Inside the Mix: Zac Brown Band with Andrew Scheps
01h 24min
(27)
Learn Andrew's "Black Box" Methods
When a session arrives from Zac Brown Band it already sounds 90% done - now learn how to add subtle and not-so-subtle touches to a mix that take it from good to great!
Andrew Scheps opens up his final mixing session for the song "Young and Wild" and walks you through track by track how he applied his tastes and techniques to amp up the song.
Each step along the way he shows you before and after examples of his creative processing that adds the perfect touches to complete the song's sonic vision.
In this tutorial you'll learn:
- Andrew's mixing thought process and mixing techniques
- Tricks to enhance already great sounding tracks
- How to add processing without compromising the artist's sonic direction
- Use creative routing and effects to add an extra sense of space to a mix
- See how the band uses meticulous editing to create a dynamic production
- Work with pre-written automation and also using automation to add more dynamics and excitement to the mix
Don't forget to download the exercise files and practice mixing the song for yourself! The band was gracious enough to allow pureMixers the chance to try their hand at mixing the first section (intro to the first chorus) of the song.
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
- 01:30 - Session Setup
- 06:26 - Drums
- 34:30 - Bass
- 00:00 - Start
- 13:07 - Keyboards
- 16:13 - Vocals
- 21:50 - Rear Bus
- 26:02 - Background Vocals
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:6 - Stereo Bus
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |
00:00:07
Hello children, welcome
back to Flux Studios.
00:00:10
I'm Andrew Scheps and today
we're going to do something
a little different.
00:00:14
In the past I have done some demonstrations
of how I would mix the song,
or actually mix the song.
00:00:21
And today we're gonna look at
a song I've already mixed,
and just deconstruct the mix
and figure out what I did
and why, along the way.
00:00:29
We're working with a song
called 'Young and Wild'
of the Zac Brown album, Jekyll + Hyde,
which has done pretty well.
It's exciting.
00:00:37
The title of the album is very
indicative of the content.
00:00:42
The Jekyll and Hyde concept was that
Jekyll and Hyde are only two
totally different people
and on this album Zac is about
17 totally different people.
00:00:51
There is a full-on Rock track that he did
with Chris Cornell.
00:00:55
There is a big band track
with Sara Bareilles.
00:00:57
There is a reggae track.
00:01:00
There is a full-on super Pop dance track.
00:01:03
There's all kinds of stuff
but what we decided to do
is use the song Young and Wild,
which is a little more traditional,
a little more in Zac's wheelhouse.
00:01:11
This is very much about
the Zac Brown band.
00:01:14
It has a lot of background vocals with
the different members of the band.
00:01:17
It has the fiddle, it has all
the elements that are sort of
the trademark of the Zac Brown band
without straying to far outside of
what people would normally expect.
00:01:28
So, this is the actual session.
00:01:31
And this is the session
where I printed the mix.
00:01:35
At the bottom of the
session, on my 'Print' track
are 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
So, we obviously had
four rounds of comments
before the mix was done.
00:01:46
R5 is my final mix and this would be the
file that was sent off to mastering.
00:01:51
So, this is exactly what is on the record.
00:01:54
I don't think mastering really change
anything too much.
00:01:58
Certainly nothing substantive.
00:02:01
You should get a really good
picture of what's on the record
from looking at what we're gonna do today.
00:02:05
The first thing is...
00:02:06
I'm not gonna spend a huge
amount of time talking about
my templates and the
way I lay out sessions.
00:02:11
This session is already laid out.
00:02:13
I spent a lot of time in the other mixing
videos talking about track layout.
00:02:18
The big thing is that
the tracks go in certain order
and they are the certain colors.
00:02:22
I'm just gonna walk you
through what's in the session.
00:02:25
And you'll see that my
colors are already in,
we've already imported from my
template, obviously.
00:02:30
And this was done a few months ago
so there might be somethings that
were imported from my template
before my template got to be
what it is today.
00:02:37
So, there might be a few unfamiliar things,
I don't even know but we'll discover along
the way as we look back at this mix.
00:02:43
So, before we start tearing this apart
we're gonna listen to the mix,
and you'll notice my
'Print' track is in Input,
so we're listening to the session live.
00:02:52
And just to double check
that everything came up ok,
I actually checked this
against the printed mix
and it does phase out, all you hear
is a little bit of reverb
and delay effects which of course
wouldn't phase out when you check the mix.
00:03:04
So, here we go from the top.
00:04:07
Alright, we just played up to there
then obviously we get
another verse and a chorus.
00:04:11
It's a pretty traditional song structure.
00:04:13
There is a bridge which
we'll have a look at later
because it has a couple of elements
that aren't in the rest of the song.
00:04:18
But that's the basic structure. We're
just gonna play you some of the rough mix
because what this will show you is exactly
what the session was like when I got it.
00:04:26
And this mix was in the session then.
00:04:29
This sessions were incredibly
well recorded and well put together
and there was a lot of time
taking on the production.
00:04:37
So there's a lot of automation
in the session when I get it.
00:04:41
A lot of routing, a lot of processing.
00:04:43
So the mix is pretty far along.
00:04:45
But let me just play you just that much of
the song from the rough mix.
00:04:50
Then we'll go through
and look at what I did
and then you'll get a chance
to A/B that later on.
00:05:55
Alright, no surprises there.
00:05:57
You see that all of the sound effects
and the little sort of gimmicky things
that are part of the production
are already in there.
00:06:04
What you will probably
notice if you A/B those two
is that they are very similar
in terms of the aesthetic
but hopefully the final
mix is just
a lot more of everything that's going on.
00:06:18
So, it sounds a little more finished
but everything that sticks out,
sticks out a little bit more.
00:06:24
Let's have a look at what's in the session
to get a better idea of
what's around here.
00:06:29
And then we'll see how I did what I did.
00:06:32
We start from the top, there's
and acoustic drum-kit.
00:06:34
Lots o microphones.
00:06:36
Four toms which have been cut so
only the tom hits are played.
00:06:41
We've got two microphones
going into a kick bus.
00:06:46
No, that's actually a parallel.
00:06:47
Like I said before, this section
was quite complicated when I got it.
00:06:51
There's a lot of processing that
was already in the session.
00:06:54
This kick smack is on a send from...
00:06:58
Here we go! Send from the
original kick track.
00:07:01
And this is a parallel
compressor just o the kick drum.
00:07:03
But this is their stuff, I'm
gonna show you all their stuff
before we get to my stuff.
00:07:08
We've got a drum-kit.
00:07:09
I don't think there's anything else
that's really that interesting.
00:07:12
They've got a couple of interesting
microphones on it
just to give it a little character.
00:07:16
Then, down here at the
bottom are their Auxes
that collect the drums.
That's one that's the whole kit.
00:07:22
And they've got a
parallel drum smack
which is parallel
compressor for their drums.
00:07:28
So they obviously watched
some of my mixing tutorials
and they are already down the path that
I'm going to take them event further.
00:07:35
Then we see a lot of the
stuff from my template here.
00:07:38
It's the same stuff that's always there.
00:07:40
So, there you go.
00:07:42
Here we have some programed drums,
we've heard this drum loop on the intro,
as well as a lot of extra like
kicks and snares,
little 808 hits and things like that.
00:07:50
It's the same drum color
but it gets it's own VCA
because it helps me while
I'm mixing to separate
the programmed drums from the live drum.
00:07:59
Nothing too crazy here.
00:08:01
Then we get down into percussion.
00:08:03
The tambourine loop, some live percussion.
00:08:06
There's the good shaker,
you can see it right there,
that's the good shaker.
00:08:11
As opposed to the bad shaker.
00:08:13
Then we see from my template, I've
got my percussion Aux and VCA.
00:08:17
Just like I normally would.
00:08:19
Then here is a group of tracks
that are not in every session,
these are all just sound effects.
00:08:23
These are sweeps that are part
of the way the track is built.
00:08:27
And then below them are a
lot of the sound effects.
00:08:30
And they are color coded just
so I can find them,
these colors don't mean
anything in particular to me.
00:08:35
But because they're colors
I don't normally use
I know that I've got some elements
that aren't part of
every song that I mix.
00:08:42
So there isn't a color that normally goes
with it and I can find them quickly.
00:08:45
We've got two sets of sound effects.
00:08:48
Quite a few of them.
00:08:50
Then we're finally out of
drum and sound effect land
and we get down to the bass.
00:08:54
Very straight ahead, there's
a bass DI and a bass amp.
00:08:57
And there's a second set of tracks
there's a little bass overdub.
00:09:01
Now we get down into the guitars.
00:09:04
There are quite a few guitars,
there are quite a few
guitar players in this band.
00:09:08
And that is one of the
things about this band.
00:09:11
There are 8 people in the band.
00:09:13
And they are all pretty
amazing musicians.
00:09:15
I've seen them live and it's
ridiculous what they pull off.
00:09:19
And without a lot of gimmicks and
as far as I can tell, without
anything pre-recorded.
00:09:24
And hearing them warm-up before
the show was astounding.
00:09:28
Six part harmony in a rehearsal
where nobody could hear anything,
an upright bass, couple of
acoustic guitars and a banjo.
00:09:35
And it was ridiculous.
00:09:36
They can all play, they can all sing.
00:09:39
And for me, while I was mixing,
that was something that I
really wanted to keep in mind.
00:09:43
I wanted to be able to hear the band,
not just Zac witch the backup band.
00:09:49
You need to hear all of
the individual voices
and all the individual musicians.
00:09:53
So, you got a lot of guitars.
00:09:56
You got Clay here then Coy.
00:09:58
Zac then Hop. Some more Zac.
00:10:01
A lot of guitars going on.
00:10:03
But, they're all just different
shades of green, so I can find them.
00:10:06
All of these Auxes, within the guitars
are from their original sessions.
00:10:10
You can see, there's a lot
of detailed work when I got.
00:10:15
Then we get down into string land.
00:10:18
That's all labeled fiddle.
00:10:19
But there are basically two types
of string parts on the song.
00:10:23
There's the pizzicato part
which you heard in the intro
and then there are more traditional
bowed strings
which are in the bridge.
And it's still fiddle.
00:10:31
It's still just Jimmy
playing along with the band
and some overdubs to
go along with it.
00:10:37
It's very much still the band
but it acts like Jimmy and the band
when he's play pizzicato
and string section when
he's playing legato.
00:10:46
So, we'll check that out later on.
00:10:48
Then we've got some keyboards.
00:10:50
Rhodes and glock.
00:10:52
The glock is just in the bridge
so we'll talk about that when
we talk about the bridge.
00:10:55
But the Rhodes is a pretty
major part of the groove.
00:10:59
And then we get down to
some of the normal stuff.
00:11:02
Lead vocal.
00:11:03
There's the bounce of some
of this vocal effects.
00:11:06
They have created some very
specific delay effects
so they went ahead and bounced that.
00:11:10
And then are a couple
of extra effects tracks.
00:11:13
And then little bits of the vocal
are either copied or doubled
and those are going into some
delay FX and things like that.
00:11:19
But basically, there's one Lead Vocal
and then you gotta a bunch of vocal FX.
00:11:25
Then...
00:11:26
We get down into the background vocals
and again, this is where you really
see the members of the band.
00:11:31
We've got a little 3
part harmony set here
with Clay, Jimmy and Hop.
00:11:36
I believe all tracked at
the same time together.
00:11:39
They do this a lot when
they track in a room,
they sing so well together.
00:11:42
This is one set.
00:11:44
Then we got another set down here
which is used in the intro
and then again in the outro.
00:11:49
It's Clay, Jimmy, Hop and Zac.
00:11:51
Zac is actually muted in here
because I think they just decided
they didn't want his voice as
the background and lead.
00:11:57
So, they are sacrificing a note,
but that's OK.
00:12:01
So you notice there's no
Lead Vocal in that spot
but they decided to go with the
group of guys, no including Zac
and then Zac come in as a
new voice in the song.
00:12:11
And then at the end there's some extra
cascading background vocal parts
which we might not even listen to.
00:12:16
There's some FX and a little overlap.
00:12:19
And that, I believe,
are all of the tracks.
00:12:23
Then you'll notice here some
tracks you might recognize
from my template.
00:12:29
And then there are
some FX tracks here.
00:12:32
These are all from the
session that I've got.
00:12:35
And then below that we have all of
the Auxes that are in my template.
00:12:40
So, some of this should
look super familiar
to any of you watching the
other mixing tutorials.
00:12:44
And some of it doesn't look
anything like the other songs.
00:12:47
Except that the track order and
the color coding is similar.
00:12:52
OK, now that I've given you the really
brief tour of the session
I wanna go back through
so you can get a good idea
of what was sent to me.
00:12:59
And what I added.
00:13:02
Because I think from listening
to the rough and then to my mix
you can hear that
element-wise it's identical.
00:13:07
I'm really just mixing what was there.
00:13:10
And there's a concept that
I've used inside my head
and also when trying
to explain how I mix.
00:13:18
This concept of black
boxing things.
00:13:20
And what it means is, taking what I'm given
and using it as if that is
the way it was recorded.
00:13:27
Period.
00:13:28
So, it doesn't matter if the sound of
the kick drum is one track of audio
or it's 2 tracks of audio
with a parallel compressor on
it and a bunch of plug-ins.
00:13:38
To me, it's the kick drum.
00:13:40
And that's all it is.
00:13:42
And as we move through the session,
you'll see that I do leave quite
a bit of their stuff alone.
00:13:48
Including the arrangement.
00:13:50
I told them very early on that I'm fine
having a session that's
a little bit messier
because I can decide for it,
I'm good with Pro Tools,
I know what stuff looks like.
00:13:59
I'm not gonna get confused by having a bunch
of stuff in the session that's muted.
00:14:03
One of the first things you
see in the drum tracks
is there are tons of muted regions.
00:14:08
Some of this is just
cleaned up tons.
00:14:10
If he doesn't hit
the toms, mute it.
00:14:11
I do that quite a bit,
it's manual gating basically.
00:14:14
And just keeps cymbal
bleed and rumble
and things out of the drum kit
until he actually hits the toms.
00:14:21
But there are a couple of other
things like kick drums
that have been moved,
turned off and turned on.
00:14:27
There is some automation
on plug-ins going on.
00:14:31
Some which I've done,
some they've done.
00:14:33
Basically, the reason is because,
you can see over here,
there's even some extra audio
at the end of the session.
00:14:40
These arrangements were very
fluid while they were working.
00:14:44
Zac is very creative and would walk in,
sing a part and then they would
end up rearranging the bridge.
00:14:52
Or they tried with the looped intro
then tried with the drum-kit
going back and forth
and finally making a decision.
00:14:58
But that decision, for
the most part would hold
and every once in a while they'd say:
'Hey, look, if you look
at the drum tracks,
these tracks have regions that are
muted from this part to this part.
00:15:07
Could you turn those back on
and turn off this other track?"
And this was a very easy way
for me to follow the trail of
breadcrumbs that they left
from the original tracking through
to the final arrangement.
00:15:18
And that really allowed us to
be fluid while we were mixing.
00:15:21
It wasn't a whole lot that changed
but there were some things.
00:15:24
So, it's good to actually leave some
of what they did to get the session ready
behind because then it was very
very quick to make the changes.
00:15:33
Basically, all of the plug-ins
on these drums are from them.
00:15:38
I don't normally use a Q8.
00:15:42
I don't normally use an REQ 6.
00:15:44
It's just not one
of the EQs I go to.
00:15:46
I know from looking at this
that these are their plug-ins.
00:15:49
The H-Delay, the SSL.
00:15:52
So, it's a lot of the standard sort of
plug-ins, EQs, compressors
but this is stuff that they had done
while their were tracking and then
building the song from the overdubs.
00:16:01
And, this is a perfect example
of me just black-boxing.
00:16:04
I went back to the kick
drum, had a listen to it.
00:16:08
Let me take these plug-ins
off for a second,
I think you can guess what they are.
00:16:17
There's a live kick and
there's kick sample.
00:16:20
I thought, well, that sounds really good
but I love lo-fi
and I love using that on kick drums
so I thought, 'let me just hear what
it sounds added to their kick'.
00:16:29
Taking their kick like a black box,
putting a little bit of lo-fi on it
and let's check out what that sounds like.
00:16:44
Just happier with it.
00:16:46
So, my usual drum treatment is
to put a lo-fi on kick drum
and I would normally do a bunch o EQ
but this kick actually
sounded really good to me.
00:16:55
So I just left it alone.
00:16:56
And I'm sure that the
thought in my head
when I didn’t EQ it was,
'Well, I'll always come
back to it if I have to.'
As it turned out,
I didn't have to.
00:17:05
If we look at the snare, it's
very much the same type of thing.
00:17:13
And if we look at their plug-ins,
they have an SSL.
00:17:17
Now, one thing that's interesting,
as I scroll back through the session
you notice this last insert, on Insert E,
is bypassing and coming back in.
00:17:26
So,
let me disable it for a second.
00:17:29
And you see, I've got a
little bit of lo-fi,
.4, a little bit higher than kick,
that's normal for me.
00:17:35
So here's without.
00:17:48
OK. It's still a little lacking.
00:17:50
So what I did was
normally I have a send
that is set up going to a Devil-loc.
00:17:57
And,
I'm not exactly sure why
I decided to put it on the track.
00:18:01
And to be honest,
this might be something that they've
played with and not kept.
00:18:06
And then I decided to go ahead
and sort of finish the thought.
00:18:09
So, I'm using the Devil-loc which
is a very distorted compressor.
00:18:14
But you see that the mix is on 4.
00:18:16
I'm keeping the original snare drum
and then blending this in.
00:18:20
This is technically
a parallel process
but it's just for the snare.
00:18:24
And I think the reason
it's on the track
is that, if we look at the bypass, it's
green, which means it's automated,
and I'm gonna use my usual
Ctrl+Cmd+Click
to show me that automation playlist.
00:18:36
And you see that it is ON for quite
a bit of the session in choruses.
00:18:43
But where the snare plays in that
second verse, I turned it back OFF.
00:18:47
So here's the second verse
which should be exactly
what we just listened to.
00:18:54
And here is in the first chorus,
just as an example,
with that Devil-Loc on.
00:19:05
Obviously it's louder but it's
got a lot more ring to it.
00:19:08
You hear the snares rattling
when the kick hits.
00:19:11
It's just a way of me getting a little
more excitement out of the snare
without having to do anything that is
automating in a place
where it can keep me from
working on the drums later.
00:19:22
I'm not doing mute automation
which is hard to see sometimes,
which I hate.
00:19:26
So, it's just a very quick way for me
to get a little bit of
extra body on the snare
just in the choruses.
00:19:32
So, that's our snare with
and without the Devil-loc.
00:19:35
And I really like the sound of it
and it might have worked
in that second verse
but I think what we'll find out
is it was just too dirty.
00:19:42
And we're really trying to
dry up that second verse.
00:19:46
Then going back though the drum-kit,
there's not a whole lot else that I did,
you'll notice there are a ton of
plug-ins in this first set.
00:19:54
Some EQ1 to just do some high pass.
00:19:57
There may have been some phase.
00:19:58
This all in the session as I got it.
00:20:01
And I didn't bother messing with it.
00:20:03
Come down to the overheads.
00:20:05
I believe that this is theirs.
00:20:10
This is an SSL EQ
and then it's followed by
one of my signature EQs
which is an EQ3 getting
rid of harsh mid-range.
00:20:19
So, let's go to the third chorus
and have a listen to the
overheads without this EQ.
00:20:45
It keeps the hi-hat bleed
and also that ride cymbal
just sounding a little more teeny.
00:20:53
It actually brings
up the top end
by sucking out some of the mid-range.
00:20:57
So rather than making it super bright
which would really change
the character of the kit,
I made the decision to suck
out some of the mid-range
which would allow that
top end to come through.
00:21:07
Excellent decision I might say.
00:21:10
Then looking at the rest of the kit,
there's very little going on.
00:21:13
Again, another
mid-range seek and destroy EQ.
00:21:18
The close room, which I'm not
gonna even bother going through.
00:21:21
It's just the exact same thing.
00:21:23
Sucking out a little harshness,
let's you use more of the top end.
00:21:26
And I believe I did it again
on a microphone Dave called 'Hot Carl'.
Don't look that up.
00:21:32
And this is more of a close microphone.
00:21:35
It's sort of a lo-fi microphone.
00:21:40
Which is a really cool sounding microphone,
it adds some of that loop
quality to the drum-kit.
00:21:45
Which is what glues it to the song.
00:21:47
When you have a drum loop for the intro
and then you switch to a drum-kit
it's nice to have
some remanent of that kind of lo-fi
sensibility mixed in with the kit.
00:21:57
But again, I sucked out a
bunch of the mid-range.
00:22:08
Which when is just that kick/snare,
it doesn't make a massive difference
but what we'll find is that in the track,
every time there is a big opened hi-hat
or one of those cymbal hits,
it just goes through and stays
super super smooth
which is kind of the idea of this drum-kit.
00:22:29
You hear, there aren't many fills,
there aren't a lot of cymbals,
and this is meant to have live drums
kind of playing like a loop
but there's enough live feel.
00:22:38
There are very few edits,
all of the edits are just to mute things.
00:22:42
The timing is as played.
00:22:44
Great drummer, really kind
of grooving with the song
and keeping it sounding like a
loop in terms of the part
but letting the track breath.
00:22:51
It's a great sort of
A/B with the loop.
00:22:56
There's one of the room track
and then that's it for
the actual drum tracks.
00:23:00
So, all of these drum tracks are
going to a bus called DRUMS.
00:23:06
And it's all caps so you have
of yell it when you say it.
00:23:09
And that then feeds the mix-bus.
00:23:11
Basically, they just popped and
SSL compressor on the drum kit.
00:23:14
I'm fine with that,
it sounds good.
00:23:16
I'm gonna keep it exactly
the way they have it.
00:23:19
So again, this is the idea of
black-boxing their drum kit.
00:23:22
I start from where they ended
and then take my mix on from there.
00:23:27
Just try and have a bit
more of what they're doing.
00:23:29
Then the other thing they got
is something called Drum Smack.
00:23:32
And this is off of a send.
00:23:34
This comes off of a few different tracks,
comes off the overheads,
some of the close rooms,
and I'm gonna play you the second chorus
where those microphones are playing
and you'll hear what's doing.
00:23:54
So, it's kind of subtle
but it's doing exactly
what all of my usual parallel
drum compression would do
which is, it's lengthening the kick
and making it a little more round,
and the way I use the word round
may not be the way you
use the word round.
00:24:09
Round is a relative term
that doesn't actually mean anything.
00:24:13
But to me it means that the
kick has more of a shape to it.
00:24:17
Instead of the kick just hitting, it hits
and then it blooms
and then it gets small again
right before the snare hit.
00:24:23
That's what their parallel
compression is doing
and I like it so I'm gonna keep it.
00:24:29
Then all I did to the drums other than
keep what they've done and
add a couple of lo-fis
is added a couple of the
sends that I normally use.
00:24:37
Let's go back and listen to the drums and
I'm gonna mute the kick snare crush.
00:24:41
Which is my DBX 160 VU.
00:24:43
And the Fatso which is
strangely the Fatso plug-in.
00:24:49
And here is that same
chorus without them.
00:24:59
So minus a couple of lo-fis, that's
the drum-kit that they sent me.
00:25:03
And then, using my usual
parallel compression
on the kick/snare and then the kit.
00:25:09
And you notice the kit is
being sent off of the Drum Aux.
00:25:12
It's one place as opposed to putting
individual sends of every drum microphone.
00:25:18
I'm gonna leave them set at
zero and follow main pan
so there's no difference whatsoever.
00:25:25
And it gets the added bonus of,
since the drums are in a stereo aux,
if I decide to EQ them, which I didn't,
that EQ would be reflected
in the send to the Fatso
as opposed to having some
overall drum processing
that didn't make it to
the parallel processing.
00:25:40
So, anyway, now that you completely
forgot what it sounded like,
here it is with the kick/snare
Crush and with the Fatso.
00:26:06
Alright, I think we're winning here.
00:26:08
It keeps the character, which
is very very important.
00:26:11
But everything just sounds a little
more exciting, a little bigger,
and I little more energetic, which
is always what I'm going for.
00:26:18
I'm not gonna actually go through every
single one of these tracks.
00:26:22
What you'll see, if you
look at the programming
is again, lots of their plug-ins.
00:26:27
They have a sample
of a big kick.
00:26:30
Which sounds like this.
00:26:34
But when I got it, it sounded like this.
00:26:39
Which is cool, but again,
this is hinting at being a large
kick with a lot of low end.
00:26:45
So, if I want a synthesized low end
I love this Lowender plug-in,
it's based on some of
the old DBX sub boxes.
00:26:52
There's also R-Bass or Max Bass
which are two different
flavors of the same thing.
00:26:58
Which don't actually synthesise
low end, they synthesize
harmonics of what would
have been the low end.
00:27:03
It's more of a psychoacoustic trick to make
you hear low end when it isn't there.
00:27:08
In a lot of cases that can be great
because you're not gonna mess
with things down around 16 Hz
but you make it feel like they're there.
00:27:15
In this case I wanted some 16 Hz.
00:27:18
Well, 19.
00:27:19
So, I'm gonna use Lowender
to create a bunch of sub.
00:27:31
It just make it a little longer,
a little bigger, a little lower.
00:27:34
Happy like that.
00:27:36
We'll quickly see a lot of
standard stuff on here.
00:27:40
There's a snare drum
sample that they're using.
00:27:43
This is their EQ and their reverb,
just to get and idea
of what's on here.
00:27:58
This is actually the same sort of idea
that I have with my snare reverb,
which I'm not using on this.
00:28:04
It gives you some stereo width and
some length to the snare drum
but without making it
really sound like reverb.
00:28:10
So, they've done it with
the sample into a reverb.
00:28:13
I would normally just take
the snare drum itself
and sent it in to my ambience.
00:28:18
It's actually just a very
stereo reverb as it is.
00:28:22
But I chose not to use it
because they were already doing
that job with this snare sample.
00:28:27
That way, I didn't have to go through
and do mute automation on the send
to mimic the snare drying up
and getting wetter the way they had
already set up with the sample.
00:28:36
Other than that,
there're just a lot of little
programmed drum things here.
00:28:41
Hi-hats, stuff like that.
00:28:43
And then we get down into the percussion
which is very straight ahead.
00:28:46
And all I really did
here is my usual thing,
of taking all of their percussion
as played...
00:28:53
Take it into an Aux fader so I can
add a little bit of Aphex to it.
00:28:56
Again, this is that vintage Aural
exciter that I use quite a bit
hiding way down at the
bottom of the session.
00:29:03
And we're only hearing
the Aphex process.
00:29:08
It just brightens up the percussion
and makes it work a little bit better
with the top of what's going on.
00:29:15
Here, might as well just go ahead
and solo up the percussion.
00:29:26
And here's without the Aphex.
00:29:39
Just a little more present,
a little more in your face.
00:29:41
But it's got, I always do this with
my fingers when I hear that top end.
00:29:46
I don't know what that means
but it's like, with the congas you
can feel the fingers on the skins.
00:29:51
You sort of feel like you're more
in the room with the percussionist,
which I like.
00:29:55
The only other thing about
the drum programming and the percussion,
before I move on,
is you'll see all this
sends with an F on it.
00:30:04
These are all sends to that Fatso.
00:30:06
What it means is that all of the rhythmic
elements are going into that Fatso.
00:30:11
Not just the drum-kit.
00:30:13
And it makes them
all work together.
00:30:15
If I solo up all of our
rhythmic elements,
here is without the Fatso.
00:30:43
It's basically just more of everything
but as I'm sure you've learned by now
with all my shared parallel compression,
what it does is it sort of,
everything is louder but nothing
steps on anything else.
00:30:54
Because whatever happens
at that very instant
is loud and pushes down everything
else on the parallel compressor.
00:31:00
Then it comes right back up
and you hear whatever is happening next.
00:31:04
So, it's different then
just turning it all up
and I don't think you can get
the same sort of effect
by directly compressing these elements.
00:31:10
First of all, they will
have to go through one
stereo compressor, and that would be it.
00:31:15
Which is just a little weird
in your signal path to take
all of the drums, the
programming and the percussion
and chunk them through and Stereo Aux
just so you can compress them.
00:31:23
But that also, that
interaction wouldn't be there.
00:31:25
You'd loose some of the
uncompressed stuff.
00:31:28
So, if the kick and the tambourine
happen at the same time,
this way, the parallel
compression gets turned down
but both of those uncompressed
signals are still there.
00:31:38
So you get both transients.
00:31:39
In a straight compressor,
whichever transient was louder would
in effect turn down the other element.
00:31:45
It's a very different sound.
00:31:47
Let me just play for you again.
00:31:50
I'll go to the last chorus
which is even busier.
00:32:14
Now that we're done with these
pure rhythmic elements,
we work our way down
past the sound effects.
00:32:20
I'm not really talk about them a lot.
00:32:22
Only because they're very well put
together. They're just some sweeps.
00:32:25
I'll play a little bit of them soloed.
00:32:44
So, sound effect stuff,
you do hear them in the track.
00:32:47
What I really like about it is it just
keeps it from being
the guys in the room.
00:32:53
It's like, 'Oh, yeah, this is a record'.
00:32:55
Not, 'This is just a
recording of us in the room'.
00:32:58
It's a very well produced
song without this stuff.
00:33:01
But on first listen
you might say...
00:33:04
'Hey, why is that stuff in there?'
But I think that these are the details
that make people remember Zac's stuff.
00:33:10
He's just very ambitious
and he's constantly pushing it.
00:33:14
He won't settle from
something that's just...
00:33:16
'Oh, yeah, that's us playing
music and that's cool.'
No, there has to be something about it.
00:33:21
I think even though this is one of the more
straight ahead songs in the album,
he really felt like he had
to have some of these
like bells and whistles, literally.
00:33:29
I didn't do too much to them at all
other than put them into the Rear Bus
which is my stereo unlinked compressor
that's used parallel on
everything in the song
except the drums and bass.
00:33:42
And that's exactly how
it was used here.
00:33:44
Once we start getting all
the other instruments in
then we'll talk about the
Rear Bus specifically
but I don't think there's much point now.
00:33:52
Next down in the session is the Bass.
00:33:54
Our nice bright blue, which always is.
00:33:57
Matt is a really good bass player.
00:33:59
Really good.
00:34:00
I didn't realize quite how
good until I saw them live.
00:34:04
He's sort of ridiculous.
00:34:06
It's very straight ahead,
there's DI and Amp.
00:34:09
All I did was a little
bit of noise reduction
which, I mean, this is something
that will happen sometimes.
00:34:15
I think, if I go back a playlist
this will be un-noise reduced.
00:34:28
And here's the playlist after Z-nosing it.
00:34:39
And you can hear there are a
couple of edit clicks in there.
00:34:42
And that's why I always
do this on a playlist.
00:34:45
If those clicks were
sticking out at some point,
I would have gone back and fixed them.
00:34:49
Obviously this bass note
gotta moved a little bit.
00:34:51
I don't know why,
I didn't do it.
00:34:54
It's nothing that bother me.
00:34:55
But I always do keep the
unprocessed audio around.
00:34:58
If you're gonna change audio in a session,
make a playlist, it's so easy.
00:35:02
No reason not to do it.
00:35:04
So I did that to both the DI and the Amp.
00:35:06
And what that gives me,
with them together,
is just a nice clean bass sound.
00:35:16
And by clean, I mean, it doesn't
have a lot of noise all over it.
00:35:20
So obviously, that's still a
little dirty but that's cool.
00:35:23
No plug-ins, they ran the
bass through a Bass Bus.
00:35:26
And all of these plug-ins are their.
00:35:28
So, I'm not even gonna talk about them.
00:35:32
There you go, it has some stuff on it.
00:35:36
And then, strangely, the bass is actually
going to the Rear Buss on this mix.
00:35:40
So, we'll listen to that later on,
once we have the whole mix together
and you'll really hear
how that can totally
change the Rear Bus works.
00:35:48
It gives you tons and
tons of bass in the mix
and you can change that
obviously by re-balancing
but it will also let the bass kind of drive
the rest of the instruments.
00:35:58
So, interestingly that
was my choice on this mix
but it doesn't make sense
to listen to it yet.
00:36:04
Before we move into
the rest of the band
let's just hear the rhythm sections.
00:36:08
I'm just gonna solo up...
00:36:09
Might as well solo
up the sound effects
since we said we're done with them.
00:36:13
So here's percussion,
programming, drums and bass.
00:36:45
Alright, a lot of detail in the
sound effects and programming.
00:36:49
The drums have a really cool
kind of lo-fi vinyly feel to them
which is that Devil-loc compressor
as well as some of
taking out the mid-range
in those overhead microphones.
00:37:02
You get this nice grainier top end
but no real presence on
the hi-hat and cymbals
which I kind of like.
00:37:10
And the bass is driving the chorus,
so that's a very fine thing.
00:00:00
Alright.
00:00:01
Now we get to the mess.
00:00:04
We'll start with guitars.
00:00:06
I'm just gonna go ahead and solo up
all of the guitars and I'm gonna
play from the end of the intro
into the verse and we'll get
to the beginning of the chorus
so you can kind of hear what
the guitar arrangement is.
00:01:07
Alright, there's our guitar arrangement.
00:01:10
There's basically a main
guitar in the verse
and that's Zac's acoustic.
00:01:14
And then you've got the little comping
chunk guitar up here
which is Coy playing a rhythm track.
00:01:22
And again you noticed
lots of muted regions.
00:01:25
This is the way they built
their guitar arrangement.
00:01:28
Stuff is played, is put in place
and then they decide:
'Well, no, let's not bring
that guitar into...' And things like that.
00:01:34
These are all decisions they made.
00:01:36
With Coy you end up with just the chorus,
which is the effect that they were using.
00:01:41
In the verse you have the
chorus, just to be confusing.
00:01:45
And then, in the chorus,
you have the verse. No!
No, in the chorus you have
the clean dry guitar.
00:01:50
So, very similar part,
but a totally different sound.
Here's what's going on in the verse.
00:02:09
Alright, it's the same guitar player
doing the same type of part
but it's on different sides,
it sounds totally different.
00:02:18
But it's really
doing the same job,
it's adding some rhythmic propulsion
to the guitars as a whole.
00:02:25
You've got Clay up here playing riffs.
00:02:32
It sounds great, as you can see
there are no plug-ins on this.
00:02:36
It goes down to an Aux where there is
a CLA-3A.
00:02:44
A LA-3A modeled compressor,
that's from them.
00:02:47
And then they have a send
off to the Clay Slap.
00:02:51
Which is just a delay down here.
00:02:54
Echoboy, really
simple short slap.
00:02:57
This is what makes up that sound.
00:02:59
Again, I'm black-boxing the sound.
That guitar sounds great,
I don't need to do anything other than make
sure that's the right level
once I start balancing
the guitars.
00:03:09
The other thing is, when there's a guitar
arrangement this complicated
with these many pieces in it,
I'll tend to leave the
panning exactly as I get it.
00:03:20
Unless something occurs to me.
00:03:22
I'm not gonna go through and
double check their panning.
00:03:25
I'm gonna assume that they spent way more
time on the panning
than I ever would in my five minute check.
00:03:31
I might solo up the guitars
the way I just did and
listen through a section
and hear that there's sort
of a nice stereo spread
and interesting things are happening
and not everything is on one side.
00:03:41
But that's it, then
I'm gonna trust that
they've done everything
that needs to be done.
00:03:46
And if I hear something
later on that bothers me
I will hunt it down and figure out
why it's bothering me.
00:03:50
And then decide if the whole
guitar needs to move or not.
00:03:53
But for the most part,
they did a really good job
putting this together.
00:03:57
So, just working though the parts
in the chorus you've got some
more riff guitar up here.
00:04:07
Which, within the context of
the guitar arrangement...
00:04:17
You don't hear it
as much of a lead,
it's a really sort of
intricate counter melody
to all of the guitar
parts that are going on.
00:04:24
I really like it.
00:04:25
I like the balance.
00:04:26
Again, that's a reason for me not
to mess with the panning
because it's interacting
with a lot of other stuff.
00:04:32
Then we've got Hop's guitar down here,
just in the choruses.
00:04:41
Real kind of straight ahead combo sound
a little bit of distortion,
and this is the continuation
of Hop's guitar from the verse.
00:04:48
So, I'll play you the end of
the verse into the chorus.
00:04:58
So, two totally different
parts panned differently.
00:05:01
Much like Coy's guitars
are panned differently
into very different sounding parts.
00:05:07
But these are the people in the band.
00:05:10
So, it's important for me to know that
these are both Hop.
00:05:12
I love the fact that the stuff is labeled
with the guitar player's name.
00:05:15
Because it makes a difference.
If you're building an arrangement
you can decide that each
guitar part has a personality
or you can decide that the
guitar player has a personality.
00:05:25
In this case they haven't really worried
too much section by section,
whether Hop's guitar stays
on one side or not.
00:05:30
They're moving it around to do
what's best for the music.
00:05:33
And that's great. And that approach
works really well on this song.
00:05:36
But there are certain songs where you might
decide it's more important
that Hop kind of stays still than he move
because that can be distracting.
00:05:44
The listener will often sort of
construct a world
in which the mix is taking place.
00:05:50
And, if something moves,
it sort of breaks the spell.
00:05:55
And you're no longer listening to the song,
you're listening to the mix.
00:05:58
Because why did that guitar move from
one side to the other?
So, unless it's the most awesome
effect in the whole world
I'll generally
stay away from it.
00:06:05
They've built their guitar
arrangement by doing that.
00:06:08
But I think the difference
in level between those parts
sort of gets around any
idea that you might have
something that would distract
from listening to the song.
00:06:16
And then Zac's acoustic, down here,
is a kind of a rhythm part.
00:06:21
And then it turns in to more of a
strummy part I believe in the chorus.
00:06:33
In this case, they've been sure to keep
Zac in exactly the same spot.
00:06:38
It actually works out pretty well because
Zac is going to a mono bus.
00:06:42
Which is collected down here on
the Zac Acoustic Guitar Bus.
00:06:46
And then that is panned 10 left.
00:06:48
End of story, done.
00:06:50
Now, this automation, I believe
they had put in the session.
00:06:56
Again, I don't automate a
whole lot until the very end.
00:07:00
What that also means is that I
can leave their automation alone
until the very end of the mix process.
00:07:06
I can leave the automation on that acoustic
and if it works for me,
I'm done.
00:07:10
If it doesn't work for me then I've
gotta back track, get rid of it,
but sort of keeping in mind what they
were trying to do with their automation.
00:07:17
In this case, I just left it alone.
00:07:20
And I think all I did,
since it's a different nylon
guitar, they have put
some EQ on it for one
section of the song.
00:07:34
Now that I've found the
long lost automation,
you can see that in the second half of
the lick section, which is an instrumental,
this guitar comes in and it's EQed,
it's not drastic
EQ but it is EQed.
00:07:47
And then when we get back to
the chorus the EQ drops out.
00:08:05
It's not a drastic EQ but it's
sucking out a little bit of the boom
and accentuating the top end.
00:08:11
Now, looking at this,
I can't remember if I did
this or they did this
but basically what they are doing,
or what I'm doing,
or somebody's doing with this EQ...
00:08:19
It's the equivalent
of a volume ride
but if you just push this
guitar up in this section,
what would happen is the
boom in the guitar
would start to overtake some
of the other things.
00:08:30
So, it's a combination of level
by pushing up this top end.
00:08:35
But compensation for that
extra level of this guitar
by sucking out a little bit of the body.
00:08:40
It's just gonna make the guitar feel the
same but all of a sudden jump out.
00:08:44
We'll find out later when we've got most of
the instruments back in.
00:08:47
But this guitar is a little bit of a
feature in the second half of this section
and then drops back to do it's normal.
00:08:55
'I am the acoustic guitar
player in the song
playing the chorus' bit.
00:08:59
As opposed to 'I am the focus
guitar, check me out'.
00:09:01
So, it's a subtle EQ
thing, but it works.
00:09:04
I'm gonna take credit for it,
let's say I did it.
00:09:07
They'll let me know if I didn't.
00:09:09
That's our guitars.
00:09:11
You do see that they're all going
to the Rear Bus, which again,
you'll hear the magic of the
Rear Bus a little later.
00:09:18
Then the fiddle tracks
take up a lot of room in the session
but basically,
there’s not a lot going on.
00:09:25
If we solo up the fiddle...
00:09:29
It's just harmonized pizzicatos.
00:09:37
Alright, and later in the song,
basically the same thing.
00:09:52
Alright, then we have a little
bit of a rhythm part later on.
00:09:56
You heard a little bit of
the legato.
00:10:00
I don't remember why this is in
but I think it was just to have
a little burst of some strings.
00:10:06
Let's listen to the section and
see if we can even hear it.
00:10:17
It's in there, it's tucked it
but it's kind of cool. This is
obviously something they did
just to fill in the hole.
00:10:23
It's very much like the way
they did their arrangement
with all of the sound FX and the sweeps.
00:10:28
Anytime there is any chance to add to that
dynamics of the song, they do it.
00:10:36
It's just great perseverance
to have things as tweaky as a little tiny
fiddle part taken from
a section you decided we do not want the
legato fiddle at all
but hold on, what if we had
that tiny little chord.
00:10:49
Someone had to even
remember that it was there.
00:10:52
When we get to the bridge, however,
these play the part of a string section.
00:11:21
And then we're right back to our pizzicato
but with a little bit
of the legato thrown in.
00:11:37
So, they’ve taken care of
all this processing for me.
00:11:40
I really didn't do anything.
00:11:42
These plug-ins are all theirs.
00:11:44
A little bit of EQ,
One knob filter.
00:11:49
That's on that extra rhythm part.
00:11:52
And some Renaissance X.
00:11:55
CLA vocals on the strings.
00:11:58
That's actually working out quite well.
They sound really nice.
00:12:02
A little bit of EQ, this would be me
saying they got a little bit harsh.
00:12:06
And then, this is the reverb that they
chose, it sounds great.
00:12:10
What happens a lot when I'm mixing
is I get lots of sessions with plug-ins
that I don't have.
00:12:15
I might or not have heard of them.
00:12:17
But I just don't own them.
00:12:20
I believe that Valhalla reverb was actually
purchased while mixing this record.
00:12:25
I'll hear it, I'll get a demo
and hear the plug-in and go:
'Oh, that's amazing'.
00:12:30
And because it's a one-off and
I'm not in the middle of like,
'I budget some money for plug-ins'
Like, I just gotta some work,
because I'm mixing a song,
and I can spend U$150 on a plug-in
and then, 'Oh, it sounds great'.
00:12:40
And it's exactly the reverb they were
using so no one can question it.
00:12:44
It's a great time to buy a plug-in.
When you get some work
and something comes in with the
plug-in that you've never heard of,
if it's awesome buy
it right and there.
00:12:52
You can usually talk yourself into spending
that money while you're getting paid.
00:12:56
If you wait till the end of the session or
when the demos run out
you're not getting paid
anymore and you won't buy it.
00:13:01
That's my little tip for buying software.
00:13:04
It's a terrible tip. You're
just gonna spend money.
00:13:07
So, again, these strings
just go to the Rear Bus.
00:13:09
They're gonna interact with everybody
and do their job but they
already sounded really good.
00:13:14
Last but not least
before we get to vocals
we've got a couple of keyboard parts.
00:13:19
One of which isn't actually a keyboard.
First there's the Rhodes.
00:13:37
So, you have to realize that the
Rhodes is playing the whole song.
00:13:41
As are the guitars.
00:13:43
No single guitar plays
the whole song.
00:13:45
But the combination of all of them do.
00:13:47
When I was making sure
that the Rhodes was OK
I was doing it in the context
of the Rhodes and the guitars.
00:13:54
I don't know that I really did anything to
this except spread it out a little more.
00:13:59
So, it was a stereo Rhodes to begin with.
00:14:02
And I'll go back to just
listening to the Rhodes.
00:14:04
Here's without the stereo width.
00:14:27
So, it's a little subtle
but what will happen is
with the guitars, it will just help
separate it a little bit.
00:14:33
So, here's with the guitars.
00:14:56
You can hear it's
not subtle anymore.
00:14:58
It's the difference between the Rhodes kind
of being on it's own and in the middle
and not really interacting a whole lot
or really playing with the guitars
and, more importantly to me,
starting to hide
behind the guitars.
00:15:11
There are a few guys in the band who
are awesome keyboard players
but none of them are know for being
keyboard players, they're know for being
these multi-instrumentalists who play mostly
things that have necks and strings on.
00:15:22
So, the idea that the Rhodes is a
main instrument is really important
but I really wanted the
guitars to carry the show
and strangely just spreading it out a
tiny bit really helped tuck it in.
00:15:32
Again, this is without.
00:15:56
It's just that weird combination of,
it's easier to actually hear
the Rhodes through the guitars
but at the same time it works
better with the guitars.
00:16:06
Not night and day difference
but to me something that will actually
really help make the mix work.
00:16:13
We didn't talk about the Glockenspiel,
it happens in the bridge.
00:16:16
I'll just solo it up so
you can see what it is.
00:16:22
It's a Glockenspiel. Fantastic.
00:16:25
That's all we need
to say about that.
00:16:27
Alright, moving on to the lead vocal.
00:16:30
Zac, great singer, great sounding voice.
00:16:33
They had already done a lot of work.
00:16:35
They've got some plug-ins on
his voice, they've got EQs,
they've got more EQs, they've
got some compressors.
00:16:41
They've got some more EQs and compressors.
00:16:45
Basically, again, I black box this.
00:16:47
I just said: 'You know what,
the vocal sounds good,
I'm gonna leave it alone'.
00:16:52
And then treat it as if that is
the mono vocal track I've got.
00:16:56
Now there are also some bounced FX
which I said we'd check out.
00:17:05
And there's some little delay sends.
00:17:13
They've built a lot of
the vocal FX for me
but the vocal itself
sounds like this.
00:17:26
I have exactly the same tracks I always
bring in from my template.
00:17:29
I've got a pretty straight
ahead lead vocal track
which just has a little bit of EQ,
some Phoenix and a tiny
bit of compression.
00:17:38
And that's parallel with something
that I'm not using in the intro,
which is the Pultec 'crank a bunch
of 8K, get rid of the low end'
into an LA-2A which is set like a de-esser.
00:17:51
This is basically building
a 3 band compressor
and bypassing the bottom
band and the top band.
00:17:59
I'll put this 3 plug-ins up
on the screen together.
00:18:04
This is the order of the 3 plug-ins.
00:18:07
Get rid of a bunch of low end
add a bunch of 8K.
00:18:10
Then go into a compressor which is set to
only look at the higher frequencies.
00:18:15
This is gonna look at that 8K range
and it's basically gonna
crush the 8K vocal.
00:18:21
Then you go back into another EQ, add back
all the low end that you took out
and get rid of...
00:18:27
Oh, in this case I left all
the 8K that's in there.
00:18:31
Every once and awhile I get rid
of some of the 8K that I added.
00:18:34
But that's not the case here.
00:18:36
And what that gives you is a
very sort of poppy sound.
00:18:40
So here is the chorus
with the Pultec muted.
00:18:43
I'm gonna mute it after
I hit play because it's automated,
otherwise it will come right back on.
00:19:08
It just feels a little more crushed
and a little more mixed.
00:19:11
It has sort of a sheen to it
which is what you get when
you over-compress the vocal.
00:19:15
But by using this as a
parallel effect, first of all,
it sounds different but in the context of
the song it's still gonna sound like Zac.
00:19:22
Because I never loose this uncompressed
version of the vocal up here.
00:19:26
Just another parallel process.
00:19:28
And past that, they already
had some FX on him.
00:19:32
Which I left in the session.
00:19:34
That's these Auxes down here.
00:19:37
There's verbs and plates and some lead
delays and things
which I never even looked at.
00:19:43
I think they spend so
much time setting this up
why would I mess with that?
If it sounded bad or too wet for me,
I would go ahead and try and
reverse engineer what they've done
and figure out how to fix it.
00:19:56
But I feel like, if they spent
that much time on the lead vocal,
if I can, I will make the mix work with
whatever they've given me.
00:20:03
And then add my parallel
stuff on top of that.
00:20:06
And a little bit of my FX as well.
00:20:09
I'm using my usual vocal crush,
which is an 1176 all button in.
00:20:13
Parallel.
00:20:15
This goes into the Rear Bus,
which we still haven't got to.
00:20:18
And then into the Aphex
which is exactly the same Aphex we
used on the percussion earlier
just for a little bit of extra top end.
00:20:24
So if I get rid of the
3 sends that I added
here's that verse going into the chorus.
00:20:43
Alright, now we're gonna add
the Vocal Crush, the
Rear Bus and the Aphex.
00:20:49
And here's the Vocal
Crush 'all buttons in'.
00:20:51
Super slow attack,
super fast release.
00:20:53
A good amount of gain.
00:21:07
Alright, you can hear, it just comes alive.
00:21:09
It's got a lot more energy,
it's more present.
00:21:12
And I think that's the general theme of
everything I did in this mix.
00:21:16
Everything is just more of what it was.
00:21:18
It's all bigger, it has more low end,
it has more top end,
it has more depth, it has
more attack and release.
00:21:23
It has a little more of everything.
00:21:26
How do I do this? You might ask.
00:21:29
There are all the little things I've shown
you on the individual instruments
but the huge component
of this is the Rear Bus.
00:21:35
I've mention a few times:
'Oh, that's sent to the Rear Bus.
This is sent to the Rear Bus'.
00:21:40
Before I get to the
background vocals
let me just give you a quick
tour of the Rear Bus.
00:21:44
So, let me solo up the bass,
the guitars,
the fiddle,
the keyboards,
and I'll leave the vocal
out of this for now,
we don't really need to get into that but
you'll see it when the whole mix is in.
00:21:59
Then I'll go down to my Rear Bus fader.
00:22:01
This is a multi-mono, which basically
gives me two mono compressors
that have same the knobs on them.
00:22:07
So I have unlinked stereo compression.
00:22:10
And it's an UAD.
00:22:12
Universal Audio 1176 AE.
00:22:14
It's their anniversary edition.
00:22:16
This an 1176 that never
existed back in the day.
00:22:20
They built it,
I don't remember which anniversary it was
of the original 1176,
but it's been around quite a while,
so they made a special
version in hardware
then they modeled the
hardware that they had built.
00:22:33
So, this is kind of the play of the movie
of the Broadway
show of the movie
of an 1176.
00:22:41
But it just sounds a lot like the
hardware 1176 that I used to use,
some old crusty black faces.
00:22:48
And these settings at 2:1,
2:1 doesn't even exist
on any other 1176.
00:22:53
But the attack being super slow
and the release being
sort of up here, near 5.
00:22:59
That's pretty much what
I'll do on the hardware.
00:23:02
And now I'm gonna play you all of
the instruments that I'd soloed up.
00:23:06
We can leave this open and see
how much it's compressing.
00:23:09
We're not gonna hear the
Rear Bus for a second.
00:23:11
And I'll do verse into chorus.
00:23:32
Now prepare do be amazed.
00:23:34
Now we're gonna pick up a lot
of level with this as well.
00:23:37
It's a little bit of an unfair test but
that's OK because I win.
00:23:59
Everybody is just interacting,
everybody is a little happier.
00:24:05
Now, I'm going to take the
bass out of the Rear Bus.
00:24:08
Because I said that normally the
bass doesn't go into the Rear Bus.
00:24:11
And that's true.
00:24:12
The bass is gonna drop in level
quite a bit but what you'll hear
is the lack of interaction between the
bass and the rest of the instruments.
00:24:20
The thing about that,
specially in the verses
is the fact that the bass
isn't always playing.
00:24:25
So, listen carefully to the
space between the bass notes
as we listen to the end of the verse.
00:24:31
This is with the bass
out of the Rear Bus.
00:24:46
I'm gonna put it in the Rear Bus and
we're gonna pick up level
but listen to the guitars.
00:25:02
A little hard to hear because so much stuff
changes by putting the bass in there
but to me you hear everybody
getting out of the way of the bass
and then coming back in.
They kind of lay back.
00:25:12
Move forward, lay
back, move forward.
00:25:13
And then once we get to the chorus,
now everybody is just interacting
the way they normally do
inside this Rear Bus magic
pool of compression.
00:25:48
To do a real A/B I'd have to have two
different levels to play the bass back at.
00:25:52
But you hear guitars just
sticking out all over the place.
00:25:55
The bass just keeps everybody in check
and really drives the song
when it's in the Rear Bus.
00:26:01
Let's check out our background vocals
and then we get to actually listen to
everything all together.
00:26:06
There are two main sets of background
vocals that we have to deal with.
00:26:09
One are called the 'I remember'
because it's from the very beginning of the
song, in the intro they sing 'I remember'.
00:26:17
These are 'TUNA', apparently.
00:26:20
These are Clay, Jimmy and Hop
and I guess they've been tuned.
00:26:23
And they like to name
them like they're fish.
00:26:25
So here are the background vocals.
00:26:31
And there was a track of
Zac which has been muted.
00:26:37
And I think, aside from
keeping his voice out,
it actually feels kind of
cool as just a three part,
and not having the main part.
I'm gonna make this inactive.
00:26:47
Just if while I'm wildly muting things
I accidentally turn it back on.
00:26:51
So, I believe that this is basically
the panning they gave me.
00:26:55
I think I made them a little bit wider.
00:26:57
It's on 70 and 81 instead of probably in
the 50s or 60s.
00:27:01
But the idea is that this is an ensemble of
live singers singing together.
00:27:05
The treatment on them is minimal,
they go down into
'I remember' Bus
which has their plug-ins on them, again.
00:27:13
Renaissance X and another
Valhalla reverb on an ambiance.
00:27:17
It's not nearly as big as that string
reverb we had.
00:27:20
And then I take those
backgrounds down into...
00:27:23
This is an older version of
my template, I didn't have
the Pultec chain that I just
showed you on the lead vocal,
available for the background vocals yet.
00:27:31
I just hadn't done that yet.
00:27:33
The plug-ins I use on the
background vocals...
00:27:36
I put in an EQ3,
this is just a high-pass filter to control
some o the low-end in the microphones
and then I've got a little bit of,
it's not a notch filter
but I'm taking out
some 3.5K basically.
00:27:49
Which for me is a frequency
that tends to ring.
00:27:52
Specially on cymbals and vocals.
00:27:54
And these particular vocals must have
had a little bit of that going on.
00:27:58
They just felt harsh when
I listen really loud.
00:28:00
And one of the things
that is important to me
is that people can listen to my mixes loud.
00:28:05
I think that's when there are a lot of fun.
00:28:07
And that also really engages the
listener to listen to music
if they can listen to it loud.
00:28:12
So, getting rid of harsh
mid-range frequencies
is something I often do.
00:28:17
When I'm dealing with drums
I'll actually make sure
they aren't there.
00:28:20
With other instruments, or with vocals,
I wait until I notice that they're there
and then I go ahead and take care of them.
That must be what happened here.
00:28:27
It's not drastic, it's 4 dB,
but it's enough to actually fix something
that must have acted like a problem.
00:28:33
Then I have a Pultec,
I'm adding a little bit of low end
and a little bit of upper mids.
00:28:38
This is well above the
mid I was taking out.
00:28:41
Just adding some shape.
00:28:42
And then a little bit of Phoenix.
00:28:45
Let me play you this group of
background vocals with and without.
00:28:49
This last plug-in here is just a
little bit of gain through a L2.
00:28:54
Not much going on there,
I'm gonna leave that in
because otherwise it's
not gonna be a fair A/B.
00:29:02
Alright, here's with my
pool of magic.
00:29:09
So, a lot o apparent
gain coming out of this.
00:29:13
And a lot of that is the
Pultec and the Phoenix.
00:29:16
That's what you get.
00:29:18
So, it's a lot more present, a lot
more in the room, which I like.
00:29:21
Very quickly, there's one more
group of background vocals
which are used in the choruses.
00:29:28
Not that extensive.
00:29:39
So, those are getting the exact same
plug-ins that the other ones are.
00:29:42
All the background vocals are going into
my background Aux.
00:29:48
That's basically it.
It's again, three part harmony,
they're not as widely panned
because now they're in chorus
that has a lot more going on.
00:29:55
So I want the vocals to be a
little more of a package.
00:29:57
Plus, they're not singing
lead at this point.
00:30:00
In the intro they are.
00:30:02
In the chorus they are
harmonies to Zac's lead.
00:30:05
A little more of a
smaller stereo package.
00:30:08
But they're still very tight.
00:30:09
You can hear how well they sing together.
It's kind of ridiculous.
00:30:12
And then at the very end of the song,
there is this track here.
00:30:23
Which they went ahead
and bounced for me.
00:30:25
I'm not sure exactly why they decided to.
00:30:27
I think it's these tracks up here.
00:30:29
But there are also some
effects that go with it.
00:30:35
So, just some short delay, I like it.
00:30:37
I left it, there's
nothing else to do.
00:30:40
These backgrounds kind of went as is.
00:30:42
Down here, on the sends,
you'll notice that in the
intro, I'm turning off
these three sends.
00:30:51
And then once we get to the
chorus, they are back on.
00:30:53
So, in the chorus,
I'm sending to the Aphex,
which you've seen before,
I'm sending to the Rear Bus,
which we've just checked out and saw how
unbelievably awesome it was.
00:31:03
And I'm sending to some vocal reverb.
00:31:05
In the intro, I am not.
00:31:07
And then, in the beginning of the chorus,
do I turn them on right away?
It looks like the Rear Bus comes on early.
00:31:16
That's just straight automation.
00:31:17
But they're all one by the time
they start singing on the chorus.
00:31:21
So, the intro is much
dryer and more present,
and a little more natural
sounding without the Rear Bus
and the vocal reverb.
00:31:28
But then, once we get to the chorus,
the track has a lot
more going on.
00:31:32
So, in the track,
they probably don't feel hugely different.
00:31:35
I'm gonna throw everything in
and we'll listen to the chorus.
00:31:45
I'm gonna play that again, just focus on
the background vocals. Here's the intro.
00:31:50
I'll play you a longer run here.
00:32:00
In the context of the song,
to me they actually feel very similar,
but there's a lot of automation
turning off those sends,
making it work.
00:32:09
And that's the difference between what
you can hear in solo and what you can't.
00:32:14
When you listen in solo they sound totally
different, you listen in the track,
all of the extra instrument
that are going on the chorus
just eat that reverb and
eat that extra compression
and the compression is needed to make them
sound as present as they do in the intro.
00:32:29
So, that is basically it.
What I'm gonna do,
very quickly, is I'm gonna go through,
I'm gonna leave a lot of the
smaller plug-ins that I did
but I'm gonna take out a lot of the
big broad stroke stuff that I did.
00:32:42
I'm gonna take out the
Kick/Snare Crush,
I'm gonna take out the Fatso.
00:32:46
I'll take out this Devil-Loc on the snare.
00:32:51
I have to remember to put it back in.
00:32:54
I'm gonna take out the Rear Bus.
00:32:57
And I'll take out,
I guess I'll leave the vocals alone,
they're gonna be a little loud,
but that's OK.
00:33:05
Here's the mix with my little tweaks
but basically now, all you're gonna hear
is the effect of my 2-bus processing,
which is the next thing
we're gonna talk about.
00:33:16
So here's the end of the verse
going into the chorus.
00:33:39
Alright, that makes me sad.
00:33:41
Which is good.
00:33:42
Because now I can make myself
happy again really quickly
by turning this stuff back on.
00:33:47
And I think all we've got
left is the Rear Bus.
00:33:51
If I remember correctly.
00:33:53
Here's that same spot.
00:34:16
Everything is just more present now,
things are moving around, it's interacting.
00:34:20
And more importantly,
it's sounds more like a record.
00:34:24
I don't even know exactly what that means
but it sounds more like a record.
00:34:29
And less like a rough mix.
00:34:30
And their rough mix was great.
00:34:33
Let's listen to that same
spot on their rough mix
just to go back to where
they have left the track.
00:34:53
It's not that dissimilar to my mix without
all of those parallel chains
but I think what you really hear is,
it sounds good,
but it doesn't sound like something
you would hear on the radio
or coming out of the
car next to you,
or something like that.
00:35:09
It just feels like:
'Man, that's a cool song.'
Once you get to the point
where it feels like a record
that's when it feels
somehow special.
00:35:17
And, not all records should be like this,
but a record like this,
I feel like there's gotta be something
about it sonically
which you don't necessarily understand.
00:35:28
Like, this is a band and
you hear that it's a band,
you hear the different guitar players.
00:35:32
But there's something about it that
isn't what you would hear
if you were just standing around in a
room listening to these guys play.
00:35:38
And that's what makes it special.
00:35:40
It's captured for the record.
00:35:42
Part of it is having all the little sound
FX and things like that
but part of it is just the
way the mix is finished off.
00:35:48
Again, I'm back in input so
this is where we are right now.
00:00:00
So, the last piece of the
puzzle is my 2-Bus processing.
00:00:03
Obviously there was not 2-Bus processing
on the rough mix that I got
or there was some that
I decided to get rid of.
00:00:11
So, I've completely replaced wherever
was on the rough with what I'm using here.
00:00:15
I'm just gonna go through each plug-in, show
you what it does, tell you what it does.
00:00:19
And play you what it does.
00:00:20
First in the chain, and you might noticed
if you watched some of my tutorials,
these were in a slightly
different order.
00:00:26
It's just a different
version of the template
from a different point in time.
The template is ever changing.
00:00:31
First thing in the order is
an UAD Fairchild emulation.
00:00:36
I also use the PuigChild for this.
00:00:40
They're both software
emulations of a Fairchild 660.
00:00:45
It's and overbuilt compressor
and what that means is that
it was built so that
every time in the circuit design you
might have one transformer there are two.
00:00:54
Any time there should be
one tube there are two.
00:00:57
There's lots and lots of circuitry and
miles of wire inside one of this.
00:01:02
I'm not using it for the compressor at all,
I don't actually like
the way a Fairchild compresses most things.
00:01:07
I've got the threshold all the way down,
which bypasses the compression,
I've got the mix at 50%
so we're only blending in some of this
but what I'm after is the
sound of the transformers
which are just huge coils of
wire so what they give you
is kind of a lumpy slow response.
00:01:24
A little bit of a slow limiter.
00:01:28
But at the same time they also give you a
high-pass filter down around 15 Hz
and a low-pass filter up around 25K.
00:01:35
That's just the nature of
what coils of wire do.
00:01:38
So, I'll play this with and without.
00:01:40
Hopefully you will
like it better with.
00:01:42
Here's without.
00:02:07
A little brighter, a little cooler, a
little happier. We're gonna leave that on.
00:02:11
Next in the chain is something
that I almost always use,
the Neve 33609.
00:02:17
And basically this is a compressor
that is exactly like or is
supposed to exactly like
the 2264 compressors
that were in my console.
00:02:27
It's a compressor I got very used to the
sound of and has a very specific sound
when you set to this 100 ms release time.
00:02:34
It's not right for every mix but it's right
for a lot of mixes.
00:02:37
So, here is the chorus
without this compressor.
00:03:05
Again, it's a good thing so we're gonna
keep it in and move on to the next part.
00:03:10
Which is, this Brainworx EQ.
00:03:13
The Brainworx EQ I'm actually using for two
totally separate things
but it's all within this one plug-in.
00:03:20
The two main components of this
are a mid/side EQ.
00:03:23
Rather than equalizing the
left side and the right side,
You can EQ the mono section,
which is what's happening
in both speakers,
so anything panned to the center.
00:03:32
And the stereo section, which is
anything that's happening in one speaker
or the other but not both.
00:03:37
Anything panned off to one side, or
reverbs or overheads, that kind of thing.
00:03:43
And all I'm doing is adding a high-shelf.
00:03:45
So, this is a very gentle EQ,
it's 1.3 dB at 8K.
00:03:50
And that's it, I'm not touching the middle,
I'm just brightening up the sides.
00:03:54
And then the other thing I'm using
is a stereo width control.
00:03:58
This will just push the
mix a little bit wider.
00:04:02
And it does it with some phase tricks,
there are lots of good widening plug-ins.
00:04:06
The Waves S1 is great, the
Air Stereo FX is great.
00:04:11
This happens to be built into the same EQ
that I'm already using on the mix
so it was just a great place to go.
00:04:17
It sounds different than the other ones.
00:04:19
It tends to be a little bit
cleaner too, which I like
because I'm pumping the
entire mix through it.
00:04:23
I'm not just trying to widen the
Rhodes like I did with the S1 earlier.
00:04:26
So, here's without.
00:04:52
I like that a lot, I
love that extra top end.
00:04:55
I feel like Zac's vocal is
really starting to pop.
00:04:58
And I like the widening.
00:04:59
Specially because there's
so many very stereo delays
and sound FX and things like that.
00:05:03
It just makes them even wider.
00:05:06
Things being wide is a
big feature of the mix.
00:05:09
Second to last but not
least is a Pultec EQ.
00:05:12
This is basically your
classic happy face EQ.
00:05:16
I add bottom and I add top.
00:05:18
I'm adding plus almost 3.
00:05:21
Which, this is not decibels,
it's just from 0 to 10,
I don't how many dB this is.
In the manual I'm sure it says.
00:05:27
But I'm adding 100, and
this is a shelf down here.
00:05:31
And then I'm also adding
even more than that of 10K.
00:05:37
This band up here is not a shelf,
it's actually a parametric band
and you have a bandwidth
control here.
00:05:42
By making it this broad,
it starts to act like a shelf,
specially when you're up at 10K.
00:05:47
It's not adding as much up around 20
as it would if it was a shelf
but it's adding quite a bit of top end.
00:05:52
Here's the chorus without it.
00:06:18
There you go, now the top end of everything
has really come up and it sounds mixed.
00:06:24
As opposed to just sounding like a bunch
of tracks put up at a really good balance.
00:06:28
It's really starting
to feel like a mix.
00:06:31
And that bottom end is really
pushing the bass forward
and letting it help drive the mix.
00:06:36
And the last thing on this chain,
very simple Massey L2007 mastering limiter.
00:06:42
It's an awesome transparent limiter.
00:06:44
It's L2 style where you only
really have a couple of controls.
00:06:48
You've got release control which I always
leave at the default.
00:06:52
You've got four different modes and you
should listen through the modes.
00:06:55
But basically I've got a half dB threshold
with just under 0.18 dB output.
00:07:03
It keeps the red lights off and it's adding
about 0.36 dB of limiting
to the final output.
00:07:12
Because we're in a
floating point mixer
it's actually overshooting
a little more than that.
00:07:16
I'm getting a little
more limiting than that.
00:07:18
But it's basically just keeping things
in check and keeping the red lights off.
00:07:21
I'm not gonna bother
playing it to you without
because then we'd be clipping and
all kinds of things would happen.
00:07:25
And, there's no real point.
00:07:27
Basically, it's not adding a
massive amount to the sound
but it's that final little
bit of glue at the end.
00:07:33
Alright, we've been through everything
that's going on in this session
and I think what we've learned,
is first of all,
Zac can sing.
00:07:41
Second of all, the band can play.
00:07:43
Third of all, as a production team
they and along with their engineers
can put together a record.
00:07:49
This was really well put together
and really well thought out.
00:07:52
There's a lot of care taking
in the guitar arrangement
as well as in the
processing that they chose.
00:07:58
So, this is a great
example of me realizing
that I already had something
that was really good.
00:08:06
And I just needed to turn it into a record.
00:08:08
And I think rather than
the reaction being:
'Hey man, this sounds a lot like our
rough, wouldn't you just master it?'
What they loved about it was
that it was true to the rough
in so many ways but sounded like a record.
00:08:22
And sometimes the real talent in any sort
of creative endeavor
is understanding what you don't need to do
and what you shouldn't do
along with what you should do.
00:08:31
So, given that, what I'm gonna do is play
you a little bit of the rough again
and than a little bit of my mix.
00:08:38
And you'll hear all of the similarities
but hopefully you'll also hear
how far it has actually come.
00:10:49
Et voilà!
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- Avid Lo-Fi
- Sound toys Devil-Loc
- Avid EQ3
- reFuse Lowender
- Avid Revibe
- Waves Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter
- Waves Z-Noise
- ValhallaDSP VintageVerb
- Waves S1 Imager
- UAD Pultec EQP-1A
- Waves CLA-2A
- Waves CLA-76
- UAD 1176LN Anniversary Edition
- UAD Fairchild 670
- UAD Neve 33609/C
- Brainworx digital_v2 EQ
- Massey L2007 Limiter
Young & Wild is a song by The Zac Brown Band, from their album "Jekill & Hyde", released in 2015 under Big Machine Records and Republic.
The album became number 3 in the Billboard 200 charts, was awarded Gold in the same year and by 2016 it had already sold over 672,000 copies.
Andrew Scheps is a music producer, mixing engineer and record label owner based in the United Kingdom. He has received Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album for his work on Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium, Album Of The Year for Adele's 21, and also Best Reggae Album for Ziggy Marley's Fly Rasta
Andrew started as a musician, but found that what he enjoyed most was working behind the scenes. This led him to study recording at the University of Miami. After graduating, he spent some time working for Synclavier, and then on the road with Stevie Wonder (as a keyboard tech) and Michael Jackson (mixing live sound). But he found his home in the studio, and he honed his craft working for producers such as Rob Cavallo, Don Was and Rick Rubin.
Scheps is known for his balanced and modern sounding mixes. He is also the owner and president of Tonequake Records
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