John Paterno Mixing Lifeboats
03h 08min
(34)
In Episode 5 of our Lifeboats Series, Grammy Award Winning Engineer, John Paterno, opens the multitrack for the Will Knox song, "Lifeboats", and takes us all the way from hearing the song for the first time, to a completed powerful and energetic mix with his signature sound imprinted upon it.
In this 3 hour tutorial, learn how John:
- Uses Analog EQs to commit sounds and add extra tone early in the process
- Uses Mono delay on the drums to enhance the shuffle groove of the track
- Cleans up clicks and pops that can be distracting and pull the listener out of the track
- Reamps the guitars using a Little Labs PCP box, an Otis amplifier, a Universal Audio OX and a Chandler LTD-1
- Controls the balance of the drums in the overhead mics
- Deals with the phase relationship between a Bass DI and Amp
- Monitors in Mono to fine tune balance relationships
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- 00:00 - Start
- 01:36 - Setting Levels
- 02:49 - Create A Rough Mix
- 08:09 - Bass And Drums
- 29:03 - Drum Delay
- 32:36 - Lead Vocal
- 39:50 - Guitars
- 40:13 - Gain Structure
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Stereo Bus Placement
- 04:00 - Back To The Vocal
- 07:09 - Vocal Effects
- 14:33 - Back To The Drums
- 15:55 - Bass Phase Relationship
- 27:30 - Drum Ambience
- 34:26 - Guitar Ambience
- 39:42 - Compress The Drum Effect
- 42:19 - Organ
- 51:30 - Piano
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Synth Strings
- 09:51 - Background Vocal
- 13:37 - Synth Hook
- 14:06 - Piano Bridge
- 15:23 - Juno Bass
- 15:57 - ARP Pad
- 18:40 - Pluck Synth
- 20:05 - Shaker
- 26:33 - Back To The Stereo Bus
- 32:12 - Bridge
- 38:52 - Switching To Mono
- 41:27 - Vocal Automation
- 42:59 - Tweaking The Mix
- 50:06 - Refine Vocal Automation
- 57:41 - Print The Mix
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |
00:00:00
Ciao amici and welcome
to my version of "Lifeboats."
I'm glad to be a part of this series,
and as a disclaimer...
00:00:06
Not really a disclaimer. Just so you know,
I have not heard this tune yet.
00:00:10
I have avoided it.
00:00:10
I've avoided it on the internet,
I've avoided all the other mix versions.
00:00:14
You're getting the same thing
I'm getting, at the same time,
although you've probably
heard the tune before me.
00:00:26
Let's get started,
and the first thing I'm going to do
is take a look at what's been sent to me.
00:00:31
I'm just going to spot-check
a couple of tracks
and just get an idea of what the sound
is like versus the level.
00:00:37
And I'm doing this just so that I have
an idea of where
the head space was
of the person who recorded it
as much as anything else.
00:01:19
I'm going to listen to a tom fill
and see if that tells me
which side the tom should be on
based on the overheads.
00:01:29
Floor tom to the left on this guy.
00:01:36
Looking at some of these levels
I've gotten to a point where
I want to see transient levels
look a certain way on a meter.
00:01:43
I want to see more average steady-state
signals look a certain way on a meter,
and it corresponds to how I came up
and using VU meters.
00:01:51
I'm going to go through and make
some tweaks using Clip Gain
to get things where I think
they should be.
00:01:57
I know it's a visual thing
and I know you're thinking,
"Why isn't he listening to this?"
Well, because I know where
I'm going to go with some of this
in the next couple of stages
of the process.
00:02:06
So I can either turn it up now
or I can turn it up later,
but I am going to end up turning it up
in one place or another.
00:02:13
I'll make a few of these adjustments
as the music is playing
just so I have a visual reference
of what I'm seeing.
00:02:49
The first thing I'm going to do is just
put up a really quick rough balance.
00:04:37
I just want to get a few
of the key elements in
just so I have an idea
of what the song is about.
00:04:42
A lot of these other one-hit things
are things that just come in
in sections.
00:04:46
They're like detail things,
but I'm really trying to look for the meat
of the song right now.
00:04:50
So I'll pop up these guitars,
get those in play,
and then we'll listen down
from the top
and really get a feel
for where the song is.
00:06:00
Let's listen down from the top
just to see where we are.
00:06:04
I might put in markers as I go too
just to speed up the process a little bit.
00:07:33
In listening down I'm just trying to find
what the driving forces are.
00:07:37
Sometimes it's the vocal,
sometimes it's the vocal and the bass,
sometimes it's the drums
that are really pushing the thing along.
00:07:44
And in this case it's the bass
that's really the undertone,
the driving force of the tune,
so I want to make sure that I am cognizant
of that the entire time.
00:07:54
And it should be kind of featured
because it's adding
a lot of harmonic content,
it's adding a lot of movement,
and it's a really nice complement
to the vocal.
00:08:03
It's really nicely played.
00:08:04
That said, I'm going to mute
most of these tracks
and then we'll start from the top
and just kind of start looking
at the bass and the drums
and how they're going to sit together.
00:08:15
I may pop the vocal in and out as well
just to keep a perspective check.
00:09:09
I'm sliding this fader back and forth
just to try to hear the phase relationship
between this 251 Amp
and the Bass DI.
00:09:17
The 101, I don't know if we need
that much of a roomy sound,
so I'm going to leave that out
at the moment.
00:09:24
Also, there's something a little funny
with the pitch of the bass.
00:09:28
The bass is a bit glitchy in spots,
so whatever was done before it ended up
in front of me, it's done.
00:09:35
Is it going to pull me out of the record?
With everything in, probably not.
00:09:40
If anything does bug me, I'll address it.
00:09:43
If it was clicking and doing
some other stuff
I would take care of that immediately,
but it's not.
00:09:47
The thing to do in this case
is not to stress over it.
00:09:50
Just roll with it,
and in the grand context of things
I bet it's going to be fine.
00:09:56
The bass has got a nice shape to it
overall as far as the part goes.
00:09:59
I might just go ahead
and try and level it out a little bit,
and I like to use the 1176 for that.
00:10:31
Right in this area
there's a little click on the bass.
00:10:35
If you listen, you should hear it
right before the second note.
00:10:42
Those are the kinds of things
that later on I will end up hearing.
00:10:45
What I like to do
when I do find these things,
I go and I clean them up right away,
so out comes RX 7 De-click.
00:10:54
This is the factory preset
and I usually give it a shot right away
to see if it takes care of it.
00:11:01
I'm going to play that again.
00:11:06
Here it is before.
00:11:16
And then we always crossfade
when we do this stuff,
because if we don't
it comes back to bite us later
and it gives us another click.
00:11:24
I'll do a quick crossfade.
00:11:26
I'll leave this thing open,
and if I hear this stuff as we go along
I'm just going to take care of it
because I always end up hearing it later
and I know that about myself.
00:11:35
Given the nature of what's going on
with this bass sound
I want to try to keep it a feature,
but I also want it to react nicely
with the drums as well,
especially the kick and the snare.
00:11:47
So
I'm going to pivot to the kick
and the snare quickly,
and the overheads,
and just get a feel for how these three
or four key tracks
in the rhythm section are going to
interact with each other.
00:12:00
Let me turn a couple of these things on.
00:12:02
I'm going to stay away
from the bass amp for the moment,
I just want to hear the DI, kick,
snare, and the overheads.
00:12:41
There's some weird stuff going on here too
with the cymbal decay.
00:12:51
It kind of flutters a little bit.
00:12:53
So with that in mind,
we may be seeing a few of these issues
with some more of the track,
so then you got to kind of think about...
00:13:00
Or at least I want to start thinking about
turning it into something,
trick it out a little bit so that maybe
those types of things
just become part of the vibe
and you don't really notice them as much.
00:13:11
Let me roll up to a spot where these guys
are kind of playing out a little bit more.
00:13:49
So maybe the way to go is to have the bass
feel like it's really the star
and then the drums
are kind of filling in around it,
as opposed to making the drums the star
and making the bass
kind of go underneath it.
00:14:02
I'm kind of picking sides here
where sometimes maybe I wouldn't,
but in this case,
I think if I can trick out
the drums a little bit
and get a lot of focus on the bass,
I think it'll make for
an interesting record.
00:14:15
To that end, what I'm going to do
is I'm going to process the bass DI,
the kick, and the snare right now,
all at the same time.
00:14:24
I'll run them through some outboard gear,
get a little better tone on it.
00:14:27
On the snare I want a little more crack,
a little more snap than what's there.
00:14:30
The kick drum, I just think
I want it a little rounder.
00:14:34
I know I haven't listened to the Kick Out,
I'll put that up and the Kick Alt
in a second.
00:14:38
They may or may not help.
00:14:39
Let's listen to those real quick
before I make a decision about that.
00:14:43
I'm going to listen to
the kick, the snare,
and these other kick drums
and the bass.
00:15:31
This Kick Alt is interesting.
00:15:32
I wouldn't use it as a kick drum,
but it may be useful as some type
of extra ambience or room,
or maybe use it to trigger something else
if we kind of dirty it up a little bit.
00:15:42
I'm going to take these two kicks,
the In and the Out,
combine them together onto a new track
through a piece of outboard gear.
00:15:50
I'm going to go through
these Chandler Neves.
00:15:53
So the bass I'm going to run
through a Mike-E
and a Chandler Limited Little Devil EQ.
00:15:59
Let me get a couple of tracks set up,
we'll get a sound going,
and we'll print them down.
00:16:10
So you're probably wondering
why I'm going through all this trouble,
going through hardware
versus going just with plug-ins,
and I already have a plug-in
on the bass DI
and I will not take that off
because I like what it's doing.
00:16:22
And that's the crux of it right there:
I like the tone I get by going through
certain pieces of outboard gear.
00:16:30
The Chandler stuff is Neve-style,
it's not quite the same.
00:16:34
The Q points on the EQ
tend to be a little bit narrower
and I like that for a lot of applications.
00:16:41
Plus, there are more EQ points on this
than a Neve module,
so it gives me a little bit extra.
00:16:46
This combination of the Mike-E
into the Chandler red EQ,
I stumbled upon it at some point
and I just love what it does to the bass.
00:16:56
And I haven't found a plug-in setup
that really matches it.
00:17:01
I still love the 1176
on the front end, though,
I really like what it does to the tone.
00:17:06
And honestly, once I get through all this,
it may end up again
onto my EQ'ed bass track.
00:17:11
It just really depends on how I'm feeling
and what kind of motion
I'm getting out of it.
00:17:16
And because it's really
what I'm trying to do,
I'm trying to make sure the tracks
feel musical at the end of the day
and make sure that there's
some sway to them, some feel,
and we're going to build depth
into the tracks as well.
00:17:29
Those are the ultimate goals here for me.
00:17:32
That said, I am going to solo
a few things up
and I am going to get sounds
on a few things.
00:17:40
So we're going to switch over behind me
to some of this outboard gear
and we'll give it a listen.
00:17:45
Here's some of the Bass DI. I'll go
into the tune a little bit as well.
00:18:01
For level going to the compressor,
to the Mike-E,
I'm basically using it as a compressor
and I'm using it for its Drive function,
which is this first knob here.
00:18:14
Instead of adjusting the Input gain
I'm going to adjust
the Send to it, literally,
just by adjusting the Output
of this Bass DI track.
00:18:22
That's how I'm getting my level
just so that's clear.
00:18:57
I like that for the bass.
00:18:59
I put a little bit more low end on it
so it has a little bit more size,
and now it has a little more punch
and a little more point to it as well.
00:19:06
So now let's listen to the kick drum
and get those guys to work together.
00:19:11
And those are coming out and they're going
through the top Chandler module.
00:20:20
And again, I'm just going for a little bit
more size, a little more clarity,
and maybe feeling a little bit more 3D.
00:20:27
That's the goal for me here.
00:20:28
The snare, I already know
I want it brighter
and I want it to kind of cut
a little bit more.
00:20:34
I have a feeling that's the first thing
I'll end up doing,
is adding a little top to it
or a little bit more crack.
00:21:39
Let me play it a little bit
and I'll pop all the EQs out,
and then I'll pop them back in so you
can hear a little bit of the difference.
00:21:45
It's just the three EQs
on these three elements.
00:22:32
So I'm going to print these down
from the top of the tune.
00:22:35
This way we'll never have a recall issue,
they're always here,
and then we can process them later
if we need to.
00:22:41
So here we go from the top.
00:23:05
Great! We have these printed,
I'm going to take these out of Record.
00:23:08
And then all the tracks
I'm using as sources
I'm going to take out of the equation
by making them inactive and hiding them.
00:23:19
Now I'm only dealing
with these new elements.
00:23:22
Possibly this bass,
and we're going to get rid of the 101
because I know I will not use that either.
00:23:29
So now let's listen with the overheads
and see where we are.
00:23:52
Now that I'm thinking about it,
this Kick Alt,
no pun intended,
let's kick this into the equation
and give it a listen
against everything else.
00:24:11
So this is kind of like
a mono room in a weird way.
00:24:15
Let's see what happens
when the tom fills come up.
00:24:23
Okay, we're getting toms in there too.
00:24:25
There's a lot of low end,
but we can deal with that.
00:24:27
I'm wondering what happens
if we scuff this up a little bit.
00:24:30
We can do it in a few different ways
and what I think I'm going to do is
I'm going to try this mpressor first.
00:24:44
And the other thing I'm going to do
is I'm going to filter out
some of that low end right away
just because A,
it's eating up the compressor,
and B, I have another use
in mind for this.
00:24:54
So if I can clean it up a little bit
and make it sound more like a drum kit,
then it'll help in my next application
which we'll get to.
00:25:02
Quick listen.
00:25:31
The other thing I'm going to try
is maybe put just a little grit
on this track as well,
and I'm going to do that
using a UAD 610 channel.
00:25:42
You'll see a lot of my plug-ins
come up a certain way.
00:25:45
I have presets that I just know
that I'd like to go to
as a starting point.
00:25:50
So here's one that's literally set up
to be a gritty tone right off the bat.
00:26:21
Actually, we're going to give it
even a little bit more Gain.
00:26:25
We're compressing a lot, we're getting
7.5 dB of gain on there,
so I'll give it a little bit more Gain
coming out of the compressor.
00:26:39
That's a little bit more
of what I'm after.
00:26:41
Let's hear that with everything else.
00:26:52
Funny how it went away.
00:26:54
What do you think
could be the cause of that?
Shall we look at the phase?
I think we shall!
I'm going to put a phase button up here
because some EQs
don't have phase buttons on them
for some reason.
00:27:10
Because of that we have to do this
and I'm going to find the Trim fader.
00:27:23
Okay. Hear the difference?
Here's without.
00:27:40
If you notice with the phase button
the way it is right now,
the snare sounds good,
but there's no bass drum.
00:27:47
When I pop it in
the snare doesn't sound as good
but we suddenly get a lot of low end.
00:27:52
Let me play that again a little bit,
you can hear the difference.
00:27:55
Here is
out of phase.
00:28:21
I don't want this to be the main focus
of the sound anyway.
00:28:25
I like it flipped, I like what it's doing
to the bass drum.
00:28:28
And then I want to blend it in
a little bit,
see if I can get it to feel good,
but then I want to actually show you
the real purpose that I want to try
to make this track work.
00:29:04
I like it in there,
but the main point of this
is I want to actually help the drums
kind of roll a little bit,
so I'm going to set up an Aux track
and on this Aux track
I'm going to go Aux 17,
I'm going to put a delay.
00:29:22
And I am going to check out
this Binson Echorec by Overloud.
00:29:30
So the idea here
is to give the track some swing
using a delay.
00:29:34
I'll solo it up
and let's time it so it feels right.
00:30:51
I'm going to pop the vocal in real quick
to see if that's messing with the groove
of the vocal as well.
00:31:22
I like what that's doing at the moment.
00:31:24
Once I get in a few more elements
I'll probably fine-tune it,
but it's at least a starting point.
00:31:30
And then the other thing
to mess with right now
is to see if we get some repeats going,
if that helps or hurts the situation.
00:31:37
So I'm going to do that real quick
before I move on.
00:31:41
I'm going to mute the vocal again.
00:32:04
The other thing to try is to halve this.
00:32:06
We're at 284 and it's feeling pretty good,
so what happens if we go to 142?
I kind of like the longer one personally.
00:32:26
I'll add this back in manually, 284.
00:32:38
And while we're here
let's take a look at the lead vocal.
00:32:41
I put a couple of trims in
because it was very, very low
on a couple of lines, and then
the rest of them are normal levels,
so I just thought I would
even them out a little bit more
just so that we don't have to fight
with it later on.
00:32:52
By adding the Clip Gain on these vocals
the other thing I'm doing is I'm making it
so the compressor doesn't swing wildly
from one section to another.
00:33:01
If I compress it for the verse
and I haven't compensated the gain,
if I get a tone that I like,
then the chorus comes in
and suddenly it's going to
bury everything.
00:33:09
By compensating the gain before it hits
anything else in my signal path,
which at the end of the day
is what I want,
because I don't want wild swings
on the compressor,
I don't want to suddenly get buried
and then not enough compression.
00:33:22
So by tweaking a few things
using Clip Gain on the track itself,
it does it all Pre-Insert,
and it just gives me
a little bit more control.
00:33:31
There's a few things I can try on the
lead vocal as far as compression goes.
00:33:36
I'll give it a listen for a second
and make a decision.
00:33:50
I'm going to try a Fairchild on here.
00:33:52
The reason I'm thinking Fairchild
is because I know the sound quality
of that style of compressor, right?
Which is a variable mu style
compressor, right?
It tends to be kind of thicker,
but yet it can grab super-fast
and it just gives things
a little bit more personality
and a little more tone
than maybe some other choices out there.
00:34:14
This SPL Iron plug-in
that I've been using a little bit now,
it has the characteristics
of the variable mu.
00:34:22
It sounds a little more modern
in an interesting way,
so maybe we'll try both
and we'll pick one
and we'll see what works.
00:34:29
I'm going to put on the SPL first.
00:34:31
So I'm going to run up to a spot
where there's some level,
the second half of the second verse
into the chorus,
let's see what makes sense.
00:35:22
I like the way it's grabbing
and I like the way...
00:35:25
it just feels like the vocal
stays present the whole time.
00:35:28
So let me pop on the UA Fairchild
and do it as a comparison.
00:35:33
We'll pick one or the other.
00:35:35
There's a few other little tweaks
I think I'd like to do to it.
00:36:25
And I'm listening for tone.
00:36:27
I know the levels may not be
completely matched,
but the main thing is I want to hear what
it's doing to the character of the voice.
00:36:33
Is it pinching it?
Is it making it sound bigger?
Is it making it more present?
Anything you run audio through
is going to impart some type of tone on it
and right now I'm just determining
which tone I think is going to work
a little bit better,
just from the compressor point of view.
00:36:48
So here we go. Let's listen.
00:37:34
In this case I'm going to go
with the SPL,
or at least for the moment.
00:37:38
Maybe once I get a few more elements in
I'll change my mind,
but I like what this is doing.
00:37:43
The other one
brought out the midrange a little too much
on the vocal for me.
00:37:49
This seems to just be a little smoother
and it's got a little bit more
chess to it, to me.
00:37:54
I am also hearing something,
a little tone in there
that I want to see if I can address
right now as well with an EQ.
00:38:01
It's in, like, the lower midrange,
in case you're wondering.
00:38:27
You hear how right there it's just
making things a little bit honky?
Obviously it's exaggerated,
but I'm going to bring it out now
a little bit
and then we'll turn it on and off
and you can hear what it's doing.
00:39:24
So it's just clearing it out
a little bit.
00:39:27
One of the good and the bad things
about a lot of this vintage-modeled gear
is they sometimes bring in the noise
and some of these other things.
00:39:37
There seems to be a bit of noise
coming out of the Echorec.
00:39:42
What I'm going to do...
I turned up the Noise knob earlier.
00:39:45
What happens if we take this down?
Ah!
Better.
00:39:52
It clears it up.
00:39:53
Let us look at the guitars.
00:39:56
There's an intro guitar,
there's a main body guitar.
00:39:59
I'm going to shoot up
to the main body for the moment.
00:40:15
These levels are pretty low.
00:40:17
I'm going to Clip Gain them up a bit
just so that it's in a more
reasonable range
and I'm not cranking the fader.
00:40:26
A reasonable range for me,
with a guitar sound like this
I want the meter to come up
somewhere between the green
and then into the yellow a little bit.
00:40:36
Otherwise, to hear it I'm going to
end up cranking up this fader,
and I just don't want to do that.
00:40:41
I want to try and keep things around 0
as much as I can
for a variety of reasons,
some of it's just old habits
are hard to break.
00:40:48
In this case I don't want it
to be too soft
and I don't want it to clip,
but I want to have a healthy enough level
to where if I put a plug-in,
especially an analog-modeled plug-in
like an 1176 or an LA-3A
or something along those lines,
that it hits that gear "properly."
And I say it in quotes
because everything is relative,
but it's my mix,
it's my context,
and for me, properly is hitting it
around 0 VU.
00:41:23
A lot of my presets
are set up around that fact
so that when I turn an 1176 on
it's already set up
for the meters to be a certain way,
or for the track level
to be a certain way,
and it helps getting
repeatable, expected results.
00:41:40
So,
that's one of the keys
to keep things moving quickly.
00:41:45
I mean, I'm doing this mix
and I'm talking a lot now,
and I definitely wouldn't be talking
nearly as much.
00:41:50
But
these are the things I would just do
without even really talking
or thinking about it
just because I know what's going to happen
in the next few stages down.
00:41:59
So let's take a look
and see where the level is.
00:42:12
And not tooting my own horn here,
but I'm at 0 on the fader.
00:42:18
We don't have it panned yet,
all the other things are kind of going,
we got the kick, the snare, and the bass,
and just by that one move of +6.9 dB
the guitar sounds like it's
in a reasonable place
kind of right off the bat.
00:42:40
Now let's hear this guitar with the vocal.
00:43:23
What to do with this sound?
I can EQ it, I can compress it,
I can do a few things.
00:43:29
What I wish is I wish it had
a little bit more bark to it.
00:43:33
It has some, but I wish it was
a little bit brighter.
00:43:36
I just want it to have
a little bit more attack,
a little bit more clarity, just...
00:43:41
maybe make it just sound a little bit more
old and funky at the same time.
00:43:45
I can do this with plug-ins
or I can do it a different way.
00:43:49
And again,
it's like,
you don't always have to go
to outboard gear,
but here's a situation
where I think I can get
a really cool tone.
00:43:59
I would have to go outboard gear
to use it,
but in this case what I'm going to do
is I'm going to reamp this guitar.
00:44:05
Even though we already have the sound,
I'm going to run it out
through a guitar amp
and I'm going to bring it back,
but I'm going to bring it back
through the Ox system.
00:44:15
And what that will allow me to do
is it allows me to pick some speakers,
it will allow me to pick some microphones,
and really customize the sound.
00:44:23
I'm going to take a quick listen
before I do this to this 122
and see if the combination of the two
makes sense,
or if I should just stick with the 57.
00:44:32
Let's explore that real quick as well.
00:44:34
I'm going to mute the 57,
I'm going to Clip Gain up this guy again,
and we're going to go
about the same, let's go +6.9.
00:44:45
And let's listen to this
for a second in the track.
00:45:04
It sounds like a ribbon mic, right?
It's got a bit of a rounder tone,
it's a little softer,
it sounds a little more distant,
and the question is:
is that what we want or not?
The other question is: what's the
combination between the 57 and the 122?
So let's give that a listen real quick.
00:45:45
Honestly, together it's a good sound.
00:45:48
Let's go down this road
and see if I can improve it,
and if I can't, we'll go back
to this combination.
00:45:54
But what I'll probably end up doing
is combining them down to one track
in any event, just because
there's no reason to have them separate
because it's the same performance.
00:46:03
Let me set up a new track,
our 'Main Gtr reamp'.
00:46:08
I'll group them together.
I actually like the blend of them
exactly where I have them,
so I will group them together
and call it 'src gtr',
and I'm going to turn them down
about 6 dB, 5.9,
and then this way I'm not hitting the
guitar amp too hard when I go to it.
00:46:26
I am going to bring it back
on Input 10 of Pro Tools
and I'm going to send out to
basically a reamp device,
and in this case I'm using
a Little Labs PCP.
00:46:39
The signal comes from here,
goes to the PCP,
the PCP converts it from +4 to -10,
guitar level signal,
and then that will go
to the input of the amp.
00:46:50
The output of the amp goes to the Ox,
and the Ox comes back
into a Chandler module at line level,
and then from the Chandler module
it goes back into Pro Tools.
00:47:17
Let's open up the Ox as well
so we can take a look at that.
00:47:23
And right now I have it set up
for a Marshall cabinet,
which I don't think I'm going to want.
00:47:28
I have a few other things that I like.
00:47:30
Maybe we'll try this 1x10,
or the 1x10 cabinet first.
00:47:35
I have a 57 and a 67 on them.
00:47:38
Let us solo this up
so that we can hear them.
00:47:42
Okay, but what we have to do
is we have to set both Outputs
to Output 5.
00:50:46
I like what this is doing,
so I'm going to print this down
all the way from the top.
00:50:51
And then this way we have it.
00:51:21
Now that we've printed
and we take a look at these tracks,
notice the extra little byproduct we get.
00:51:29
Whether it's good or bad,
we'll find out soon enough
once we listen in the track.
00:51:33
But we end up getting a little bit
more compression out of it
by going through the amp again.
00:51:38
If you noticed earlier on the bass,
I did run it through some
compressors as well,
but I'm going to scroll up here
so you can just take a look at the bass
again while I'm thinking about it.
00:51:48
Here's the Bass DI track.
00:51:50
We got the compression
out of the bass too,
so it's not parallel compression,
it's just kind of full-on compression,
but it gives me a little bit
more control of the track
and a little bit more consistency
all the way through.
00:52:01
Again, whether or not that's
a benefit, we'll find out.
00:52:04
I think it will help us more
than hurt us though.
00:52:08
While we're here on the guitars, let's
also just take a look at these other ones
and just get them
completely squared away
so we don't have to think
about them anymore.
00:52:16
I'll take these other tracks
and I'll hide them and make them inactive,
and now we have the added benefit
of only one track to deal with
as opposed to those two.
00:52:24
Let's see what this verse guitar
and this intro guitar sounds like,
and if it's a similar sound
we may just go ahead
and go with our same route.
00:52:33
If it's a different sound,
then we will proceed a different way.
00:52:39
Let's check these out real quick,
I'll just solo them up and listen to them.
00:52:51
I'm going to gain-structure myself up,
gain myself up to +6.9 again
because it seems we like that number.
00:52:58
Things seem happy there.
00:53:17
That's the intro guitar part,
and now let's hear
the verse guitar part.
00:53:24
I want to hear both because I'm inspired
by an idea that I will share with you
as soon as we hear this other part,
because I want to see
how they might work together.
00:53:33
Again, I'm giving them some gain,
soloing them up,
let's put them at 0.
00:54:13
Okay, so it's a similar part.
00:54:19
It's played a little differently, right?
The verse one is just
a little bit more round
and less attack.
00:54:26
I am going to combine these guitars
down to one track,
I'm going to go out to
a Chandler Germanium EQ.
00:54:38
So I'm going to go through those guys,
it goes to Output 12 and then Input 12,
and it's down at the bottom
of one of these racks over here.
00:54:46
And I'm just going to EQ it a little bit,
I'll see if I can get
a little nicer tone on it.
00:55:27
And then I think I'm also
going to run it through
an LA-3A.
00:55:32
And I have one of them
hooked up right now.
00:55:52
Unfortunately there's no bypass
on the LA-3A
so you can't really hear the difference,
but our benefit now
is we're getting a little extra leveling
and we're getting a little extra presence
just because of the electronics.
00:56:07
Let me print this down
into the spots where
the intro guitar happens,
and then we'll take a look
at the verse guitar.
00:56:14
Then there's something else
that I want to try on the verse guitar
that'll make it a little bit different.
00:56:38
That's the intro guitar,
so let's get rid of these dudes
and let's get rid of this guy too,
for now,
and while I'm thinking about it,
I still want to explore
that modulation kind of idea.
00:56:53
There is a chorus pedal called Boss CE-1,
and UA has a version of it
called Brigade Chorus.
00:57:03
Let's see if this does something similar.
00:57:11
Not quite a phaser.
00:57:12
I'm going to reserve judgment on that
for the moment.
00:57:16
What I'm going to do is I'm
going to look at these verse guitars.
00:57:19
I might run it through
the same process that I just did
with the same EQ,
and combine them down together.
00:57:26
Let's just hear what that sounds like,
and if it sounds good then we'll
just put these down as well,
and then this way we'll have them.
00:57:33
Same signal path.
00:57:34
If I feel it needs a new EQ,
or a change in EQ,
I will go ahead and change it.
00:57:39
But if it sounds good the way it is,
I'm going to leave it.
00:58:21
I'm going to adjust the Output
of the compressor too,
just to give it a little bit more gain.
00:58:45
So now I'm going to print these down.
00:59:13
I have those printed,
we'll get rid of the source tracks
because we don't need them anymore,
we'll take this Brigade guy off
because we didn't dig it.
00:59:20
Because this guitar part
is played so soft
I thought it might be nice to augment it
with something that's kind of a double
but not really.
00:59:29
I'm wondering what a vibrato
would sound like on it.
00:59:32
I am going to create a new track
and I'm going to go back
through our PCP path.
00:59:38
It will be a vibrato pedal at this point,
so we're going to call this
'VB Verse Gtr'.
00:59:46
I'm going to grab a vibrato pedal
out of my stash.
00:59:49
This is a custom pedal
that I built from this company
called Build Your Own Clone.
00:59:58
And for a while they were doing
these Boss vibrato pedals,
and it sounded so good
that I actually sold my original VB-2
and I use this now.
01:00:11
This has a power supply,
so it will make life a bit easier
on the battery front.
01:00:22
And
let's see what this sounds like.
01:01:05
So use it a little like
on the choppy seas
kind of a feel, maybe?
Not to get too literal,
but it gives it some motion at least.
01:01:14
Let's see where that takes us
in the big picture.
01:01:37
And then, since we're here
and since we're set up,
I'm going to take
this printed intro guitar
and I'm going to give it
one other shot.
01:01:45
This time I'm going to use
a Moog phaser
and see if that takes care of it for us.
01:01:56
I'm just going to grab this pedal.
01:02:03
Yes, I do like guitar pedals.
01:02:19
Audio In, Audio Out.
01:02:24
Power supply.
01:02:25
Fun fact: these are
positive center,
so I had to do a little mod
on this cable
—thank you to the wonderful techs
at Henson—
to get it to work right.
01:02:40
So we are now listening to
the intro guitar through this phaser.
01:03:21
I'm getting a little resonance
that I don't want in there.
01:03:25
I'm just going to,
at least for this print,
I'm going to just take out
a little bit of
250 Hz or so.
01:03:33
Let's see if it helps if I dip this out.
01:03:49
Nope, it's lower. 119 Hz.
01:04:02
I'm going to print these down.
01:04:23
You may be asking yourself
why I'm going through all this trouble,
why I'm not using plug-ins,
and there's a couple of reasons:
I generally do really like
the tone I get from these
and they have a bit
more personality than...
01:04:36
than plug-ins,
some plug-ins.
01:04:39
Some plug-ins are great and fantastic
and we all know that.
01:04:42
The other thing is that this buys me
a little bit more flexibility
if I decide I want to do something else.
01:04:50
And I don't mean to say that cryptically,
I don't know what's going to happen,
to tell you the truth.
01:04:54
But
by having the straight guitar
and the affected guitar,
I have them on different tracks,
I can have panning options,
I can have all of these things.
01:05:02
And granted, yes, you can copy it
to another track and call it a day,
and that's valid as well,
but in my case
I really just prefer this tone.
01:05:14
It just sounds more organic,
it sounds bigger,
and in this kind of record
those kinds of things,
at least to me, add up.
01:05:22
I'm going to mute these four guitars
for the moment,
I'm going to go back to the top.
01:05:27
Let's get this reamp guitar in
and let's get these intro guitars in.
01:05:31
Let me figure out what I'm going to use
and then I want to look at the
Stereo Bus chain for a second.
01:06:24
This might be a nice contrast
having the phaser guitar in there.
01:06:27
It needs maybe a little bit of work,
but check it out.
01:06:43
I'm going to EQ this a little bit.
01:06:55
And compress it a little bit
so it speaks a little bit better.
01:07:00
I like this mpressor for things like this.
01:07:30
The panning ideas are just a guess,
they seem like they kind of work,
so I just totally got lucky there
just with where the hi-hat is
and where the guitars are.
01:07:42
I'm not going to complain about it,
I'm going to roll with it.
01:07:45
This verse guitar,
it might be good vibrato,
and then maybe if we add a little
of the other guitar in on the left
maybe that's a sound.
01:07:52
Let's see what that's like.
01:08:10
I don't know if we are going to use
this intro guitar anymore.
01:08:15
Let's just make it inactive
for the moment
just so that it's easy to get back
if I want to.
00:00:00
Let's take a look at the Stereo Bus
and see what we have going on there.
00:00:04
Also, I'm noticing my meters,
I have some stuff jittering around,
so something is making some noise.
00:00:11
Let's just figure out what that is.
00:00:13
I have my volume cranked in here
and I'm not really hearing it.
00:00:17
I have a feeling it's this Echoson thing.
00:00:21
And it stopped,
so,
something to keep an eye on.
00:00:26
I'm not really hearing it, and like
I said, my volume is pegged.
00:00:28
If you have headphones on
maybe you can hear it a little bit.
00:00:31
I don't know, it probably is not
even going to matter in the end.
00:00:34
Again, something we'll keep our eye on.
00:00:35
For the Stereo Bus
I really like using the ATR tape plug-in,
so I'm just going to go right to that.
00:00:42
I have a preset that I really like,
that I kind of came up with
using the 250 formulation,
1/4" heads,
and +3 level.
00:00:51
Also, if you notice,
my 'bus trim', I'm set at +1.2,
and I've done that because
I tend to mix on the hot side
and then this gives me
a little bit more trim level.
00:01:02
Once I start hitting the ATR,
I want to hit the ATR in a specific way,
and I can do that and I can get there
by either adjusting the Record Level
or I can do by the trim going in.
00:01:12
Does it really matter?
Probably not a ton
if it's the first thing in the chain.
00:01:16
If it's not the first thing in the chain,
I may put something else above it.
00:01:20
And if I do, then, obviously,
I'd want to have a couple of places
to be able to adjust it if I need to.
00:01:27
Also note
I have Ozone on here.
00:01:30
I have a preset that I really like to use.
00:01:33
At some point I was fooling around
and I put the Vintage Limiter
into the Maximizer,
and I just really liked what it did.
00:01:40
Right now I'm going to hit Play
and you can see where it's set.
00:01:43
It's basically wide open
so there's no limiting going on at all,
but it is part of the signal chain
and it will be part of the signal chain
all the way to the end.
00:01:51
It's just how I like to do it.
00:01:53
It preserves the feel
going on to the final stage
of mastering and beyond,
wherever it ends up.
00:02:01
It's a way for me to bulletproof my mix
so that it feels the way
I intend it to feel
when it goes on to other people,
and I found this works for me.
00:02:10
I don't kill it,
I leave enough headroom
for a mastering engineer
to do their thing.
00:02:15
But again, hopefully I've baked in
enough of the feel
that they can't undo it.
00:02:23
Not that I have issues with mastering
engineers because I really don't,
but, you know,
like all of us, there are good ones
and bad ones.
00:02:32
There are people who care
about the things I care about
and there are people
who care about other things,
so it's a way to ensure
that the things I care about
stay intact.
00:02:42
You can see right now
where Ozone is sitting.
00:02:54
Like I said, basically nothing,
so let's go back to the ATR
because that's kind of where
the action is at this point.
00:03:00
There is a sweet spot for me
with the ATR
which is just where it gets,
like, to -1 and 0.
00:03:07
If it goes too far it sounds
a little too compressed to me,
it loses some dimension.
00:03:12
But I find that if I keep it right around
0, -1, I'm really happy with the results.
00:03:16
So here, check it out.
00:03:59
We're going to leave this here
for the moment,
and now we're going to go back
to the vocal.
00:04:04
I know it's a lot of skipping around,
but this is sometimes
just the way I work,
it's just what I feel like I need to
address at the moment.
00:04:10
We had an initial thing
going on the vocal.
00:04:13
Let's play it to get our bearings again.
00:04:55
What I'm really wishing for
is a lot more kind of
chest and thickness.
00:05:03
I like the control I'm getting
with what I've added so far,
but I'm going to do a parallel thing.
00:05:09
My version of the parallel thing,
which is just a bit rock,
old club, old school,
but it works.
00:05:16
I'm going to copy the track down,
and I will put a different
main compressor on there.
00:05:21
And in this case
the first thing I'm going to try
is an Arousor.
00:05:25
And I usually use a Distressor
or an Arousor on a thing like this,
although the SoundToys Devil-Loc
is really good as well.
00:05:32
I'll call it 'El8 Vocal' because
that's the name of the Distressor.
00:05:36
'El8' is close enough.
00:05:38
I'm going to listen to the sound,
I'm going to hit it hard.
00:05:52
And then I'm going to blend it in
with my lead vocal
but I'm going to turn it down,
like, a lot.
00:05:57
So I'm going to bring it out all the way
and I'm going to bring it up
until I start feeling the presence of it
and start feeling the chest of it.
00:06:04
That's where it will live.
00:06:19
So let me just play these two lines
and you can hear the difference.
00:06:52
It adds a little chest,
it adds a little more immediacy,
a little more urgency to it,
and those are the things
I'm looking to get out of it.
00:06:59
What I'll do is I'll group these together
so that when I do rides
everything moves the same.
00:07:04
I'll call this 'ld vocal'.
00:07:06
And then let's talk about
some effects.
00:07:10
I'm kind of liking the mood
of that Binson
so I think I'm going to try it
on the lead vocal as well.
00:07:16
And it'll probably have
a bit of a different time,
and then because it has a different time
it will have a bit of a different feel
than the one that we've got going on.
00:07:28
Sometimes I like to just do
a really short slap
as opposed to it being a timed delay,
so let's see what happens here.
00:07:34
I have a couple of Buses set up,
and usually these are my dedicated
Vocal Buses, 9, 10 and 11.
00:07:39
I may add more,
I may not use all of them,
it just really depends.
00:07:43
But usually I go delay and then reverb,
and then extra reverb or extra delay
or something like that.
00:07:48
So let's see what happens.
00:08:08
So I'm going to try tight and see,
so I'll go, like, 100 ms or 109 ms.
00:08:14
That seems to be one of my
favorite numbers for some reason.
00:08:25
It's almost like a room sound,
it could be kind of cool.
00:08:27
I'm going to turn up
the Wow button a little bit
and I'll take the Noise all the way off
since we know we have an issue
with some of that.
00:08:33
Maybe the Wow will give us a little
pitch-bendy thing that could be cool.
00:09:03
I'm going to try a few other
little things here
to see if I can give it
a little bit more personality.
00:09:09
I like the tone of it, but let's see
what else we can do here.
00:09:46
Unfortunately in this case,
because of his vocal tone,
it's making it a little too resonant.
00:09:52
I might just go more straight tape
on this.
00:10:01
And I'm going to go to time again
because I don't know what the tempo is,
I don't really care.
00:10:06
So, again, I'm going to
try it tight first.
00:10:51
It's a good starting point,
we need a little bit more stuff on it.
00:10:54
I'm going to go for a reverb.
00:10:58
We can go with a chamber
kind of thing, that might be cool.
00:11:03
We can go with, like,
a 224 kind of a thing
that's got a bit of a metallic
or a bit more of an '80s-ish kind of...
00:11:11
Metallic is not the right word
but it's kind of the idea.
00:11:14
I've got this set of reverbs
that I really like to use,
and sometimes they come in handy.
00:11:19
I have this one here
that's called Vintage Soul,
and it's the combination of a few
different elements of this REmatrix.
00:11:29
Let's give this a listen
and see if this gets us anywhere.
00:11:47
So I kind of like that
but it's kind of long,
so I'm going to bring it back.
00:11:54
Yeah, maybe I'll split the difference.
00:12:43
I'm kind of digging that.
00:12:44
I hear where the next
few steps should be,
so if it sounds a little raw
and disjointed,
you're probably right,
but stick with me
just a little bit longer.
00:12:53
The 'esses' are bugging me a little bit
so I'm going to pop on a Pro-DS
and see if that makes my life easier.
00:13:06
So I'm going to get a sound
on the main lead vocal
and then, once I get something I like,
I'll copy it down to the other track.
00:13:12
It sounds a little counterintuitive
but it works for me.
00:13:45
So I copied this down,
we'll play a small section,
and let's A/B it and see
if I'm kidding myself or not.
00:13:52
So here it is in.
00:14:30
I like what it's doing,
I like where this is.
00:14:34
So now let's take a look at the
overheads, the drums and the bass,
and just see how all that stuff
is working out.
00:14:42
This is a band track
and I want it to feel like a band.
00:14:46
I mean, granted, there are some
synth things that we need to get to,
but I want it to feel like a band
and one of the things to make
something feel like a band
is to make it feel
like it's in the same space.
00:14:55
So we'll look at this stuff
and then we're also
going to take a look at
putting the band in a room
and what we might use to do that.
00:15:05
Without any further ado
let's take a listen to where we are
and start looking at the drums
and the bass in particular.
00:15:56
I'm switching the bass mic in and out
and I'm doing this
for a particular reason,
and that reason is I want to see how humpy
the response is of the low end.
00:16:07
Are notes going away?
Are they coming back?
Because this is the classic thing
that happens
with bass guitar in particular.
00:16:15
You have a DI,
the signal goes straight from the DI
right to your recorder.
00:16:21
It also goes to your bass amp,
and if you're using a tube amp
with a 15 inch speaker,
it takes a finite amount of time
for that note to hit,
for the amp to respond,
for it to generate the power
to recreate the note,
and then to move, if it's a 15 inch
speaker in particular,
to move that speaker.
00:16:40
So what happens?
The DI signal happens,
phase-wise, in front of the amp signal,
and depending on how much energy
it takes to move that speaker,
depends on the speed at which
it will move that speaker, right?
So my point is that
the DI is one reference,
and then the bass amp,
the phase can be quite different
on certain notes
in relation to the DI.
00:17:09
So how do we get around that?
There's a couple of ways
that I like to get around it.
00:17:14
One is to do what I did
with the bass DI,
and EQ it and do what I'm going to do,
and then reamp it.
00:17:21
So we could do that,
and then the other thing is...
00:17:24
I believe I talked about this
in one of my other pureMix videos.
00:17:27
I really do like using SansAmp on bass.
00:17:30
It keeps the phase relationship
exactly where it's supposed to be,
and then on top of it
you can get more size, you can get
more dirt, you can do a few other things.
00:17:38
That being said,
what I think I want to do
is duplicate this 'Bass EQ'
and then first try an Ampeg B15,
the UA version of that on here,
and see what we get.
00:17:50
And if that works, great,
and if it's still having funny,
humpy things,
then I might run out to the SansAmp.
00:17:57
So now I'm going to find the UA B15
and turn that on.
00:18:03
I'm going to call this 'Bass Amp Sim',
I'll mute the 251,
and we'll solo the B15 for a second.
00:18:11
Let's just hear what this sounds like
on its own.
00:18:23
It's pretty beefy
and it might be good on its own
without the DI,
so let's do some experimenting
because that's the only way
we'll really figure it out.
00:18:31
Back to the bass,
just the Bass EQ for a second.
00:18:42
Now I'll switch it as we go
just to kind of get a feel
for what the B15 is doing to it.
00:19:32
And typical with me, there's
elements of both that I like.
00:19:35
What I'm going to do
is I'm going to group these guys together
and I'm going to turn them down.
00:19:43
We'll see how it blends in the track
straight off the bat
and then maybe I'll play
with the relationship a little bit
to get what I want.
00:20:35
There's a little bit of a ring in there,
down low,
that I want to just see
if I can get rid of.
00:20:42
Part of it is a function of the amp.
00:21:07
When I say ring, I mean
there's like a little resonance.
00:21:09
Some type of either overlapping frequency
or just something that is a little loud
and might be obscuring
some of the other things around it,
so that's kind of what I'm looking for
when I crank that up like that.
00:21:20
I'm going to check up another octave too
to see if that might be the culprit.
00:21:40
What I'm hearing when I have this
cranked like this
is I'm hearing the note,
but I'm also hearing,
like, another partial,
whether it be a harmonic
or some other component
that seems to be fighting
the fundamental note.
00:21:55
And these are the things
I'm trying to address
just to get the maximum
amount of clarity.
00:22:01
I have another point now
that I'm interested in,
so now I've got this 83
and then I have 118.
00:22:08
I'm going to mess around with both
and figure out the best of both worlds
and see if it actually helps
the situation,
so I'm going to bring this one down
a little bit as well.
00:22:46
You can even look at the meters
on the EQ on the left
and you can see how much energy
I'm taking out
just by grabbing those two bands.
00:22:55
And granted, it's a pretty good amount,
it's 4 dB
for each band,
but it's interesting to see
how much it's grabbing
and how the meters are reacting too.
00:23:16
We're going to hear that in the track
and see if we still have the low end,
the deepness that we want,
but yet it's not kind of obscuring
in that area that we're
digging out a little bit.
00:23:59
And the other thing that's getting
to me now is the snare,
it's just pretty damn loud.
00:24:04
I'm going to mute the vocal,
we will concentrate
on the drums for a second.
00:24:08
And that snare may just be
a function of the overheads,
so let's see and then let's see
what we can do about it.
00:24:35
The snare is pretty loud
so I'll try a little compression
and see if we can
dial some of that out.
00:24:45
I'm going to use this Elysia
just because I like it.
00:24:48
What I'm trying to do
is just deal with the snare
and try not to grab too much
of the other elements,
so let's see if that's even possible.
00:25:23
Here it is in and out
and it is doing something.
00:25:39
I may be doing too much,
but let's see how it sounds in the track.
00:27:15
I think that works. It's given us
better control of the snare,
and then
I'll combine that
with what I want to do next,
which is try to put everything
into a room
and have it feel like it's in a room.
00:27:27
I think that might go a long way
to just glue everything together.
00:27:32
Now let's take a look at
just the overall ambience of the drums
and let's see what we can do
to give it a little bit more space.
00:27:41
One thing I really like to use is...
00:27:44
Altiverb has
a room model of
EastWest, Cello,
I don't remember
what it's called at this point.
00:27:53
It's called Cello on here, studio 2,
which is a really cool room.
00:27:58
It's got a bit of a darker tone to it,
I really like it for this style of music.
00:28:04
Let's run a couple of things through it.
00:28:07
You may question why I'm just going
Mono In, Stereo Out,
and my philosophy with reverbs
is that most of the time
I want it just to feel
like a diffuse field.
00:28:20
So whether or not its pans,
if it goes slightly to the left
or the right,
or even hard left or hard right,
the point of it is to make whatever
sound you're sending to it
feel like it's in a bigger,
wider space.
00:28:33
The first thing I'm going to do is
send overheads to it.
00:28:38
Notice too, I always have
everything at 0 when it starts up.
00:28:42
This way I know it's working,
I know it's on, it's loud.
00:28:46
But that's okay,
I know I'll turn it down.
00:28:48
I mean, a lot of people
work the opposite way
where it comes up and then you
turn the fader up for nothing.
00:28:52
Either way is fine,
I did that the other way for a long time.
00:28:56
I just kind of like this,
and then every once in a while
you have a happy accident.
00:28:59
If you tend to mix
on the conservative side,
it automatically makes something
not conservative right off the bat.
00:29:07
Sometimes there's a happy accident
that you decide you want to
hold onto because of that.
00:29:11
Here's just the drums,
the overheads into this reverb.
00:29:41
The other thing that's kind of bugging me
is the darkness of the cymbals.
00:29:46
I think I'm going to try
and just EQ this out a little bit.
00:30:46
I like what that's doing.
00:30:48
I did the cymbal grab,
that's just a quick fix.
00:30:50
Sorry, I probably won't address
that again, at least for a little bit.
00:30:54
I went back to focusing on the reverb
because this is the way
my mind works sometimes.
00:30:58
Sometimes it's just a quick fix
that's taken care of
and then back to the matter at hand.
00:31:02
What I like about where I have
the drum reverb right now
is I feel like I'm hearing some distance
on the bass drum
and I'm hearing some space on things,
which is really what I'm going for.
00:31:11
So now let's add in
the kick and the snare
and see what that gets us.
00:31:29
And then let's add a little bit
of this onto the kick drum.
00:31:50
There's a lot of bleed of the snare
into the kick drum.
00:31:54
In some instances you'd want to gate it,
in this case
I'm actually kind of fine with it
and I actually like the fact
that we're getting
a little of that snare tone.
00:32:04
And it's getting into the reverb as well,
so I may not have to add as much
on the main snare.
00:32:09
Let's keep listening.
00:32:37
While I'm here, I'm also going to take
a look at the toms real quick
and get those guys in place.
00:32:43
If you notice, I have the overheads
panned in a bit.
00:32:45
I tend to like to do that in general,
I like having a wider sound field
with other instruments,
and I also like having it feel like you
feel a little more space with the reverb.
00:32:56
I don't do it all the time this narrow,
but in this particular instance
I like where the guitars are sitting
a little bit out.
00:33:02
That's why I'm rolling with it this way.
00:33:04
Let's listen to the toms real quick.
00:33:17
I'm just going to use them
just as accents,
I'm not going to make them necessarily
the star of the show.
00:33:28
Also because there's
a weird click there at the end.
00:33:40
There's a snare hit or something weird.
00:33:45
I mean, the other thing
I could do is gate it
so we can hear what that sounds like.
00:33:53
If I take the Release down a little bit
I could probably get rid of
that little snare.
00:33:59
Too much.
00:34:06
I don't think we need it on the high tom.
00:34:12
It's not a major thing
and we're just using them
for accents anyway,
but I'm going to leave that one
on the floor tom.
00:34:28
Now we have this kind of loud,
rocking guitar,
which I kind of dig.
00:34:32
It might be a little too loud,
but the other thing I want to look at,
I want to feel like this is in the same
space as everything else as well.
00:34:39
So even though there is a drum reverb
that has the drum thing on it,
guess what?
Room sounds are not just for drums,
especially when it's the same reverb.
00:34:50
Sometimes you put everything
in the same reverb
and it sounds like it's
in the same room,
and that's kind of
what I'm going for here.
00:35:22
It's just a touch,
but
it does something cool, I think.
00:36:01
Okay, and now we'll look at
the verse guitars.
00:36:14
Let's just try putting it
on those as well.
00:36:27
It's short, I know,
but it just adds an extra little bit
of dimension.
00:36:32
And again, this concept of everybody
kind of gluing together,
I think this will work.
00:36:50
The added benefit,
if you notice, I haven't put
the bass in there.
00:36:53
Again, thinking back
to what we started with
and how we want the bass...
00:36:57
or at least I want the bass
to be kind of the star of the show.
00:37:01
So if we start putting everything else
into this space
we're immediately creating a different
dimension now for the bass guitar
if we don't add it in there, right?
The bass is immediately going to be
a little bit more forward
because everything else around it
is going to have a little bit of space,
a little reverb on it,
so we're getting, like,
a double benefit here.
00:37:20
Let's see where we are.
00:38:09
The snare is still feeling a little loud
in the balance to me,
and I have our snare track
actually pretty low,
at -8.6, for it to be doing
much of anything,
so that means I'm still getting
a lot from my overheads.
00:38:22
And if I pull the overheads back too far
then the groove is going to go away.
00:38:25
I'm not using the hi-hat at this point,
but I'm about to pop the hi-hat back in
just to see if I can find a compromise
to keep the groove going,
but not have that snare
just be so over-the-top.
00:39:34
That's starting to really
come together for me.
00:39:37
I'm listening to the vocal,
I'm focusing on the lyrics,
I'm not being whacked over the head
with the snare,
and I still feel the pulse is good.
00:39:45
That delay thing I have
on the drums is cool.
00:39:48
It might be a little too pointy,
so I might just need to compress
that a little bit
with something kind of funky.
00:39:54
So let's take a look at that real quick
and I'm just going to go for it
and just put a Devil-Loc on it
because I can.
00:40:02
Let's see if it just totally
makes it kooky or not.
00:40:23
It makes it kooky,
but it might be cool.
00:40:26
I'm going to put a Fast Release on it,
I'm going to see if I can slow down...
00:40:30
take the feedback down on this delay.
00:40:32
I don't know that there is,
but I just got it, like, two days ago,
so maybe there is
and I just don't see it.
00:40:38
Let me fool with one parameter
and see if I can get it
a little bit less,
and if not,
we'll deal with it in a different way.
00:41:02
And then there's always the volume pot,
or the volume knob.
00:41:07
It can be pretty useful too.
00:41:40
Now all I'm hearing is the delay,
so that's not the best idea.
00:41:43
Maybe we just need to turn it down
a little bit.
00:42:21
Let's start checking out
some of these other elements.
00:42:24
We've got the String Ensemble,
some other synthy kind of things.
00:42:28
That will probably throw it a bit more
into a modern era,
which will be great,
but before we do that
let's take a look at the organ real quick
because I think that's going to be
kind of an integral part as well.
00:42:49
I'm listening to this organ sound.
00:42:51
Do we really think we need
the Organ Bottom
for more low end?
Listen again.
00:43:07
I would say no,
so we're not even going to bother
listening to the Organ Bottom
because there's already a ton of bottom
in this thing—probably too much.
00:43:15
But let's listen and hear what's going on.
00:43:18
Are they using stops? Or are they
doing something with the organ
that's causing a bit more texture?
Or is it mainly this kind of low,
thick drone?
So let's skip around for a second.
00:43:41
It's basically the same tone
all the way through.
00:43:44
I'll pop an EQ on it.
00:43:56
And the main thing to decide now
is what's the function of the organ
in this whole thing,
so let's listen a bit in the track.
00:44:41
Does it need to be in there?
Can we do something with it
that actually makes it a bit more
engaging?
I do have this thing
called the Wow Control,
which is kind of cool.
00:44:55
It's like a cassette tape simulator,
or a warbly tape simulator.
00:45:00
It does a bunch of different things.
00:45:05
Maybe we can do a more Beatle-esque "While
My Guitar Gently Weeps" kind of thing
and just put a little spin on this thing.
00:45:25
I know it might make you
a little seasick,
but maybe that's why
you need the lifeboat.
00:45:29
Ba-doom-pom tss!
Seriously though, let's see what happens.
00:45:37
This also has its own Noise component,
so I want to get rid of some of that.
00:46:04
I just want to hear this thing
sitting over the whole track,
so I'm going to add one other element.
00:46:11
This is something I like to do when I want
more of an umbrella over things.
00:46:17
And then I've got a nice little thing,
so let's try 'tight octave'.
00:46:34
And let's see what happens
if we really kind of just
mess with the tone a little bit more
just to give it a little bit more...
00:46:41
I don't know, just something.
00:47:13
And the other thing is maybe it doesn't
need to be panned hard left and right,
maybe it just needs to happen
off to the side.
00:47:19
What about that?
And because we can
we're going to add one other element,
and that would be a compressor.
00:48:23
I think we'll do it right at the top.
00:48:25
I'll go back to our
mpressor.
00:49:13
That last little thing I did,
the Elysia also has an EQ on it
so I popped that in just to make
the whole thing punch a little bit more.
00:49:22
I want this to feel
a little bit more ethereal,
but I want it to feel ethereal
only on that side.
00:49:28
So we've got the guitar on the left,
it's got that cool reverb on it,
maybe this needs its own space
but it needs to be dedicated to that side,
so we're going to do a quick...
00:49:40
a quick reverb.
00:49:41
Let's pick a Bus.
00:49:45
18.
00:49:49
I want something a little messed up.
00:49:51
I need to keep going back to this well,
but this well runs deep for me
because I spent a lot of time on this.
00:49:59
There's this thing.
00:50:02
This might sound cool.
Let's give this a listen
and put Bus 18.
00:50:54
The other thing to remember,
and this is something
that I should point out
because it's in the back
of my mind the entire time:
there are other elements
that have to come in.
00:51:02
In addition to me trying to come up
with a sound,
I'm also trying to come up
with a sound
based on the fact
that there are other things
that are going to be happening.
00:51:11
I like where this is sitting
at the moment,
so I'm going to leave this.
00:51:16
I am going to
say goodbye to this guy
because we don't need it.
00:51:22
The next thing I want to look at
is this Piano Melody,
let's see what this is about.
00:51:43
Okay, and there are some clicks on this.
00:51:51
Right there, and there's one
at the end here.
00:51:54
Right where that piano comes back in.
00:51:57
To save time and energy and sanity
I am literally
just going to go through.
00:52:04
I'm going to go to my friend
because this is the stuff that when
you're in the 11th hour of the mix
and you start hearing,
it just makes you crazy.
00:52:14
You avoid the craziness,
you get rid of the craziness.
00:52:17
And this piano sound
actually has given me
a little inspiration already,
so I think I already know
what I want to try.
00:52:35
It's gone, we like it.
00:52:38
This is a piano, this is a stereo sound.
00:52:41
Does it need to be stereo?
What happens if it's mono?
Thick, but that's not a bad thing.
00:52:56
We have that phaser guitar
going on the right,
maybe this should just happen
on the left a little bit.
00:53:00
And then let's EQ it a little bit,
let us come up with an idea
for an effect
because this is screaming
for an effect.
00:53:20
So I'm filtering out quite a bit
because we need the melody line,
we don't need the pedal noise,
we don't need a lot of that other stuff
that's going on.
00:53:28
And then this might stand
for a bit of compression as well.
00:53:32
I'll go here and use a stereo Arousor.
00:54:01
Let's see if we can get away with
just a nice little delay on this guy.
00:54:05
Let's do a mono...
00:54:13
PrimalTap.
00:54:14
PrimalTap is cool.
00:00:00
Now let's see what the String thing is.
00:00:10
Guess what we're going to try.
00:00:13
We're going to try
the Brigade Chorus on this one.
00:00:20
It might work.
00:00:22
Let's see.
00:00:46
This sound just needs a little something.
00:00:48
It's buzzy and it's kind of deep
and it doesn't seem to have
a lot of focus,
so this might be a bit radical
but let's see what this does.
00:01:00
It just kind of brings out the distortion
in not a cool way.
00:01:06
Let's try filtering a little bit
and then let's try using this Lowhi guy
to see if maybe we band-pass it.
00:01:34
That might be kind of nice.
00:01:37
Let's see what it sounds like
in the track.
00:03:53
So now in stereo mode
I like what the Brigade Chorus
is doing,
I sort of like where it's
putting everything.
00:03:59
I'm going to my
little bastion of piece of gear
that nobody knows about,
and now everybody
is going to know about it.
00:04:08
I have this box that takes stuff in mono
and does simulated stereo.
00:04:14
We are going to use that right now.
00:04:16
I saw an engineer use it once on an
acoustic guitar and I stole the idea.
00:04:20
I don't know if the engineer
still even owns it,
or whatever,
but it was, like, the coolest thing
that I saw this guy do.
00:04:28
So I have one. I bought one
and I've had it ever since.
00:04:31
It's called AN-2 Stereo Simulator
by Studio Technologies.
00:04:35
So what I'll do is I'll
patch this sound out into that
and then have it do
its processing thing in it.
00:04:42
It kind of does this frequency
separation thing,
and what's cool is when you put it
in mono it still stays in mono,
it doesn't go away.
00:04:50
But yet it doesn't feel
like it's in the center,
it feels like it's just around.
00:04:54
Because it sounds
a little bit like the organ
I want to keep it away
from the organ,
so I got the organ off to one side.
00:05:00
I like this thing sounding
a little bit more stereo,
so that's kind of why
I'm doing all of this.
00:05:05
So I'm going to call this
'AN2 String Ensemble'.
00:05:10
It's set up
pretty much the way I normally use it,
which is full stereo.
00:05:15
It does have a modulation control in it
but I don't really ever use it.
00:05:20
I just use it for the stereo spread.
00:05:33
I don't know if there's a bypass knob
on this piece of gear.
00:05:36
If there is...
00:05:37
Oh, maybe there is.
00:05:39
Looks like there's an On/Off button,
so maybe we can hear the difference.
00:05:43
Let me run it, get the level right,
and we'll see if I can kick it
in and out for you.
00:06:19
That's not a bypass button,
but it kicked in the modulation
and I kind of like it.
00:06:24
The other thing I'll do real quick,
it's going to sound out of time
but I'm going to solo up the organ
and I want to hear tonally
how they're matching.
00:06:32
Even though they're not playing at the
same time the way it's supposed to be,
I want to hear their blend
with each other.
00:06:55
If you notice with the meters,
it's kind of this happy accident
where just because of the way
this box is processing
it's taking something that's right-heavy
on my source track
and then it's suddenly
making it left-heavy.
00:07:07
Which is where I want it to be
because the right side
is where I have the organ panned,
so it's a two for one here:
I get a tone I really like,
I get an extra bit of modulation which
I never would've thought of turning on,
and then it's even panning it in a place
that makes sense to me.
00:07:24
So before I push my luck too much
I'm going to print this down
for the entire length that it plays.
00:07:42
So the String Ensemble pass is printed,
I'll take it out of Record,
say goodbye to the source track
because we don't need it anymore.
00:07:52
Give it a listen, blend it in.
00:08:46
This needs maybe just
a little bit of space on it as well,
some type of just nice
little reverb to sit in.
00:08:54
Maybe we'll set up something
that'll be like a general...
00:08:58
for these kinds of things.
00:09:10
Yeah, maybe we'll use a 480.
00:09:14
Like a Medium Hall or something
to give it a little space.
00:09:19
Actually, Jazz Hall is kind of cool.
00:09:22
We'll use that.
00:09:23
Reverb time is relatively short,
which is good.
00:09:25
Let's just give it some density.
00:09:52
Let's see what this
background vocal does here.
00:10:14
So there are some
timing issues here on this
that are going to be distracting.
00:10:24
So that word right there
is just way on top,
and I wonder if it happens every time.
00:10:30
It probably does.
00:11:00
That "hold" one is a little ahead.
00:11:11
I'll just do a quick general crossfade
in case I missed something.
00:11:16
Let's get...
00:11:17
Let's put a compressor on this vocal,
I think I'm going to use an 1176.
00:11:37
And let's hear how it sounds
just with the treatment that we
already have on the lead vocal.
00:12:05
This needs a little EQ.
00:12:07
There's something a little
hard about it.
00:12:25
And maybe there's a little too much delay
or something on it too.
00:12:44
Okay. Now here's another question.
00:12:46
This lead vocal in the bridge,
does it need to be on another track?
Is there an overlap?
Doesn't look like it.
00:12:54
So you know what?
We're just going to pop it in
with the others.
00:13:00
Unless there's some driving reason
for me to do otherwise,
I don't think we need to
worry about it.
00:13:20
It's fine.
00:13:27
There's no reason to have that vocal
on another track
unless you're going to do
some other crazy thing to it,
which in some context might work,
but I think in this case
we're going to roll with it.
00:13:38
Let's see what this 'SY1 Hook' thing is.
00:13:52
All right.
00:13:53
Here's the thing:
it's out of tune.
00:13:59
So, do we want to put it in tune,
or do we want to modulate it in a way
that makes it cool?
I'm not going to use it.
00:14:07
I think we have
almost everything in now,
I think we just have to get
the Piano Bridge.
00:14:11
Oh, we have some synths
to put in too.
00:14:13
All right,
here we go.
00:14:50
And then, let's just
make this aggressive too.
00:15:24
The piano is in in the bridge,
let's see what this Juno Bass...
00:15:39
I'm not going to use it
just because it's in the way.
00:15:42
Let me see if it's good in the bridge,
but I don't like what it's doing
in the chorus.
00:15:55
It's just mud.
00:15:58
So now let's take a look at this ARP Pad.
00:16:04
It sounds a bit like a harmonium,
so I want to go with this UberMod thing,
and maybe I have this preset
that it's called, like, Spreader.
00:16:12
Or maybe the Shimmery Vibes,
let's see what that sounds like first.
00:16:28
That might be nice in there.
00:16:30
I'll put a little bit of our
synth reverb on there.
00:17:10
Okay, let's see what this
ARP Wave Pad does.
00:17:48
I'll get a little more gain.
00:17:54
I'll just throw it in here a little bit.
00:17:56
I'm trying to figure what the function
of this is actually supposed to be.
00:18:18
That part is taking me out of the record.
00:18:22
We're going to leave that out
for a little bit as well.
00:18:24
So now I have two things
that I think are a little questionable
and may not end up in the end.
00:18:31
It's just taking me away from the song,
which we don't want to have happen
at the end of the day.
00:18:37
Let's see, I think there's a shaker part
on here that I still need to deal with.
00:18:41
And then there are these Plucks,
so let's see what this Pluck stuff does.
00:19:20
I really don't understand
why these are here.
00:19:35
All right.
00:19:37
We are going to
put these in our other pile of stuff
that either I don't know what to do with
or I don't think should be used.
00:19:48
I'm actually going to put this pile
down at the bottom.
00:19:52
At this point these things are starting
to become a bit of a distraction to me.
00:19:57
What I'm going to do right now
is I'm going to refocus;
I'm going to focus on the elements
that make the song strong,
and then I'm going to take it from there.
00:20:06
The only other thing
I got to put in is this shaker,
let's see what this is all about.
00:20:10
We have a Left, a Right,
and an Overhead for some reason,
so I'm just going to use the Left.
00:20:24
Again, Clip Gaining
just to make sure
that I've got a proper level.
00:20:38
And that's out of time.
00:20:40
I'm not going to use that either.
00:20:41
This will be the rough and ready mix.
00:20:44
These elements here, I'm just going to
make them a little bit smaller,
everything is muted.
00:20:49
I might come back to them,
I'm not saying never,
but
all of these things are going to be
distractions from the vocal
and I don't think
they need to be distractions.
00:20:59
Let's listen from the top
and let's see where we are.
00:22:30
I muted the ARP Pad in the first chorus
because I think it will be more effective
coming in in the second chorus.
00:22:37
I'm just making an arrangement
decision right now,
and then there's this piano
that I just...
00:22:42
I just want to hear it speak more,
so I'm going to try
this Full Canadian setting
that I like on this RS EQ.
00:23:00
And here it is bypassed.
00:23:35
This organ that comes in here,
it's kind of loud.
00:23:41
I think I'm just going to
Clip Gain it down a little bit
and see if that takes care of it,
and if it doesn't,
then I'm going to ride it.
00:25:59
I made a few changes on the fly there,
just stuff that I reacted to,
and that's kind of what is
going to happen now.
00:26:06
I'm basically going through,
reacting to some stuff.
00:26:10
I want to deal with the Stereo Bus
a little bit more
just before I start doing the rides.
00:26:14
I want to see if I can get everything
in place as close as I can,
static, before I actually
start making moves.
00:26:20
The arrangement
feels like it's taking shape,
there's a couple of things that just
need to come down in the verses
to kind of give the whole thing
a little bit more space.
00:26:29
The bridge is a little out of control
and I got to deal with that too,
but that's kind of where I'm at
at the moment.
00:26:35
Let me deal with the Stereo Bus
because I want to get the limiter involved
and then I might add one other piece.
00:26:40
And at this point I'm going to start
looking at some meters too.
00:26:44
I like to use this Blue Cat Meter
for some stuff
just because it's easy to read
and it gives me a lot of cool info.
00:26:50
I'm going to start
around the second chorus
and I'll let it play from there.
00:27:27
I'm coming in a little hot in general,
so I'm going to look at my ATR first.
00:27:54
Just so I'm clear, my thinking
with the Ozone Limiter at this point
is I'm just trying to get the level up.
00:28:00
I want to get full-scale peaks going
and I want to turn it up
enough to where...
00:28:05
again, back to my
bulletproof thing earlier,
but at the same time,
I don't want it to flatten and get 3D.
00:28:12
The levels are going to change,
the relationships will change a bit here,
but I want to build it in
so that when I do make my final changes
it all sits together
and it all sits at a level
that I'm willing to pass
on to other people.
00:28:24
As I go back and forth, hopefully
you'll get a better idea of what this is.
00:28:28
That's the idea at this point.
00:28:30
And we're still getting a lot of noise
from this Binson,
so I think I'm just going to
turn it all the way off.
00:28:35
One other thing that could be causing
some noise in here.
00:28:38
At the end of the day you're never
going to hear it, but it is quieter now.
00:28:42
So anyway,
back to this chorus.
00:29:18
And I'm going to look at doing
one other thing here too.
00:29:21
I'm going to check out
the SPL mastering limiter.
00:29:26
This is kind of where I like it the best.
00:29:28
It's really good on vocals
and I really do like it on the Stereo Bus,
so let's see what happens here
and see if we get a benefit out of it.
00:31:53
The kick drum is kind of poking out a bit
in a weird envelope kind of way,
so I'm just seeing if there's
a few things I can do.
00:32:01
I like the SPL box on there,
I like what it's doing to the overall top,
I like that when the bridge comes in
it does help kind of glue it together
and keeps it from getting
a little too out of control
and keeps it focused.
00:32:14
In the middle eight, in the bridge,
I would love to hear an additional effect
on the lead vocal.
00:32:22
Stereo track.
00:32:23
There's this old piece of gear
called the DMX,
made by AMS,
which is a really cool delay.
00:32:30
I don't have one,
but I have a simulation
that I kind of put together
with a Sony M7.
00:32:38
So what I'm going to do is I'll run
the lead vocal out to the M7
for just the bridge and record it in,
and then this way we've got it.
00:32:48
And then I can do what I want with it.
00:32:50
So I'm taking Output 5-6,
I'm assigning it to the M7,
just returning it back
where I would normally return it back.
00:32:59
Basically it's a detuned harmonizer,
it's
tuned up a couple of cents
and delayed a couple of milliseconds
on one side,
and tuned down and delayed another
couple of milliseconds on the other side.
00:33:13
There's a lot of pages
and parameters in here.
00:33:16
The one thing I do want to do is
I do have this Stereo Exciter
that I use on background vocals a lot,
but in this case
I'm going to turn it off
because I don't want
that brightness on here,
but I want the doubling effect.
00:33:32
That said,
when I hit Play we should hear
the lead vocal going through that.
00:33:45
And then we're hearing the effects
and then there's a bit of a delay.
00:33:48
That's why it sounds so weird,
because we're not
delay-compensated yet,
so I'm just going to make sure
my edges are good.
00:33:55
I'm actually going to extend
this breath out a little bit more
and make this crossfade a little nicer.
00:34:02
And then
the same with the other side,
a little, nicer crossfade
because we don't want it clicking.
00:34:08
So I do that, and I'm going to
print this in.
00:34:42
Great! So now I just put this back
into the Stereo Bus,
my source track,
and then we listen back.
00:35:03
So my goal here is just to give us
a little more size in the bridge
without having to go too extreme
because he's singing a lot of words
and we want to make sure
we hear what he's saying.
00:35:13
So, if I take this out
and then we just hit Play...
00:35:53
That seems to be working pretty well.
00:35:55
I'm going to add a little
of the lead vocal reverb
onto that M7
just so that it gives us
a little bit more dimension.
00:36:11
Actually, no,
I'm going to put a whole different
effect on that
just because I want the texture
to be a bit different
with this M7 part.
00:36:22
So I'm going to pick a
Bus,
16.
00:36:33
Going back to the REmatrix
there is a
vocal preset.
00:36:43
I think it's this 'Vibe-y Vocal'.
00:36:58
It's kind of long.
00:36:59
I'm going to actually add
a little bit of modulation to it as well
just because
I think it just might help,
just the whole atmosphere of it.
00:37:17
And the effect I'm getting
is that it's almost like adding
a long delay,
but not adding a long delay.
00:37:24
Just by adding all this extra reverb
we're giving it space,
but without giving it a specific place
to hang your hat on.
00:37:32
Let's hear how this sounds.
00:38:11
I'm liking that transition.
00:38:13
I just got to get this drum fill
because it just needs to come up.
00:38:23
I'm just going to try
just doing this whole end bit
and then this tom fill as well.
00:38:28
I'll turn this up a little bit,
just a little Clip Gain.
00:38:41
So that works in this transition here.
00:38:54
What I'd like to do now
is take you down the road of mono,
because this is usually
where I pop into mono
and do vocal rides in mono,
and then I also listen
just to make sure that I'm getting
my maximum separation.
00:39:10
So I'm going to pop us into mono
for a little bit,
but because
your gain
is going to increase
because I do this,
so as not to clip anything
I'm going to turn off the automation
because I only have a ride
on there at this point.
00:39:25
And I'm just going to drop it
a little over 3 dB
just to make sure nothing clips.
00:40:40
As I go I'm just going to make
a couple of changes
that I think I'm going to need
to deal with at some point,
and now is as good a time as any.
00:41:29
And the other thing I'm going to do
is I'm going to maybe do
a couple of vocal rides too
while we're at it.
00:43:03
Now it's just a real circle thing for me.
00:43:06
I tend to go back and forth a lot now,
so, like, the kick,
can I make the kick a little better?
It's a little too thick,
so I'm going to look at that right now
while I'm still listening to the vocal
and seeing if I need to do
more intense vocal rides on it,
so it's kind of a combination
of a few things.
00:47:20
So now something just kind of
inspired me toward the end.
00:47:31
It might be nice for this last chorus
to hear something kind of
go up an octave,
so I'm going to go back to my friend,
the Crystallizer.
00:47:42
This one I'm going to do stereo.
00:47:44
What I'm going to do is
I'm just going to put it
on that String Ensemble
that I processed with the AN-2,
and it will only come on
in the last chorus.
00:47:57
A Bill Withers kind of moment
or something,
the end of "Ain't No Sunshine"
or something like that.
00:48:04
SoundToys Crystallizer,
I think I have something called
'tight octave'.
00:48:11
I'll go full Mix
because it's just going to turn on...
00:48:37
Okay, so we're going to mute that
and then we're going to unmute it
where we want it to.
00:48:45
Right there where the band kicks in.
00:48:50
I'll make sure I get the whole thing.
00:49:11
So check out what happens,
I'll turn it on and off,
and it's not that loud
but suddenly you lose a little bit
of this kind of magicky
kind of top when I take it out.
00:49:50
In lieu of trying to fit
some of those other parts in
maybe we can create
a bit more atmosphere
or a little bit different thing just by
throwing something up an octave, right?
We get a little better tone,
it feels like the record
stretches a little bit more,
but without having to have another part.
00:50:05
I think that works,
so I'm going to leave that in there.
00:50:08
I went through a quick pass with the vocal
just to kind of take care of a few things
that would have really jumped out at me.
00:50:14
Now my next level is I go into Trim mode
and then I really concentrate on it,
which is what I'm going to do right now.
00:50:29
And what I'm trying to do is just make
sure I hear all the detail on the vocal,
that's kind of the main idea
of all of this.
00:50:36
I'm not listening too loud.
00:50:38
I mean, it's kind of moderately loud,
not too bad.
00:50:41
Again, we're still in mono
and I'm just trying to make sure
I hear every detail in mono.
00:50:46
When it's in stereo, obviously the outer
stuff is going to come up in volume,
but at the end of the day
you should still be able to hear
all the words of the vocal,
which is what the goal is.
00:53:17
What happens if we mute
this answer bit here?
It might be a good contrast
if I can get the volume right, right?
And then maybe that "just one more."
Nah!
Too clever.
00:57:37
I'll probably do another
little tweak or two,
but that's me going through the vocal
and it's usually two passes like that.
00:57:45
The final thing to do
is to print the mix,
so I'm going to create a new track,
a new Audio track,
I'm going to put it underneath
where my Stereo Bus is.
00:57:55
And I like to do it this way:
I'll assign it to the main Output
that we've been listening to.
00:58:00
I always keep Bus 3-4 open,
and then I always come out Bus 3-4
to get to the track.
00:58:10
We're going to call this
'Lifeboats - JP Mix',
it's titled.
00:58:17
I usually start with 'JP Mix'.
00:58:19
As we get into revisions
with the clients,
then each one will say
Rev1, Rev2, Rev3.
00:58:26
I usually include the date as well
just so that everybody's on the same page.
00:58:31
It definitely makes things
go a little quicker.
00:58:34
The other thing I really like to do
is I like to make sure all the files
are exactly the same length,
just in case at some point things need
to be edited by a mastering engineer
or by somebody else
they are all exactly the same.
00:58:48
So what I tend to do
is I highlight a region.
00:58:51
I'll put this on Input so I can hear it
and I'm going to Solo Safe it
as well for future needs.
00:58:58
I am at the intro of the song
and I'm going to hit Play
just to see where I am.
00:59:07
I'll go a little closer.
00:59:10
That's a good starting point.
00:59:12
I'm going to check my ending
and make sure I am definitely
into the fade-out.
00:59:19
And the next thing I'm going to do
just for consistency's sake
is I'm going to put in a marker,
but I'm going to do a Selection.
00:59:26
I'm going to call it 'track'.
00:59:28
By doing that, anytime I need to
get back to this, it's there.
00:59:31
Granted, once it's printed,
as long as I highlight it
and then create a new Playlist
I can get around it that way as well,
but in case I forget or in case...
00:59:41
You know, for whatever reason,
at least it's done and I know it's there.
00:59:44
So, with that said,
I'm going to print it down.
01:03:34
I've pretty much taken care of everything
that I needed to take care of,
and this is where I would either
leave it up
and make one little tweak
or two in the morning,
or I just send it off to the client.
01:03:44
I get comments,
and hopefully there's not
that much to do.
01:03:48
I think it's feeling great,
I love the way the vocal
is sitting against the drums,
I love the way I can hear the bass,
so it's doing all of these things
that I was hoping to do.
01:03:57
And then,
the lyric content
also informed the guitar effects
and some of the other more spacey
kind of weird things.
01:04:06
I mean, there's a bit
of desperation to it,
so
in coming up with these effects
I'm also trying to enhance the vocal
and the whole experience, right?
I'm trying to get it
to really tie together.
01:04:19
So hopefully the clients
will pick up on that,
and hopefully they will like it,
and
then we'll move on to the next tune.
01:04:28
Thanks so much for spending
the time with me to check this out.
01:04:31
Ciao!
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Software
- Audio Ease Altiverb
- Elysia mpressor
- Empirical Labs Arousor
- Fabfilter Pro-DS
- Flux Solera V3
- Ghz Lohi 3
- McDsp AE600
- McDsp Futzbox
- Over Loud Echoson
- SPL Iron
- Softube RS127
- Sound Toys Crystallizer
- Sound Toys Devil-Loc
- Sound Toys Primal Tap
- UAD 1176 LN Rev E
- UAD 1176 Rev A
- UAD Ampeg B15N
- UAD Ampex ATR-102
- UAD Brigade Chorus
- UAD EP-34 Tape Echo
- UAD Fairchild 660
- UAD Lexicon 480L
- UAD UA610-A
- Valhalla Uber Mod
- ghz Wow Control 3
- iZotope Ozone
- iZotope RX De-Click
- reMatrix
Hardware
- Build Your Own Clone Vibrato
- Chandler Limited Germanium
- Chandler Limited LTD-1
- Chandler Limited Little Devil
- Empirical Labs Mike-E
- Little Labs PCP Instrument Distro
- Moog Mooger Fooger
- OTIS Amp
- Sony M7
- Studio Electronics AN2 Stereo Simulator
- UA Ox
- Urei LA-3A
John moved to Los Angeles two weeks after graduation from the University of Miami MUE [Music Engineering] program. A short period of freelance assisting concluded with a staff position at Sunset Sound/Sound Factory in Hollywood, where for five years he was exposed to many great engineers, producers, and artists.
After breaking out of assisting, John worked with a wide range of producers including Mitchell Froom, Joe Chiccarelli, Byron Gallimore, Celso Valli, and Stephen Duffy. He won a Latin Grammy for his work with artist/producer Soraya.
In addition, John has produced or co-produced projects for The Black Mollys, Mitchell Froom, Lustra, Robbie Williams, The Lilac Time, and many other artists. He as also co-written songs with artists and has written pieces for TV and film.
Check out his videos on PureMix to see how his meticulous approach makes for detailed and punchy mixes.
Robbie Williams
The Steve Gadd Band
Soraya
Robben Ford
Eros Ramazzotti
The Thrills
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