Joel Hamilton Mixing Highly Suspect
01h 43min
(38)
Watch Joel Hamilton Mix The Hit Single "My Name Is Human"
In this 2-hour mixing tutorial, Joel Hamilton opens up the multitrack for Highly Suspect’s hit single "My Name Is Human" on his SSL console and then creates a new mix of it on camera, explaining every thought and decision that he makes along the way.
This video is an in-depth look at what it's like to mix a hit rock song from a massive band, using the best of both analog and digital tools.
In this tutorial, Joel explains:
- His workflow in detail, including session setup, gear, routing, revisions and delivering mixes to clients.
- How he uses an SSL Console and Outboard processing to shape the tone of the record and then moves into the box to fine-tune the mix
- Uses outboard time-based effects like an Effectron II, AKG BX10, and a Bricasti M7
- Sets stereo bus EQ and compression
- Prints to a dedicated print machine w/ separate hardware and then does additional digital processing after printing stems from the analog mix.
- How to slave multiple computers together to harness more processing power.
This is your chance to take an exclusive look at Joel's mixing techniques, thought process, and the approach that he has used to sculpt countless hits.
After you have seen how Joel mixed it, download the multitrack session and mix the same song for yourself to practice what you have learned.
Parts of this site and some files are only accessible to pureMix Pro Members or available to purchase. Please see below our membership plans or add this video to your shopping cart.
Once logged in, you will be able to click on those chapter titles and jump around in the video.
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:30 - Routing
- 01:34 - Listening To The Tracks
- 02:22 - Adjusting Volumes
- 03:19 - Parallel Compression
- 07:36 - Setting Up The Delay
- 10:32 - Create The Shape
- 13:35 - Recording Studio
- 18:41 - Vocal Chain
- 26:00 - Guitars
- 31:13 - Filtering Send/Return
- 36:50 - Monitors
- 42:16 - Print Chain
- 47:24 - Digital Processing
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - The Loop
- 02:25 - The Bridge
- 13:17 - Automated Delay
- 15:48 - Back to the guitars
- 16:37 - Slaving Computers
- 20:18 - Printing Stems
- 22:13 - Analog Mix
- 27:07 - Deliverables
- 29:55 - Drum Stem
- 31:03 - Bass Stem
- 35:26 - 2 Bus Digital Processing
- 36:14 - Drums Digital Processing
- 37:04 - Vocal Digital Processing
- 37:36 - Sub Digital Processing
- 38:21 - Bass Digital Processing
- 40:09 - Guitars Digital Processing
- 42:43 - Piano
- 43:41 - Final Mix
- 45:18 - Minimal Gear
- 46:10 - The Mix Vision
| Part 1 | Part 2 |
00:00:00
I'm Joel Hamilton and we're here
at Studio G, Brooklyn
in Room A
where I'm gonna mix 'My Name
Is Human' by Highly Suspect.
00:00:16
I'll be coming out of Pro Tools,
one sound per channel, essentially,
on the console.
00:00:22
And I work hybrid
so I'll be using
plug-ins and outboard gear.
00:00:27
And exactly like if we were doing
this off of the tape,
it comes to the tape returns
of the SSL.
00:00:33
Outboard gear is inserted
exactly the same way,
where we can break it at the
tape machine output
and then return into the line in.
00:00:41
That will be sort of
the 'pre' console patch.
00:00:44
Or we can patch at the Insert
and then select on the SSL
whether it's Pre or Post EQ.
00:00:50
We then run off the
main outputs of the SSL,
we run it out to a Print path
set of things in
the hardware domain
and then back into a
2-track print device.
00:01:02
Just like a tape session,
it's like we're starting on our
multi-track tape machine
and we're printing to our 2-track
stereo capture tape machine.
00:01:11
In this case it's just replaced by
two Pro Tools rigs
running at different
sample rates.
00:01:16
I'm capturing at 96 kHz,
also through a Burl
but it's a Burl B2 in
this case on the Print Rig
and it's at 48 kHz
on the multi-track.
00:01:27
Regardless of the
delivery sample rate
I always capture at 96 kHz.
00:01:32
We'll get it laid out on the console
and we will start listening
to individual elements
out of Pro Tools.
00:01:38
It's really that simple as far as
starting to figure out
what's important about the song.
00:02:23
So the first thing that
I'm reaching for here
is what's labeled '47/44 Room'
which I guess is just some
47 mono and 44
coming out the same output.
00:02:37
But in Pro Tools I'm pulling it down
8 dB, it turns out,
I wouldn't have know that.
00:02:44
It's sort of like a
summed mono room thing
and it was just really woofy
so I just wound up
reaching for some low-mid
frequency and pulling it out.
00:02:55
That was the only one that
felt really far off.
00:03:19
Let's get a parallel
happening for the drums.
00:03:23
A crazy compressor.
00:03:26
The Aphex Studio Dominator is what
I'm using on the Stereo Bus
as my drum parallel,
a weird, one space, multiband limiter
that basically was
intended for use
at College Radio Stations
in the 80s and early 90s.
00:03:43
What I love about it
is that you can kind of make
it drive dark or bright
by using the low and
high frequency controls.
00:03:52
And it's got a 'drive'
that's kind of like
an Aphex Exciter situation.
00:03:56
Basically, with the settings
it's pretty easy to describe,
it's every single thing all the way up,
it's what I wind up
with on my Drum Bus.
00:04:05
Not only is that handy
for recall,
I like the way it sounds.
00:04:10
On this console we have
four mono Cue sends
and we have...
00:04:17
one Stereo Cue Send
which is pannable.
00:04:20
The Stereo Cue Send
is normally used for either
monitoring headphone mixes
or to send to a Stereo Reverb.
00:04:30
In this case I'm using it to
go to a parallel drum bus.
00:04:58
I didn't even look at the Bus compressor,
it's pretty much all the way up.
00:05:02
Let's listen to
Drums without and Drums
with parallel processing.
00:05:26
It's a massive difference.
00:05:28
At this point in the mix
I'm gonna put up some effects
because I know where this is going.
00:05:34
I've listened to each track,
I've listened to kind of
what we're working with here,
I have the benefit of
having heard this song before.
00:05:40
And so I'm gonna wind up
moving towards
having some effects that
I know I'm gonna want.
00:05:46
Francisco will patch the effects.
00:05:50
I'm labeling on the console right now
which Aux Send is going to
what piece of gear in the rack
so I can keep it straight.
00:05:59
Aux 2 is going to an Effectron
right behind me here.
00:06:04
And...
00:06:05
On the console I'm actually
already putting a gate.
00:06:09
Every single channel on this SSL 8000
has Dynamics which means
it also has an Expander-Gate.
00:06:17
The Effectron, which is a delay,
is a little bit noisy at rest
so I'm gonna gate it lightly.
Just above system noise.
00:06:25
On Aux 3
Francisco patched
the Bricasti M7.
00:06:31
Aux 4 is gonna be a BX 10,
which is an AKG spring reverb,
sort of like the
upper-mid sized one,
the BX 20 is the
biggest one they made.
00:06:41
The BX 10 is on long.
00:06:44
And the Bricasti is on .8 second,
more of a room sound
for the Drums.
00:08:03
I'm only putting that delay on the snare
just so I can find the delay time.
00:08:09
It's not intended to be
on the snare drum in the end,
I'm just using the
snare as a good way
to time the delay that I will
more likely use on the vocal.
00:08:17
It might be a little bit on the snare
but in this case I'm not
intending for it to be there.
00:08:22
It's really just to
get the delay time.
00:09:10
I'm using high and low-pass filter
in the 500 rack back here
to filter the send
to the Spring Verb.
00:09:17
It's really just to darken it a bit,
I like the sound of the spring
but I don't need the
springy top end of it
because the things that I'm using on
snare and the other brighter elements
come from the Bricasti anyway.
00:09:29
So the longer reverb
coming off a mechanical
reverb, like a spring,
I just want it to be darker
so I have
the send cranked on the
bottom snare right now
and I'm gonna listen to that
and adjust the low-pass
so we don't wind
up with a bunch of springy
top end on the drums.
00:10:33
So in general at this point
I'm gonna be going around,
back and forth
to all the channels,
I kind of keep going back and forth
as the priorities,
how the snare verb
works with the vocal,
how the verb works on the vocal,
because it's the same verb,
how the vocal relates to
the snare drum right away
becomes a concern early on.
00:10:53
That will slowly become
the kind of flag in the send
that I start to place things
around those two elements.
00:11:00
So at this point I'm
really just listening to,
starting to listen to the vocal,
but on my way by I might hi-pass
the backing vocal tracks.
00:11:09
I wind up with
a high-pass, dynamics and EQ
along with the Sends.
00:11:15
For me it's like
a piano in a sense,
that my work-flow includes being
able to put my hands on it.
00:11:21
It's not things I couldn't
achieve by clicking
but just like I can
program
a ten note chord on a piano in midi
or I can put ten fingers on
the piano and just play it.
00:11:33
I prefer the tactile experience,
specially during the set-up.
00:11:37
This will be explained further when
we get deeper in my work-flow
that I kind move into the
box at a certain point
after I created the shapes
much like if you record a
performance on the piano
and then manipulate
it in the box
rather than starting off in the box
to create a piano performance.
00:13:29
I'm actually engaging a couple of the EQs.
00:13:32
We tracked this at a place called
AudioVision in Bogota, Colombia,
which is a really nice room,
it's a John Storyk designed space,
he did it right after Electric Lady
down there in Colombia.
00:13:43
It's an 8058 with a
really nice big live room,
really good stuff there.
00:13:48
There's also plug-ins on some of these
elements that were already there
because I start to put them on
while we're tracking.
00:13:54
I was the producer on this
particular project as well
so it enabled me to kind of
steer it towards the direction
early on in the process.
00:14:01
At this point I'm starting to
engage EQs and some dynamics
knowing that I want the
kit to sit in a place
in this particular
style of music,
I want the kit to just hang in there,
basically at the exact same
level at the entire time.
00:14:16
I wound up going to the
dynamics section on the SSL
instead of going in-the-box or
to an outboard piece of gear.
00:14:23
I went right to the
dynamics section,
I don't even have to look because
all the way up is limited
and I brought the threshold until
it's just kind of grabbing the top of it.
00:14:33
The expander gate is on now,
I'm starting to pull up so
much gain on this channel
that you can start to hear the
bottom snare through the kick,
you hear the bleed.
00:14:42
On the inside kick...
00:14:45
I just want it to be limited because
that's really the snap in this style
and I even high-passed it
at 70 ish on the inside there
because I'm gonna get
most of my low-end
from the resonant side kick drum.
00:15:00
And for me, once I figure out
that if I high-pass the crap
out of the inside kick
essentially all I have is
one microphone at 40 Hz.
00:15:10
It negates any of the
phasing inconsistencies
that I've found when people
hand me things to mix
or even for me if I didn't
bother to go move it
because I just know the
relationship was gonna be fine.
00:15:21
Same thing with snare top
and snare bottom where I mind
different aspects of the
sound of the instrument
from the two different microphones.
00:15:29
So that's why I'm already
listening to the snare top
with some
compression on it, which is 5:1 ish.
00:15:37
The release is all the way
fast, which on a SSL
is 'f',
for fast.
00:15:43
Same deal, Expander-Gate,
really fast, you can set the range
on the SSL expander,
so it's pulling back
14 dB.
00:15:52
So not like crazy gated closed,
just pulling some of the noise down.
00:15:57
This was tracked to tape as well
so I'm gonna be conscious of
noise management
on all of these tracks, especially tracks
where I'm gaining up a lot
with the parallel send
and adding top end
which we're not doing yet
but ultimately we always do.
00:17:26
The kick and snare sort of
starting to come into focus
with some parallel stuff,
some EQ stuff happening,
and some compression.
00:17:33
Basically everything
that we will be doing to varying degrees.
00:17:38
This bass has a lot of growly
kind of mids in it,
I really wanted to bring
those to the foreground
so the bass kind of fills up
int the speaker a bit more.
00:17:47
Again it's just high-passing the amp side
and then getting more
low-end of the DI side,
I'll probably ultimately
low-pass the DI
so I'm sort of using
the bottom of the DI
and more of the top of the amp.
00:18:00
I'm using the Dynamics section
on the SSL at this point.
00:18:04
I may decide to go outboard
with some of these elements
but I usually, in my work-flow,
I start at the console,
I face this way,
figure out what I'm working with
and then I get an idea like:
"Oh OK! This one needs this particular
tool to really start to speak."
That's when I start
to go outboard
or to a plug-in or whatever.
00:18:22
I'm using the bottom from the DI
on the bass because
in general, specially when it is
a bass player in a rock band
that uses pedals and stuff
I don't even take the
pedals to the DI sometimes
because I just have consistent
low-end from the instrument itself
and then it moves around quite a bit
coming out of the speakers of the amp.
00:18:43
Let's get to the vocal chain
patched up here.
00:18:48
On the Insert
on the vocal chain we've
got the Maag K-Comp
because I'm using this parallel EQ,
I'm adding some air
on the vocal, 15 kHz.
00:18:58
Just a little bit at
220 Hz for some chest.
00:19:02
And I'm using the
compressor section
on medium ratio
fast attack and release.
00:19:10
I wasn't hitting it too hard,
the comp range is adjustable
on this particular compressor
so I can limit the response
to 8 dB of gain reduction total.
00:19:20
I'm probably nowhere near that
but I'm stopping it at 8 dB.
00:19:24
Feeding that
is the EQ on the channel
and this compressor,
which is a Magnatec 31B,
this one is pulling back about 4 dB
de-essing a little bit,
I don't know how much
because there's one needle
to meter both things.
00:19:42
It's 0, 1, 2.
00:19:46
Yes, I'm compressing two.
00:19:48
This just kind of eases the thing
into the tape return
to the console, so I'm just not
hitting the console as hard.
00:19:55
And therefore not hitting the
rest of the chain as hard.
00:19:58
For everybody who cares it's 140 volt rails
massive headroom,
it's the type of thing that
when you watch something like
the Godfather or anything
that was made pre L2,
that's the thing where you're like:
'God, how did that person
just scream when they got shot
and it's not distorting?'
It's a limiter like that.
00:20:17
It's and incredible box.
00:20:19
They are really rare.
00:21:37
Just listening to the vocal sit
as we transition from
Verse into Chorus here
because we really change his character
and its's coming out of the same channel.
00:21:46
So, I need to find things
that really support
that arc.
00:21:50
With the vocal,
what I was hearing
was kind of boxy, mid-rangy thing.
I think we tracked this
with a 47 but
the guy is a really good singer
and stays kind of on the mic
but definitely his
got a lot of character
available to him in his voice.
00:22:09
It's like changing from this verse
kind of like winier thing
to this very strong and super
heroic delivery in the chorus.
00:22:16
I was just hearing some
annoying mids
that I'll go after more at the console
but what I was responding to was
just giving it some air,
pulling him forward of the guitars really.
00:22:27
Kind of creating a shape that I like
because then I make the guitars
bend to the shape of the vocal.
00:22:33
I wind up tweaking it now
more at the console EQ
and then I keep returning
to the outboard
and back to the console until
I get both things kind of
working together, meaning the
EQ, the compression,
and the EQ at the console.
00:22:47
The compressor on the Insert
is gonna be more of a concern
once I start EQing at the console,
I started it in
sort of a generic
beginning position
but then I'm gonna see how it responds
when I start digging in
to the EQ at the console.
00:23:00
Because that one
is post EQ,
post console EQ,
the other one is Pre.
00:24:27
So as I go after the vocal character
it's shifting sands,
now I'm hearing the lack of
mid definition in my Room mics.
00:24:36
I wanna pull the way the snare is engaging
that nice room in Bogota
back up into foreground
and sort of wrapping around this
more mid intense vocal delivery.
00:24:46
That's why I'm gonna keep
moving back and forth and back and forth
scanning against
how the kick works with the vocal,
how the snare relates to the vocal
and then basically the entire mid character
of the band, it's a three piece band.
00:25:00
But there's even guitar tracks and
some other little sort of production things
that came later but
the three piece band
kind of lives on this side
of the console at the moment.
00:25:10
That's why I'm staying over here.
00:25:12
When I'm reaching out on a sweepable EQ,
which is what it is on the SSL,
I have no idea of what number it is
when I first reach for it.
00:25:20
And then,
when I go back and look
sometimes I'm chocked at
what I actually grabbed for
because the idea that
I'm actually boosting
1.5 on one of the room pairs
and 2 on another of the room pairs.
00:25:35
It's an R88
which is a stereo ribbon,
which was about
10 feet in front of the drums
and then a pair of Bovas Spherical Omnis
that were spaced 20 feet back
from the drums, something far.
00:25:51
Much more diffuse.
00:25:53
Rather than finding the low-mid in this one
the way I did in the 47 and the 44 thing
I felt like I wanted to
hear some clacky EQed mids.
00:26:02
Let's get the patch
happening on the guitar here
because what I just heard on the guitar
is kind of like an annoying just...
00:26:10
SM7 I know was what it was,
SM7 in front of like
a Fender Deluxe turned all
the way up type of sound.
00:26:18
And there's some mid
stuff I wanna get on.
00:26:20
I'm gonna use a pair of EQs
on the tape out
which are also obscure
and then a Chandler Zener
Limiter on the Insert
just to get some compression
happening on these guitars,
it's gonna smooth out
some of the smackiness
of the half drive stuff.
00:26:39
The EQs
Martin Audio Corp
PEQ 500A equalizers.
00:26:46
These are solid-state
discrete EQs
that kind of sort of kind of
work like 3 band Pultecs.
00:26:55
Or a Lang, it's like a three band
Lang, if you know what that is.
00:26:58
There's boost and cut
selections on each one
and I've just found that these
kick ass for guitar, basically.
00:27:05
They have that same kind of
aggressive forward thing,
it's not like a Pultec in a sense,
it doesn't make things smoother,
it just sort of pushes
the chest forward
of anything that you want
mid-range growl from.
00:28:10
So those EQs make a massive
difference in how these guitars sit.
00:28:15
And the intention was always gonna be
to EQ the hell out of these guitars.
00:28:20
They were tracked really unruly.
00:28:23
The whole idea, honestly,
was to sort of
build in a land mine so it never gets
to that point where it feels like
a Kemper or anything that's sort of like
a POD or modeling type of too
smooth in the distortion zone.
00:28:38
It need to have a unique texture
to it so we just let it fly.
00:28:42
Instead of filtering the guitarist's
gestures thorough more cliche lands
we decided to actually just kind of use
some really broken and blown out amps.
00:30:48
There's Guitar 1, there's Guitar 2
and then there's a guitar
that I played after the fact.
00:30:54
The Guitar 2 is really just a unison double
of what the basic guitar did,
to widen it out in the Chorus.
00:31:01
The one that I played has nothing to
do with what the other guy played,
it just sort of adds
depth in the Choruses.
00:31:06
Guitar 01 has the EQ and
compressor chain on it.
00:31:11
The other two are really just coming
out and I'm EQing them at the console.
00:31:14
I use this Allison Filter,
it's a high and low-pass filter,
basically intended
for laboratory usage
but use it, customized,
our tech here put UTC ins and outs on it.
00:31:25
I use it after the
Effectron that I'm using,
just to sort of round it off
again for the same reason
that I'm filtering the Send.
00:31:32
I'm filtering the Send
on the Spring
but I'm filtering the
Return on the delay.
00:31:38
I usually make it darker
so I wanna take down
the top end noise
that the Effectron creates.
00:31:43
And that also means
that I'm bringing it back
to the console balanced
because it's running
through some transformers.
00:31:48
That Effectron is like a quarter inch
In, it's almost like a guitar effect
but we're running it
through a balanced device
and bringing it
back to the console.
00:32:08
Before it sounded really mid-rangy
and now it's just way darker,
it kind of adds more to
the chest tone of the voice
rather than just kind of
this mega-phony thing that was happening
wherever he was sitting before.
00:33:30
After looking at all the
things happening here
I wanted the piano to
come up a little bit
in that sort of instrumental
after the first chorus.
00:33:40
I wanted the guitars to just get a
bit more aggressive in the low-mids.
00:33:44
Vocals shaping is
happening again,
sort of adjusting the mid character
when he goes to the different
range in the chorus.
00:33:51
The biggest change just now
is bringing the sub,
which is just a sine wave kind of synth
that really pressurizes
the mix during the Choruses.
00:34:00
But it is meant to be interpreted as
kind of an extension of the bass guitar
rather than if there was
some magic organ player
that sleeps during the verse
and wakes up and starts playing.
00:34:09
It's just to shake the subs a bit.
00:34:12
Usually for me, in a song like this,
I listen to transitional energy
more than I just need to
listen to the whole verse.
00:34:20
It's like I'm listening how one
thing gets to the next thing.
00:34:24
Because you kind of crack that
you have the mix.
00:34:28
It's like at that point it's salt
and pepper but you kind of got it.
00:34:31
You wind up opening up
how to make this song exciting,
how to make it work.
00:34:35
This song...
00:34:37
We knew was the single,
this song wound up being like
number one rock song.
00:34:42
It was all over the place,
this record was number one
alternative record last summer.
00:34:46
The thing people responded the
most to when they heard this
was that transitional energy,
it was like this off the cliff feeling
that this Chorus has and
the superhero delivery
that the singer gives during the Chorus.
00:36:52
I primarily monitor on ATCs,
the SM25s with the sub
but from time to time
I flip to the Auratones.
00:37:01
I think more like a producer
when I'm listening to the Auratones
and then I'll go over
to this little Bose
which for million years for me
it was like having the boombox.
00:37:13
That kind of doesn't
exist anymore,
it's more about the little powered
computer speakers these days
as the sort of lowest
common denominator listen
and I just know these things,
I have them for years.
00:37:24
When I say listening like
a producer I mean that
I find...
00:37:29
I figure out whether what's
happening in the mid-range
carries me through the story,
so if I'm creating a narrative
arc with the mix as a producer
I need enough energy
in the mid-range
that it translates
to a phone even.
00:37:43
It doesn't mean that
there's a mix consideration
as far as making
things translate,
as a producer I'm looking at
putting the focus on mid-range energy
that will translate to anything
because the song and the
elements in the mid-range
are the things will help
pulling me down the arrangement.
00:37:58
So I can kind of just
hear what's happening
in the mid-range without
all the excitement
of the physicality
of larger speakers.
00:38:06
We get tricked by big speakers
into thinking that
it's fun to listen to
and then it becomes one of those mixes
that's like a sonic parlor trick
that sort of wears off
after hearing it twice.
00:38:17
I look for longevity
on Auratones.
00:40:05
I'm looking at a few different
relationships at the
same time at this point
and one of them was sort of the
Kick/Snare/Vocal situation as always.
00:40:15
But how it's translating on small speakers,
the Auratones
and the Bose,
I wasn't listening on the SM25s at all.
00:40:21
I just took a look at
the level of the parallel drum bus was
doing to the Kick/Snare relationship
because it sort of flattens
everything in a good way.
00:40:30
Like, the snap of the Kick,
the top of the Snare, the toms
and everything is kind
of the same through that
Aphex that I'm using.
00:41:13
I'm just listening to the Toms
which sort of were tracked well
and I forgot that I should even care
about trying to EQ them.
00:42:19
I'm gonna start listening
through the entire Print Chain
because it's where
the 'Print Machine' is,
my 2-Track capture device is.
00:42:27
But we're actually running
on the Main Outs of the console,
we're going to
Curve Bender,
we're going to a Camilo Silva
4000 compressor,
this was made before there was like
8 billion clones,
this is kind of like a more
hi-fi, higher headroom
version of a 4000
Bus compressor.
00:42:49
The Bus compressor is in, by the way,
on the console,
and has been since I started.
00:42:53
But we're running through the Maag
EQ 4
and the Curve Bender
and the Camilo Silva.
00:43:01
I wound up with the Camilo
Silva on the Print path
after the Main Outs of the console
because where I want
the low-end to speak
it just simply,
even though the SSL is modded
like crazy, Dan Zellman did a really nice
2-Mix mod for us,
there's low-end coming out the Main Outs.
00:43:20
You have to kind of convince
console sometimes
to let it all out.
00:43:26
And so,
what I want is
get the mids right,
get the mix happening
and then actually
add some
low-end
after the console,
once I pass the Main Outs
I don't have to deal
with any headroom issues
but I do want
a compressor that's responding
to those moves in the low-end.
00:43:44
More or less depending
on the program material.
00:43:47
Having that Camilo
Silva on the Print path
is having a Bus compressor that's
hearing the mix I wanna hear
instead the one that
fits out the 2-Mix holes
that SSL has given me.
00:43:58
And I listen on the externals
the same way I would
if I had a 2-Track
machine set up.
00:44:04
So this is where I change to listening
to the externals at the center section
and I'm listening to
what's coming back
from the whole chain.
00:44:12
And I can compare between
just the 2-Mix
and the external.
00:44:18
You know, my Print Chain,
by flipping back and forth here,
just by listening to
external 5 on the SSL
At this point
I'll be listening to the
returns of the 2-track
and will hear what I'm
doing to the Print Path.
00:46:00
OK, so I'm listening to
2 EQs
and a compressor on the
Print Path itself now,
running into 96 kHz in a Burl B2
coming out of a Lavry Blue
listening to it
again at the center section
so it doesn't look like
anything has changed
but we're hearing a completely
different interpretation
of the things that I
have created before.
00:46:23
One I moved back to working on
the 2-Mix EQ
I wound up with
taking down a little bit of
150 in this particular genre
but moving up some 40
and the sub on the Maag,
whatever that is.
00:46:37
And a little bit of the Air band at 15 kHz.
00:46:39
On the Print Path the
Camilo Silva compressor
is really just kind of catching
some of that physicality.
00:46:46
It's kind of to start to
make the whole thing dance
with that new low-end
that I've now kind of injected
back into the mix that I'm working on.
00:46:54
It's how it relates to the mids
and then
the mids hang in there
and I want the mids to
kind of start to dance
with that low-end that I've added.
00:47:04
So, that Camilo Silva gives me
a different time constant as well.
00:47:08
On the console I'm using
the 1 millisecond attack
and then the .3 release.
00:47:13
And on the
Camilo Silva
I'm using the .3 attack
and the auto release,
so kind of going after a
different aspect of the mix,
kind of riding the levels more
than just knocking them around.
00:48:16
So when I move over to
screen sharing
and looking at the Print Path,
which is a separate Pro Tools Rig,
what I wind up looking for is
just the almost mastering style of moves,
just to get the tilt right,
it's kind of an extension
of the 2-Mix EQ that I'm using
but I don't use anything
notchy enough, sort of tweak head enough,
so I use broader
strokes at the console
and then get a little more
tweaky in the digital domain
because it's good for that.
00:48:48
The way that I capture what
I'm doing in the analog domain
is back on a 2-Track device
the same way that I would
with an analog tape deck.
00:48:56
I use a separate Pro Tools rig
running on a Laptop
over here at the moment.
00:49:01
With a Burl B2 and a Lavry Blue
that I'm listening out of.
00:49:06
Along with an Apollo that is
really just for processing.
00:49:10
I'm gonna use
the UA console on the way in because
I can print some of the plug-ins
and kind of get a little tweakier
again about the mid character.
00:49:20
Things that I feel
were loading up
in a weird way in
the analog domain
and I'm just running out
of EQ bands or whatever.
00:49:27
Like, if I'm not stacking EQs
and I know I want just to put it across
the entire mix, like a low-mid dip.
00:49:34
Usually a cut in this case,
the only time that I sort of
engineer
technically, correctly,
the rest of the time I'm like
just grabbing knobs
and turning them until they stop,
but once I move
over into the box
on the Print Path,
it's kind of like voicing my Tape Machine
to hear it the way I wanna hear it.
00:49:52
Or it's an extension of the
analog EQs that I'm using
where I can't get as notchy
with the particular gear I have.
00:50:22
When I'm listening to these frequencies,
the reason that I'm choosing them
is sort of where you
find the frequency
that doesn't seem to be adding
anything to the musicality.
00:50:33
You find sort of turbulence,
like there's a different
tone happening in between
two frequencies
that you care about,
or there's, for whatever
reason, this group of elements
causes some sort of
aharmonic activity
that just eats headroom
and doesn't do anything for
the presentation of the song.
00:50:52
This is the type of thing that
I'm notching out before the Print.
00:51:24
I mean, look at how I can pull that down
12 dB, I'm not going to but I could
pull that down 20 dB
and that doesn't affect the content
of the excitement of the mix at all
but when you put it back you realize
how much bloat there is at 117.
00:51:39
And just because it's
the bottom of the guitar,
it's kind of the top of the bass,
kick or where the
floor tom is ringing
or whatever is kind of
all coming together there,
it's just
murky crap that's eating headroom.
00:00:00
I wanted to hear more
motion in the chorus
from a loop that's
happening in the background,
even though we
don't really notice.
00:00:06
Again, it's flipping between
listening like a producer
and listening like a mix engineer
where it's like getting the tilt right
and then going: 'OK, at that tilt
we now don't have
enough energy happening
in this clacky mids in
the rhythm section.'
Cause again,
this is a three piece band.
00:00:23
I brought up some of the guitar
stuff that I played on it
and I brought up
some of the loops
and actually kind of
equalized the loops
to sneak them up into a range
where there's now sort
of a deficit in there
based on the scooping
and tweaking that I did on the EQs.
00:00:39
It's also the way that
these things start to hit,
the 2-Mix processing,
like the way that the
Camilo Silva is moving,
it makes me hear different things
sitting in front of the ATCs now.
00:00:48
Like when the kick
starts to knock
things out of the way
and the loop comes back
in the gaps a bit.
00:00:54
It's like I can get away
with a bit more volume,
it's not side-chaining but
it's like the loudest gesture
wins through the
Bus compression.
00:01:02
Here's the loop.
00:01:47
I made that loop with Recycle
a million year ago
and I wound up with it
as a Recycle file that
I played in Reason.
00:01:56
As a sort of bit crunched
drum thing,
I think it was either me playing
or someone around here just playing it
and then it was sliced up
and bit crunched with a pedal,
one of those Alesis
like bit cruncher things.
00:02:12
I can remember what
that thing is called.
00:02:14
That's what gave motion
to this Bridge initially
and then I wound up really liking
it in the Choruses as well,
it kind of filled in some spaces
that helped them move.
00:02:25
This Bridge
has about eight
gazillion tracks in it.
00:02:30
I will
solo it in a second here.
00:03:00
Clearly it's supposed
to just sort of be like
noisy radio transmissions
all laying over each other.
00:03:07
It's just filtered like crazy
and adding some chaos to this
weird mechanical Bridgy section.
00:03:13
We recorded basically everybody
at the studio reading different things
we grabbed off the internet randomly
about
conspiracy theories about
the universe,
things like that.
00:03:25
This is all stuff
that's down to the right,
it helps give some depth
to this three piece
image in this mix.
00:04:41
I'm just looking at the
print level at this point
because it's a little bit bananas,
which is weird
because
at the 2-Mix it's not that crazy
but I still backed
it down a bit.
00:04:52
And it's because I'm hitting
the front of the Burl
on purpose a little bit harder
like -8 would be unity
basically at this point.
00:05:02
We're at -16 so it's kind of
like driving in the transformers
of the B2 a little bit.
00:05:08
These moves are much less renegade,
this is like moving tweaky little things,
again, listening loud,
listening on different speakers.
00:05:17
I do most of the work on ATCs
and then the finer work
I jump around a bit more,
or turn in down and turn it up.
00:05:24
And figure out what's
annoying me when I have it
cranked and kind of
mellow that out a bit.
00:07:22
It's kind of like if
I throw a global boost
of a top-end shelf,
it's kind of the same is if
you were lighting the room
and there was something
kind of silver behind me.
00:07:32
That one spot, it gets real hot.
00:07:35
And the rest looks great.
00:07:36
So it's like,
I'm throwing a kind of
diffused light on everything
when I put a top-end boost on it
and it winds up
revealing a few hot spots
in the mix like maybe some S’s
and cymbal thing here or there,
the backing vocals just had a weird top end
so I'm low-passing them now
at the console at 12 kHz.
00:07:58
No big deal but just because
there's something really zeenie
happening way up top
now that I'm boosting
on the Air band and
the top In-the-Box
at 10 kHz,
like a big wide bell,
and that kind of started
to make some S’s get
a little hot.
00:08:13
Now I'm going back and re-evaluating
the top-end that I had
going back and forth between
the box and the console
to kind of open things up a bit more
and that's the game
for me at this point.
00:08:25
It's like, how much can I open this up
and retain the character.
00:08:29
I haven't really gone
outboard much on this mix
and mostly it's
because I tracked it
with the intention
built-in to the tracks already.
00:08:38
There's a lot of times where I need a ton
of outboard gear to get things
to go where they need to go
but in general
there's times where
a very small number
of things doing a lot,
like an 1176 going
crazy by itself
is a completely different sound
than 4 compressors, one after the next,
each pulling back
2 dB,
that's 8 dB right?
In the end it's 2 dB each
but
a compressor pulling back 8 dB
doesn't sound like
four compressors
pulling back 2 each.
00:09:08
It's a completely different thing.
00:09:10
That same thing happens
because of the way
amplifiers work,
because of topologies and
architectures within a piece of gear,
it's completely
different for me to just
wind on 15 kHz at one EQ
versus having three different EQs
all kind of
handling a different
aspect of the top-end.
00:09:31
The Massive Passive mastering
plug-in is bringing up
kind of a 10 kHz bell.
00:09:37
The Maag is bringing up
15 and up,
like a big wide shelf, the Air band thing.
00:09:44
I wound up chilling out
on the Curve Bender,
I'm not even boosting any
top-end at this point,
I'm just filtering
and dropping a little bit of 150
but I like the transformers in
that thing and keeping it in-line.
00:09:54
Each amplifier brings
a slightly different color to the sound.
00:09:59
Just like you would choose
between a Marshall and a Fender,
with the same guitar you wind up
with a completely different tone,
specially
when you turn it way up.
00:10:08
You wind up revealing the character
of the amplifier at that point.
00:10:12
That's yet another example
of a few things doing a little.
00:10:15
If I had 10 different amps,
each one only on 2,
it's not very different,
you wouldn't really hear
the difference between them
but if I crank the Fender,
crank the Marshall
then crank the Supro,
all three sound very very different.
00:10:29
That's the reason to have
something do a lot on its own
because it reveals
its character directly
or having a few things
reveal their character
in a more subtle musical way
across the entire mix.
00:10:40
That's why I'll get more renegade
at the channel
then I will across the entire mix.
00:10:46
Especially when I'm
trying to preserve
transients
and depth and color
on the 2-Mix
that I fought with
at the channel itself.
00:10:56
I think a big
thing at this point
for me always in the mix
is that I wanna feel like
it's rocking and then
build the low-end
to the point where
I'm not blowing things up.
00:11:07
It's like we get the mids right
because it's where the
perception of volume comes from.
00:11:12
The vocal and the snare relationship
is where I'm gonna judge
how loud it is in the room.
00:11:16
And then relative to that
that's where it's important to see
whether the kick is then
destroying the speakers.
00:11:22
Obviously I can turn the
low-end all the way up
and the kick all the way up
and then just listen really quiet,
it doesn't destroy my ATCs.
00:11:29
And basically it's like,
when I see them working too hard
at the playback volume that I'm
intending people to hear that,
I know there's something wrong,
it's like the tilt is wrong.
00:11:39
And parts of these are
mastering of course
but it all goes together.
00:11:44
It's like this is,
I gotta hand the gesture
to Joe Laporta at Sterling who
ultimately really mastered
the one that's on the album
and have him
speed it even farther
in that direction
where when we get it
to the perceived volume
we're looking for
it's not making the
motors work too hard
because ultimately that's
what these things are.
00:13:18
I'm gonna add a little bit
in-the-box here, there's an automated delay
on the main vocal.
00:13:26
So I'm just gonna bring
this whole thing up.
00:13:29
Just a little bit.
00:14:29
All right, so same deal, going back to
the 2-Mix EQ
to add a little 6.5
because on the small speakers,
right where I wanted
something to kind of
speak
on the snare and the voice,
I needed some life there.
00:14:45
Adding a little bit more of that delay
is starting to give
this Chorus a bit of that
superhero vibe that I was looking for.
00:14:52
The hard part
in my opinion is that
you're playing with the
perception of what's big
and what's small.
00:14:58
There's a flag in the send
as to what's loud,
it's the vocal and the snare
and the guitar is coming from nowhere
and start challenging that guy,
that's what gives us the illusion
that it got really gigantic in the chorus
along with the sub
getting engaged,
that just floods the room at that point.
00:15:51
There's something annoying happening
in the guitars here
that I'm now looking at,
I just wanna take another
look at what I'm doing here.
00:15:59
This is again on the Print path.
00:16:01
There's just some funny
business going on in some mids
there are disturbing
me in the Chorus.
00:16:07
I might have to get
it at the channel
or it might be a global thing I can move.
00:16:35
And we're getting pretty
close to printing this.
00:16:38
The 2-Track device that
I'm printing to here
is another Pro Tools rig.
00:16:42
The one that I described with
the Burl B2 and the Lavry.
00:16:45
We're going through the UA Console
with a couple of plug-ins on it,
some final EQ tweaky things.
00:16:51
In the Pro Tools,
Pro Tools is locked
with time-code over Ethernet.
00:16:58
And so basically,
whenever I hit go on
the multi-track machine
the print path rolls.
00:17:04
And so I'm screen sharing to
be able to put it in record
and then when I hit play over here
it records in the same
place every single time.
00:17:11
So when I'm printing stems
or all the subsequent prints
like an instrumental, an 'a Capella',
any of those things,
it's always in sync with
the multi-track device.
00:17:21
If you have a laptop or two
or you have multiple computers
and you're doing a lot of stuff
with like 'Native Instruments'
or midi, or things like that
time-code over Ethernet
because you can connect
two computers together
and just make a couple of Auxes,
even on the In-the-Box session,
and have
one computer that's just dealing
with running the sampler,
five soft synths,
free other things and run it in
to your main session
that's running your multi-track program.
00:17:50
And you wind up with massive amounts
of processing power
on a computer that's only handling
midi notes and soft synths.
00:17:57
I used to do it
to just be able to run things
amazingly
from tape
and having an USB midi type of device
that is reading time-code SMPT
and just locking a
computer and using it like
a sampler that's in sync
with a multi-track tape machine
because I had a 2-inch 16 track.
00:18:20
So it was like we steal one of the tracks
just to be able to lock
the computer to it
rather than using like
sequencer based, hardware sequencers
because they were a pain in the ass.
00:18:30
We have the ability to lock
computers that's why
I got into locking
these things together,
when computers weren't as powerful
and I had some
soft synth going on
and I just ran it on my laptop
while the other computer,
a Pro Tools Mix Plus rig,
was handling the audio
and I brought it back
on the console anyway.
00:18:50
So even if you work In-the-Box
this works but for me
it's like I can bring back
a couple sounds from soft synths
like down in the right on the console
and include those in the mix
and they are just in sync
over Ethernet,
that means you don't even have
to be sitting that close to each other
if you've got a long enough Cat 6 cable.
00:19:06
You can use your laptop as a remote
to record yourself in
the other room that way.
00:20:12
Just a few final tweaks to
the backing vocal top end.
00:20:16
Just final shaving of things here.
00:20:19
We're at the point where I'd start
printing some stems here.
00:20:23
I use stems not only for recall
but I sort of move the shapes
I've created in the analog domain
into the box at that point
and sometimes tweak further.
00:20:33
Which is what we're gonna do with this mix.
00:20:35
When I first started
doing this was because
I was doing a record for a guy
who is called 'Pretty Lights'
and everything that he does is like,
In-the-box created,
like with summing
boxes and stuff
and there's just
massive headroom.
00:20:50
Just crazy amounts of headroom
still hits it
hard enough to distort it,
like just going crazy with the levels
and kind of the way it punches then
comes out of the speakers
the same way back in the day
is the way like a snare sounds
comes out like an MPC 60
turned all the way up.
00:21:07
There's like a square wave thing
and you running up against
that ceiling all the time
and making it sound right.
00:21:13
And I was like, 'Wow,
so I have to mix this
and compete with that
type of gain staging
rather than doing anything
that has to do with like
just the straight up musicality
I have on a console.
00:21:25
This just has to the hit,
like and ogre shaking you.
00:21:28
The way that I decided to
do it was to print stems.
00:21:31
Taking it farther in-the-box
because I can sort of
reset my headroom at that point
and take it even crazier
like using what I made
almost like samples
and recreating the mix in-the-box
the same way that
'Pretty Lights' did,
you know,
when he used all the information
we recorded it out in the room
and took it into the box and
just made everything huge.
00:21:52
So, it's sort of like
putting yet another magnifying glass
on things that we've
created in the analog domain
where we're subject to physics.
00:22:02
Whereas we're sort of not, in-the-box.
00:22:04
The way that I do this is
I put it in record
stand-by on the print path
and it's locked to
the main rig, so when I hit play here,
it's gonna start recording over there.
00:26:42
There's further processing that I wanna do
but I wanna do it
in the digital domain
because there some kind of tweaky things
about the drums sound
and a few other things
that I wanna get into.
00:26:52
I always print a mix 1 off the console
directly,
but I don't always deliver
that mix as the one
that I give to the label or to the client,
sometimes I do more
in-the-box before I deliver it
and in this case I'd like to do more.
00:27:09
For me deliverables
are a mix 1,
an instrumental, a TV mix
and an 'a Capella',
that's usually whats
defined as deliverables
and then for myself
I'll print stems.
00:27:22
In this case stems would be
the stereo mix,
it's sort of a fold-down,
a submix of the drums,
keeping them exactly
as they were in the mix
and just muting the rest of
the stuff on the console.
00:27:36
So we hear exactly what they were doing
in the mix
but by themselves, it's kind of
like soloing the entire drum-kit
and all the parallel processing
and verb that's on them.
00:27:47
It's like
just leaving exactly
what the drums were doing
and printing that to the print path.
00:27:54
It's locked with time-code so then
we mute all the drums
and we'll print the bass
in real-time,
exactly the way it appeared in the mix.
00:28:02
We'll do with the vocal,
with the guitars, the piano
and all the elements get they're own stem.
00:28:10
The reason it's a stem
and not just a multi-track
is that includes all the processing
that happens during the mix
and it doesn't change to print the stems,
it's exactly the shape of
the piece I've created
that fits in the mix
the way I want it,
that's then
sent
by itself
to the print machine
so that we wind up with
those pieces that can be
reassembled for recall
to sound exactly like it did.
00:28:36
When we go back and forth between
the analog mix that was
printed just as a 2-track
and then stacking up all the
stems at zero in Pro Tools,
it should sound just like
the analog mix and
we make sure it does
before we pull it off of the console,
ten guitars becomes a stereo
pair on the console, on faders,
those two faders,
but with the further processing,
the EQ I have patched in this case
and the compressor
coming out the center section
through the Bus compressor.
00:29:06
Now the Bus compression changes a bit
because when you mute the drums
and you mute all the other elements
the guitars aren't now dancing
with those drums anymore,
that's when I wind up using something like
an SSL G compressor
as a plug-in on my stem session
if I need to do a recall.
00:29:26
And honestly, nine times out of ten
the way I'm using the compressor
I'm not moving it enough
to really care that I've lost
2 dB of kick drum
3 dB of kick drum dance
to the real thing because I'm doing it
in two different places,
I wind up doing the same thing
where there's like one plug-in compressor
and then the one that
was already on the stems.
00:29:50
When I'm printing stems I
get the same gain structure
even if I don't get the
same time constants,
the same compression dance.
00:29:56
I must print the submix of the drum stem
and then we'll continue on
with the rest of the stems.
00:30:01
This is where Francisco would do
this, each time.
00:30:04
So, I think that
I'll explain he's doing while he sits
on this chair for a minute
and actually gets it rolling.
00:30:10
So basically, all of the
channels get muted,
that are
tracks
but none of the channels get muted
that are effects returns.
00:30:21
So even the Effectron,
the BS-10, the Bricasti,
the parallel drum bus
obviously stays up.
00:30:28
We'll solo in the box as well
in case there's something
like a parallel send
to like a side-chained
plug-in compressor
or any effects bleed
or anything like that.
00:31:03
All right, so that's the drums,
let's print the bass stem, next.
00:31:07
So in this case there is no effect send
from the bass
and so Francisco just
soloed the bass tracks
instead of leaving
everything else opened.
00:31:18
The drums have so much else
going on on the console
the we left it opened and
just muted the other elements
but in this case
we can just use solo and print out
to the Print path.
00:31:28
A lot of the motion that's
included as far as the
bus compression response to the
bass and the kick and everything
it's motion that I've
included by having
an in-the-box send from
the inside kick mic
to a compressor on
the bass in-the-box.
00:31:44
So even without them having to engage
each other in the analog domain
they're side-chained a little bit
so we do get the same basic effect
even when we're printing the stem
as the kick drum being there moving
it through the Bus compressor.
00:31:57
Now, it's the same thing
that I'm checking for
when I'm listening to the Bose
with their cheap little limiter thing.
00:32:03
It's like I see the 2-Mix compression
get hit less
when I'm using it in-the-box,
side-chained from the kick drum because
the compressor is not responding
to the energy of the kick and the
energy of the bass at the same time.
00:32:17
So that's why we're not seeing it
swing wildly all over the place
because I've accommodated for that
in-the-box before it comes out
to the channels individually.
00:32:26
While we're printing the bass stem
you'll hear it getting ducked
by the kick drum pattern
even without hearing the drums.
00:33:56
So during the verse
there's actually
an in-the-box side-chain
thing happening.
00:33:59
I actually automated up the snare
on the same bus that's keying
the compressor that's on the bass
and turned down the kick drum
and then they flip
in the Chorus
where the kick is then
moving it all of the way
but almost an imperceptible amount,
I can see it happening
on the meters
but you don't really hear it.
00:34:19
But there's just less energy,
it's like 3 dB or
something in the choruses.
00:34:23
So when we're printing these stems
it takes the length of the song
times the number of
elements that we wanna print.
00:34:29
About an extra hour
at the end of the mix
to get these stems printed
but this is what saves us
three hours of recall.
00:34:39
Since we continue to mix analog
an hour seems like a bargain to me
compared to have to bring back
every single thing that we've used.
00:34:48
This is mix is fairly minimal again because
it was tracked with a lot of intention.
00:34:52
But there is times where it's just
everything is patched,
there's a million
things going on outboard,
we're using every single
channel on the console,
it would take hours
to do the recall
even with Total Recall on the SSL
it still takes a person
turning the knobs until
the zeros back out again.
00:35:07
It doesn't all just snap back,
you physically turn it,
it just reminds you where
it was when you finished it.
00:35:14
Francisco printed all the stems
and what we're gonna open now
is actually the original stem session
from the mix that I delivered
to the label,
the one that ultimately
was on the radio and of all that,
the actual stems from that.
00:35:28
Because we can talk about
the further processing
that I've got into
in theses stems,
this was all done in-the-box.
00:35:36
So what I wound up with here
is more EQ on the 2-Mix
using the Manley again,
using the Oxford again,
with a couple notches,
this is like .6, you can see,
1 dB here
and then .8 up
at 55, like just...
00:35:56
Just little moves here,
it's things that I felt
I didn't hit the target
in the multi-track.
00:36:02
But I do wind up with
the old UA
SSL Bus compressor.
00:36:08
At this point I'm using the new one.
00:36:10
And then a limiter.
00:36:12
This was basically
to give the listener
it's not delivered with any limiting on it.
00:36:17
In this case,
let's listen to the
drum stem by itself,
it's an obvious place to start here
and we'll see what
I would up doing
on the EQ.
00:36:42
All these moves are incredibly minimal
and they were made
in context,
I'm only soloing and playing them
to give an example of
what I pulled down
and it's because it was
relative to something else
in the stems
that I pulled down that 200.
00:36:58
Probably for some of the
throw of the bass in the
low-end in the guitars.
00:37:03
There's something in the room
that was just not moving
correctly with that.
00:37:06
Now let's listen to something like
the main vocal for a minute
here in the Chorus,
we'll see what processing
we have going on.
00:37:26
So I have a de-esser,
an Aux for the EQ again,
which I clearly use all the time.
00:37:32
In this case, sometimes I'll
find things like on the sub,
sometimes I'll find things where
it's really just for
tape noise or system noise
and I'm managing that.
00:37:42
I'm pulling down the top-end
because there's nothing about
the sub that I care about
above 500 so I'm low-passing like crazy
just to get the noise out of that track.
00:37:53
So that I can kind of recompress
a little bit in certain cases
and not just keep pulling up
the noise floor, system noise,
compressor noise, tape noise
because again,
this stuff was tracked to tape
so a lot of the elements
that were tracked to tape
and gained up quite a bit,
the noise floor is up.
00:38:10
So anywhere that I can
kind of just low-pass
or get of rid of that
noise, I will.
00:38:15
It's just easier in the
digital domain to really just
hack that top-end off
and keep something like
low-end phase consistent.
00:38:23
In the bass
we wound up
again, I wound up with
something that was just
engaging the cones a bit too much
and these moves, again,
were made in context.
00:38:33
But it was in relation to the
drums the way that the bass worked.
00:38:37
Check it out in solo here in the Chorus.
00:39:04
So again, it's about the sort of
bloat at 100 that was getting in to
and a little bit more down way low,
at the fundamental.
00:39:12
The thing that's cool about
this that I love is the way that
when you're equalizing a sample
of a drum break
you wind up equalizing
the verb, you wind up equalizing
everything because you can't
remove them as individual sounds.
00:39:27
So it's just kind of every
move is a global move
when you're
equalizing a drum loop
that you've sampled
in stereo off a record
and I love that
what I'm equalizing here
and in the drums and the
vocals and all of that
I'm actually
making a global move across
all of those elements so what
we're hearing as the bass now
is actually three bass tracks
summed down to a stereo pair
and then equalized together.
So I'm pulling this 100 Hz
out of the DI and the amp track now
and there's something about it
that starts to make it kind
of work together better.
00:40:00
The summed element
sounds different than
the individual elements
even playing together on a console.
00:40:07
So now I'm moving it around as one
thing, as one big thing.
00:40:11
This is like
the stuff that was
annoying me in the guitars
that was starting to go after
in the 2-Mix here.
00:40:19
I went even farther with it
in the stems and pulled down
4 kHz ish
almost 2 dB,
which is a lot in the
stem world for me.
00:40:29
I high-passed just to get rid
of the crap at the bottom.
00:40:56
And remember that these, in solo,
are not something individually
that are meant to work alone.
00:41:04
So now guitar 2,
because this kind of one big sound
when Guitar 1 and Guitar 2
kick in the Chorus,
so here's what Guitar 2 is doing.
00:41:35
All of these are incredibly minimal,
there's like 2, 2.5 dB moves
at specific frequencies
and it's the way that
it was stepping on
something else in the mix.
00:41:45
That move in the guitar probably
revealed the chest in the snare
in the Choruses.
00:41:50
It's like right where I
like the snare to speak
like in a sort of
250 to 300 range
at the bottom of it where
it feels really solid,
that's exactly where I'm removing it
out of this guitar stem.
00:42:03
And this guitar
only happens in the Chorus
and it's right where when
it was masking something
about the snare
that I didn't like.
00:42:11
The extra guitars have
no further processing
but these is how they wound up.
00:42:35
That's just me playing extra guitars
through Shimmer,
it's the Valhalla plug-in.
00:42:40
Those were printed as one thing.
00:42:43
It gives some depth to the chorus.
00:42:45
The piano by itself
wound up this.
00:43:04
So basically people don't realize
they're like the Halloween soundtrack.
00:43:07
Because it's basically
playing in the background
of this, I didn't remember
it being basically that.
00:43:13
There's like a vocal 2 moment.
00:43:16
This was a part of the recall,
it's actually sort of changing
how the radio edit
worked in the bridge.
00:43:22
It was adding a main vocal,
a kind of extra thing in the
Bridge of the radio edit
because the album version,
the bridge is twice as long.
00:43:33
So this is an example of where
in the stem session
it's kind of yet another chance.
00:43:39
You know,
I've done vocal overdubs
into a stem session
a bunch of times.
00:43:44
Now we're just gonna listen
to the mix that I delivered
with all the digital processing
on all the stems happening.
00:43:50
And then I'll bypass
all the digital processing that
we've done in the stem session.
00:44:44
With the processing I
feel like this track has
a certain magic to it,
it gives you this like
velocity, like you lost the brakes
going down the mountain
in the Choruses.
00:44:55
And then without the processing,
it gets a bit more flat-footed,
it's the way that it
moves down the street,
it's the subtlety of the feeling that I get
and what I picture in my mind
when I hear it with the processing intact.
00:45:09
With the processing I see the singer like
with his heels
on the edge of the Empire State
Building, like proclaiming
this to the entire
city in Manhattan.
00:45:18
And without I kind
of just hear a band.
00:45:22
A lot of my favorite records were made
with really minimal gear.
00:45:25
My favorite rock records,
my favorite funk records,
a lot of them were made with
minimal track count,
minimal effects
but
clever use of those effects
and it's why even in something
like this that ultimately
went to the Grammys,
again, it was number one Billboard,
it got all the sort of
numbers that labels
get excited about.
00:45:50
And we used
one mono Effectron delay
that was about
100 bucks when I bought it,
I think they are all the way
to like 150 now on Ebay.
00:45:59
And a Spring Verb
and a Bricasti.
00:46:03
One automated delay In-the-Box
that was the only real
sort of plug-in effect
other than compression and EQ.
00:46:11
But working on a console, figuring out
what each element needs
to do to really speak.
00:46:18
To me those are the things
that really moved me.
00:46:21
Using that long delay
as a really obvious part of the arrangement
in the Verse is kind of like...
00:46:27
To me that's Pink Floyd delay where
it's really a part of the arrangement
and that really speaks to me
and that resonated
with this band's fans.
00:46:37
It's where production, mix engineering
and engineering all
sort of blur together.
00:46:42
You can't figure out whether
the song was just built
to always have that delay there
or whether the mix engineer
put it afterwards
as an idea of how to fill up
a little bit of space
an make the verse work.
00:46:52
As opposed to using the Bricasti
to give a sense of a physical
space around the drums.
00:46:59
There's always those two things
in all my favorite records,
there's an effect
that gives an idea,
a surreal space,
some sort of heroic space where the...
00:47:09
these events took place.
00:47:11
Where the guy's echo bounces
off the back wall at Pompeii.
00:47:15
So you wind up with these tracks,
you have to have a vision
for where they take place
and that informs
all the other moves.
00:47:21
Does this happen in a place where
guitars are loud,
does it happen where
the walls are far from the snare
or close to the snare?
Giving a sense of place in a mix
is as important as
whether there's low-end
in the kick drum in my opinion
because that's where I visit
when I was 12 or 14 and I get the chills
listening to Led Zeppelin
or listening to The Police
or whoever it was, Run DMC.
00:47:48
I pictured a place that
these events took place.
00:47:51
A pictured an actually Club or
a venue where these
sounds were happening.
00:47:57
And that's what made
me connect myself to it
rather than just whether there was
80 Hz in the kick drum or not.
00:48:04
That has no emotional appeal to me.
00:48:06
None of the technical aspects
got inside my heart.
00:48:10
I would think about them but
none of them got in my heart
and took root.
00:48:13
So that's why when we
are making moves like...
00:48:16
The final EQ moves
in those stems
that I'm talking about,
imagining this guy as a superhero
announcing this sentiment to
all of Manhattan
that's what moves me.
00:48:27
That's what all of this
is in the pursuit of,
is moving knobs and using
everything in this room
to finally forget that it's there
and lean back an actually
imagine where these sounds
are taking place.
00:48:38
And hopefully it's a place
that inspire someone
and reaches and connects with
them across space and time.
00:48:44
That's what makes
a favorite band
instead of good kick sound.
00:48:49
That's what makes a
movement
and creates gravity around the band
instead of making
a well-balanced mix.
00:48:56
So having a vision for
connecting with other people
leads me to make these decisions
and makes them pretty easy.
00:49:02
It's pretty simple in the end
when you're looking
to communicate
rather than just adjust things.
00:49:07
Every single move in a mix
is in pursuit of the vision.
00:49:11
And when your vision is clear
for who you're trying
to communicate with
it informs every other
move on the console,
every other move in processing.
00:49:19
Why to put reverb,
why to put a delay,
that's all answered by having a vision
for where that mix needs to go.
00:49:27
It was with all that in mind
that we put together this final mix
of 'My Name is Human'
by 'Highly Suspect'.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
- AKG BX 10 Spring Verb
- Aphex Dominator 2
- Briscati-m7m-stereo-reverb
- Camilo Silva F Stereo Compressor CFS 4000E
- Maag Magnum PI K
- Magnatech 31b
- Monitors ATC scm25a
- Mono EFFECTRON delay
- Pultec PEQ-500a
- UAD BAX EQ
- UAD Manley Massive Passive
- UAD Oxford EQ
- UAD Precision Limiter
- UAD SSL G Series
Joel Hamilton is a record producer, engineer, musician, and an owner of the incredible Studio G in Brooklyn, New York.
Over his already impressive career, he has helped artists like Highly Suspect, Pretty Lights, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop and more craft their music using his production skills and hybrid approach to record production.
In addition to making records, Joel also appeared as the host of the Spotify/Bose produced web series named “Art Of Sound”, which focuses on the connection between the physical, technical and emotional sides of music and sound.
When he is not creating chart topping hits with other artists, he performs as a musician with the band Book of Knots.
Highly Suspect
Pretty Lights
Sparklehorse
Elvis Costello
Tom Waits
Lyrics Born
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