John Paterno Mixing Robbie Williams
02h 54min
(75)
Sit next to Grammy winner John Paterno while he explains to you, step-by-step, how he mixed Robbie Williams' hit song: "Don't Stop Talking".
Through this amazing 3 hour journey John starts from the foundation of the rhythm section and offers priceless insights on how he recorded the sessions and then he walks you through his choices of plug-ins and analog hardware to process over 60+ tracks.
After careful mixing of the lead vocals working with EQ, compression and effects to make it sit and float in the mix, John then covers his 2-bus processing chain that glue the tracks together perfectly. He then mixes acoustic and electric guitars, background vocals and all of keyboard tracks which are an integral part of the production.
No matter your skill level in sound engineering and music production, John Paterno's way of explaining his thought process makes it easy for everyone to absorb his techniques and methods to apply them on any mixing session.
Learn how to achieve a professional sounding pop record:
- Background vocals effects to create that tight pocket around the singer during choruses
- Electric guitar tricks to keep the wall of sound wide and smooth
- Drum processing to maintain impact and drive the groove
- Low frequency saturation to give bass that body and energy that never stops pumping the beat.
This is your best chance to learn how a hit record is made - from its raw tracks and production choices to a compelling final vision for the record.
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
- 05:29 - Session Setup
- 09:00 - Bass
- 07:30 - Drums
- 13:25 - Track Delay Compensation
- 18:18 - Kick/Snare Relationship
- 20:40 - Bass Amp
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:2 - Lead Vocals
- 02:52 - Compression
- 04:22 - Dynamic Equalisation
- 11:25 - Effects
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:4 - Stereo Bus Processing
- 08:48 - Toms
- 10:00 - Electric Guitars
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:2 - Acoustic Guitars
- 09:20 - Keyboards
- 17:30 - Lead Vocals FX
- 24:27 - Background Vocals
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:2 - Background Vocals FX (continues)
- 17:21 - Additional Keyboards
- 23:19 - Drum EQ
- 26:16 - Automation
- 36:16 - Final Print
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |
00:00:07
Buongiorno amico!
John Paterno here.
00:00:10
Today we're gonna take a look at
a Robbie Williams track
called "Don't Stop Talking."
I got involved with this record
toward the end of its recording span
and I got to record drums
on this particular track,
with Matt Chamberlain,
and we did it at Henson Studios,
out in LA.
00:00:27
Matt Chamberlain,
if you don't know who he is,
played on a ton of records,
and is very easy to find
on All Music Guide, if you want
to check out his whole discography.
00:00:35
Great, great drummer!
Let's start right off the bat
by checking out the rough mix.
00:02:09
Let's take a quick look at the tracks
that we're dealing with here.
00:02:12
We've got a bass part,
most likely a DI.
00:02:17
And then we have the drums.
00:02:19
We have a kick. On the kick,
I used a D112 and a U47 FET,
combined them both down through a bus
and ended up with the one kick track.
00:02:29
And on the snare,
we have a 57 on the top,
a 452 on the side,
and a 57 on the bottom.
00:02:36
And again,
all three mics combined to one track.
00:02:39
Matt used two toms on this,
each tom on the top had a 414
with a hypercardiod pattern,
and on the bottom, a 421.
00:02:48
Again,
everything combined down to one track.
00:02:52
The reason I'm combining the microphones
is that I want to make
decisions as I go, as a recordist.
00:03:00
I feel like that if I do need
to make adjustments at mix time,
I have everything I need,
at this point.
00:03:08
Some people I know like to split out
kick mics, or snare mics,
or all of these mics,
and they have their reasons,
and that is a valid approach,
but I'm one for you push up the faders,
and you should have the sound right there.
00:03:21
And that's why I go through all of this.
00:03:24
I like having multiple mics
because of the tone it gives me,
and because...
00:03:30
it allows me to just really
sculpt the sound right then in there,
and go for a sound.
00:03:36
Alright! Continuing on,
for overheads we have...
00:03:40
I think I used a pair of Audix SCX1s.
00:03:44
Small diaphragm condenser,
a little bit like a Schoeps mic,
or even a KM 84 kind of a thing.
00:03:52
Hi-hat was an AKG 451, or 452,
they're basically the same microphone.
00:03:58
The 441 track is a Sennheiser 441
that's put up into the kit,
you can probably catch that
in the photo.
00:04:06
And then rooms,
I have two sets of room mics.
00:04:09
There are those static Gefells
that are at Henson.
00:04:13
I don't know the model number
off top of my head,
but they are
a large diaphragm tube mic,
kind of like a U 67 kind of a thing,
and I also have a pair of RCA 77s.
00:04:25
Next, we have
these "MC Loop" tracks, 1 and 2,
they were just small parts
that we used in the bridge.
00:04:32
Looks like we have some percussions,
some tambourines and some shakers.
00:04:36
A pair of acoustic guitars...
00:04:39
This Jebin String Ensemble
is a keyboard part.
00:04:45
We have a tremolo guitar.
00:04:48
This Trim Chopper track right here,
we will talk about
when we get into the guitar thing.
00:04:54
We have a couple of electric guitars.
00:04:57
A couple of other various keyboards,
a couple of piano things...
00:05:00
Scrolling down real quick,
we have a lead vocal...
00:05:04
The lead vocal is on
two different tracks in this case,
because we have overlap
between the verse and the chorus.
00:05:10
Otherwise, most likely, I would have
kept everything on one track.
00:05:14
And then we have this thing here called
"Fireworks Vocal FX"
and we will also get to that in a few.
00:05:22
And then we have
our basic background vocal set
that happen in the choruses.
00:05:27
And then also
a set of bridge background vocals.
00:05:30
Let's start getting a few things set up
that I know I'm gonna need.
00:05:33
I'm going to set up a couple of
Master faders and an Aux track,
and this is where
my mix is gonna be sent to.
00:05:40
All of these tracks as you can see
are set up to an output
called "Stereo Bus."
And so,
these will all feed an Aux track,
and that Aux track is
what we're gonna monitor through,
and eventually print through.
00:05:54
So! I'm going to open up...
00:05:58
one stereo Aux...
00:06:02
one stereo Master fader...
for the Aux,
I will explain that in a second.
00:06:08
And then I'm gonna open up
one more stereo Master fader.
00:06:15
And that is gonna sit
on my overall output.
00:06:18
So let's move these around real quick.
00:06:21
The Master fader
we're gonna put up on top.
00:06:24
We're gonna assign this to...
00:06:28
output D 15-16,
because that is one of our outputs.
00:06:35
We are going to
assign the output of the Aux
to output 1 and 2.
00:06:40
Oh, I'm sorry! To D 15-16.
00:06:44
And also to B 11 and 12,
which we need to do so that
you fine folks can hear us.
00:06:51
And then we're gonna assign
our input to Bus... "Stereo Bus."
And this is our path for monitor.
00:07:00
I'm gonna name this track "Stereo Bus."
We're gonna solo safe it
by hitting the Command key
and clicking on the solo.
00:07:09
And we are also going to take
our other Master fader we created
and we're going to assign that
to the Stereo Bus,
and this is gonna be
a "Stereo Bus Trim."
What this will allow me to do
is make up for any gain changes
that I need to make
as things hit the Stereo Bus.
00:07:29
I may or may not end up using it,
but it's there, just in case.
00:07:32
So, let us start
just by pushing up the drums,
let's see where we are.
00:08:32
Ok. I may or may not
use this VCA fader at all,
but what it allows me to do
is it allows me to solo up
individual elements of the groove
without having
to hold down the Control key,
or do any crazy stuff like that.
00:08:45
While I'm here,
I'm also gonna group the toms.
00:08:50
And I'm also gonna group the overheads
so that I can maneuver them in tandem.
00:09:00
Ok!
Let's take a look
just quickly at the bass.
00:09:04
We'll bring up the bass
and see where we are with that.
00:09:25
Ok. Now, this bass sound...
00:09:27
I want to try and go for something
and get a little bit of a...
00:09:30
kind of a bigger tone,
maybe a little bit more defined.
00:09:34
What I'm gonna do
in this particular case
is I'm actually gonna go out
to some hardware to do this.
00:09:39
I'm going to run this track,
I'm gonna go through a Fatso Junior,
and then a Chandler LTD-1 EQ.
00:09:47
And so we'll do that, bring it back in,
and then that'll become
my new bass EQ'ed track.
00:09:55
So what we're gonna do
is we're gonna create a new track.
00:10:00
Call it "Bass EQ."
Output 5 of Pro Tools is connected to
the input of the Fatso.
00:10:10
So I'm gonna take the bass...
00:10:12
Send it to output 5 of my interface...
00:10:16
And then from the Fatso,
it goes to the LTD-1,
and then the output of the LTD-1
is hooked up
to the input 5 of our Pro Tools rig.
00:10:25
So we're gonna go Interface A 5.
00:10:29
So theoretically,
when I put this on Input,
and hit Play on the bass,
we should hear and see
the bass signal going through.
00:10:45
Alright!
So now, we'll take a look at the bass,
we'll take a look at the hardware,
and let's see
what we can do with the sound.
00:10:53
Our signal path for this bass chain
is the Fatso Junior, as I said,
and then the Chandler EQ.
00:11:02
Let's run the track
and let's tweak some knobs
and get it to where we want it to be.
00:11:56
Ok, so what I'm going for here
with the Fatso
is I'm trying to get
a little bit more size out of it.
00:12:04
Not necessarily compress it more,
it's pretty...
00:12:07
it's compressed a little bit.
00:12:09
This is adding a little bit more
just overall tone,
and then this Tranny feature,
I really like what it does
to the low end on the bass.
00:12:19
It just adds
a little bit more dimension.
00:12:21
Let me run it a little bit again,
and then I'll bypass it again,
and you can hear what I'm talking about.
00:13:01
Ok. It just extends the thing down
a little bit more, to my ears.
00:13:05
So now let's check out the EQ.
We'll see if we can add a little EQ,
and maybe
make it a little bit more aggressive.
00:13:12
And maybe overdrive it a little bit
even with the line amp on the Chandler.
00:14:28
So what I've attempted to do with this EQ
is just kind of
focus it a little bit more
but keep the size that I've tried
to generate from the Fatso.
00:14:36
So I've got a hi-pass filter at 50Hz,
I'm doing a small
low frequency boost at 60Hz,
and then to add some presence,
I am adding...
00:14:49
a little bit at 2.7K.
00:14:52
I've also increased
the line amp a little bit,
so it drives the whole circuit
a little bit more.
00:14:59
And I've turned down the output
a little bit to compensate.
00:15:03
So I'm liking this combination
and the way it sounds,
so what I'm gonna do is I'm actually
gonna print it down for the entire track.
00:15:10
And then I will just deactivate
the original track,
and this will be the track
that I end up using.
00:15:45
Now that we have the bass printed,
let's talk about
a couple of things here.
00:15:51
I chose to do this this way,
to go out to hardware,
because there are
some elements of the hardware
in certain cases that
gives me a little bit more dimension
and a little bit more flexibility
than say a plug-in counterpart.
00:16:07
It's not to say the plug-ins are bad,
because they're not at all.
00:16:11
But there's something about
a real transformer,
and there's something about
certain ways that the hardware
interacts with the audio,
that in certain cases I prefer.
00:16:20
And it's literally just that,
a preference.
00:16:22
I also want to point out
something else here.
00:16:26
We have to take into consideration
delay compensation,
and compensation for that delay.
00:16:33
Pro Tools has a way to do that,
and it's in the I/O Setup.
00:16:37
So I'm gonna click on I/O Setup
and take a look at our settings here.
00:16:42
We wanna look at this check box
in the lower right-hand side:
"Compensate for output delays
after record pass."
We want to make sure that's checked,
and there's also
an input version as well.
00:16:53
What this check box is allowing me to do
is it allows me to compensate
for the delay to and from the interface,
or the delay incurred by the interface,
by audio going out and coming back in.
00:17:06
Pro Tools knows this number,
and Pro Tools can move my audio files
forward that amount,
because it's a fixed amount.
00:17:14
Now we've printed this bass track,
let's do a quick A/B before we move on,
so you can hear the final result.
00:17:20
I'm gonna kick my original track
into the Stereo Bus.
00:17:24
Listen for the attack on the bass,
listen for the low end,
and listen for
the feeling of kind of depth,
like you can kind of feel like
you're hearing around the sound.
00:17:34
So while we'll do this,
we'll switch back and forth.
00:18:00
Ok.
00:18:01
Hopefully you're hearing
a bit more presence,
a bit more kind of
maybe excitement to the sound.
00:18:07
What we're gonna do now, I'm just
gonna take the voice off this bass track
and I'm just gonna hide it, because
I don't need to deal with it anymore
and I don't want to see it
on my session.
00:18:19
The next thing I want to do,
I want to look at the kick, the snare,
and the bass still at the same time,
because there's one extra element
I want to add to the bass.
00:18:28
And I also want to process the kick
and the snare as well in a certain way
so we can take care of all of these
at the same time.
00:18:35
I'm gonna mute the bass for a second.
00:18:37
And then we're gonna listen to
the kick and the snare.
00:18:51
Just the kick...
00:18:57
Just the snare.
00:19:03
What I'd like to do is create a track
that combines those two
and helps the overall punch,
once we get the entire mix going.
00:19:13
So what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to put a gate
on the kick, and the snare.
00:19:20
We're gonna use the UA SSL.
00:19:29
I have my favorite start points,
so that's why I tend to go to these,
I like this particular EQ,
and it's set up
always with the Dynamics in,
and always with the EQ in,
because I'm gonna end up grabbing
those two things anyway most likely.
00:19:42
So we're gonna copy this
down to the snare as well.
00:19:46
And we're gonna start
with the snare first,
and we're gonna gate it.
00:20:07
Ok. Same with the kick...
00:20:22
Ok, and here they are together gated.
00:20:40
This is only preparation
toward a next step.
00:20:43
The other thing I want to do is I want
to try to enhance the bass even more.
00:20:46
I want to try and give it
kind of an amp quality.
00:20:50
There are plenty of
great amp simulators out there.
00:20:53
I have something
that I really like to do,
and we're gonna show you that right now.
00:20:58
We're gonna run this through
a Tech 21 SansAmp Acoustic DI.
00:21:02
And I discovered this a while ago,
and I really like it on bass, because...
00:21:08
when you're using bass amps,
when you're using tube amps,
when you're using amp simulators even,
sometimes, there is kind of a little
phase delay depending on the note.
00:21:18
You know, the physics of a low note
going through a tube,
going through a transformer,
getting a 15’’ speaker moving,
sometimes you get certain notes
that don't always line up
and they just go away.
00:21:32
I found that using the SansAmp pedal,
I can keep everything aligned
all the way down,
and it just keeps things more solid,
and I can still get
that sound of a bass amp.
00:21:45
The SansAmp 8 dip pedal
is great for this as well.
00:21:50
There's definitely some other things
out there that you can use.
00:21:53
So! Let's set up two tracks now.
00:21:55
We're gonna set up one new track
that's gonna go with the bass,
and we are gonna call this...
00:22:01
"Bass SA", for SansAmp.
00:22:08
We're gonna run the kick and the snare
through a compressor called the Boiler.
00:22:13
The Boiler was made by a company
called Ridge Farm Industries.
00:22:18
I know this studio went out of business,
I'm not sure if these things
are still available or not,
but I like what they do
in certain instances.
00:22:26
So I'm going to call this track
"Boiled Kick and Snare."
I'm gonna route
my kick and snare to output 6,
which is hooked up to the Boiler input.
00:22:40
And then I'm going to assign input 6...
00:22:45
as the input
to the Boiled track coming in.
00:22:48
Now if I hit play, theoretically,
we should hear it.
00:22:53
Alright!
It's getting there.
00:22:57
And then, we're gonna do the same
with the bass, with the SansAmp.
00:23:00
Now, with the bass,
we're getting to the SansAmp
via a box called the Pepper,
which is a multifunction box
made by Little Labs, that...
00:23:12
In this case, I'm using it to go
from +4 signal level down to -10,
so that I don't blow up the pedal,
and then it also has
a line level output.
00:23:21
So I can take the output of the pedal,
run it into this box,
get it back up to +4 line level,
and get it back into my system.
00:23:31
So, let's just make sure
we're hearing audio,
and that is on I/O 7,
so I'm gonna go output 7,
and I'm gonna go input 7.
00:23:44
And I'm just gonna hit Play real quick
to make sure we can hear it.
00:23:51
It's a little distorted at the moment,
but we're professionals,
we can fix this.
00:23:56
So this is the SansAmp
that we were talking about.
00:23:59
And we are gonna run some signal
through it right now.
00:24:01
This is the Pepper.
We've got the audio going to the Pepper,
we've got the output going to the In,
and then the output returning
into the Pepper,
and that's changing our levels
from +10 to -4,
so we don't blow up the pedal.
00:24:14
This SansAmp -
I believe there is a newer version of it
maybe it's called the Driver,
or something like that,
so if you look and don't see
this particular one,
they have something very, very similar,
I think, that they still make.
00:24:26
So let's hit Play on the bass,
and let's listen.
00:24:39
Now I'm going to try and just get
a little bit even more grit,
but more of an amp sounding kind of grit
using the SansAmp pedal on the bass.
00:25:24
That's doing what I want it to do.
00:25:27
It will all become clear
as soon as we print this,
and we print the drum thing
that we have just talked about.
00:25:33
So now, let's move right to the drums.
00:26:02
What I'm really digging about this
is the bit of grit,
the bit of distortion,
the bit of almost aggression
that we're getting out of it. And we're
getting it just in short bursts,
so it shouldn't overwhelm everything
once we get the whole picture developed.
00:26:16
And then we'll print both
this drum thing,
and then also the bass
through the SansAmp.
00:26:51
We have now printed the bass,
and we've printed
our Boiled kick and snare.
00:26:56
And I'm going to
take these out of record,
I'm gonna put my original bass track
back into the Stereo Bus,
and I'm also gonna take
my kick and snare
and put those back
into the Stereo Bus as well.
00:27:11
Now you may be wondering
why I printed this other bass track.
00:27:16
I wanted to get an extra dimension
on the bass
that I wasn't getting
from just the one track.
00:27:22
And this is almost like a bass...
00:27:25
if you want to look at it as a bass DI
and a bass amp track
that I'm gonna use at the same time
and I'll blend them together to get
something that I feel like I really like.
00:27:35
Why didn't I do it off the DI,
or the original one?
I probably could have, but I liked
the bass and all the tone that I get
from my EQ'ed path.
This is just a preference,
and something that
I've developed over the years,
so that's why it's ended up.
00:27:50
The Boiled track
we're gonna add to our drum VCA.
00:27:55
So it's part of the group.
00:27:58
And we are gonna group the bass...
00:28:02
tracks together as well.
00:28:05
And...
00:28:08
Let's - in solo -
just listen to the bass,
and we'll get a quick blend
of these two.
00:28:14
Even though they're grouped together,
I'm gonna hold down the Command key,
and probably lower
the bass SansAmp track
so I have control over the one track.
00:28:37
Now... Notice...
00:28:39
That sounds out of phase.
So what do we do?
We'll grab a phase button from an EQ,
the good old EQ 1-Band will work.
I'm gonna put it right at the top.
00:28:51
And we are gonna flip the phase
on the SansAmp. Let's check this out.
00:29:08
Now, let's look at the kick
and the snare individually for a second,
because remember
we had that tight gate on them.
00:29:14
I was aggressive with the gating
on the kick and the snare
when I went to the Boiler,
because I really wanted to
just get attack and point on it.
00:29:22
So now that we're using them back
as a more normal function,
I'm gonna lighten up on them,
just so that I create space
but I can still hear the decay
on the kick and the snare,
which is important
for me to be able to hear.
00:29:35
And so we're gonna do that
with the kick first.
00:29:38
The kick's in the Stereo Bus,
and we're gonna hit Play.
00:29:59
My goal is to make sure we hear
the decay of the kick drum.
00:30:02
I don't mind if I'm getting a little
snare bleed in there,
because in the big picture, it's not
gonna matter all that much.
00:30:07
But we are controlling that sound
a little bit,
so we can just help
our definition on things.
00:30:13
We'll do the same with the snare.
00:30:14
There's not a lot of ghost things
on the snare,
so we can get
a little aggressive with it.
00:30:50
So now, let us...
00:30:53
hear where we are, with the bass,
and with the current drums.
00:30:57
What I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna unsolo this stuff.
00:31:00
I'm going to turn down the bass a lot
for the moment,
and mute it for the second.
00:31:07
I'm gonna take
my Boiled kick and snare track,
I'm gonna take it all the way out.
00:31:12
And I'm gonna see where we are first
with these elements,
and then we're gonna bring in
the additional stuff.
00:31:34
The Boiler is just really reinforcing
that kick and snare, right?
Giving us a nice little pop, and...
00:31:41
it goes away really fast, so it's not
gonna take up a lot of space
in the overall feel of the track.
00:31:47
It's kind of why I get into that.
Let's bring the bass in.
00:32:07
And then let me mute the SansAmp
as we go,
and you can kind of hear the difference.
00:32:31
It almost sounds like
there's a whole additional octave
that wasn't there before.
00:32:35
So we're golden. It's a good thing.
00:00:00
We are now going to...
00:00:03
I'm just gonna shorten these guys up
because we've got a good starting point
with these elements, and I want
to switch to the vocal right away.
00:00:11
Because...
00:00:12
In this kind of song, and in this kind
of context, in my opinion,
these are the 3 things.
00:00:17
We've got to deal with the groove,
and with the vocal.
00:00:19
The groove comes from
the rhythm section.
00:00:22
The bass can drive it,
the kick can drive it, whatever,
but we've got to get that train going
before we actually get the vocal in.
00:00:29
And that's what we're gonna do next.
00:00:31
So we've got these two vocal tracks,
and like I said earlier,
they overlap in a few spots,
and that's why they are on...
00:00:39
two separate tracks.
00:00:40
So I can't combine them onto one track
otherwise I would.
00:00:44
But what I am gonna do is
I'm gonna set up two Aux tracks,
and these are gonna be my vocal tracks.
00:00:50
One of them is gonna be
my main vocal track
and then the second one
I'm gonna have some fun with.
00:00:56
So, let's do that.
I'm gonna set up two Aux tracks.
00:01:04
And I'm gonna select the bus 21.
00:01:08
These two vocals
I'm gonna send out to bus 21.
00:01:14
And I'm going to solo safe
these two vocals,
because I'm gonna just
mainly deal with these Aux tracks.
00:01:23
They're gonna become the tracks
that I deal with basically.
00:01:26
These first 2 tracks
- the top 2 tracks -
are literally just
feeder tracks into the Aux.
00:01:30
So I'm gonna call this "Robbie Lead."
And we're gonna leave that
for the moment.
00:01:37
So we're just gonna deal with
this first Aux track,
so I'm gonna mute this second Aux track
and I'm gonna turn the volume down
just for good measure.
00:01:46
Now let's check it out
and make sure we're happening.
00:01:55
Great! So now,
what are we gonna do with the vocal?
First, we're gonna listen to the vocal,
and we're gonna see what our options are.
00:02:02
I noticed right off the bat
that we get in this chorus section,
and it's louder.
00:02:08
So we need to see how much louder,
maybe we need to drop this vocal...
00:02:12
- the chorus vocal track
down a little bit,
just to keep it even
all the way through,
or that might be totally fine
where it is,
but let's see without any processing
where we are.
00:02:43
I might bring it down,
maybe just a dB...
00:02:46
A dB and a half... Just...
00:02:49
Just for safety sake.
00:02:51
Because it also hits
the compressor harder,
and I may not want that to happen,
because we're gonna end up putting
a compressor on this lead vocal track.
00:02:59
I'm going to first
put a compressor on it...
00:03:03
and for vocals, I really like LA-3As...
For most things.
00:03:08
So I'm going to find the UA LA-3A
and I'm gonna put that on.
00:03:14
And we're gonna get this going.
00:03:55
I like what that's doing.
It's not a ton of compression
but we're leveling everything
and it'll stay nice in the track.
00:04:02
Next, I want to look at
maybe an EQ option.
00:04:05
I have a hardware box
that I use sometimes,
called a BSS 901, I believe.
00:04:12
It's called a dynamic equalizer.
00:04:15
It allows me to narrow in certain bands,
it allows me to compress those bands,
or expand those bands.
00:04:21
McDSP have a very similar product
called the AE400 Active EQ.
00:04:27
What I'm gonna do with this is
I'm gonna try to find
a few areas where the vocal might be
a little pinched when it gets loud.
00:04:34
Then I'm gonna narrow in
on those frequencies
and then take them out, dynamically,
so that when he's singing soft,
we still have it.
00:04:41
But when he's singing loud,
the frequencies are dipped.
00:04:45
I'm gonna run right to the chorus,
hit Play,
and give it a listen, and see where
- if anywhere -
it might need to be treated.
00:04:53
We're gonna start right here, and
maybe we're gonna loop this little bit.
00:05:11
I've got this great feature on here,
where I can listen to
a particular band in solo, basically.
00:05:17
And I can figure out the areas
that I want to address.
00:05:26
And... Here's a thought...
00:05:27
One might think that it might
just become a piercing sound
that you hear
that you want to control.
00:05:33
But if somebody is in a smaller room,
and the room has a resonance,
if they're singing soft,
they're not gonna generate
any of the resonances.
00:05:42
But when they sing loud,
the room's gonna get involved,
and you will get
the tone of the room on your track.
00:05:48
So sometimes when they sing louder,
you may have this kind of chesty sound
or you may get a ring at a lower
frequency that you might not think.
00:05:55
So, I'm hearing that
as much with this as I am...
00:05:58
something
that's a little bit aggressive.
00:06:00
That's why
I'm checking out this area first.
00:06:13
So right there, it definitely seems like
it could use a little bit of something.
00:06:17
Now, what I'm gonna do quickly
is go to the first verse
and see if it's really annoying
or apparent there.
00:06:23
And if it is, then maybe we'll end up
doing a notch for the whole thing,
so I'm looking at EQ, and also
Dynamic EQ, at the same time.
00:06:39
It's not really bothering me there.
00:06:41
Let me play it a little bit longer,
I'm making a quick decision here,
but let me let you check it out.
00:06:45
So here it is
- the first couple lines.
00:07:00
Alright. Now here it is out, entirely.
00:07:02
See if you hear any room resonances.
But I wasn't hearing any.
00:07:19
Ok.
00:07:20
I think I'm gonna go the Dynamic route
with this particular frequency.
00:07:24
So let's cruise up to the chorus.
00:07:28
Let's get to this little section
where he's singing.
00:07:31
A few lines...
And let's set it up dynamically.
00:07:35
Now, what we're gonna do is
we're gonna have to set a threshold.
00:07:39
We're gonna have to set
the amount of gain reduction.
00:07:42
So the gain reduction we do right here
from this slider,
and I'm gonna make it kind of
aggressive, maybe 9dB, or so.
00:07:50
And then... we can fool with the Ratio,
the Attack and the Release,
and this is similar
to a regular compressor.
00:07:58
Let's move some sliders
until we can get going.
00:08:27
Let's check it out before,
and then after.
00:08:57
I think that's gonna enhance
the clarity of the overall track,
and get them on top,
without it taking up too much room.
00:09:04
In this section of the song,
we have background vocals coming in,
there's other things going on,
and we'll still be able to keep
the focus where we want it with them.
00:09:12
And now, let's see if we need something
in the presence band dipping as well.
00:09:17
I don't think we need it, but let me
just highlight this next section,
and see if we get any benefit.
00:09:24
We're gonna go through the same process
again really quick.
00:09:26
We're gonna listen at this band,
and we'll see if we can get anything
that's worthwhile.
00:10:00
You know, there's something going on
right there, right close to 5K,
that I think could also benefit
by this process.
00:10:07
So we're gonna do that
real quick as well.
00:10:10
Same idea - we're gonna
take this down 9 dB or so...
00:10:14
We're going to take it out of that band,
we're gonna bring
our Threshold down a bit...
00:10:20
I tend to like faster Releases on things
so I end up in these lower numbers.
00:10:25
And also we want it to grab
relatively quick,
so we'll keep it kind of similar
to what we have next to it.
00:10:31
And let's check it out!
Ok. Let's listen to that bit bypassed.
00:11:04
I think that's pretty cool!
I'm not sure if it needs de-essing
or not at this point,
but once we get a few more elements in,
once we get a little more effect on,
we'll see if
that's gonna become an issue.
00:11:16
The next thing I want to do...
00:11:18
is get just an effect or two going.
00:11:22
I know I'm gonna want a little reverb,
I'm probably gonna want a slap delay,
just something short,
like 100ms, 109ms,
that seems to be one of my favorite
numbers for some reason.
00:11:32
I'm going to create two more Aux tracks.
00:11:35
I haven't forgotten about
our Aux 2 there,
we'll get back to that in a minute.
00:11:40
We are going to solo safe,
we are gonna assign inputs... 9 and 10.
00:11:47
9 will be a slap delay,
we'll probably use the EchoBoy.
00:11:56
And... I think I've got a preset
some place, and if not...
00:12:03
"EBoy Start", there we go.
00:12:05
We look at Time... 2.91.
00:12:08
We're gonna type this in
and just go 1.09.
00:12:11
Because that's what
we like to do with this.
00:12:14
And... Mix is all the way up.
00:12:17
And... Feedback is there, a little bit.
00:12:19
And then, for reverb, I'm gonna use
this plugin called REmatrix,
which is by Overloud Technologies.
00:12:28
If you don't know about this plugin,
it's pretty cool.
00:12:32
You've got
five different convolution reverbs
that you can blend together.
00:12:39
And then once you blend them together,
you can modulate them,
you can add delay, and then you can
process them with some Drive,
some Distortion, some Compression,
and some EQ.
00:12:50
They do a lot. It takes a little bit
to get your head around it,
but once you do,
they can be really, really useful.
00:12:57
I have a preset in here
that is a Lead Vocal,
and so I'm gonna double-click on that,
that opens it up, and notice
it opens these modules.
00:13:07
Right now, I've got a Room going,
I've got a Plate...
00:13:11
There is a Delay on it,
and it delays the reverb
and blends it back in.
Right now, it's set to quarter notes,
we'll leave it there for the moment.
00:13:18
We have this Drive thing
that is actually just that, Drive,
and then there's an overall EQ
for the reverb as well.
00:13:25
So, let's assign Sends.
We're gonna assign Bus 9 and 10.
00:13:31
Ok. We're gonna hit this red dot,
and leave it open for the moment.
00:13:35
Or red box, I should say. And then
we're gonna assign Bus 10 as well.
00:13:40
I'm gonna leave these both
open and active,
so that I can turn them both,
and make some noise.
00:14:03
Ok. I'll do a couple of phrases with,
and then without.
00:14:19
Cool, right?
Giving us a little bit of depth,
and giving us
a little bit of fun factor.
00:14:25
And now,
let's add a little bit of reverb in
to see what kind of changes
we may need to make to this preset.
00:14:32
So... Let's do this. Hit Play!
Ok. The overall thing
is probably a little bit long,
so we're gonna edit this reverb
right here.
00:14:54
We're at 2 seconds,
and 12 milliseconds of pre-delay.
00:14:58
And then, let's see where the Room
is as well while we're at it...
00:15:02
Room's at 1.5.
00:15:04
So I think I'm gonna take
the Plate down just a little bit.
00:15:14
And actually, I'm gonna
turn the Delay off for the moment.
00:15:44
Ok, I'm kind of digging that.
Let's pop this Delay back in
and maybe we'll switch the Time
to eighth notes and see if that
makes it feel a little bit better.
So here it is at quarter,
and then as it's going,
I'll switch it down to eighth.
00:16:25
I'm kind of digging that at the moment.
I think we'll leave it there for now.
00:16:29
I think we're in a good spot.
00:16:31
The next thing I want to do now
we have some effects going on the vocal
is I want to address this other track
that we talked about,
this second Aux track.
00:16:40
A lot of times against the Lead vocal,
I like to put something really, really
aggressive on the compression front
against it.
00:16:48
It helps it kind of keep its focus,
but without having to run it
through the whole thing.
00:16:54
We'll call this "Robbie",
and I'm gonna tell you what it is,
we're going with the Devil-Loc.
00:17:00
So we're going to pop that on.
00:17:03
We're going to... put on this insert
the Soundtoys Devil-Loc.
00:17:09
And we're going Devil-Loc Deluxe,
because that's the way we do things.
00:17:13
Now... This is the preset setting.
00:17:16
And now let's listen to it
just on its own,
and hear what it's doing. I'm gonna
turn up the vocal a little bit,
and I'm gonna solo it.
00:17:24
So we'll just listen to this beginning.
00:18:12
Obviously, we have
a bit of a level difference there,
and I can't really compensate for,
because
we're hitting the compressor so hard.
00:18:19
But the point of this is
now what we're gonna do
is we're gonna blend the two together.
We're gonna blend our main lead vocal
and we're gonna pop this guy in as well
and check out what happens,
even before we hear it in the track.
00:18:32
Let's play this a little bit
and I'll bring in the Devil-Loc.
00:19:03
Now...
00:19:04
The question is,
as we've taken this AE400,
and we've grabbed these areas that...
00:19:10
we identified as possible problems,
and now we're taking those areas and
we're ramming them into this compressor
and we're probably
accentuating them even more.
00:19:19
So what do we do?
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take
this AE400 and just copy it down.
00:19:26
Because I already figured out
the areas that I like
and the amount of gain reduction
that I like.
00:19:31
I could put it before or after,
and that may be an experiment
to see which is better.
00:19:36
From my experience,
this is where I want to go.
00:19:39
So I'm gonna leave that in place,
just like that.
00:19:43
We're gonna take the vocal out of solo,
and we're gonna listen to it,
and we're gonna work on the blend
against the track,
cause at the end of the day,
that's what is most important.
00:19:51
Let's listen and I'm gonna
vary the level of the Devil-Loc.
00:20:21
So now, let's unmute our slap
and listen, and check the balance.
00:20:34
Ok. I'm happy with that.
00:20:36
Now let's unmute the reverb
and see where we are with that.
00:20:46
Reverb off the top is a little bit much
so I'm gonna bring that back
a little bit.
00:20:50
I think what I'm gonna do, in this
case, is maybe lose that Delay,
I don't think we need it,
because going forward,
I have something else that'll be
much more interesting than that.
00:21:00
Here we are.
00:21:11
The only other thing
I'm gonna do right now with this
is I'm gonna group these vocals together
so that when I do rides,
and when I do moves,
they function the same way.
00:00:00
Now we're gonna address the Stereo Bus.
00:00:02
The first thing I want to do
is open a meter
just so I have a reference...
00:00:08
where I am and where I'm going
with the level.
00:00:11
I like this Blue Cat DP Meter.
00:00:14
We're gonna open that up.
I have a preset here that I dig.
00:00:19
I'm using the Cat's K-14 scale.
00:00:23
My goal is gonna be to keep stuff
in this kind of...
00:00:28
probably +2 to +6 range
for the RMS level,
and let the peaks kind of do
their thing, go all the way up.
00:00:35
But I want to open this now,
just so I have an idea,
and I can basically make sure
I guide everything
towards the direction I want to be
with level.
00:00:45
Next, let's put on a hardware insert,
and I'm gonna use I/O 3 and 4.
00:00:53
And on I/O 3 and 4,
we have an SSL Stereo Bus Compressor.
00:00:58
We have a Neumann PEa EQ
that I'm just gonna use
for the transformer factor,
because it does have
input and output transformers in it.
00:01:07
And then at the end of it, we're gonna
have a Dangerous Music Bax EQ.
00:01:49
I'm gonna turn down the vocal
because it's a little bit loud
at the moment, regardless.
00:01:54
And I'm gonna retweak it
a little bit more.
00:01:56
For the settings, I tend to like
a pretty fast Attack,
and a pretty fast Release.
I like to feel the compressor pump...
00:02:03
On this type of tune especially.
00:02:05
I think it just adds to the energy
and to the excitement.
00:02:08
My goal is to get
about 4dB of compression.
00:02:11
Anything beyond that...
00:02:13
If we start getting up towards
the next level, which is the number 8,
it gets a little too squishy, and it
doesn't ever recover fast enough for me.
00:02:20
I mean, there are faster releases,
but I also want it to feel musical
at the same time
and I don't want to feel like
the compressor pumping
is fighting
the natural rhythm of the tune.
00:02:30
And I'd like the ratio at 2:1 as well,
because I feel like
I can hit it a little bit harder
and get that SSL kind of quality,
and not overcook it.
00:03:18
So as I switch it in and out,
listen for...
00:03:22
just the feel of the drums especially,
and the way
the drums sound much more roomy,
just by virtue of me
having this compressor on the bus.
00:04:02
Cool!
So I'm happy with those settings.
It's doing what I want it to do.
00:04:07
And we haven't even added a reverb
to the drums yet.
00:04:09
So, it's really lively,
it's really roomy,
but yet,
everything's still nice and immediate.
00:04:15
I'm really happy with that.
00:04:17
Now we're gonna move on to the other
elements of our Stereo Bus chain.
00:04:22
After the compressor,
we have this Neumann EQ,
and I'm only using it
for the transformers.
00:04:28
This may come across as a bit
of a subtle effect, but listen closely
and listen at what happens to the top
end when we switch it in and out,
and listen to what happens to the depth
as we switch it in and out as well.
00:04:41
To my ears,
we get a little bit more dimensionality
by having the transformers in the chain.
00:04:49
What I'll do is run the track,
and every four bars,
I'll switch this Neumann box
in and out of the circuit.
00:04:56
So let's give it a spin.
00:05:28
Pretty cool! It's subtle, but...
00:05:31
if you concentrate a bit,
you will definitely be able to hear
the kind of way
it goes this way and this way,
which is my ultimate goal.
I really want to hear space in mixes.
00:05:40
I don't want to hear things crowded,
I want to feel like I'm...
00:05:43
I can get into the middle of it.
00:05:45
And finally, we'll look at the Bax EQ
and see what that gives us
in the big picture.
00:06:40
Okay. What I'm liking about
this setting that I've just ended on
is it's giving me
a little more extended bottom end
but it's not getting too flabby.
00:06:50
And it's giving me
a little bit more presence,
but it's not hitting me over the head
with it either.
00:06:56
I achieved that by adding the filter in
at the bottom.
00:07:00
The filter is set to 18,
and I may actually switch that to 24
and see if we get
a little bit more benefit.
00:07:07
Doing a dB and a half at 98...
00:07:09
And then on the top end,
I just have a half dB down at 1.6K.
00:07:14
Now the Bax is a really, really sweet,
really, really broad EQ.
00:07:18
It's a subtle thing,
but as we switch it in and out,
you're definitely gonna notice
a difference.
00:07:24
I've also kicked in the 70 kHz
so that I can get rid of spurious
frequencies
that may somehow be in my audio.
00:07:31
This also helps my A/D conversion
when I go back into Pro Tools
on this insert.
00:07:37
Now let me play it.
We'll do the four bar thing again,
and I will switch the EQ in and out.
00:08:13
We're gonna hang with this for a while
and now I'm gonna add
one other element to the Stereo Bus
before we get onto other stuff.
00:08:20
I'm gonna take a look at my meter.
I'm gonna open it up.
00:08:23
And then I'm also gonna add
at the end of the chain
a Massey L2000 Limiter.
00:08:27
Now I'm gonna run it and adjust it.
00:08:45
The limiter is now on, and...
00:08:48
we're gonna leave it
where it is right now.
00:08:50
I may make some gain structure
adjustments later on,
but at least I know it's there, and
I'm getting the sound of the limiter
through the speakers, and on my mix.
00:09:00
I want to make sure we have the toms in
because they're down at the moment.
00:09:04
Let's just address those
very, very quickly.
00:09:07
We're going to reengage their group.
00:09:12
We're gonna pan them a bit.
00:09:15
We're gonna go...
00:09:17
I tend to like my overheads and my toms
in a little bit,
I don't necessarily like them
hard wide left and right.
00:09:23
So I'm gonna go up
to this first tom fill
and we'll bring it up,
so that the level makes sense.
00:09:37
Basically, they're not loud enough,
so we're gonna turn them up
a little bit more.
00:09:46
Ok. And now, let's check the high tom
to see where that is.
00:09:50
That one hit right here.
00:09:56
In context,
that's gonna work out pretty well.
00:09:59
But we have them in...
00:10:00
And I think I like
the roominess of it all at the moment,
and once we get some other elements in,
we may end up doing some balancing
in that sense.
00:10:09
Let's see
what's playing in the first verse.
00:10:11
We have this guitar here, Guitar 3.
00:10:14
Let's take a listen
and see what that's doing.
00:10:36
Alright. Let's solo that up,
and see what we have here.
00:10:57
Ok. This sound is almost mono.
00:11:15
It's the same part all the way through.
What I'd like to do
is maybe give it some dimension,
via maybe a Chorus, or some type of
pitch shift kind of thing.
00:11:26
I also want to try and help
the definition of it a little bit
via a little compression to even it out,
and also a little EQ.
00:11:34
So let's blast on a quick...
00:11:36
I'm gonna go with an 1176 on this one.
00:11:42
I have a lot of presets
that I like as starting points...
00:11:46
this one in particular.
I tend to like the 1176 at 8:1.
00:11:50
So let's start there.
00:12:04
That may look like a lot of compression,
a lot of meter compression,
but let's listen to it in the track
and see if we're getting
some benefit out of it.
00:12:35
Let me run the track,
and we will bypass the 1176
every couple of beats,
or couple of bars,
and I may adjust the output level
to help you hear the difference,
and also to help me as I go along.
00:13:15
I think I've changed my mind
about the chorusing aspect.
00:13:18
that I just mentioned. I think maybe
we'll just go with some EQ,
maybe we'll put a little API on it.
00:13:45
Now, let's quickly look at the API.
00:13:47
What I'd like to do
is just play it a little bit...
00:13:50
The 1176 is in...
00:13:52
And then we will bypass,
and then unbypass it,
and you can hear the difference,
and how we get a little more presence.
00:14:28
Alright! I like where that's going.
00:14:31
I think what I might do
is just narrow it down in the panning.
00:14:34
It sounds like it's almost mono anyway.
00:14:37
I think what I want to do is just
move it off to the side a little bit.
00:14:42
Now let's look at one of the other guitar
parts that happens in the verse here.
00:14:45
We have this thing called Trem Guitar.
00:14:47
If you noticed right below it,
I've had it muted the whole time,
I have this track called Trem Chopper.
00:14:53
When I mixed the song, I originally
took this Trem Track
- let's listen to this really quick...
00:15:12
It's kind of a cool sound,
and I like the kind of manicness of it.
00:15:17
But I wanted to take it a bit further,
so I decided to run it through
this pedal called the Chopper.
00:15:24
It's basically the same concept
we used on the bass,
but instead of a mono output,
I've run it through two stereo outputs
of some Chandler LTD-1.
So let's hear what this sounds like.
00:15:52
I just thought that was really cool
at the time, and I still do!
That means we are not gonna deal
with this Trem Guitar track at all,
so I'm gonna turn the volume down,
and I'm gonna take the voice off,
and I'm gonna take it off the screen
so I don't have to look at it anymore.
00:16:05
I like to devoice things
before I take them off the screen,
just in case
somehow they inadvertently get unmuted,
or there was some group I didn't see,
and they get turned up.
00:16:17
Because there's nothing worse
than having a ton of tracks
and having a sound that you cannot find.
00:16:22
It's maddening.
00:16:24
So, now that we have
this tremolo guitar in,
let's take a look at this one that says
BJ Electric Guitar.
00:16:45
It sounds like an AC30 guitar amp.
That would be my guess.
00:16:50
And then, let's go up to the chorus
and see what happens here.
00:17:01
Ok. It becomes
kind of a different guitar part.
00:17:05
So there's a couple of things I can do.
I can roll with it the way it is,
or I could split it off
to a separate track.
00:17:11
When the chorus comes up, it might
just be nice to keep it where it is,
and just treat it as like
the guy played the guitar track down,
and we might not have to get too crazy.
00:17:20
But I know what I'm gonna want to do
is treat this guitar somehow, regardless.
00:17:25
And with this part... It sounds like
I'm gonna want to add
a little reverb to it.
00:17:30
And then, we may end up
doing some compressing to it.
00:17:34
Then what we'll have to check is...
00:17:36
what happens between
the softer part and the louder part,
and see if we can find
a nice balance between that.
00:17:41
I'm gonna set up a quick reverb
and it's gonna be
a short room type of thing.
00:17:55
I'm gonna use Bus 7.
I'm gonna call this Room.
00:18:00
We're gonna use Altiverb for this.
00:18:09
There is a couple of
recording studio programs in here.
00:18:12
There's a couple of cello rooms I like
and a few other things.
00:18:15
I think we're gonna use what I consider
a kind of brighter cello room,
which is Live Room 1.
00:18:21
What I'm trying to do here is just give
us a little dimension on the guitars,
a little space.
00:18:26
I am going mono in/stereo out.
00:18:29
Put that on this BJ Electric,
and see where this gets us.
00:18:34
Ok. We're gonna go to Bus 7.
00:18:37
And we are going to play the track,
let's solo it up and turn it up
to see what we have.
00:19:26
Okay. I like the reverb.
00:19:28
I kind of wanted this kind of...
not metallic, but more reverbering
kind of live kind of sound on it.
00:19:36
But now I want to focus on
the actual tone.
00:19:38
It's a little reversed.
Maybe I normally do things,
but I had this idea in my head,
and I wanted to pursue it
before I forgot it.
00:19:45
So... We're gonna work backwards
a little bit.
00:19:47
Now we have a reverb sound
that's gonna work in the room,
I'm gonna mute the send for the moment,
and let's focus on
the actual guitar sound.
00:19:55
What I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna start in the chorus,
'cuz that's where our loudest level is.
Let's give this a listen.
00:20:12
It's a nice sound,
it's a little brash though.
00:20:15
So let's figure out something that
we can do to take care of the brashness,
but yet still have it be present.
00:20:24
Now let's go the Universal Helios.
00:20:29
Alright. We're gonna run this,
and we're just gonna fool around
and see if we can get
a little more definition on the sounds
without it getting even more brash.
00:20:57
So what I'm going for is...
00:20:59
There is lot of
like brashness to the sound,
and I want to hear
more of the fundamental.
00:21:04
That's why I chose a lower frequency.
00:21:05
We're at 1K, as opposed to
maybe going for 2.8 or 3.5,
where that'll give us more presence.
It doesn't need any more presence.
00:21:12
What I need is a little bit more meat.
00:21:14
So, let us hear that, and then
let's hear the reverb on it as well
and see how they all interact.
00:21:20
So what I'll do is I'll run the track
and I'll bypass the EQ
one or two times,
and then I'll put the reverb on,
and bypass the reverb one or two times.
Here we go!
Now, my output level is a little hot.
00:21:54
The Helios seems to be a little loud
in general when you put it on,
so I'm gonna back up
this Level Adjust a little bit.
00:22:02
I'm saying that it's hot, because
I'm almost clipping my meters.
00:22:05
And I want to make sure I have enough
headroom going into anything else
that's following it, so I don't distort.
00:22:22
Now I'm gonna
turn the reverb on and off.
00:22:48
So you can hear
it's a pretty short decay,
but it's also just kind of adding
a nice little bit of...
00:22:55
kind of an umbrella
over the whole thing.
00:22:57
So let's hear it in the track,
and we'll just hit the chorus,
and for the moment,
I'm gonna mute the lead vocal
so that we just concentrate
on the rhythm stuff.
00:23:22
Cool, I'm digging that!
It feels really good.
00:23:25
I really like the sound on it as well.
00:23:27
Now I'm immediately gonna go
to this Guitar 3
and let's balance that and see if we can
bring that to a nice place as well.
00:23:50
For the moment, I'm gonna just mute
Guitar 3 and look at Guitar 4.
00:23:54
I'll explain my reason again in a second
once we get Guitar 4 going.
00:24:31
It's a cool sound.
We just need to work on it a little bit.
00:24:36
I really like what the Helios did
to the previous track,
so I just want to see
if I copy this Helios down...
00:24:44
Basically put an instance of Helios
on this track as well...
00:24:48
Select it.
00:24:50
I'm gonna choose
a different frequency point or two,
but there's something about the tone
on the BJ Guitar that sounded pretty nice
so let's see what happens here.
00:24:57
If we... we start at zero.
00:25:00
And then, fool around with this
and see what it gives us.
00:25:31
Now let's switch it in and out of bypass
so we can hear the difference.
00:25:57
Now there's something that happens
with the low end
when he hits one of those chords.
00:26:03
I have a filter on here, and I just
want to hear what it sounds like
if I filter out some of the low end.
00:26:09
Let's hear what that much sounds like,
and see how it sits.
00:26:25
I also want to try
a little compression on this...
00:26:28
as well,
just so we can control the dynamics...
00:26:31
just a touch.
00:26:34
Let's try an 1176 on this,
and see if it does good things for us.
00:26:52
Our level's pretty hot, and
it's clipping the plug-in right away,
so I'm just gonna take the input gain
down quite a bit
and see what this gives us.
00:27:15
Let's listen to that
in the track real quick.
00:27:42
Ok, I dig that.
00:27:43
But it would be nice if the guitar
- because it's almost mono-sounding
at the moment -
it'd be nice if it sounded more stereo
as opposed to panning it. We're in
the chorus, it might be nice to have this
kind of... just bigger event going on.
00:27:57
What I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna pop on
the Soundtoys MicroShift.
00:28:06
This is kind of a pitch-shifting program
and this will help me
get stuff off to the side.
00:28:13
I'm gonna keep
the Delay setting kind of tight.
00:28:17
I'm gonna make sure the Wet
is all the way up
so we're hearing all of the effect.
00:28:22
I'm gonna put it in solo for a second.
We'll have it bypassed...
00:28:42
Now that's pretty intense.
And it might be a little too much.
00:28:46
Let's see what happens if we bring back
the Detune all the way,
and we bring the Delay back
all the way as well.
00:28:56
It's still
a little too chorus-y unfortunately.
00:28:59
I think I'm gonna try something else.
00:29:02
Let's open up this Delay
and let's do this:
let's put 10 ms of delay on one side...
00:29:10
Leave it 100% Wet.
00:29:11
The left side
we're gonna make 100% Dry.
00:29:16
And we're gonna unlink these
so that we can make
literally one side Wet,
and the other side Dry.
00:29:25
We may have to do
a little gain compensation,
but let's listen first
to see where we're at.
00:29:40
The left side is slightly louder
because we're hearing it first,
so I'm gonna take the Gain down
on just the left side just a little bit.
00:29:48
And let's see
if we can gain-match the level.
00:30:08
Ok. We also have modulation on here.
I'm gonna take all of this off,
which was bad on my part to start,
sorry about that!
Now let's check it out!
Now let's listen to that in the track.
00:31:07
That's working for me!
The guitars come in, we hear them,
but they're also not taking up room,
they're not stepping on the vocal,
they're not stepping on anything.
00:31:14
They're nice, they're wide, they're out
of the way, quote, unquote,
but yet we're still hearing them.
00:31:19
The other thing I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna run this
into some reverb, and I'm gonna create
a bit of a longer room
for some of these instruments,
and we'll end up using it
on several things by the end of the day.
00:31:31
So I'm gonna create a new Aux track.
00:31:36
We're gonna call this Bus 8.
00:31:39
And I'm going to open up...
00:31:43
We're gonna call this...
00:31:46
Just call it Long Verb,
so we have some type and name for it.
00:31:50
I'm going to open up another
of the Overloud reverbs.
00:31:56
Then we're gonna go with a preset
called Distorted Guitar Room.
00:32:04
So, let's see what this does.
00:32:08
Again... Bus 8.
00:32:11
And let's solo this up.
00:32:42
Notice it's got a little EQ on it
in the preset
and there's a little bit of
Gain going on
and right now
it's set for high-frequency shelf,
but what I want to do is I want to
make it just a peaking EQ,
I don't want to get
too, too bright on top.
00:32:57
So I'm going to change the Q
and I'm just gonna bring it up a bit
so that instead of it shelving,
we're gonna have
a peaking response to the reverb EQ.
00:33:38
I'm totally digging that.
00:33:40
Now that we have
all these elements in place,
before we move on to anything else,
let's just do a quick A/B
so you can hear what's happened.
00:33:49
I'm gonna take off that Delay
that added the space,
and I'm also gonna mute the reverb
for the moment.
00:33:55
So... This is...
In context, without the vocal,
but we're feeling it with the band.
00:34:01
So here is a bit of the chorus
without that stuff.
00:34:20
Okay. Let's do it backwards.
00:34:21
Let's do with just the reverb first,
so you can hear how the reverb
affects the outside, while that guitar
is still in the middle
because of how it's been recorded.
So let's check this out.
00:34:46
That's actually a pretty good sound too,
because we're hearing
the attack of the guitar,
and it feels like it kind of moves out
once we start hearing the reverb.
00:34:54
But knowing that we have some
other elements come up,
I think having all of this stuff on
is really gonna work.
00:34:58
Now let's pop this on again as well.
00:35:01
So now we have the spread guitar
and the reverb.
00:35:03
Let's check that out.
00:35:19
Pretty cool, I think!
Now let's go back
and look at this Guitar 3 in the chorus
that I had muted earlier.
00:35:26
Let's just play it where it is,
and listen to what it's doing.
00:36:01
Now let's go back to the verse
and listen to it in the verse,
and I'll explain why in a second.
00:36:22
Now when I play it in the chorus,
it feels a little back
in relation to the other guitars
that come in, and it's bothering me.
00:36:29
I have 2 options.
00:36:31
Let me play the chorus again
so you can hear what I'm talking about.
00:36:35
Listen to when it goes...
00:36:37
It's gonna feel
a little back on the beat
and just doesn't really feel like
it's pushing the song forward.
00:36:57
Without editing this, I almost feel like
the chorus feels stronger without it.
00:37:03
So now my options are I can mute it
for just that section,
or I could slide them around
and I can edit it,
and make it feel better.
00:37:11
What I'm gonna choose to do with this
is actually mute it,
because I don't really think it needs it.
But what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna duplicate this playlist
and I have to remove
this asterisk at the top,
I already know that, when I do it,
and I'm going to duplicate the playlist
and I'm just gonna mute them.
00:37:33
And now they're gone. But if for some
reason I need to get back to it,
I've duplicated the playlist
and I can easily get back
if I decide I want this in
and I want to pursue this
a little bit more.
00:37:44
And the other reason I duplicated it
is because
we have these mutes in here that
were done at some point for some reason.
00:37:51
So I want to remember those mutes.
00:37:53
So if I mute the whole thing out,
I will never, ever remember
that those 3 sections
were supposed to be muted here.
00:37:59
I'll zoom in a little bit more
so you can see that.
00:38:01
So here is the chorus, right, and here
are these couple of mutes that were done
and then here is my duplicated playlist
with everything muted.
00:38:10
I'm gonna roll with this
for the moment
and we're gonna move on
to a couple of other things.
00:00:00
Our next point of interest is gonna be
the acoustic guitars in the chorus.
00:00:31
So... They're playing the same part.
It's a doubled acoustic guitar.
00:00:36
What I'm gonna do is I'm going
to just level-match them.
00:00:46
And then I'm gonna group them together.
00:00:49
I'll call it Acoustics.
00:00:53
And... Let's take a look at the sounds.
00:00:56
We're gonna listen to one at the time.
We'll start on the left side.
00:01:04
So right away, one of my favorite
compressors for acoustic guitar
is the LA-3A.
So I am gonna grab the LA-3A.
00:01:30
So again, I'm just going for
a little leveling,
a little evening of the peaks,
so that we can have them sit
in a nice place in the mix.
00:01:38
And then I am also going to put an EQ.
00:01:42
We're gonna go with another
of my favorites for acoustic guitar,
is an API 550A.
00:01:48
So let's see what we get with this.
00:02:16
I'm not quite sure
about this 3K bit that I've put in.
00:02:20
I'm gonna switch that in and out
real quick,
but we'll hear it
in the context of the track
and that'll be the determining factor.
So a quick listen...
00:02:42
Okay.
00:02:43
And since we've determined that
the sounds and the parts are similar,
I am just gonna go ahead and copy
these settings to the other track.
00:02:54
And then, that gives us this...
00:03:08
Okay, I'm gonna pan them in slightly.
00:03:12
Just so that they're not quite as stark.
00:03:17
The next thing I want to do is
I want to put a little bit of that room
that we used on the electric guitars,
that cello room
that we did with the Altiverb.
00:03:28
And that was on bus 7, I believe.
00:03:33
Yes, right here!
Altiverb, Bus 7, Room.
00:03:38
So here we go.
We're gonna listen to just the left.
00:03:59
I'm just gonna bring it down
just a little bit.
00:04:01
Then I'm gonna copy it as well
and put it on the other acoustic.
00:04:05
So let's check that out.
00:04:14
Now what I'll do is I'll bypass it
for a couple of bars
and I'll pop it in for a couple of bars.
00:04:19
So, bypassing...
00:04:45
So hopefully you can hear that
they're just receding back
into the track a little bit more
with the reverb.
00:04:51
There may be a touch too much on there,
and I will deal with that in a second.
00:04:55
One other thing I'm gonna do, since
we've already copied these levels over,
I'm gonna go into my Acoustic group
and I'm gonna modify
my settings for how these groups react.
00:05:09
What I'm gonna do is I want it
to follow volume and pan,
solo and automation,
but I also want it to follow
the controls of the inserts.
00:05:21
And I also want it
to follow the level of the send.
00:05:26
This way, I can grab one of the sends,
and both of them will move.
00:05:30
And the same thing with the EQ
and the compression.
00:05:32
I can grab any setting on one of those
plug-ins and it'll follow on the other.
00:05:37
Let me show you what I mean.
Here's the API.
00:05:40
This is the one
that we're looking at now.
00:05:43
I'm gonna open up the second API.
00:05:46
That's the one, the guitar on the right.
00:05:49
Now, if I take this filter setting
and if I move it over to the right,
the other filter follows.
00:05:55
When you have things
in tandem like that,
it makes them very easy to deal with.
00:06:00
So now, most importantly -
I'm gonna bring it down a little bit -
let's listen to it in the track.
00:06:31
So what I want to do is I want to
pull up an effect that I tried earlier
but didn't have much success with.
00:06:38
This time I'm gonna use
a stereo Aux on this,
because I want the things to really
feel like they're separated still.
00:06:44
I am going to put in the Soundtoys...
00:06:51
MicroShift.
00:06:53
We'll leave that in stereo
and we're gonna put it on an Aux send.
00:06:58
Let's do Aux 19-20.
00:07:01
And we're gonna assign this to 19-20.
00:07:05
And then,
we're gonna go back for a second
to my Acoustic...
00:07:12
group setting, and also enable it
for Send C,
and while we're at it, just in case
we do more, we'll do A, B, C, D and E,
so we don't have to come back to it.
00:07:24
So now, we have...
00:07:27
this effect on both channels,
I'm gonna pan it to the left
on the first acoustic.
00:07:36
And on the right acoustic,
I'm gonna pan the effect to the right.
00:07:41
So now we're sending from these
acoustics, and we're gonna hit the...
00:07:46
- we're gonna call it Pitch Change -
I'm gonna spell Pitch right
for those of you scoring at home.
00:07:54
Let's solo the acoustics,
and then let's bring up that fader.
00:08:21
It's pretty cool how it opens it up.
00:08:22
We can fool around
with some of these settings.
00:08:25
Let's see if
the second setting works better.
00:08:51
I'm gonna go with that. I added
a little bit more of this detuning
just to maybe help it feel like
it's a little bit wider.
00:08:56
Let's listen to it in the track.
00:09:20
Alright!
I'll probably end up bringing
the acoustics down a little bit more
once we get a few more things in.
But I like where it's sitting.
00:09:26
Then the final main element
in the chorus is
whatever this String Ensemble is.
00:09:32
So let's give that a quick listen.
00:09:43
Ah!
Alright. So we have a pretty
mono-sounding synth right there.
00:09:53
The question is
what do we do with this now?
Let's see what some of our options are.
00:09:57
First of all, let's work on the sound.
Let's figure out
if it needs to be maybe a little smaller
so that it's not
taking up too much space,
or let's figure out if it needs to be
broader and take up more space.
00:10:08
My first inclination
is to go with something
that will just take the bottom off
of it a little bit,
and kind of give it this floaty
kind of presence in the chorus.
00:10:24
So we're gonna go to FilterBank here
and I'm gonna go
with a sharp slope, 12dB.
00:10:31
And we're going to
filter some of this out.
00:10:42
I'm gonna bypass it.
See if you can hear the difference.
00:10:45
We'll go in and out.
00:10:57
There is a pretty strong mid-range
component in here as well,
so let's see if we can grab that
and deal with that as well.
00:11:15
Somewhere right there. We're just
going to take it out just a little bit.
00:11:21
And maybe we'll go with a narrower Q
so we don't grab as much
of the surrounding area.
00:11:31
And I'll turn it on and off
so you can hear the difference.
00:11:46
Alright.
00:11:47
Let's listen to it in the track
for a sec.
00:12:16
In some ways it's nice in mono,
and maybe that's a good contrast
to everything else that's going on.
00:12:24
Let me see
what we have available though.
00:12:29
There's an effect I like to use sometimes
with this Crystallizer plug-in.
00:12:34
What it does is it kicks the signal
up an octave,
but it does it in a really kind of
interesting way.
00:12:42
So I'm gonna use this preset
that I may have called 8va String-y,
and see what that gives us.
00:12:48
Now I'm gonna play it to you
in full Wet mode,
but it's not gonna end up there.
We're gonna find some kind of balance.
00:12:54
So check this out.
00:13:06
It sounds like it's out of
some weird sci-fi movie, right?
So let's go the opposite way though now.
00:13:12
We're gonna make it completely Dry,
and we're just gonna bring it in a bit.
00:13:15
And check this out.
00:13:35
Okay.
I'm gonna see if I have a tighter one.
00:13:37
I have one here called Tight Octave.
00:13:39
Let's see if
that's a little bit tighter.
00:13:56
Ok. So, let us listen to this
in the context of the track.
00:14:29
I dig that. It creates
a little bit more of an event
when that part does come in.
00:14:34
Now the only question is
is it looks like this part enters
in the first B section.
00:14:40
So let's see if this is applicable
for the first B
or if it just needs
to come on in the chorus.
00:15:04
Let's hear it once bypassed.
00:15:06
Just that first B section.
00:15:26
Now this may be one those things
where we bypass in the first B section,
but when the second B section comes up,
we keep it in.
00:15:33
And I think I want to do that.
00:15:35
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
enable the automation
on the Bypass function.
00:15:42
And what I've done is I've held down
the Ctrl+Option+Cmd keys
and clicked on the Bypass.
00:15:49
And I'm gonna enable the automation
for Bypass.
00:15:52
And then what I'm gonna do also is
I'm gonna make sure it's on.
00:15:55
And now I'm going to look at the bypass
automation for the Crystallizer,
and I'm going to -
just for that region right there -
I'm gonna turn the bypass on.
00:16:11
So, theoretically, I'm gonna hit Play,
and then by the time we hit the chorus,
we'll get the effect.
00:16:30
Great.
00:16:31
And then, I also maybe want to put
a little bit of reverb on this.
00:16:35
And we've got some of
that longer stuff on the lead vocal.
00:16:41
Let's give that a quick shot.
That's bus 10.
00:16:45
And let's see what that gets us.
00:17:04
Ok, I like that a lot.
It might be a little bit too much,
but I like where it's going.
00:17:31
Ok. I think that's all sitting together
really, really well.
00:17:36
Let's pop the lead vocal back in.
00:17:38
And let's take a look at the lead vocal
from the verse going into the chorus.
00:17:42
There's one additional element
that I want to add.
00:17:45
It's an effect that
when I mixed this originally,
I liked so much I printed.
00:17:50
Maybe we can talk about a way or two
that we can get to that,
or the elements that it's composed of.
So... Giving it a listen.
00:19:22
Alright. It's starting to come together.
00:19:24
I rebalanced a few things because
we didn't have the vocal in.
00:19:28
So as you saw, I took the acoustics
down a little bit,
that new String thing
down a little bit...
00:19:34
I took a quick look at my meters
just to make sure
things weren't too out of control,
and I'm actually in a pretty good spot.
00:19:41
We'll touch base on all those
things again real quick,
but I just wanted to let you know
why I made those couple of changes.
00:19:47
Now, getting back to the lead vocal...
00:19:51
Let me play you this effect.
00:19:53
I'm gonna solo the lead vocal as well
so you hear it in context.
00:20:13
Ok. Now I'm gonna solo it
just on its own.
00:20:26
Ok. So let's just
talk about what this is.
00:20:30
It's a delay, obviously.
There's panning on it.
00:20:34
And then there's a filter component
to the delay,
and a little bit of distortion.
00:20:39
So, I have this processor
called the FireworX
and I was able to create this preset.
00:20:45
Now, had I not printed this,
I would have gone along
these same steps.
00:20:49
I would have come up with some type
of a little bit of distortion, and filter,
went into a delay,
and then into a panner.
00:20:57
So let's now hear it
against the lead vocal,
in solo, and we'll find a level for it.
00:21:11
And we'll put it in the track.
00:21:39
Okay. I like the balance of that,
but now, the tremolo guitar,
the Chopper thing,
is becoming a bit distracting,
because it is so loud.
00:21:51
So I am going to
just put a compressor on it,
and in this case, I'm gonna use
the Elysia Mpressor.
00:22:00
And I'm just gonna get this
quickly into a spot
that I know I like to start with.
00:22:07
Let's hit Play,
and let's do a quick adjustment.
00:22:38
Okay.
00:22:40
Let's hear that in the track.
00:23:11
Okay.
I think that's all sounding really good.
00:23:15
And hearing these toms,
this tom that just went by,
I'm wondering if we can get away
with a little bit of EQ on it.
00:23:21
So... Just to bring it out
a little bit more,
and give it a little bit more zip.
00:23:26
I'm gonna brighten it up a little bit
with an API 560.
00:23:31
I'm just gonna add
a little bit of presence...
00:23:33
2K, 4K...
00:23:35
Just a little bit in there.
00:23:38
And let's solo that up
and give it a listen.
00:23:49
I'm gonna
exaggerate it a little bit more,
because I think it probably needs it.
00:23:54
And then maybe we'll just add
a little bump in the low end
to really make it speak.
00:24:02
Ok, and here it is bypassed.
00:24:10
It's a little bit louder as well,
we're gonna turn it down.
00:24:15
Let's hear that in the track.
00:24:29
Alright!
Now let's look at the background vocals.
00:24:33
We have a couple of sets of tracks here,
labeled 1, 2, 3, 4,
and then an additional pair,
let's say 5 and 6.
00:24:41
When I get background vocals like this,
I like to set up an Aux
and send them all to the same place
because generally, they're recorded
on the same mic,
with the same couple of people,
so we'll end up EQ'ing things
in a very similar way most of the time.
00:24:58
And then we'll end up processing
the same way, most of the time.
00:25:02
So I'm gonna set up an Aux,
and I'm gonna funnel
all of these tracks to the same Aux.
00:25:07
So I'm gonna create
one Stereo Aux fader.
00:25:14
Assign it an input.
00:25:16
Let's go Bus... 23-24.
00:25:20
And then all of these background vocals
we're gonna select,
then we're gonna assign them
also to Bus 23-24.
00:25:28
At the moment... We'll label this
"Background Vocal"...
00:25:35
At the moment, I'm gonna solo
all of these things at the same time
and let's listen to it
to see what we're dealing with,
and then also we'll figure out
a blend at the same time.
00:26:10
Alright. That sounds like
Stephen Duffy and Claire Worrall.
00:26:14
Let's see what that sounds like
just like that.
00:26:28
Ok.
00:26:29
And then, the next phrase...
00:26:45
Okay.
00:26:47
And, let's see
what these other parts are here.
00:26:56
Okay. Claire adding in...
another spot part there.
00:27:01
We're gonna pan these
all hard left and right.
00:27:03
Now we have all these things
going to the same two tracks.
00:27:08
So now, I'm gonna process these things
as if they were one track.
00:27:11
In analog tape days you would have
taken all these background vocals
and you probably would have
comp'd them down to two tracks
and then from that point on,
that's what you had.
00:27:19
So it's a little bit of that philosophy.
00:27:21
We're taking a bunch of tracks
and we're making them more manageable
and we're putting a sound on them
that's gonna be complementary.
00:27:28
So let's start with
a little bit of compression.
00:27:32
For this kind of thing,
I like the 1176 by UA.
00:27:40
And we're gonna...
do my little start point.
00:28:04
Hitting pretty hard on the chorus, but
I think it's gonna be okay in context.
00:28:09
You know what?
I'm gonna switch up here.
00:28:11
Instead of doing this,
I think I'm gonna use the Elysia again,
the Mpressor.
00:28:17
Because it'll be a bit more
aggressive on the attack
and I think that might be a cool effect
in this particular case.
00:28:25
So I'm going for a super-fast attack,
I'm going for a ratio of maybe 5:1...
00:28:30
The release I'm gonna keep
kind of fast too.
00:28:33
Let's see what this sounds like.
00:28:35
I'm gonna give it a little more Threshold
as well, and some make-up gain.
00:29:12
Okay. So we've got that,
and now let's do a little EQ,
let's see if we can get it into...
00:29:18
into a nicer place, and a bigger place.
00:29:22
Let's go with the McDSP AE400.
00:29:25
And I'm doing this
for a couple of reasons.
00:29:29
As we talked about with the lead vocal,
we have this dynamic EQ, right?
We were able to take care
of a couple of things
that may be a problem sonically.
00:29:37
I already know I want to
brighten them up a little bit,
so we're gonna go a little bit brighter
right off the top,
and hear that.
00:29:55
Alright. That's actually sounding
pretty good just with that little bit.
00:29:59
Let's listen to the next bit.
00:30:05
Do you hear those T's, and the C's,
the "Ta" and the "Ka"
on the "To" and the "Care"?
Let's see if we can
take care of that a little bit.
00:30:18
And so we'll use our old friend
the side-chain and listen
to see if we can get
into an area that makes sense.
00:30:42
See, right in there,
I think if we do a little...
00:30:46
dynamic dip, I think...
00:30:49
it will help us out a bit
and they won't jump out in the mix,
which is what
we really don't want it to do.
00:30:56
We don't want it
to draw attention to itself.
00:30:59
So let's give this a listen and see.
00:31:03
Ok, we'll give it more Threshold,
or less Threshold,
so it will engage.
00:31:17
Ok. And then I will bypass the band
and we can hear the difference.
00:31:21
Here it is in.
00:31:34
It's helping a little bit, but there's
also a lower frequency component,
and let's find that as well.
00:31:52
Ok. So, I'm gonna go for it
right around there.
00:31:55
Again, same thing,
we'll just bring it down.
00:31:59
Gain reduction down,
when the compressor's engaged.
00:32:04
Give it a little more ratio.
00:32:07
Faster release.
00:32:10
And maybe a little
faster attack on this one.
00:32:27
Ok. Now let's hear it bypassed.
00:32:34
Ok. And we'll put it back in.
00:32:40
It's helping a bit. Now let's listen
to the whole thing in context.
00:32:44
We're gonna pop it into the stereo bus
and give it a listen.
00:32:59
Those S's are still a little harsh.
00:33:02
It seems to be
just this one section here.
00:33:14
Okay.
00:33:17
If we take a look at the files...
00:33:20
We'll probably see
where our trouble areas are.
00:33:27
The "Dom", the "Ta", the "Care"...
00:33:30
We can approach this
in a few different ways.
00:33:32
We can use a de-esser across it,
or we could literally go in here and grab
each of these little bits using Clip Gain
then turn them down.
00:33:41
So I think I'm gonna go this route.
00:33:44
I'm literally just gonna back it down
7, 8 dB
in these sections
where the offending noises happen.
00:33:54
We're gonna start with the background
vocal that'll be on the right hand side.
00:33:58
I'm gonna solo it up.
00:34:00
And let's just go ahead
and grab them all.
00:34:08
Ok. So it's the same process,
I'm gonna...
00:34:12
I'm gonna separate the region,
and then I'm gonna turn down the volume.
00:34:20
And for each one of these
hard consonants...
00:34:23
Now I'm choosing to do it this way
over a de-esser
because I have a lot more control
than just using a de-esser. Sometimes
I will use a de-esser on these things,
but in this particular case, and due to
the circumstances, I am going to
just do it this way. But check it out.
00:34:45
And let's do a quick before and after.
00:34:48
So here we are before the Clip Gain.
00:34:53
And then here we are
after the Clip Gain.
00:34:56
Ok. It comes down a little bit.
And now we can take it down even more.
00:35:01
And almost get rid of that T sound.
00:35:05
That was probably a little too much.
00:35:08
But the goal here is to deemphasize
those hard consonants
so they don't jump out
of the speakers at us.
00:35:15
So I'm gonna continue on this way
because we only have another
couple of words that could be...
00:35:20
that are probably offensive.
00:35:26
I'm gonna mute these other
girl backgrounds for just a second.
00:35:35
Ok. That T we probably
won't have to deal with,
but just to be safe,
I'm just gonna take it down anyway.
00:35:43
So that's the right side.
00:35:45
And then here is the left side.
00:35:49
We're gonna continue on
for the next time,
the "Overdosed on liberty" line,
and see if we have anything
to deal with there.
00:35:59
Okay.
00:36:06
Okay. That V sound is a bit intense,
so we're gonna do that.
00:36:10
And so I'm gonna continue on
with all of these
and do the same kind of a thing
until I get everything under control.
00:36:19
Just a note: it sounds like I'm maybe
interchanging these consonant concepts
with the idea of using a de-esser,
when in reality,
they are all the same basic problem.
00:36:32
You end up getting
a really narrow frequency band,
but really aggressive sounding tone.
00:36:40
And a de-esser is built to do that,
but a de-esser isn't just about S's,
it's about any kind of these
hard consonant sounds as well
that have a really
focused frequency area.
00:36:54
And I'm gonna continue on
in this fashion
with these consonant sounds,
turning them down
just so that - like I said -
they're not gonna jump out at us
when we're listening to the mix.
00:37:05
So, see you on the other side!
00:00:00
Welcome back.
00:00:02
I've gone through these vocal tracks
that we talked about.
00:00:05
I've dipped all the offending consonants
and while I was at it,
I did it on the lead vocal as well.
00:00:12
Same idea. Grab a piece.
Clip Gain it down, and we're good to go.
00:00:18
While I was doing that,
I also have one other track
that was done in the same manner as
that FireworX track on the lead vocal.
00:00:26
We came up with the sound, we dug it,
we printed it and it ended up in the mix
and now I'm gonna incorporate
that sound as well,
but I also went through and did
the process on that sound as well,
because we're being efficient.
00:00:40
So, let's listen to where we are now
before I put this extra track in.
We'll listen to the chorus.
00:00:47
As you can see,
I've done some edits on the lead vocal,
and I've already done them
on the background vocals.
00:00:52
So coming up to the first chorus,
giving it a listen.
00:01:43
Alright. So that's where we are.
00:01:46
I probably have to rebalance
just a few more things here and there,
but this is kind of what I'm going for.
00:01:51
Getting back to this M7 track.
00:01:53
What I've done here is
I've taken a background vocal blend
and I've run it through a Sony M7
processor that I have a preset in
that's supposed to mimic
an AMS dmx delay unit.
00:02:10
One of the qualities of the dmx
that's really nice
is that it has
a bit of brightness to it,
and also you can detune and delay
audio signals with it.
00:02:24
So a common usage would have been
to detune the left side
maybe by 7 to 9 cents in one direction,
so maybe say -7 on the left,
and on the other side,
detune it +5 on the right,
just so there's a little bit
of pitch discrepancy.
00:02:44
And then also delay them a little bit
several milliseconds each time.
00:02:48
And it might even be like 5 ms
on one side, 7 ms on the other side.
00:02:53
Super short.
00:02:54
But what happens is,
as you blend this kind of bright,
kind of slightly detuned,
and slightly delayed sound
against your regular background vocals,
it just adds
a whole extra bit of dimension.
00:03:08
So, based on my description --
there are other ways to get to this --
it's easy to do.
00:03:14
But because
we were so happy with this sound,
I'm gonna stick with this
in this particular application.
00:03:21
I'm gonna solo up the background vocals
and then I'm gonna
just play this one little loop,
so we hear it once without the M7,
and then we'll pop it in.
00:04:01
As you can see,
it definitely adds some top,
it adds some width, and it adds
some excitement to the thing.
00:04:08
I am going to listen down,
and I'm gonna blend this in to taste.
00:04:13
And let's hear it by itself,
just so you can really hear
what it's like on its own.
00:04:32
Cool!
So... Let's listen in the chorus.
00:04:47
Once I get a ratio that I like, I'm also
gonna group these things together
so that if I need to ride them,
they will ride as one unit.
00:04:55
So I'll probably end up doing that
as we're listening down.
00:05:44
Alright. It's coming together.
00:05:46
Now I want to look at the effects and
add some effects on the background vocals.
00:05:50
So I'm going to create a new track.
00:05:56
Assign it a bus...
00:05:59
We'll go Bus 13.
00:06:05
Call it "Background Vocal Verb."
And I think I'm gonna go with
this Rematrix one more time.
00:06:24
Try this Big Background Vocals patch,
then see if this works.
00:06:30
If not, I have something else in mind
that I think would be good,
but let's try this first.
00:06:38
I'm gonna solo them up.
00:07:01
I think I want something
that's a little bit brighter,
and maybe a little bit more vintage
sounding, in this particular case.
00:07:10
So I'm gonna switch this up,
and I'm going to use...
00:07:13
the Lexicon 224.
00:07:17
And we're going to find a...
00:07:21
I think I'm gonna start there...
Small Hall.
00:07:26
And...
00:07:28
And a fairly decent decay time.
Let's listen to this soloed.
00:07:40
Ok. I'm just gonna hit it harder.
00:07:56
Ok. I'm gonna listen to this in context.
00:08:31
I'm also gonna copy it down to the M7,
because that extra bit of brightness
in the M7 track might help us out
hearing the reverb a little bit more,
just changing its color a bit.
00:08:45
I am also going to bring down
the Bass reverb time slightly,
and bring up
the Mid reverb time slightly,
because I want it to be
a little bit more forceful.
00:08:56
Our Pre-Delay is set to 32 ms
and I'm okay with that.
00:09:23
Alright. I'm liking that.
00:09:26
The other thing I want to do is just
add a little delay on the vocal,
on the background vocals as well,
just give it a little repetition,
to see if I can just make it
a little bit grander.
00:09:35
What I have to be careful about is
I want to make sure
we can hear all the lyrics
and everything is still intelligible.
00:09:42
But I think we will be able
to make that happen.
00:09:45
So I'm gonna use...
00:09:48
Let's assign it a bus...
00:09:51
We all know the routine...
13... Bus 14...
00:09:55
Call this "Background Vocal Delay."
UAD has a Cooper Time Cube
and I think that could be
kind of cool for this situation.
00:10:11
Mono/Stereo.
00:10:17
Sync on, so I can time it.
00:10:21
And we're gonna go 1/8th note...
00:10:25
On each side.
00:10:28
Alright. There we go.
00:10:32
And we're gonna assign this to Bus 14.
00:10:36
I'm gonna solo up the background vocals,
and let's just hear
where we are with this.
00:10:46
And we're also gonna increase the decay
right off the bat
so we can hear some repeats.
00:11:20
Ok. So we'll play it back without it.
00:11:46
Now I'm gonna over exaggerate it a bit
so we can really hear the effect.
00:12:05
Then I'm gonna split
the difference a little bit,
and the other thing I'm gonna do...
00:12:09
The delay sounds cool
but it might be a little bottom-y.
00:12:13
So I'm gonna put a high-pass filter
after the plug-in.
00:12:18
I'm gonna go up maybe... to 300.
00:12:21
Let's see what that sounds like.
And I'm gonna go sharp. 18.
00:12:25
Actually let's go 24 and back it off
just a little bit more.
00:12:29
My thinking is that
I don't want to take up too much space
but I want to hear the repeats.
00:12:33
So, check this out. Here it is out.
00:12:52
I'm gonna actually
go a little bit higher.
00:12:56
And I'm gonna increase the amount of
delay just a little bit more on the send.
00:13:08
Ok. So we just get
like a little flutter at the end
as opposed to when it's bypassed.
00:13:20
It sounds like there's a little more
chest on it when it's bypassed.
00:13:24
So I'm preferring not to have
that much information
in the low end on the delay.
00:13:32
So let's hear it in the track.
00:14:22
Alright!
I think that's feeling pretty good.
00:14:27
Now what I am noticing is it sounds
like I'm overcompressing
my Stereo bus compressor.
00:14:33
So... Way earlier,
when I put this stereo trim fader in,
it was for this very reason.
00:14:42
If I start feeling like
I'm hitting something too hard
in that Stereo Bus chain,
I have a very easy way to trim down -
or trim up if I didn't think
I had enough gain - the mix.
00:14:54
So I'm gonna bring this back a few dB
and check out how it clears itself up.
00:15:00
Right now
it's getting a little too compressed
in the loudest parts of the chorus.
00:15:05
But listen...
Well, let's listen without the change,
and then we'll listen with it.
We're coming up to the first chorus.
00:15:28
Ok. Now I'm gonna bring it back...
00:15:32
I'm gonna bring it back 4dB
and let's see what happens
if we come back that far.
00:16:00
So, that's got the feel back to me.
00:16:03
I don't feel like I'm on the verge of it
totally falling apart
and I don't feel like it's sitting
in compression the whole time
which is what I was
really trying to avoid.
00:16:11
Let's do this example one more time
with the Stereo Bus trim.
00:16:17
I want you to listen to the kick drum,
and to the snare
and just listen to how,
at the current level,
they're starting to fold.
00:16:26
They're starting to become undefined
and a little murky.
00:16:29
I want to try to avoid that
as much as possible.
00:16:49
The sound almost starts getting
two-dimensional,
it just feels like it's all coming
and just becoming compacted
in a not very fun way.
00:16:57
So we're gonna go down four dB
and now let me play it back to you
with less compression.
00:17:22
So... It makes a difference, that bit.
00:17:25
We're getting toward the end of our...
of getting everything in here,
and we have a couple of piano parts.
Let's explore these real quick
to see what they are
and see what we need to do with them.
00:17:34
Looks like
they only play the first verse
and up until the first chorus.
So, listening.
00:17:50
Alright, and then on this track,
it looks like maybe it's in reverse.
00:18:07
Alright.
00:18:08
So we've got one forward
and one backward.
00:18:11
So, what happens if we pan these...
00:18:15
Let's see what happens,
what they sound like...
00:18:35
So... Because that second one there
came on so hard,
I think what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna fade this one up.
00:18:44
I'm gonna crossfade these two
so that we create a fade up.
00:18:54
And also fade out the track below
so it sounds like a nice transition.
00:19:07
Ok, as opposed to
what we just had a second ago,
which is a hard transition.
00:19:14
Ok, that jump on the right...
Not very cool.
00:19:17
I'm gonna crossfade these
so we get a nice transition.
00:19:27
Ok. I'm gonna group them together.
00:19:33
Piano V1.
00:19:37
I'm gonna make them both the same level
and then I'm gonna bring them down
and we'll figure out a level
for them in the track.
00:19:45
Now the question becomes - because
we have this really wide panning guitar
that comes in halfway through the verse -
if we pan these really wide,
we might lose some of the effect.
00:19:57
What I might do is just keep them
closer to the center
and keep them around the vocal
just so that we're adding
kind of a little layer of dimension
from the center to the sides as well.
00:20:10
Let's see if this grand theory works.
00:20:58
That's not too bad!
And then for good measure...
00:21:03
let's run this
through the Cooper Time Cube.
00:21:08
Both sides.
00:21:10
And just see if it just
splashes things around a little bit
in an interesting way.
So we're gonna solo this up.
00:21:16
We'll solo just the one for a second.
00:21:36
Ok. Now, let me bypass it.
00:21:46
It might be a little too loud,
but I like the effect.
00:21:48
I like the way
it's spreading things around and...
00:21:52
and brightening them up a little bit.
00:21:54
Probably because of
the filter we have on there,
taking out the low end, just giving it
a little extra something.
00:22:01
So let's listen to this soloed.
00:22:22
It's pretty cool!
Let's check it out in the track.
00:23:11
I think that's working really well.
00:23:13
I want to point something out here, and
this happens to me every once in a while
but you may have noticed that
I've barely done anything
to the drums EQ-wise.
00:23:26
But it's all sounding good to me.
00:23:28
I may want to experiment right now
brightening up the overheads a touch
now that I've gotten all this stuff in.
00:23:37
But I'm really digging it,
I really love the feel of it,
I really like the space on everything.
00:23:43
So in that spirit, I'm going to...
00:23:46
I think I'm gonna try the API.
00:23:49
It might be a little too much,
the API 550, but let's see.
00:23:54
And I'm gonna go to 15k and I'm just
gonna open up the top
on each of the overheads
at 15k.
00:24:03
All I'm trying to do is just give us
a little bit more definition
on the cymbals when the cymbals hit,
but without having to take care
of the rest of the kit.
00:24:12
Or without having to affect
the rest of the kit, I should say.
00:24:15
So... Bypassed.
00:24:19
And then I'll kick them in...
partway through the verse.
00:24:54
Let me solo them up
just so you can hear what's going on.
00:25:01
Headphones Recommended
I know it seems subtle
when you listen to it on its own, but...
00:25:27
for some reason in the track,
it seems to be adding a lift.
00:25:31
I don't know if I have
a great explanation for this,
but sometimes this kind of thing
happens because remember,
we're totally in an interactive place
with all of these things.
00:25:39
So I'm not fooling myself, let's do
this test one more time across the track.
00:25:44
I'm gonna mute the lead vocal, just so
we can concentrate on the rhythm section.
00:25:49
Listening with headphones is recommended
Yeah, it just gives us
a bit more clarity in the cymbals,
it gives us a little bit more presence
on the snare and on the hat.
00:26:23
So I'm gonna roll with this.
00:26:25
At this point, I think I'm ready
to turn on some automation
and make a few moves, and really
just bring these sections to life.
00:26:34
Normally what I like to do is
start with the lead vocal,
especially when I feel like the mix is
coming together and it's feeling good.
00:26:41
I start here because
this is still the center of the record
at the end of the day,
on this kind of record.
00:26:46
We want to make sure we can hear
the vocal and all the nuances there.
00:26:50
So I'm just going into Touch mode
in the automation
and I'll write a pass.
00:28:32
Ok! So that's a first initial pass.
00:28:35
And at this point,
I'll put the automation in Trim mode.
00:28:41
It moves my faders to zero.
00:28:45
And it allows me
to write automation moves
over top of my initial automation moves.
00:28:51
Why is this important?
If I like the slope of what I did
and just want to
make a few incremental changes,
or for that little section,
just bring it up or down a little bit,
I can do it without blowing over
the automation that I've written already.
00:29:07
So what I'm gonna do now is
I'm gonna play it a little bit
and if there is a spot that's bugging me
I'll probably roll back
and then do a quick little fix.
00:29:32
So right there, "Cause when you"
might have been a little soft.
00:29:35
I'm just gonna bring it up.
00:29:40
I'm gonna give myself
a little more room
so that I can actually make the move.
00:30:01
Ok.
00:30:36
Ok. Right there,
right at the top of that chorus,
we're gonna switch gears for a second,
but I'm reacting to something
each time the chorus starts.
That first power guitar that comes in
is cool, but it's pretty overwhelming.
00:30:52
So I'm gonna grab that...
00:30:55
Actually I want to confirm that's it, so
the first thing I'm gonna do is mute it
and see if that's actually
what's offending me when it comes in.
00:31:14
Yeah. Now check it out with this part in
and listen to the first chorus, how
it's not quite defined when it hits.
00:31:32
It's just a little bit too obtrusive.
00:31:36
So I think I'm just gonna do
a quick ride on that
so it's just not as splatty,
or as aggressive when it comes in.
00:31:43
And the first chord before the chorus
I'm gonna bring down as well
so we can have
a little bit more of a build.
00:31:49
So let's check this out.
00:32:12
Ok. I didn't love that,
but I think
I understand what I need to do.
00:32:17
I like the attack on the downbeat
but I think maybe it's just
a little too long of a sound.
00:32:24
So...
00:32:25
We can do one or two things.
We can take a look at our compressor
and we can see how fast it's decaying.
00:32:31
Maybe we can fix it
by changing the Release
and making the Release faster
on the compressor.
00:32:37
Or we can write in the automation.
00:32:39
So let's see what happens
if we change the Release.
00:32:47
Ok, our Release right now
is just about at 5,
and now I'm gonna move it faster.
I'm gonna put it up -
let's put it up all the way to 7.
And let's see what happens.
00:33:11
Ok, here it is back at 5.
00:33:24
I'm gonna end up
doing a combination of both.
00:33:26
I kind of like the faster Release,
but I'm also gonna do a couple of rides
just to enhance it
and then bring it back. So...
00:33:34
so we get a little bit more
of the power chord push.
00:33:37
So... Here we go!
Alright. I figured it out
just as I started to hit Play.
00:34:36
It seems like the attack on the first
chord of the chorus was really strident
but the attack on the second chord, maybe
it's how it was voiced, wasn't.
00:34:46
What I ended up doing is I ended up
riding down the first of the two chords
and then leaving the second
of the two chords where it is.
00:34:53
That seems to have taken care of
the problem I was having
with hearing nice attacks on each one.
00:35:00
One other thing I want to touch on
is the background vocals.
00:35:04
Let's make sure
we have all of our intelligibility
and making sure it sits nice
against the lead vocal.
00:35:24
Right there,
I want that "Dumb" to come up, so...
00:36:16
Alright!
Just kind of in the final stages now.
00:36:19
I want to take a look at my mix
and see where I am level-wise.
00:36:23
So remember I'm using this meter
with a K scale, K14 scale.
00:36:28
And I want to hit in this range
between 0 and +4, or so,
maybe even a little bit harder.
00:36:35
I want to make sure I leave enough room
for the mastering engineer
to do their thing, but I also want
to be able to preserve the sound
and the intent of my mix
at the same time.
00:36:43
And also, we want to make sure
when we pass it on to the artist
that they get excited about it
and they feel like it's competitive -
or at least in the ballpark -
to other things
that they're used to hearing.
00:36:55
So let's take a look
to see where we are.
00:37:09
We're a little lower
than where I want it to be.
00:37:11
So, what are our options?
I could do a few different things.
00:37:16
Right now I have that hardware insert,
and then I have the Massey at the end.
00:37:20
I could either try and gain stage it up
a little bit
by adding another gain element
between these two things,
or I could see what happens
when I bring up the Massey threshold
and see if it gets me in the ballpark
and see if it changes the feel too much
from what I'm after.
00:37:36
Let's give it a listen
and let me just try this first,
and see if I'm happy with the result.
00:38:42
I'm really digging this.
00:38:44
I'm able to get some more level.
00:38:47
If you noticed, I'm getting barely
any gain reduction from the limiter,
so I'm really not hitting it that hard.
00:38:53
But I'm able to get
the overall level in a range
that really makes sense in the long run.
00:39:00
There's room for the mastering guy,
there's still plenty of dynamics going on,
and I can be confident that
as it moves on,
the mix integrity is gonna stay.
00:39:12
Now,
if I put another gain element in here,
depending on what it is,
it may or may not
change the sound a lot.
00:39:21
So for example, instead of moving this
up to 9 to get what I wanted,
I could have put
a Trim plug-in in there,
and I could have turned it up then.
00:39:30
And I have to gang them together.
I can boost the gain in there.
00:39:34
And in effect, we're gonna basically
be doing the same thing
as turning down the threshold
on the Massey, right?
Because with the Massey...
00:39:45
if we increase the gain going into it,
it's just about the same as me
decreasing the threshold, right?
I'm changing the gain
at the input point of the plug-in.
00:39:56
So whether I do it here,
or whether I do it here
may not be of a large consequence.
00:40:03
What would be of a larger consequence
is the plug-in that I use
to get the extra gain.
00:40:08
So if I - instead of using the Trim -
if I go ahead and use the McDSP...
00:40:17
E606, for example,
and do the gain here,
and even if I added a little input gain
and a little output gain,
we're gonna get the color of this plug-in
in addition to the gain.
00:40:32
So it's a personal choice,
or it's a choice to make,
and it may be something to explore,
to say "Oh, well,
maybe I need a little more gain,
but maybe I can put
this other element in and it will
add in a little extra bit
of mojo to it as well."
I am happy with what I just did
so I'm not gonna go down that road.
00:40:52
I actually really am thrilled with
the way this sounds and the way it feels.
00:40:56
So I'm gonna leave it at that.
I think it's ready for me to print.
00:41:00
And it's ready to send on
to the producer, to the artist,
and to anyone else who is gonna have
to deal with the file
before it gets released.
00:41:08
The one last thing I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna create a Master track
to record this to.
So I'm gonna create a Stereo Audio track.
00:41:17
I'm going to take the output
and assign it to my monitor output,
which in this case are D 15-16, and...
00:41:26
B 11-12. And again this is so
you fine folks at home
can hear what we're doing.
00:41:31
I'm gonna assign the input to bus 3-4.
00:41:36
And I'm gonna take the output
of my Stereo Bus track
and I am going to send that to bus 3-4.
00:41:43
Now what I've done in effect is I've -
instead of monitoring
through the Stereo Bus track -
we are going to monitor through
the audio track that is being fed
from the Stereo Bus.
00:41:54
So I'll name the track.
00:41:56
Don't...
00:41:59
Don't Stop Talking.
00:42:03
PureMix.
00:42:07
I'm gonna put it on input
and I'm gonna hit Play
just to make sure we're hearing it.
00:42:15
Ok. And then the last thing I need to do
which I haven't done
is I'm gonna put
an end fade on it real quick.
00:42:21
I'm just gonna find my Master Fader
on my controller...
00:42:24
Which is right here...
00:42:27
And I'm gonna do a fade.
00:42:57
Great!
Now it's ready to print.
00:43:01
One other thing I like to do in the
interest of efficiency and consistency,
I like to make sure I start every file
I print at the same point.
00:43:12
So if I go Vocal Up, Vocal Down,
Instrumental
if I do it three weeks from now,
or two months from now,
everything is exactly the same length
and it starts in the same spot.
00:43:21
I'm gonna set that up this way,
and... here we go!
We'll take it from there.
00:43:28
Ciao amici!
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Song:
"Don't Stop Talking" by Robbie Williams
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Copyright Farrell Music Limited/Robbie Williams 2016 all rights reserved. For personal use only not for reproduction, copying or exploitation by any means or in any manner
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 has 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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