In Episode 3 of our Lifeboats Series, Legendary Mixer, Mick Guzauski, opens the multitrack for Will Knox’s Lifeboats onto his Avid S6 console and takes us all the way from hearing the song for the first time, through to a completed mix with his signature sound imprinted upon it.
See How Mick:
Sets up his Avid S6 console for effortless navigation
Adds rhythm and movement to percussive synth parts with creative delays
Uses manual gating to achieve the right feel on a kick drum
Carefully crafts piano reverbs
Uses multiple reverbs to build unique spaces and textures for individual instruments
Sculpts the top end of the mix using the Manley Massive Passive
Uses a Fairchild 670 to slow down transients and thicken the drum bus
Watch Mick Guzauski's episode of our exclusive Lifeboats series, only on puremix.net
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00:00:07 Hi! I'm Mick Guzauski.
Welcome to my classroom today.
00:00:11 We've got a lot of important
information to cover,
so don't f*ck around!
What we are mixing today
is a song by the artist Will Knox,
produced by Fab Dupont.
00:00:22 I just got the tracks in yesterday,
so I just had a chance
to set them up and look at them.
00:00:26 We're going to be exploring this mix
right from the beginning with everybody.
00:00:30 I want to show you
how I did set the tracks up.
00:00:33 I'm using this Avid S6,
so I set my sessions up
to lay out very nicely on this console.
00:00:40 What I do is I take
groups of instruments.
00:00:43 Here we have bass DI and bass mic,
and all the drums,
and I put them on a VCA.
00:00:49 And then, if we go down,
percussion is on a VCA,
keyboards on another VCA,
guitars on a VCA,
and vocals on another VCA.
00:01:04 And then each of these groups
of tracks are split further
and assigned to Stereo Aux Inputs.
00:01:09 As you can see here I've got Bass,
Drums, Percussion,
Piano/Organ,
Synths 1, Synths 2,
Guitars 1, Guitars 2,
Harmony Vocal and Lead Vocal.
00:01:20 So, how I'm going to
set this up on the S6,
you see those Stereo Auxes
which are Audio Subgroups,
I'm going to set up here,
and I'll set the VCAs up here
and I'll show you why.
00:01:31 Here, let's go to the Tracks window,
and we see every track
that's in there is here,
so now I can assign,
and I'll assign these five VCAs.
00:01:44 We have Bass and Drums,
Percussion,
Keys,
Guitars,
Vocals,
and I want them convenient
so I'll just put them on 12-16, like that.
00:01:56 There are the five VCAs.
00:01:58 Let's assign the Stereo Subgroups
to go over on the right-hand side
of the console.
00:02:03 Bass, Drums, Percussion...
00:02:05 All through these,
there are ten of them.
00:02:09 Master, which is the VCA master
for everything,
Master, which is the Audio master
for everything,
the track we're going to mix to,
and that's it.
00:02:20 So we'll put this over
on the right side of the console,
we'll scroll over here and start at 17.
00:02:25 Okay.
00:02:26 So I have all my Audio Groups here.
00:02:29 The vocals I'm probably going to want
to ride from the individual tracks
instead of the Groups,
so I'm going to take the two lead vocals
and make room for those.
00:02:38 They're here,
and we'll put those on faders 31 and 32.
00:02:42 Okay, now they are there.
00:02:44 And then
there is a harmony vocal
which is
right there,
and we'll put that back down here
on fader 11.
00:02:58 So now I have this whole mix
laid out here in 22 faders.
00:03:03 Now, the way the VCAs work in the S6
is anytime you Attention a VCA
you can set it up so that it will Spill,
so if I want to work on the balance
of the bass and drums,
I press that.
00:03:17 We've got the bass
and all the drums up on these.
00:03:19 If I want the percussion,
there is the percussion here,
and what's normally there stays
because there are only
three percussion tracks.
00:03:28 Keys.
00:03:31 Let me pull these down.
00:03:34 So you can see where these green
lights are is where the tracks are.
00:03:38 The VCA is Spilled there.
00:03:40 As soon as I hit Menu,
it goes back to whatever was
assigned to those tracks.
00:03:45 Guitars,
and vocals.
00:03:48 Okay, so,
I have that set up and now
I want to save that as a Layout.
00:03:52 Store,
and then this Layout page comes up.
00:03:56 You can have 96 Layouts per song,
and I very rarely use
anywhere near that much.
00:04:02 So let's say this Layout 1
will be our mix.
00:04:10 The song starts out
with the piano,
organ comes in,
and guitars come in.
00:04:18 Now, these are all on separate VCAs,
but I want to start building the mix
with these elements that are
the main elements of the song
all within reach,
so what I will do is I will make
a second Layout here.
00:04:31 I stored that first one,
and now,
I'm not going to need
these Group faders for a while
because I will be working
on getting the balances in the section,
so I'm going to put what I'm going to
start the mix with here.
00:04:44 I'm going to put bass DI now,
just to have it,
piano,
organ,
guitars,
and the lead vocal.
00:05:02 And let's put those starting at 17 again.
00:05:06 Okay.
00:05:07 So now,
I wiped out these being there,
but that doesn't matter because
I'm going to just store it
as another Layout.
00:05:23 These Layouts will save with the session,
so I'll save the session now.
00:05:27 So, when I load this session back up,
those Layouts will come back with it.
00:05:32 So we have this,
let's go to the top of the song,
and...
00:06:18 So I've got a rough mix of the
core elements of the song here.
00:06:21 Now I can go back to the original Layout,
so I'll recall the 'mix' Layout.
00:06:28 Now, if you look at the 'mix' Layout,
Bass and Drums,
I just have that one bass track up,
because that's from the mix.
00:06:36 Keys, you see the piano
and the organ are up.
00:06:39 Guitars, they are all there.
00:06:41 So now I have something to build on
and I can start with the
rhythmic elements here
by Spilling this Bass and Drums VCA.
00:07:21 I only do this part,
what I've showed you so far,
if I haven't been given
a rough mix by the producer,
just so I can put the song
together real quick,
hear what it is,
then I'll print it and just have it
as a reference for parts
before I start the mix.
00:07:37 And since I don't have a rough,
it also made me more familiar
with what I'll be working with here.
00:07:42 Now that we know
what different things will do,
let's just start with the rhythm section.
00:07:47 What I'll do is I'm just going to pull
all the faders back down.
00:07:52 Now, I would have printed
that rough mix to refer to.
00:07:55 I did it earlier, so you'll be able to
hear it if I need to refer to it.
00:07:59 So let's start with the Bass and Drums.
00:08:03 I just hit that VCA,
and the Bass and Drums
spill all over here,
so I have this section.
00:09:24 Right now I'm just doing
preliminary EQ on the snare.
00:09:27 I just needed it to be brighter.
00:09:29 I'm just going to be putting
together the drum balances
and EQ'ing things as I go,
and also, while we are mixing,
I'll be going back and forth
spilling this VCA out here
to tweak the drums
more and more precisely
as we get further into the mix,
but right now I just want something
I can work with here.
00:10:47 The overheads sound really nice
the way they are,
and actually we have a lot
of the kit in there too,
so let's sort of build it
from this, I guess.
00:11:42 Now we'll go for these toms.
00:11:44 I don't see any leakage,
so I'm sure these were overdubbed.
00:11:56 I'll zoom in a little tighter on them.
00:12:41 What I'm doing with EQ'ing
this floor tom
is I'm adding here a little over 5 kHz,
getting a little attack on it.
00:12:51 There's the fundamental of the drum there,
at about 90 Hz, it looks like.
85 or 90.
00:12:57 But I'm boosting here at 45 Hz,
an octave below that,
and fairly broad.
00:13:03 The reason I'm doing that is because
I want to catch whatever is in that drum
below the fundamental,
just to give it a little more weight.
00:13:16 That's how I've EQ'ed this tom.
00:13:17 I'll just show you the difference
if we boost the fundamental.
00:13:33 Okay, now let's work on the rack tom.
00:13:38 I'm just going to copy
this equalizer down here.
00:13:42 On the rack tom I just want to boost
a little bit at the fundamental.
00:13:45 I will not go below that,
I'm not trying to grab a lower frequency
than the main tone of this drum.
00:13:58 There's a good starting point
for the toms.
00:14:05 I'll take it off Loop.
00:14:30 I will put this plug-in in,
this Oxford TransMod,
and just boost the attack.
00:14:58 I'll try a little bit to get some
subharmonic in this kick also,
so let me go to Avid's...
00:15:05 ...Pro Subharmonic plug-in.
00:15:15 A little less of it here.
00:15:26 Great. It's a really nice
low end on the kick there.
00:15:30 Let's live with that for a while.
00:15:44 I'm just listening to these room mics now.
Let's see what we have.
00:16:09 I normally would compress the room,
but this room sounds
pretty good the way it is,
and also, I'm not sure
how much I have to increase
the density of the sound
by compression
until I get more instruments in here,
so I'm going to hold off on that.
00:16:23 Now let's check out the bass.
00:17:13 I think the DI really sounds, like,
very close to what I would like for this,
but I want to compress it a little bit.
00:17:19 I'll go here and use
the Universal Audio LA-2A.
00:17:24 I always like the sound of it
for a bass like this.
00:17:26 It's got a slow but very smooth attack,
and medium release,
and it's very warm-sounding.
00:17:31 It keeps it under control
without it sounding compressed.
00:18:33 Okay, so we got the drums
and bass pretty close.
00:18:36 Let's listen to the percussion.
00:19:41 I don't feel entirely happy with the kick.
00:19:43 Let's try something else here too.
00:19:54 We'll take this Kick In
track here and duplicate it.
00:20:01 Now, on the duplicate,
I'll take the plug-ins off
and I'm going to take it off
the 'drums' Group.
00:20:14 And what I'm going to do
is I'm going to send it out of
a mono Bus.
00:20:22 I got to cut a little of the beginning
off here so I can move it back.
00:20:31 Now I'm going to advance
the track just a little bit.
00:20:35 And now,
I'm going to put a gate on this track,
and what I'll do with this gate
is we'll send it from that Bus
as a Key Input,
and go to External Key.
00:20:57 I do this because it seems
to be more reliable
than using the built-in Lookahead.
00:21:03 Let's use one of the kick settings here.
00:21:38 What I did was, I felt the kick drum
was just a little too long,
its decay for the other drums,
and I wanted to gate it,
but because it was sort of a soft attack
and had some dynamics on it,
I knew that just putting a gate on it,
the gate wouldn't trigger correctly.
00:21:55 So what I did was I duplicated the track,
moved the duplicate
of the track a little earlier,
put the gate on the original track
and a Sidechain Key from the track
that was advanced a little early
so the gate opens just a hair early
to let the kick drum through.
00:22:12 The gate does have Lookahead,
but I haven't really had great luck
with any plug-ins
that have Lookahead for that purpose,
so I just physically move
a track to do it.
00:22:22 This kick may need a little bit
of compression too.
00:23:00 I'll play it to you with the gate,
this Pro-G, and without the gate.
00:23:04 Here's with.
00:23:24 Hear how the gate shortens it?
That's what I was looking for
so it just wouldn't rumble
through everything like that.
00:23:38 I think I actually have to advance
that other track even a little more
because on some of the
softer attacks it still...
00:23:45 it was, like, just tripping a hair.
00:24:32 There we go!
Now I will un-Spill this VCA,
and let's
go to the guitars first.
00:25:14 Okay.
00:25:30 I'm not quite happy with the way
that kick drum is triggering.
00:25:33 It doesn't trigger nice and solid.
00:25:55 Better.
00:26:06 I'd like to take a little low end off
to get rid of some
of the thump out of the pedal.
00:27:58 I'd like to refine this sound on the
rhythm section just a little bit.
00:28:03 I'll start with the Drums Group.
00:29:17 On the Subgroup
that the drums all mix to
I put an equalizer in,
adding a very gentle shelf
starting at about 2.5 kHz
just to get a little presence
—it's only a little over 1 dB there—
and then adding
a couple of dB at 15 kHz,
just a peak for air.
00:29:34 And then a little bit of 50...
00:29:36 well, just below 50, it's 47,
for just a little bit of weight
on the bottom.
00:29:42 Now that we've got that,
after the EQ, I want to compress
these drums just a little bit,
add a little density
to the track this way,
using this Fairchild 670
plug-in from UA.
00:29:54 I want more of a smoother,
fatter kind of compression,
and I don't want, like, a lot of snap,
but just sort of a nice,
round drum sound on this,
so let's adjust this 670.
00:30:30 And notice how much the compressor
is reacting to the kick drum
versus the other drums,
so what I'm going to do
is filter the Sidechain,
which will take some low end
out of the detector of the compressor
so it will be less sensitive
to the kick drum than the other drums.
00:30:45 I want to sort of set it
so that it will compress the kick
and the snare about even.
00:31:06 I think we're pretty close now.
00:31:08 And also, I don't want this
100% through the compressor.
00:31:12 I want a parallel compressor,
so I'm mixing about 50-50
between dry signal and compressor.
00:32:49 What the compressor is doing is subtle,
but it adds what I call
density to the track
because it's bringing up
any sound between peaks,
so it just makes it a little more
cohesive, a little more dense.
00:33:01 Here's without it again.
00:33:20 So now that we compressed
the drums and your heard that,
let's put the whole rhythm section
back together
and see how this thing all feels.
00:35:50 Okay, now,
I think we need a little space.
00:36:01 A little reverb on some of this stuff,
mainly in the drums.
00:36:08 And let's...
00:36:11 ...find something here that works.
00:36:21 I'll Spill that VCA,
and now I have the Sends here.
00:37:10 It might be a little long,
so I'm going to adjust it.
00:37:12 I think this sounds like
the right algorithm to use.
00:37:16 This is the Exponential Audio
Phoenix Verb.
00:38:05 I feel a little too much there.
00:38:18 Let's hear how it sounds in the toms.
00:38:26 I can probably use a little more.
00:38:39 Okay, we'll go with that for now.
00:00:00 Now, I know we have
more keyboards to put in,
but I want to get to the lead vocal
now that we have a good bed
for him to sing against.
00:00:58 I put that equalizer in,
what I just did was
remove some of the low end,
not to affect his voice
but just get rid of a little room rumble
and rumble around the microphones,
and just the low frequency noise,
I'm trying to get that out.
00:01:11 And I think I'd like to add
a little air to his voice up here.
00:01:48 I'm putting an LA-2A compressor there.
00:01:50 I'll just set it up very, very gently now
and adjust it when we're in the track.
00:02:09 Okay, and then one other thing
we're going to need on him
is a de-esser.
00:03:22 Let's find a nice reverb for him.
00:03:32 So I'm setting up the reverb
for the lead vocal.
00:03:35 What I'm going to do here
is go to an External Insert
and go to the Bricasti M7.
00:03:43 And here is something very cool
because Exponential now makes a plug-in
that controls the Bricasti M7
and also saves all the parameters
in the Pro Tools sessions,
so we can actually use
an outboard reverb
and still have instant recall
and all the benefits
of doing it In The Box.
00:04:01 Now let's see what we got.
00:05:00 We're just going through
some different reverb programs
for the lead vocal,
I found one I like for now,
and now I'm going back
and tweaking some other things
to work with the mix as it is.
00:05:10 This piano that's in the intro,
I just want to make it a little brighter
and maybe a little more ambient.
00:05:28 So let me try...
00:05:31 I'm going to put Altiverb here.
00:05:33 Now, notice on this I'm not doing
just an Echo Send and an Echo Return
because this reverb is going to be
exclusive just to this one instrument,
so I might as well just put it in line
and just adjust the Mix
right within the plug-in.
00:05:45 I'm going to try
this User Program here that I set up.
00:05:50 It's actually a sample convolution
of this Eventide SP2016,
the old, original Stereo Room program
that's got a really nice characteristic
I like for a lot of things.
00:06:01 And here is what I sampled
at 3.2 seconds.
00:06:33 The Pre Delay is just to
separate the onset of the reverb
from the dry signal,
because in a real room
the reverb doesn't happen instantly.
00:06:42 The sound has to hit the wall,
do some early reflections,
and then, you know,
get more diffuse into the reverb.
00:06:48 Also, on this I'm adding
a little length on the top end,
so what I'm trying to do
is make this piano sort of bright
without being harsh.
00:06:56 And then I'm mixing it
at about 25% reverb
and the rest is dry signal,
and I added a little top to it too.
00:07:14 Let's see how that works in the track.
00:07:55 So what I'll do now is,
I noticed he's got a separate
vocal track for the bridge,
so I'll just start by using the same
settings as the other one.
00:08:02 So I'm just going to copy
the plug-ins with their settings
to the bridge vocal track.
00:08:27 Let's hear how this all
works in context here.
00:08:51 I'll go for a little different
character on the vocal there,
so I'm going to add a couple more
Sends and Returns here.
00:09:09 I always take the extra time
to label stuff as I'm working.
00:09:14 If somebody else has to go
through the session later on,
or even if I have to go
back to it months later,
I like a nice, organized session
and I can see exactly
what's bused where,
exactly what I did.
00:09:27 It saves time in the end.
00:09:29 So I'm going to add a little
delay on the lead vocal here.
00:09:33 Let's go to the EchoBoy.
00:09:37 Let's make sure it's synced to the track.
00:09:39 It is.
00:09:41 A light bit of Feedback.
00:09:44 Mix all the way Wet,
because it's on a Send/Return.
00:09:47 I'll do a little Ping-Pong echo.
00:09:49 Okay, that should be close,
and on this one, the one that says
lead vocal doubler,
we're going to use a little bit of,
also from SoundToys,
the MicroShift.
00:11:49 Okay, on the lead vocal
I wanted to get a nice, natural sound,
so we just have a little bit of reverb,
a little bit of compression,
and he has some EQ.
00:11:58 But then,
as the track gets bigger
and more dense in the bridge,
rather than just make the vocal louder
I want to give it
a little different character,
a little more space,
so I added a delay
and also the MicroShift,
which is basically two harmonizers;
one tuned up and one tuned down,
slight modulation on them,
left and right,
so it gives it an electronic
double of the voice,
and it sounds great
unless you use too much!
I'm going to pull a little midrange
out of her to...
00:12:57 ...clean it a little bit.
00:13:09 I cut off some unneeded low end,
which doesn't sound
like it's a problem there,
but in case something happens.
00:13:19 So that looks good.
I don't think we need a de-esser on her.
00:13:23 I'll try a little bit of that...
00:13:27 ...Altiverb 2016 that we used before,
but not quite as long.
00:13:34 There, 2016 at 2.8 seconds.
00:13:47 Pre Delay.
00:13:49 A little more than we used before.
00:14:00 This reverb is quite a bit thinner
and brighter than the lead reverb,
but I think that might be a nice effect.
00:14:06 Let's check that out.
00:14:21 This sticks out a little bit
on the word 'honey'.
00:14:25 A little bit too much.
00:14:26 I'll try a little compression,
and if that doesn't work right
when we get everything together here
and start doing rides,
I'll have to just ride that vocal down
on that word every time.
00:15:04 I think I'll have to do it by riding it
because it's really not louder,
it just cuts through a little more.
00:15:09 Let me see if that organ
is balanced with everything.
00:15:11 I haven't really been paying
much attention to that.
00:15:58 What I'm going to do now is I'm just
going to go back through
and just make sure,
now that we have the vocals in,
that the guitar levels
and the keyboard levels
that we have so far
are close to being right.
00:17:26 Okay, so,
I'll go back to the Keys Group.
00:17:37 I just want to point out
one nice thing about the S6,
is that
when you Spill a Group,
or whenever there is
an audio track on a channel,
you get the waveform right there.
00:17:50 When you're exploring a song
and mixing for the first time,
and you don't know exactly
where everything is,
you can really see
what's coming up where.
00:21:34 Let's get a little bit of space
in some of this.
00:21:36 We see this synthesizer here.
00:21:44 It has left and right,
but it's pretty much a mono signal.
00:21:47 Let's just delay it by moving
the track a little bit
and see if we give it
a little space like that.
00:22:05 I just want to put it
in mono for a second
to make sure that we're not
going to cancel it too much
by moving it.
00:22:17 That's stereo.
00:22:21 So it gives it a nice space
and it doesn't...
00:22:23 I didn't move it so far out of phase
that it's going to cancel in mono.
00:23:00 I love it when that Juno bass
goes subsonic there.
00:23:06 I'll play that again.
00:23:13 That's great!
Now let's think about
what we're going to do
with this stuff spatially here.
00:23:26 I'll try using this Waves PS22 Spread.
00:23:31 There are alternate frequency bands
to left and right
to spread a signal.
00:23:49 That's what I want to do
with that track,
and there's another mono track here
that I want to spread a little bit
in a different way,
which is this one.
00:24:02 And on this I'd like to use...
00:24:09 ...this guy.
00:24:11 I'll widen that out a little bit.
00:24:13 And this plug-in is nice,
but you got to be careful with it
because you can never get unity gain.
00:24:20 You have to rebalance
a little bit when it's in,
it always gets louder.
00:25:03 Now,
I'd like to set up a couple of Send/Return
kind of effects on the keyboards.
00:25:12 Let's go to the EchoBoy.
00:25:22 I'm just looking for some ambiences
on these keyboards.
00:25:36 I'll give it a little Ping-Pong echo.
00:25:38 A light bit of Feedback.
00:25:41 Mix all the way Wet
because it's on a Send/Return.
00:27:06 Okay, on this keyboard setup
I have EchoBoy set up
for Ping-Pong echo.
00:27:11 Maybe I have a little too much
Feedback on, I'll just back that off.
00:27:14 And I'm using another Exponential Audio
reverb plug-in called R2,
and the reason I want to use
R2 over Phoenix
is because it has something else.
00:27:24 It has some Chorused reverbs too.
00:27:34 Now, we don't want anything that big,
so let's see what we can find
that's close to what will work for us.
00:28:18 Maybe a little shorter.
00:00:01 I'll just try another reverb on the drums.
00:00:03 This one is a little bright, I think.
00:00:32 That's the Pro-L limiter.
00:00:34 I had this on here to get some gain
while I was doing the rough.
00:00:37 Right now we're not hitting it that hard,
it might be limiting 1 dB.
00:00:40 I'll probably have to use more,
but I just wanted you to see
what I have on the Stereo Bus now.
00:00:46 So I'm going to EQ the Bus
now that we are this far.
00:00:52 I'm going to put in a 20 Hz high-pass.
00:00:55 That will not affect anything, but if
there's any subsonics, they'll be gone.
00:00:59 Actually, I'm not.
00:01:00 There's a subsonic
in that Juno I really like,
so we'll go without that.
00:01:44 Slight shelf on the top
with a little bit of peak
added to it around 6 kHz,
just for presence.
00:01:51 And then,
I'm going to put in
the UAD Manley equalizer.
00:02:00 I really like the characteristics
of the top end of this equalizer,
so I'll use a shelf up here
so it's nice and airy.
00:02:15 With a little boost
way down on the bottom.
00:04:14 I'm just re-EQ'ing the snare a little bit.
00:04:16 In the track, in context,
it sounded a little thin to me,
so I took some of the high end boost off
and added a little at about 100
to make it a little fatter.
00:04:23 I'm really trying to EQ
against what's in the overheads.
00:04:26 The snare is dominating
in the overheads,
so I want to add a little low end
on the close mic
just to fatten it a little bit.
00:05:21 I just bypassed the limiter.
00:05:22 I just want to hear what it
sounds like with no processing
other than the EQ there.
00:08:57 I'm adding an EQ to the kick because
I want to give it a little more top on it
just to hear the attack a little more.
00:09:03 I just find it a little better.
00:09:35 So I'm going to have to adjust
the early trigger for the kick drum
because now we have
several plug-ins in it.
00:09:41 We have other plug-ins
all over the place,
so the delay compensation
is pushing things forward
and now this isn't ahead enough
for the kick,
so we have to move this a little more
and readjust this.
00:11:39 I'm just going back and making
some finer adjustments
on level and EQ and reverb and stuff
now that we've got
most of this together.
00:11:47 There are still two more tracks
we have to put in,
percussion-y kind of synth things,
but I'm just going to wait a minute
until we get all this stuff more together.
00:14:38 I just thought the guitars could use
something spatial and not reverbs.
00:14:46 I think a little chorus
might work nice on that.
00:14:49 I'm going to give it a try.
00:16:24 The next thing I'm going to do here
is I'm going to put a limiter
on the 'Drums' Subgroup.
00:16:29 I'm not doing this to change any sound,
I'm doing this to just even
the peaks out a little bit
before we hit the Master Bus
that has the final limiter
that I haven't put in yet,
it isn't going to have to work as hard,
it's not going to catch
the really high drum peaks
that will be caught
by this limiter before that.
00:17:46 Now we'll get a little
extra gain with this.
00:18:08 Okay, so now that we have
everything in pretty good shape here,
I want to put those last two
little percussion synth guys in.
00:20:21 What I did here
was to use a plug-in called Crystallizer,
which is a pitch shift
and a spliced delay,
it has random feedback
so it just pretty much
chops stuff up and repeats it.
00:20:33 And I've got it tuned an octave up
so it makes these little
percussion parts...
00:20:44 And I think that works really cool
for this instrumental reintro here.
00:21:04 That, of course, has to be
muted really quickly,
but I want to find something else
that will work for this.
00:21:24 But maybe I could just automate
the feedback down in that section.
00:21:44 On those first two
we might be able to use that
with this amount of feedback
but we'll just turn the Return way down.
00:21:51 Now I'm going to
automate some of this thing here.
00:21:59 Okay, let's...
00:22:00 What do they call that?
Regenerate.
00:22:25 And what I'm going to do
is I'm going to move this Return
up next to the track now
so I can see exactly what's going on.
00:22:36 So for these first two hits...
00:22:51 And then from here...
00:22:56 ...to here...
00:23:01 ...we want to turn the feedback down.
00:23:51 Okay, I'll take this
right up to the chorus.
00:23:55 I want to bring this...
No feedback at this point.
00:25:06 I'm just going to copy it
to the next B section and chorus.
00:27:41 More feedback at the end here.
Let's see.
00:28:40 I just copied that part
once more at the end
just to see how it would feel with...
00:28:45 Feel that effect and then it would...
00:28:47 As the effect faded, the next one
would come in once more.
00:28:51 Let's see what that does.
00:29:07 I'll have to ride it way down,
but I think it might be cool.
00:29:10 Now we need something more
with this too.
00:29:22 Right now I'm just going to try
a reverb effect,
maybe a little bit of flanger,
a chorus, or something long
with that other effect
on those percussion synths.
00:29:31 I'll try a couple things.
00:31:11 Okay, so what I did there was
I just put in a very bright reverb
fed from the synth tracks
and also from the last effect,
from that Crystallizer effect,
and after the reverb I put a flanger
to just move things around
a little bit.
00:31:27 And obviously right now we're hearing it
in the mix way too loud,
but I think it's going to be
a nice effect and a nice ambience.
00:31:32 Now the next thing I got to do, I guess,
is just start doing the rides
to just make everything gel
and work together.
00:35:28 I'm just starting to deal with
the automation passes.
00:35:30 On that one I was very carefully
listening to how the drums
and the rest of the instruments worked,
and I was riding the drum kit.
00:35:37 I see that we need it more
on the choruses and the bridge,
and not as much in the verses,
and a little more in the B sections,
so I just rode the dynamics
of the drums there.
00:35:45 And I'll go through each track,
sometimes more than one at a time,
sometimes one at a time
to just start getting everything to gel.
00:36:07 I've been tweaking this mix now
for about 45 minutes,
doing rides,
making everything balanced nice,
and I think we have it now,
so I'm going to print it.
00:36:16 I'm going to print it
in real time over here.
00:36:19 With some of the plug-ins I'm using
I can't do Offline high-speed printing,
and I always like to print
in real time anyways,
at least for the master pass
just to know everything is there
and everything sounds right,
so I'm going to just
mark the whole length of the song
and I can just print it.
00:36:38 We haven't listened to it
all the way through.
00:40:28 And there it is!
And at this point I would send this off
to the artist and the record company
as an overnight mix,
and check it out first thing
in the morning again
and just see if there's anything I missed
or anything I'd like to change.
00:40:43 I would do that, incorporate
people's comments,
and we go from there,
and that's it. Thanks for watching!
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Mick Guzauski has won 9 Grammy Awards and mixed over 27 #1 hits. Mick is considered one of the top mix sound engineer and mixer in the world.
Mick's love for both music and technology started when he was in high school. Growing up in Rochester, NY where there were no nearby commercial studios so Mick put together his own studio in parents' basement with equipment that he had begged, borrowed, built, repaired and modified.
In the early '80s, Mick worked with Maurice White and Earth, Wind and Fire at the Complex owned by George Massenburg (the father of parametric EQs in case you did not know...). "Being around George was a great learning experience in both the art of recording and in audio technology," said Mick.
Then in 2013, Daft Punk was looking for an engineer/mixer to team up with on their fourth studio album and at the recommendation of mutual friend Mick got the call. Unlike most dance albums, the sound of Random Access Memories is completely organic and incredibly dynamic (and fat!)
Mick is actually well-known for his natural and organic sound. Have a look at his pureMix videos and pay attention to his subtle eq and compression move. Whatever he does, it always sounds unprocessed, real and sweet to the ear.
Will Knox is an alt-folk troubadour from Hammersmith, London. Knox has supported artists such as Art Garfunkel, Pete Francis (of Dispatch), and Tyrone Wells.
His visionary melodies, hooks, and intricate arrangements create a stunning world where songs may hold shadow and darkness, but there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.
Will Knox is an alt-folk troubadour from Hammersmith, London. Knox has supported artists such as Art Garfunkel, Pete Francis (of Dispatch), and Tyrone Wells.
His visionary melodies, hooks, and intricate arrangements create a stunning world where songs may hold shadow and darkness, but there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.
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.
It's a pleasure to watch and learn from these surgeons with their finely sharpened scalpels, until I look down and realize I'm holding a power saw.
kirk-leo
2021 Feb 11
Beautiful touch! Thank you Mike
YXuZjfph
2020 Dec 26
Brilliant series.. would enjoy seeing more of these!
room.s
2020 Jul 26
su forma de trabajar es muy limpia, me encanta!
pablo.de
2020 Apr 12
Sometimes I want to keep seeing Mick, too bad there aren't that many videos of him
Note: I hated the sound of the harp
I will gladly remove it from my mix version
Cheers.
EBMusic
2020 Apr 03
Mike is very kind but I agree with some comments that the mix doesn't sound "finished" at the end of the session. Not very creative either but useful for basics techniques.
alexander.as
2020 Mar 15
Mike king
hummarstra
2020 Jan 02
What a master!!!! He reminds me of a detective with a magnifying glass looking at every detail. If i were a manager or a record executive I would entrust him with EVERY mix. The most impressive mixer I've seen so far.
shaman
2019 Aug 20
Mick G. is such a nice guy, a brilliant teacher and a true gentleman.
Which all is being reflected in his transparent and smooth mixing style,
where every element has its say.
Unfortunatelly in this arrangement there are lots of elements which either
have nothing to say, say exactly the same like other elements or are just very bad taste.
The mute botton would be gold...oh well - can a gentleman be so crude....?
Jihao Zhang
2019 Jun 15
My personal favorite mix. Fantastic tone, great dynamic range, and incredible placement in the sound field. I could listen to this mix all day long. Will probably ignore that synth then. : p
Douglas Shibata
2019 Jun 14
The great balance, soft with body, thanks Mick you are a genius.
Pjjo
2019 May 14
I notice more so with Mick than others although I’ve noticed also with others that we can adjust a parameter...then put it right back to where we moved it from. I’ve noticed myself doing that a time or two...glad to know it isn’t “just” me. I love this idea. This is a “Fab”ulous idea....See what I did there? Lol
Stunny
2019 Apr 05
nice video! but just a little rough-mix feeling.
Gonzalo Quiñones
2019 Mar 22
how can I enlarge the subtitles from my ifhone S6?
jdavis49781
2019 Jan 23
I like your mix the most so far Mick! I really liked your idea with the crystillizer. Adds a really cool vibe. Thx for the video
rmoreno
2019 Jan 22
Nice Mix, He Have The Tone...
Lysandrix
2019 Jan 09
I love Mick. Thanks for posting this.
composermikeglaser
2019 Jan 07
Nice one Mick, I love how his EQ moves are so extreme, yet his mixes still have such a listenable tone to them.
paul.q
2019 Jan 06
What a pleasure it is watching this series.
bildjan
2019 Jan 04
couldnt you just put chorus to any reverb?
mike.lu
2019 Jan 04
Still, what a fantastic idea to have those incredible guys mix the same song. Mick seems to sit somewhere in the middle between Fab & CLA in terms of vibe and "size" of the mix. Fab seems to have the advantage of producing the song and I still love Fab's idea how he put the background vocal into the mix - just a genius idea and effect.
Can't wait for Andrew Sheps now.
Thanks puremix for that series again!
MarcoPolo
2019 Jan 03
I'm really enjoying this series. It's a pleasure to watch Mick work, and that Avid console is "bananas," as Fab would say.
sircletus
2019 Jan 03
Very interesting series. I like Mick's aesthetic. ARP 3 is driving me nuts though! Late and out of tune.
AndyM
2019 Jan 03
This a brilliant series ... so fantastic to see how different mixers get great results .. please more like this where different masters attack the same material ... is much better than just one tutorial ..
M.Y.
2019 Jan 03
Bass's tone is very tight and impressive.
Duplicate force alignment gating is so fine!
