
named 'Rough'.
00:43:34
Not because it's rough,
because it's called a 'rough'.
00:43:36
Don't go thinking like that.
00:43:38
And I refer to it all the time
because artists that come to me
to produce their record
come from all walks of life
and all levels of advancement,
all places in their career,
and also
all levels of advancement in the process
of that particular record.
00:43:55
Some people show up with two guitars
and two dudes come here,
they sit on the couch and go,
"That's the song,"
and we start from there.
00:44:05
Some people show up and you're like,
"Umm, what do you need me for, dude?"
And some people show up in-between.
00:44:12
So, Polerik
showed up with this,
what I want to play you,
and we were actually hanging out
and listening to something else
and he played me this,
and I said, "Dude, this is
an amazing song!
But I think that if you did this,
this and this,
and then this and this and this,
then it would be even better."
So let me play you what he played me,
then I'll show you my thought process
and then we'll geek out.
00:44:46
Let me level-match so that I can go
in between the two.
00:44:56
I'll lower that a little bit
using Clip Gain.
00:45:07
One thing you may notice
is that the rough
doesn't have the energy burst
in the same place
as the markers here will let you know.
00:45:14
Maybe the structure changed.
You never know.
00:47:56
So I heard that and I was like,
"Dude! This is awesome!
This is great. I love it!
However,
my personal opinion —and I share it
with myself mostly at this point—
is that that "1, 2, 3, 4" hook
is so there that it gets diluted.
00:48:13
Number one.
00:48:14
So my brain turns off
after the third time I hear it,
there's nothing else for me to get to,
and even if the groove comes in at the
right time and it's really well organized,
I feel that if we could break
that stuff up a little bit
then you'll get more mileage out of it."
Second,
I felt that this part right here...
00:48:37
The first time I heard that I was like,
"This is an amazing chorus!
Why is it only once in your song
and why is it so far out, like almost
a minute and a half into the song?
It's like... you could really
make people feel more things
if this came closer,
and also, this little 'purgatory'
before the chorus...
00:49:02
Meh.
00:49:03
I'm not a super-fan of that,
I think that that could be used
as maybe a change,
but to have it be the same
before every chorus
and have the chorus have
the same lyrics as the verse,
or maybe it's all choruses
and it's an atypical structure.
00:49:16
But I think that's a shame
because if you use that
just a little bit more as a chorus
I think it would be awesome."
So we started...
00:49:23
I told him all that
and he was looking at me like, "Hmm."
And then he contacted me
and said, "You know, I would like to try
your version of the song,"
and that's how we started
working together.
00:49:35
I wasn't a fan of the bridge either.
00:49:42
That kind of, like, groovy thing
kind of was out of the, like,
more rugged 'grrr' thing,
so I wasn't a fan of that.
00:49:50
However, I loved it when he did
the "1, 2, 3, 4, 1..."
I thought that was great,
which is why I always listen to demos
all the way to the end, no matter what,
because if you don't, you might miss
the cool thing that's at the end
that you could recycle elsewhere.
00:50:04
So you remember his structure was,
"1, 2, 3, 4, hey,"
small acoustic guitar and everything,
and then there was
kind of like a chord,
and then there was a big chorus
that said "1, 2, 3, 4, hey"
with kind of a tag
at the end of the chorus.
00:50:19
Then he went back down
to a smaller, same "1, 2, 3, 4"
and then he went to this
"just a little bit more."
And then the bridge was "1, 2, 3, 4"
with a groovy thing,
and then he went back into
"1, 2, 3, 4, hey"
with the big groove.
00:50:33
And then there was that turnaround
where he says, "1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4."
That was his structure.
00:50:41
And the structure we worked out
together is like this:
Up until then,
no change from what he had.
00:51:11
This is where we started to update
the structure.
00:51:28
Notice that
the vocal goes over the beginning
of the "Oooh!",
so we don't have that wait
that we used to have.
00:51:35
This is the way it used to be.
00:51:46
So I felt that if we were able to
overlap those things
we would get more energy
out of the motion of the song
and hit the chorus harder.
00:52:35
So we took what was the bridge
and turned it into a chorus.
00:52:38
I still feel it works better.
00:52:40
So now, because this is an art form,
a percentage of you
are going to disagree and think,
"Dude, you ruined this song!"
A percentage of you is going to be like,
"I can't really tell the difference."
And a percentage of you is going to agree,
and that's what makes this beautiful.
00:52:53
So then we went into the second verse.
00:53:04
Notice that we recycled the Mellotrons
from what was his chorus
into the second verse to make the
verse lift now that he has a groove.
00:53:41
What was the bridge
is now fiercely the chorus
because it's being repeated twice.
00:53:46
Also notice that you get less fatigue
from "1, 2, 3, 4, hey"
because you don't only hear it in the
verses, but now also in the choruses.
00:54:08
I love that chord!
Check it out!
The idea here was to not have the exact
same ending on two choruses
so it didn't feel copied and pasted,
and I feel it works great.
00:54:30
Then we go into the bridge, or more
commonly known as a breakdown verse.
00:54:40
Notice the zen quality
of not having any vocals here?
Nice!
So that's the facelift we gave the song
before we started layering
all the new instruments to augment
what Polerik already had and brought
to the fore on this session.
00:56:00
Obviously, Polerik's drums
were programmed,
so I called my friend Graham
and we recorded live drums.
00:56:06
And we cut them up a little bit,
not because Graham
doesn't have an amazing pocket
—Graham has the best pocket
in the universe—
but just because we were
working with existing sounds.
00:56:16
For example, the snare drums here
and some of the others synths
and everything were already there,
and so it was easier to just
get that pocket done from the drums up
as opposed to the other way around.
00:56:30
And also we were able to make it
a little more robotic
as opposed to that really kind of...
00:56:35
It felt great, but it felt a little too...
00:56:38
...savant for what we were looking for.
00:56:40
We were looking for something
maybe a little more stiff
and a little more staccato,
and so we cut it up.
00:56:46
And then
we added some live claps
which we played
with our little furry hands.
00:56:53
The snare breaks were his,
the chorale claps were his,
tambourines I think we did here,
I played the DMX hat
on my old DMX beatbox.
00:57:04
It sounds like this, check it out.
00:57:10
And then the tambourines.
00:57:14
That was definitely a real tambourine
which we then drenched in reverb.
00:57:18
The Roland. That's a cool thing,
check it out.
00:57:24
That's that CR-78 beatbox
that's around here somewhere,
which is a fixed beatbox.
You can do rumba,
you can do cha cha.
00:57:31
I don't know what this is,
it's some tortured cha cha.
00:57:37
Bass, he played it live.
00:57:39
His bass synth, those are
the original ones.
00:57:42
The guitars we redid here,
the piano is my piano
with a 67 slightly compressed......on the edges.
00:57:53
Just a smidgen of compression
to make sure he doesn't go anywhere.
00:57:56
All the other synths were his,
except the Juno.
00:57:59
I have a morbid obsession
with the Juno arpeggiator
and I've found that the best way
to cure that disease
is to just use it.
00:58:22
I'd like to point out the fact
that if you remove it...
00:58:31
That's not as much fun.
00:58:33
All right, so that's about
all the new stuff we added.
00:58:36
Let's geek out!
00:00:00
First, let's look at the drums
because that's what people do.
00:00:03
I'm going to mute everything
but the drums.
00:00:06
And the drums sound like this
on the chorus.
00:00:19
Pretty fun, right?
So now you see why we cut it up
to get a [rhythm] coming in,
which is pretty cool.
00:00:24
I like that stuff.
00:00:28
Let's look at the bass drum.
00:00:30
The acoustic side of the bass drum
has three microphones.
00:00:34
Actually, it's not three microphones,
it's a D112, a Clarion,
and then an 'already
compressed at the take',
probably through an 1176
or a dbx 160 or something like that.
00:00:45
Let's mute the parallel,
keep the direct sound,
and let's remove all plug-ins.
00:01:00
So what am I doing here?
This probably came together
as I had this balance.
00:01:03
The inside bass drum microphone
sounds like this.
00:01:08
The outside bass drum microphone
sounds like this.
00:01:13
And the parallel compression microphone
sounds like this.
00:01:20
That's kind of like a placebo
a little bit,
but I'm sure there's something phase-wise.
00:01:24
Let's not forget that I have
some processing on my stems.
00:01:26
So, why processing here
and processing there?
It's because this happens in touches.
00:01:31
When I start the mix,
I put the limiter on every stem.
00:01:33
What I know is that, as you can see here,
they're all wide open
but they all have a 4 dB pad.
00:01:39
The reason for that is because
of this dude, the tubes.
00:01:42
We didn't want to hit the tubes too hard
and the 5 dB pads over there
probably weren't enough at the time,
so I just lowered my gain here.
00:01:51
You know, you do what you got to do
within the realm of the diversity,
so all of those are padded
by 4 dB right here.
00:01:57
And then this, this Pro-Q 2 here
is probably some final touches I put in
towards the end of the mix
when I had everything I wanted.
00:02:05
I just wanted a little bit more
of a boost here
and instead of going to change
something else
that was phase-accurate
and made me happy, I just added this.
00:02:11
Is it good manners? No.
Did I do it? Absolutely.
00:02:15
And then here a little more transient
and a little less body.
00:02:18
That's pretty much going to be
a recurring theme
in this particular mix for two reasons:
first, I had just gotten
the Envolution from Oxford,
so I used it everywhere because
that's what you're supposed to do, right?
And second, I wanted it to be really dry.
00:02:32
I wanted those acoustic drums
to have that feel
and to have that buoyancy,
but I also wanted them to... hit hard.
00:02:39
And for it to hit hard you have to have
more transient and a little less body.
00:02:42
Well, you know,
it feels like it's hitting hard.
00:02:44
And this is... yeah, less bottom
because this thing
doesn't react very well
to a lot of energy at the bottom.
00:02:51
Think of this more as my console sound,
like, imagine if I went through a piece
of gear that has a certain sound,
like this dude, or those guys.
That's kind of fixed.
00:03:00
This is where the carving happens.
00:03:02
Let's see.
00:03:07
So on the Submix here,
again, removing some bottom.
00:03:10
This I'm compressing a little bit.
00:03:16
A little bit / lot.
00:03:17
The Pultec.
00:03:21
Then, you hear that 'oom' thing?
The Envolution will take care of that.
00:03:32
And then the parallel here
has a gate on it.
00:03:37
So let's listen to just the parallel
to see why the gate is there.
00:03:40
This is without the gate.
00:03:47
Pretty self-explanatory.
00:03:50
Less bottom, more high end, so I'm
using this as kind of, like, the point.
00:03:53
And this Little Labs here
is to adjust the phase with the other two
because I'm screwing with the EQ,
which is, again, not very good manners.
00:04:02
This all happened very quickly.
00:04:04
I remember having, like,
a crazy pace in the session,
and sometimes it's easier to just
layer processing
to get this kind of tone
than just go back
and being into the minutiae
of tweaking something
that's already there.
00:04:18
I rarely do this,
but I see the value in it for this mix.
00:04:22
So for example,
this is the inside bass drum.
00:04:29
And this is the outside bass drum.
00:04:36
And then this is with the parallel.
00:04:43
This EQ is just a high-pass so I have
only the point on the inside bass drum.
00:04:54
Just that little resonance is gone.
00:04:56
And on the outside bass drum,
which is my main bass drum mic
in this particular thing,
I have this EQ on.
00:05:08
So I'm removing a lot around the 300 area
to remove that cardboard,
and then I'm managing it.
00:05:13
So I'm starting to get more of a...
00:05:16
a sample kind of vibe, right?
But still a little bit of buoyancy.
00:05:19
And I have one more Little Labs
to adjust the phase. Let's see why.
00:05:28
Meh.
00:05:29
It could do with or without.
00:05:31
Then I added parallel compression.
00:05:41
And then I added a sample.
00:05:43
This is the sample by itself.
00:05:49
I'm using apTrigga for the sample,
and it's a big bass drum apparently.
00:05:53
That's what it says, very big.
00:05:56
It must be French because
the adjective is after the...
00:05:59
Anyway.
00:06:00
And then a little bit of EQ
and then I'm adjusting the phase
with the other bass drum. Check it out.
00:06:17
Without the phase adjustment.
00:06:24
See how it's a little fuzzy?
Now with the phase adjustment.
00:06:33
This is all very unorthodox
and absolutely not recommended
in the manual.
00:06:38
For you to understand how one
can get to this level of processing
is you start with the raw drums,
then you add a bunch of stuff,
and then the artist says,
"The drums are not hitting really hard,"
so then you pull out the Envolution.
00:06:51
You try it on the Sub and it's like,
it's good but it doesn't quite do
what you want it to do,
and if you put more of it here,
it's just too obvious,
so you start putting Envolution
on the separate tracks
and that does something else.
00:07:02
And then everybody is happy,
and then two hours later it's like,
"Man, you know, the drums,
it's like...
00:07:08
They're hitting hard
but they don't have this vibe,
they don't have the...
00:07:12
like the room vibe and everything."
And you say, "Well, that's not how we
recorded those drums, obviously."
So then you go find a sample
and then you augment it that way,
and that's how you layer
into having this kind of stuff.
00:07:22
And the problem with this
kind of processing
is that it's all very interconnected,
so if I move any of these plug-ins
or if I change something
on these plug-ins,
then I will have some phase relationship
or some of the energy is going to go away
because everything is interdependent.
00:07:36
And so you have to be very careful
if you're going to go in this route
to pay attention to what's
going on and to...
00:07:44
whenever you change something,
to really pay attention to the
repercussions of what you are doing
across the realm.
00:07:51
Think of it this way:
if you were on a console doing this,
you're flat and you're cool,
you decide to add an EQ,
or maybe a high-pass filter, right?
Even before you touch the EQ,
when you hit that button,
say on an old Neve,
just doing 'clack',
you put two transformers in the path,
that's going to change your sound.
00:08:10
And then when you hit
the high-pass filter,
that's going to rotate the phase
and you're going to get out of phase
with your other bass drums.
00:08:16
So you have kind of the same situation,
except that here in a DAW
you add the processing.
00:08:23
On a console the processing
comes to you pre-tuned,
but the interaction is kind of
in the same family,
meaning that whatever
you change on the console,
especially the bottom of the EQ,
will change the relationship
with everything else,
that's why you have to be careful.
00:08:35
Here, same thing,
if you start adding plug-ins
because you're looking for something
and then you're not quite sure
that you're getting there
and you just add a little something,
you have to be careful what you change.
00:08:45
It's really important to be careful
what you change.
00:08:47
Okay, here we go.
00:08:55
So that's the real snare drum.
00:09:01
Same principle. I had a 451 on top
and a 57 on top.
00:09:06
That's because I put a 57 and I remember
putting it and saying,
"Maybe, you know, it's a little too dark.
I want it to be a little punchier,"
and I said, "Sure, let's put a 451 too."
So now we have the blend of the two.
We ended up using a lot of the 451
and not a lot of the 57.
00:09:21
And then there's the snare bottom.
00:09:24
You know, the rattle thing which I'm not
a big fan of, as you can tell.
00:09:26
And then I also had another parallel.
00:09:29
I don't know what that was.
Let's listen to it.
00:09:34
That sounds like an 1176.
00:09:37
What am I doing here?
A little bit of compression
with a fairly slow Attack.
00:09:45
That's just for leveling and it doesn't
change the sound that much.
00:09:48
And I'm opening the top quite a bit.
00:09:51
As you can see, 6 clicks
and 4 clicks at 5 kHz
and 10 kHz, respectively.
00:10:02
On the separate mics
I'm not doing that much.
00:10:04
On this, which is the top 451,
I'm lowering a little bit of the bottom
because it was probably a little woofy.
00:10:11
The rest is gating
so that I don't get too much of that
resonance on the rest of the kit.
00:10:15
And then on the parallel I have some Lo-Fi
just to add more grit.
00:10:20
Without the Lo-Fi.
00:10:32
For that reason: grit.
00:10:34
So this is all very subtle
and not that groundbreaking.
00:10:43
I also have a parallel compression Bus.
00:10:45
This is probably crushed.
00:10:48
Notice that all buttons are in.
00:10:56
And then same thing,
some high end to open the top up.
00:11:00
And then I have a sample,
and the sample is to
basically replace that bottom
that I'm removing here that I didn't like.
00:11:06
I know I added a sample
to make that fatter
because I know I don't like
what I'm hearing right now.
00:11:10
Let's see what the sample does.
00:11:16
What's that sample? It's 'SNARE6'.
00:11:19
And the combo of the three...
00:11:25
Without the sample.
00:11:30
So this sample is done just to enhance
the bottom of this snare,
but trying to keep the snare
as natural as possible.
00:11:43
And then there's the mother
of all samples.
00:11:53
And that's actually a sample
from another record I made,
from a Wakey Wakey record.
00:11:57
I tend to recycle my own samples
so that I know what they sound like
instead of just going through
libraries and libraries of samples
and saying, "Nope, not this one.
Nope, not this one. Nope, not this one."
Since I know those samples
because I made them,
I said, "You know what? I think that
Wakey Wakey sample would sound good here."
And that saves a lot of time.
00:12:12
And also, it feels like you know
what you're doing a little more.
00:12:17
So that's probably done so that
it feels the same as the others.
00:12:20
What else do we have?
We have a little bit of high end
and we have the Maximizer.
00:12:25
This is a really nice alternative
to the Sonnox Inflator.
00:12:27
Sometimes it works better
than the Inflator,
sometimes it doesn't work
as well as the Inflator.
00:12:31
It's worth trying it.
00:12:32
So this is my snare with this sample,
the big sample,
and then the shenanigans
done on the real snare.
00:12:44
Obviously by itself it's obscene,
but if we start adding the bass drum...
00:12:58
The reverb you're hearing on the snare
is an EMT 140 plug-in,
not the real one.
00:13:03
I'm sending that.
I'm also using the AMS
to make this sound.
Let me mute this, and this.
00:13:14
Check it out.
00:13:20
But not that much of it.
00:13:24
Basically none of it.
I probably changed my mind along the way.
00:13:27
And then, what else do we have?
We have overheads.
00:13:34
Really quiet.
00:13:36
A room sound with a Shure 313 ribbon.
00:13:45
I ran that through something
while I was tracking it.
00:13:48
And then we have a Drum Sub
where all the drums go to,
except for the bass drum.
00:13:53
That has a 33609 on it,
let's listen to that.
00:13:57
Let's just add the bass drum
so we understand what's going on.
00:14:10
Pultec,
and the Pultec does nothing.
00:14:12
I probably put it on
thinking I would need it,
and then I didn't do anything with it,
and then probably muting it removed
something from the transformer emulation,
and instead of bothering
I just left it there.
00:14:23
Here are some of what Polerik brought in.
00:14:36
So those are some of his samples
which we decided to keep together
as a democracy.
00:15:01
I probably made them, like,
just thinner,
and softened the transients
using the trusty A800.
00:15:08
None of this is crucial.
These are all little...
00:15:10
How would you say? Touches of paint.
00:15:12
Let's not forget to turn
the snare reverb back on.
00:15:16
You'll notice that some of these tracks
are sent into the Parallel Stem.
00:15:20
If you remember,
I'm using Channels 15-16 of my 2-Bus+
with the Paralimit
and the Harmonics on stun as an effect.
00:15:35
If I remove that, it sounds like this.
00:15:48
It's adding a little bit of density,
just a smidgen of density
which is very nice.
00:15:52
It probably does more
on the other instruments
because I'm already doing
quite a bit here.
00:15:56
Other things we added:
the live claps.
00:16:01
Obviously we're doing a number on them.
00:16:03
I'm sending them to the PCM 42.
00:16:05
This is what they sound like raw.
00:16:15
Gate them.
00:16:18
I gate them because
I'm going to Lo-Fi them,
and if you don't gate them
before you Lo-Fi them
then you get all sorts of weird noises.
00:16:27
And then EQ the bottom out.
00:16:33
And then add some EMT, the real one.
00:16:38
BX10, the real one.
00:16:44
And then that weird PCM 42 delay
which was intended for the vocal.
00:16:48
I'll show you in a second,
but check it out.
00:16:54
That's just wrong in a good way.
00:16:56
Then Polerik brought
some really nice claps,
which I put in the snare reverb
and in the AMS.
00:17:07
And I probably high-passed them
a little, yep,
and then made them a little brighter
in the context of the song.
00:17:12
Then we have tambourines.
00:17:19
And stomps, and then another one.
00:17:24
The combination of the two.
00:17:27
This is what they sound like dry.
00:17:35
They were recorded with reverb somehow.
00:17:37
Then I'm just probably high-passing
and then compressing a little bit here.
00:17:43
I'll put it in the snare reverb.
00:17:47
And then the other one is just for
entertainment, same thing. There you go.
00:17:51
Then the DMX hat.
00:17:58
And then more tambourines,
this one is a groove.
00:18:03
Flat, it sounds like this.
00:18:14
A little bit of high end,
and I created a space around it
with the UA Reflection Engine.
00:18:22
I compressed that so you hear
more of the room.
00:18:26
And also, the tambourine
goes 'tch-k tch-k clack'.
00:18:29
Sometimes it sticks out, so I used
a Limiter with a fast Attack here.
00:18:38
And then I send that
into the snare reverb.
00:18:44
And then there's the CR-78.
00:18:54
Just removing that annoying 'tssh'.
00:19:02
Just a little gentler. And the combo
of all that stuff sounds like this.
00:19:14
That's it for the drums.
00:19:16
A bunch of touches,
strokes that bring it
to that level of madness.
00:19:20
Let's focus on the bass now.
00:19:22
We have 800 bass tracks,
let's first solo all that stuff,
and I'm going to start by...
00:19:29
just different microphones and amps,
and I'll make sure
everybody has their plug-ins off.
00:19:36
Okay, here we go!
We have a DI.
00:19:45
Obviously that's a bass
recorded through an octaver.
00:19:54
And then we have the amp.
00:20:02
So what I'm doing to these two things
is a little bit of compression on this
for some reason that I don't remember.
00:20:10
I remember. This is the cleanest
version of that octaver
that I'll have between the DI and the amp.
00:20:17
So I'm basically using the DI as the top,
as the top in energy, the body,
and then the amp as the grit.
00:20:31
And I'm notching a little bit here
around 161 Hz
because I want to make room
for that DI and the amp mic.
00:20:40
It sounds like this. This is without.
00:20:52
They don't fight as much, right?
And then I duplicated the amp track
and then I did this with it.
00:21:08
I distorted the hell out of it,
and the combo of the three is like this.
00:21:18
That felt good but it's jumping
a little bit, so I compressed it.
00:21:22
Plus, the 1176 will give it
a little bit of that
transformer / high-pass vibe.
00:21:34
Putting some bottom back in
with the Pultec.
00:21:39
Don't let that additional
high end fool you.
00:21:41
This is without the high end.
00:21:51
More saturation to glue things together.
00:22:02
Then this last EQ happened
when I started layering
the other basses,
so I'm going to leave it as is for now.
00:22:08
Then I have a parallel path
that I'm going to play by itself.
00:22:16
Which is an exact copy of what
you just heard pre-processing,
and then I have a gate on there.
00:22:27
It's mostly to separate the notes
that can be separated,
and also because I have
some crazy stuff behind,
especially Lo-Fi,
so the gate is to make sure that none
of the original low noise
gets amplified by the Lo-Fi too much.
00:22:40
Then I'm compressing it to make sure
it stays really central
because the point of this
is to be tucked under,
kind of parallel compression style.
00:22:47
A little bit of distortion with Lo-Fi.
00:22:55
And then this EQ
which also was probably
designed to help blend with these guys.
00:23:02
And then we have this guy.
00:23:09
This I'm high-passing the hell out of
because I want its personality, but I
don't want it to take all that space.
00:23:15
And then Maximizer to grit it.
00:23:24
And then there's also this guy.
00:23:34
And so the combo
of all four is like this.
00:23:45
So you notice that the synth basses
provide the 'oomph' and the bottom,
but the energy and the drive
is coming from the real bass,
but they fight, so that's probably
why I have this EQ right here.
00:23:56
I'm going to open these two EQs
and I'm going to play them
with and without.
00:24:12
Notice that the two EQs
are very similar.
00:24:14
The reason for that is,
if I had two separate EQs
on these two parallel processing things
with a non-linear phase EQ
I probably would get some phase
cancellation and it would be a nightmare,
so I did one and copied it to the other
to minimize the amount
of problems I would get
by having separate EQs
on the low end.
00:24:29
I could also use Pro-Q 2
and use the Linear Phase one,but that's not what I did at the time.And so the combo of all four
sounds like this.
00:24:42
With the drums.
00:25:01
On the verse.
00:25:44
You're starting to see the method
behind the madness, right?
So, we have to make the sound
of the real bass
work for the verse,
but also work for the chorus
when the other fatter bass comes in.
00:25:54
That's going to require
some touches here and there
if you really want it to...
kind of, like, puzzle together.
00:26:01
Let's listen to those guitars.
00:26:03
Those guitars were redone here
because
it's in English
and Polerik writes everything
in his sessions in French.
00:26:16
So I have the PCM 42 on there.
00:26:17
I'm going to remove it,
I'm going to remove every plug-in.
00:26:29
It sounds like a 57 to me.
00:26:31
I used the A800 to soften transients.
00:26:33
You know that if you've seen
other videos of mine.
00:26:53
Notice how it's just less real
and a little fuzzier?
And I used the 250 tape,
which I love, at 30 IPS.
00:27:02
If I wanted to be even grimier,
I would go down to 7.5 IPS.
00:27:15
It doesn't even make a difference
to even bother.
00:27:17
This is the EQ, so I clearly needed
that guitar to go over something else.
00:27:27
Then I compressed it.
00:27:35
I added a little bit of local delay.
00:27:42
And then put it into the PCM 42
hardware delay.
00:27:50
With the sauce it sounds like this.
00:27:57
Notice what it would sound like
if the EQ wasn't there.
00:28:16
It sounds wrong and thin,
which is great,
and also, it no longer
fights with the bass,
especially in the verses,
and that was the key.
00:28:23
This is not a crucial part, but it's a
nice kind of, like, annoying lo-fi part.
00:28:27
That's why I did that.
00:28:29
The other guitar.
00:28:35
Holy compression Batman!
Let's listen to this raw.
00:28:40
Even without the Parallel.
00:28:51
I think that's, like,
a small Alvarez guitar
and it records well,
I really like it.
00:28:56
Same thing to soften it.
00:29:03
Then a high-pass.
00:29:08
It pushes it back a little bit, right?
Because if you don't hear the bottom
your brain thinks it's farther away.
00:29:13
And then... slight compression.
00:29:24
This was not compression
to keep it in place.
00:29:27
He plays amazing, I didn't need that.
00:29:28
This is compression
to make it sound like that
because some of those records he likes
have kind of that... pumping thing.
00:29:36
That's what we were looking for.
00:29:37
And then a bunch of reverbs
to soften it.
00:29:47
And then the Parallel Stem
which is not going to do much, I think.
00:30:01
Actually, it does plenty. Check this out.
00:30:03
This is without.
00:30:04
Listen to the bottom of the guitar
and the steadiness of the guitar.
00:30:24
It compensates for the pumping
a little bit
by having this body of sound
under the pumping sound.
00:30:30
So I can still get the vibe
of the pumping sound
but still have some body,
because believe it or not, these are
the only two guitars in this whole record.
00:30:46
And on the chorus.
00:31:11
It feels good.
00:31:13
And then we have keyboards.
00:31:14
We have a piano on there.
00:31:21
That was recorded with that
insane compression on it.
00:31:24
I have these three plug-ins on it.
00:31:26
This is it, raw.
00:31:35
Obviously the idea was to do
some John Lennon vibe.
00:31:43
A high-pass so it fits in the track,
and also to make it even thinner
and quickly record it.
00:31:48
A little Maximizer.
00:32:00
And then a compressor
at the end to even that.
00:32:06
Actually, it's not too even.
00:32:07
This is just to give me gain.
00:32:13
The compression is really minimal
and my Attack is slow,
so I just cheated to have more gain
without having to screw
with the fader.
00:32:21
It's despicable, I'm going to file
a complaint with my consulate.
00:32:25
Here are some different keyboards.
00:32:33
I think that's my little...
crazy, portable organ
going through Lo-Fi
and
a bit of EQ.
00:32:42
It sounds like this raw.
00:33:00
Polerik had brought a really cool
Mellotron part on the chorus,
on what was his chorus at the time.
00:33:05
I used it on the verse.
00:33:10
And then we doubled it with the organ.
00:33:20
He also brought these organ vibes,
let me find out where they play
so you can hear them.
00:33:26
It's pretty cool.
00:33:27
This is on the B section.
00:33:32
It's a Casio organ.
00:33:35
Just some reverb and I'm making sure
that stuff is out of the way,
removing the stuff that
I don't want to have in my face.
00:33:40
Check it out.
00:33:50
See, I didn't want to have
all that midrange in that organ
clouding the guitar,
I just wanted it to be a vibe,
so I just lowered the midrange
and removed it.
00:34:04
It says 'Jupiter 8 Organ'.
00:34:06
Iz nice!Again, if I did not remove the midrange
those things could not be as loud,
and they would not give as much vibe.
00:34:24
Check it out, this is without
the EQs on the organs.
00:34:43
If I didn't do that
I would probably be urged to
make the guitars brighter,
which would then
make the vocal brighter,
which would then create a mess
and then it will be World War III,
which I do not want to be responsible for.
00:34:54
So, then
he has an Omnichord,
or maybe it's the Spectrasonics
Omnichord plug-in,
I'm not sure.
00:35:05
That is really clean,
it's probably a plug-in.
00:35:19
And then at the end,
I showed you before,
we have the Juno, my baby.
00:35:27
Apparently we had a little bit
of a problem tuning it!
It sounds like this.
00:35:33
Oh! And on the Juno
I'm actually adding some delay.
00:35:38
A delay throw, let's find out where it is.
00:35:44
Yes, it sure is. It's the ending.
00:35:55
So that's just at the end,
just for like, you know,
that kind of vibe.
00:35:58
What is this?
'Omni Hi C End'.
00:36:01
So that's an ARP Omni,
or an Omnichord.
00:36:03
We don't know yet,
but we're going to find out
no later than very soon.
00:36:07
Here.
00:36:12
That sounds like an ARP Omni.
00:36:14
And on it,
wouldn't you know it, high-passing.
00:36:17
And then PanMan from SoundToys
to just make it oscillate.
00:36:29
Trippy dude.
00:36:30
And then the EMT.
00:36:32
Without the EMT it sounds like this.
00:36:43
Iz nice!But wait! There's more.
00:36:46
There's this climb here
which we built out of...
00:36:51
Let me solo this, this is awesome.
00:37:01
We built it out of bits and ends
from his session,
and maybe some of mine.
00:37:06
No, this was all a bunch of his stuff.
00:37:08
We built this climb.
00:37:15
Which goes with the vocal climb
that you'll probably remember.
00:37:18
This guy.
00:37:20
It would be probably in the same spot.
00:37:23
There it is.
00:37:24
Montée, which means climb in frog speak.
00:37:34
That's just, you know, a bunch
of stuff with no processing.
00:37:37
I probably high-passed it
because that's what I do.
00:37:40
I just like the bottom to be clean!
I like everything to be clean,
but the bottom especially,
and that's understandable.
00:37:47
And then we enter the realm of vocals.
00:37:50
So
we have a lead
here,
which was done with an Eden.
00:37:58
And then a double, also done
with an Eden, I suppose,
or maybe I changed the microphone
and did it with an SM7. I don't remember.
00:38:04
And the vocal processing
is really heavily relying on the PCM 42.
00:38:09
The thing with the PCM 42
is that if you hit it hard on Input
it distorts nicely, like in a good way,
like it's your friend.
00:38:17
What am I doing here?
A little high-pass,
a little high end, usual stuff.
00:38:21
I mean, don't obsess over those settings,
they don't really mean
anything in themselves
because they're relative to what's
going on around the vocal, right?
I'm basically shelving the whole high end,
2.18 dB at 2.6 kHz,
and then removing the bottom
before I compress it a little bit.
Let's look at that.
00:38:37
I'm going to remove
all the other plug-ins
and the special effects.
00:38:42
There you go. Let's go to, say, Verse 2.
00:38:50
Completely flat, even with those
plug-ins off, it sounds like this.
00:38:57
It sounds like an Eden.
00:38:59
I brightened it a little bit here.
00:39:04
A little bit of compression here
for some reason.
00:39:09
It's a pretty slow Attack, so I'm really
looking at compressing the body of it,
not the attacks of it.
00:39:14
Then
a little bit of pitch-centering.
00:39:18
Hi!
With Auto-Tune.
00:39:23
Here is a de-esser,
which is an interesting de-esser.
00:39:27
It's affordable and it uses
an FFT system,
so you can actually listen to the 'esses'
separately from the body of the sound.
00:39:33
It's made by XILS-lab.
00:39:35
A couple more plug-ins have been
doing that since the FabFilter Pro-DS,
and also the Eiosis,
and they all do things
a little bit differently.
00:39:44
At the time I really loved this one
and it works really good
and it's fairly easy to set up.
00:39:51
It's also French, like every
good thing in the world.
00:39:54
They also make amazing soft synths!
They're not really known
for their DSP plug-ins,
they're really known
for their soft synths,
and they are awesome!
And then this EQ is a situational EQ,
meaning that it's to fit in the track,
again, with layers.
00:40:09
We probably recorded the vocals
and it sounded great.
00:40:12
Then we started adding stuff around it,
then it sounded too thick
and we wanted to be more far away,
more vintage,
so I removed the bottom
and then that was too much.
00:40:18
Then we added more top,
more compression, more everything.
00:40:25
Obviously none of this stuff
we're missing.
00:40:34
That works.
00:40:35
This is probably going to be silly.
00:40:42
That's the sound!
And then
a little bit of... opening the high end.
00:40:49
And this is a conscious decision
of making it sound like that
so that it cuts here.
00:41:01
And then some Inflation.
00:41:03
Sorry, a lot of Inflations.
00:41:05
And then a Maximizer just for decoration.
00:41:13
And then the different reverbs.
00:41:14
But the thing that's really cool
here is... check this out.
00:41:19
This is the PCM 42.
00:41:29
You see it here freaking out.
00:41:31
I'm probably high-passing the Return
and it sounds like this.
00:41:43
With everything else.
00:41:55
I have a little bit of a slap
with the RE-201 from UA.
00:41:58
This is a bland thing so that...
00:42:00
to connect the immediate
tail of the vocal with the track.
00:42:04
It's just... I don't know, it probably
was a good idea at the time.
00:42:16
And there's nothing on the double,
it's just, you know, the pitch-centering,
a little bit of de-esser,
some high-passing,
and a Maximizer, no compression.
00:42:28
The combo of the two.
00:42:33
And in the sauce.
00:42:43
And then everything else
is pretty much the same vibe.
00:42:47
Some high-passing because everything was
recorded pretty close to the microphone
and we can't have that.
00:42:52
And then we need more buoyancy,
and that's pretty much the same
on all the background vocals.
00:42:57
We recorded the background vocals
too close to the mic
because we were in a hurry,
or maybe we did it in layers at the
same time as he was doing the lead.
00:43:03
That happens all the time.
00:43:05
It's usually, "Oh! I have an idea
for a background vocal!"
"Okay, let me create a track."
And you create a track and record it,
but if you record the background vocal
this close to the mic, you're in trouble.
00:43:13
So then you end up doing
silly things like... this.
00:43:16
If you asked me today
how I feel about the vocal sound,
I feel it's too bright.
00:43:21
I think that in the context
of everything it feels okay,
but I'm pretty positive
that if I were the mastering engineer
or if Polerik were not here...
00:43:34
...I would do something like this.
00:43:41
Don't tell no one.And I think that's it.
We have some harmonies,
these three here.
00:43:53
Yeah.
00:43:54
And then the 'Ouuuh'
that comes from his demo.
00:44:01
Dirty!
And then you heard the climb, la montée.
00:44:06
There are two more 'Montée'
and then some 'Yeahs'.
00:44:09
Everybody needs some 'yeah'.
00:44:10
Can I get a hey?Iz nice!And that's just, like, you know,
made a little crunchy
and sent to the BX10.
00:44:24
What else do we got?
Some background vocals here,
let's listen to those.
00:44:28
This is all pretty trivial.
00:44:43
Everything came in really distorted
and then we added somebecause that's the kind of people
we were at the time.And that's for this part.
00:45:11
And then I suggested
that turnaround "1, 2, 3, 4" here
would be done by a different choir,
so we recorded all this
probably screaming at the top of our lungs
in the live room over there.
00:45:25
And raw it sounds like this.
00:45:33
That's a bunch of French people!
[French]
And then crunched it a little bit
with the A800.
00:45:44
Isn't that an awesome distortion?
Check it out without.
00:45:53
And then I high-passed that.
00:45:58
Compressed the sh*t out of it.
00:46:02
I shouldn't have said
"the sh*t out of it."
"Compressed a little bit out of it"
is much more polite.
00:46:06
Some Decapitator.
00:46:09
Some Inflator.
00:46:13
A lot of Inflator.
00:46:14
And then stereoizing.
00:46:18
With the Mod Delay.
00:46:19
You know that trick where you have
no delay on the left
and a little bit of delay on the right.
00:46:24
I Maximized that, it probably
felt too dull in the track.
00:46:26
Let's see that in the context.
And then its own reverb.
00:46:31
Plus the other reverbs.
00:46:35
And it does something like this
without the Maximizer.
00:46:57
As you can see, the Maximizer
makes them more present.
00:47:00
I don't know if it makes them louder.
It kind of does, it kind of doesn't,
it's just more saturated,
more present, and more...
00:47:05
but still in the back of the room,
which is what I wanted.
00:47:07
I didn't want to have
"1, 2, 3, 4," "1, 2, 3, 4."
I wanted "1, 2, 3, 4," and "1, 2, 3, 4"
in the back of the room.
00:47:12
Or from your perspective, "1, 2, 3, 4,"
"1, 2, 3, 4" in the back of the room.
00:47:16
And the thing is that
raising the volume here
didn't give me the same vibe,
so I used the Maximizer.
00:47:22
That's my fantasy
of how that stuff works.
00:47:25
I think, people,
that we are
pretty much done with looking at
everything separately.
00:47:35
Anything I haven't precisely showed you
is because it's really trivial,
like a high-pass filter.
00:47:40
You've seen one of those before.
00:47:42
Or it doesn't really have an influence
on what's going on,
or it was not enough of a mistake
for it to be shown to you.
00:47:48
So, overall,
the idea here was to show you
several things.
00:47:52
A) To show you that the process
of recalling an analog
—or at least a hybrid
digital / analog mix—
a few years after the fact is not trivial.
00:48:02
And I keep my digital system
pretty legacy,
but, you know, three years down the road,
four or five versions of Pro Tools,
two Mac OSs,
some of those plug-ins
could probably not have been recalled.
00:48:17
So it's not easy to recall all the tracks,
you have to be really OCD about it,
and as my friend Guillaume says,
"OCD is not a disease, it's a lifestyle."
B) I wanted to show you a little bit
how a song can evolve
from a really cool demo
with a great song with lots
of little nuggets in it
into this, like, epic thing
by just shuffling some parts,
which is pretty nice.
00:48:40
C) Also how we can go
from this beatbox plug-in demo
into this really organic thing
by just augmenting
and adding stuff,
but still keeping some
of the original elements.
00:48:56
And then, D)
that it's fun to play with stuff,
like running the whole mix
through a...
00:49:08
...tube spring reverb preamp.
00:49:11
That's something
that Sylvia Massy would do,
and to great effect.
00:49:15
Personally, in this case I felt
that this really worked well
even though it's something
that I never do.
00:49:20
For this particular record it's all
over the record and it's a lot of fun.
00:49:23
It creates that grime that I don't think
I could really create with plug-ins,
or at least I personally don't know
how to do that with plug-ins.
00:49:29
Maybe Andrew Scheps would
because he spends his life
putting distortion on stuff
to great effect.
00:49:34
I don't, and so, because of those
stylistic and taste differences
I decided to use this thing
which does what it does.
00:49:41
It's not tweakable, so it's like,
"Do you like it?" "Yes!" "Great!"
"You don't like it? Turn it off."
And that's pretty much
the only solution.
00:49:49
Cool song, fun process.
00:49:52
Et voilà!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
- AKG BX10 Spring Reverb
- Antares Auto-Tune Pro
- apTrigga3
- Chandler Limited LTD-2
- Dangerous Music 2-BUS+
- Dangerous Music BAX EQ
- Dangerous Music Compressor
- Dangerous Music CONVERT-8
- Dangerous Music Liaison
- Dangerous Music Master
- Dyn3 Expander/Gate
- Empirical Labs Fatso EL7x
- EMT 140 Plate Reverb
- FabFilter Pro Q2
- InTune
- Lexicon PCM42 Reverb
- Lo-Fi
- Manley Stereo Pultec EQ
- MNotepad
- Mod Delay III
- Neuman PE Stereo EQ
- Oxford Compressor/Limiter
- Oxford Envolution
- Oxford EQ+Filters
- Oxford Inflator
- Oxford Limiter
- SansAmp PSA-1
- Soundtoys Decapitator
- Soundtoys EchoBoy
- Soundtoys PanMan
- Space Expander Tube Preamp
- TapeHead
- UAD AMS RMX16
- UAD EMT 140
- UAD Little Labs IBP
- UAD Neve 33609
- UAD Precision Maximizer
- UAD Precision Reflection Engine
- UAD Pultec-Pro Legacy
- UAD Roland RE-201
- UAD Studer A800
- UAD UA 1176 Rev A
- UAD UA 1176LN Rev E
- Universal Audio 2192
- XILS DeeS
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
Polérik Rouvière is a guitarist, composer, performer, and winner of the first Young Talent Prize of the jazz festival of La Défense. He studied sound engineering and musical harmony training at MIT Los Angeles, then returned to France and in 1999 to form the electro group Ledge. In 2012, following a romantic break, Polérik adopted the name of Ulrich Forman and turned to folk. The musician disappears for a few years to return in 2018 with a new pop folk title, "All I Want".
1234
CLICK_HEREMusic Credits1234
By Ulrich Forman
Polérik Rouvière is a guitarist, composer, performer, and winner of the first Young Talent Prize of the jazz festival of La Défense. He studied sound engineering and musical harmony training at MIT Los Angeles, then returned to France and in 1999 to form the electro group Ledge. In 2012, following a romantic break, Polérik adopted the name of Ulrich Forman and turned to folk. The musician disappears for a few years to return in 2018 with a new pop folk title, "All I Want".- Artist
- Ulrich Forman
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