Mixing a Dubstep/Rock Song in Pro Tools
01h 08min
(37)
In this 68 minute video, Fab Dupont reverse engineers his own mix of the dubstep style song called 'Carribean' by Grand Baton.
Fab emphasizes the techniques required to handle and manage a heavily layered electronic music session in ProTools. From stem-mixing, to advanced routing techniques to serious 2-bus hardware processing and special Melodyne tricks to create otherworldly tones, he leaves no stones unturned.
Throughout the video, Fab studies advanced processing and special effects for acoustic and electronic drums, synth-sounding guitars, heavy keyboards and crushed vocals, reverbs and delays
The downloadable session is quite big and you can of course import it in any DAW you like. Enjoy!
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Once logged in, you will be able to click on those chapter titles and jump around in the video.
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:0 - Introduction
- 02:55 - Bass Drum
- 07:06 - Floor Tom
- 10:02 - Snare
- 17:00 - Parallel Compression & Details
- 22:28 - Guitars
- 36:20 - Synths & Fuzz Guitars
- 42:27 - Vocals
- 52:44 - Background Vocals
- 57:30 - Bass
- 58:59 - 2-Bus Processing
00:00:07
Good morning children!
Today, we're going to be attacked
by a pack of angry wolves...
00:00:13
Namely, we're gonna be listening
and working on a song by Grand Baton,
which is the music equivalent of being
attacked by a pack of angry wolves.
00:00:21
The song is called "Caribbean Raider",
the artist name is Grand baton,
which in French means Big Stick,
by the way.
00:00:27
Big Stick, Grand Baton, is a electro-
acoustico-weirdo-dubstep artist,
and he's making
very interesting songs.
00:00:36
Today, in a slight departure from other
PureMix mixing videos,
we will not build the mix from scratch,
because as you'll understand when you
see the session, it's just not possible.
00:00:46
What we're gonna do instead is analyze
the existing mix from the actual record.
00:00:50
Check it out.
00:00:52
The first thing I'd like to do
is listen to the mix
to give you an idea of what we're gonna
be looking at and listening to.
00:00:58
Here we go.
00:02:09
Alright, so that happened.
00:02:11
How did we get there?
Good question!
It took a second.
00:02:14
It's pretty intense. Production
is amazing, and is very atypical.
00:02:19
You don't have a huge bass drum,
you have a whole bunch of little
things that make a big bass drum
or at least a big punchy Boom
in the bottom somewhere.
00:02:26
You have some ridiculous
sounding guitars, lots of them.
00:02:29
You have some ridiculous sounding
synths, lots of them...
00:02:32
not that many of them actually.
It's really a puzzle.
00:02:36
For me to be able to show you
the puzzle,
I'm gonna show you the individual
elements of the puzzle,
then I'll show you how the puzzle
is put together.
00:02:44
This session is about 130 voices.
00:02:46
I'm using analog summing
with my Dangerous 2-Bus
and a little bit of outboard,
just on the 2-Mix,
everything else is plug-ins.
00:02:53
I'll show you the 2-Mix settings
at the end.
00:02:56
First, I'd like to look at the drums,
they're interestingly constructed.
00:03:00
How so?
Well, as I said earlier,
there's not that big a bass drum.
00:03:04
Let me use my Stem mixing setup here
to mute everything
but the actual real drum set.
It sounds like this.
00:03:24
If I solo the kick...
00:03:28
What you hear
is the bleed from the tom.
00:03:30
In the rare passages where you have
an actual kick, it sounds like this.
00:03:39
The kick is doubling the tom.
00:03:41
So where does the bottom energy
come from in the whole mix?
Because it's there!
It comes from this track right here,
called Reaktor.
It's a Native Instruments instrument,
which printed sounds like this.
00:03:56
To be honest, when it came to me,
it sounded like this.
00:04:05
The choice I made here,
because of the structure
of the whole mix,
knowing that all those guitars would
gonna take all that space,
is to get rid of that twirly
little thing on top.
00:04:16
So I just low-passed it.
00:04:20
Then I limited it a little bit...
00:04:25
so that the accent "Pom-Pom-Podom-Pom!"
would be less "Pom!" than the other ones.
00:04:31
Then, I tried and enhanced
the bottom of it a little bit,
because I realized there was
no real bass drum,
and this was my chance
at getting "Boom!" in the middle.
00:04:39
So without the first Enhancer...
00:04:44
With.
00:04:48
Listen just below the point.
It goes "Oink-Oink!",
just below the "Oink-Oink!"
This Enhancer from UA adds a little bit
of fabric, a little bit of density.
00:04:58
Without...
00:05:05
The day that I was mixing this song,
Metric Halo came out with this freebie thing
and advertised all over the internet
"Download the free plug-in",
so I said "Ok, free sounds, good!
I'll download the free plug-in!"
And I tested it on this track. Why not?
It sounds like this...
This is without.
00:05:22
And with.
00:05:25
The problem here is the level is
different. I don't wanna ruin my mix.
00:05:29
What I'll do is, for you to be able
to hear the difference,
I will raise the gain with it on.
00:05:35
Without.
00:05:38
With.
00:05:42
It's kind of nasty sounding, right?
It sounds a little bit almost like
a synth, and I like that.
00:05:47
For this, I thought that it sounded
great.
00:05:49
It doesn't really do the same thing
that the Enhancer does,
or that R-Bass does, it just does
something completely different.
00:05:54
I know it's gonna be
in my plug-in folder
when I need something to sound like
it's been synthesized,
or somebody's playing some sine wave
or some square wave
under some other bass drum.
Check it out.
00:06:06
Without.
00:06:10
With.
00:06:14
I'm gonna tame it a little bit,
and I'm happy with that.
00:06:16
That's gonna be my main bass drum
in the center.
00:06:19
If you listen to the track now,
you'll be able to find that sound.
00:06:22
Pay attention to it on the sides, and
you'll see what it does in the middle.
00:06:33
Same passage without...
00:06:39
With.
00:06:45
It gives you the percussion. On top
of the song, it sounds like this.
00:06:52
Without.
00:07:00
It is the backbone of the whole track,
percussion wise.
00:07:03
And then everything else is
hung on that.
00:07:05
Let's go back to the drums.
00:07:07
In most sections, I'm dealing
with just that tom.
00:07:10
What did I do to that tom, and why?
In reality, this is really what this
tom sounds like in solo,
without the processing.
00:07:22
Honestly, the playing is amazing,
the recording is not so amazing.
00:07:25
So I had to do things.
00:07:28
The beautiful thing here is my mandate
is not to try and make
the best sounding, most accurate
drum set in the world,
obviously it's not gonna happen.
00:07:35
So that frees me to do whatever
the hell I want.
00:07:38
In this case, make it in your face,
punchy, gritty, whatever...
00:07:43
So the first thing I did, since the tom
is bleeding a lot...
00:07:49
and it's in all the other mics,
and it's a pretty dense mix,
I decided "Ok, let's gate it."
Let's rely on the other mic to get
the girth and the ambience of the set,
and let's rely on this microphone to
give me the attack and the punch.
00:08:02
So I did this way. Without...
00:08:07
And with.
00:08:12
I'm shortening the Release of the gate
to just get rid of all that garbage.
00:08:16
Then I'm EQ'ing it a little bit.
00:08:19
Namely, I'm enhancing the attack
and hi-passing the bottom.
00:08:23
With.
00:08:28
So obviously, this is not
a great sounding tom mic.
00:08:30
But I don't care, because I have tom
in all the other mics.
00:08:34
What I want here is the punch.
00:08:36
Then...
00:08:38
I use this secret weapon,
called the Devil-Loc,
which is kind of like a distortion,
crunchy, compressor, parallel
or everything all-in-one. Check it out.
Without.
00:08:50
With.
00:08:55
So, it uses that really staccato tom,
and really cut-up tom,
and lengthens those attacks
a little bit by crushing it.
00:09:03
In context, it sounds like this.
00:09:06
I'll just gonna play the set,
and nothing else for now.
00:09:16
Now, if I bypass all that processing
on the tom...
00:09:19
it sounds like this.
00:09:26
Boring. With...
00:09:36
More intense, more in your in face.
00:09:37
Again, there's basically no bass drum
playing here.
00:09:40
It's all about the tom and of course,
our little friend over here.
00:09:55
I love it, how the electronic drum-ish
Reaktor thing
actually changes pitch, depending on
what the bass plays.
00:10:01
It's pretty cool.
00:10:03
So... the other important thing in here
is the snare.
00:10:06
This is my original snare sound.
00:10:14
It sounds like a 57, average
middle-of-the-road.
00:10:18
So what did I wanna do out of that?
Since all the motion comes from that
snare pattern, and of course the guitars,
but the snare pattern is what makes
the forward motion,
so, I want this to be in my face,
grooving,
and I want to be able to make it
pretty loud,
without it taking too much space.
00:10:36
So I'm hi-passing and making it bright.
00:10:42
Then, I'm compressing it to get
that squishy...
00:10:45
oh! I used an 1176 on my snare sound...
00:10:53
Without.
00:10:57
With.
00:11:02
Do you see what I mean?
I'm not compressing a lot.
00:11:04
What I'm doing is I'm taking
those peaks down
so that the running vibe of it
is actually louder.
00:11:11
I can push it louder. The whole point
here is to try and be able
to make that snare louder without
taking too much space.
00:11:16
So if I compress the peaks, and it
doesn't take so much space this way,
I'm able to do this, and bring
everything up a little bit.
00:11:23
2 or 3dBs is all I need, because
the rest of the set is pretty exciting.
00:11:26
Then, I have the Pultec Pro.
This is without.
00:11:32
With.
00:11:36
Basically, I'm making it punch through,
right?
Plus 4 points at 5k,
so it's gonna go "iii."
Plus 5 points at 10k, which I rarely do
on a snare, they're gonna go like that...
00:11:46
The point is to make it go...
00:11:52
Without...
00:11:56
Ok?
Let's listen to that one track
in context, without the reverb,
in context of the rest of the drum set.
00:12:10
We started here.
00:12:18
We're making progress. Now...
00:12:20
I feel, and you probably do too,
that it's got that bite,
but it doesn't have kind of like
the distance behind it,
the depth behind it.
00:12:30
I don't necessarily want it to be this
thick, I just want it to do that.
00:12:33
So what I did is I duplicated
the snare track
and I did different processing, so yes,
it's parallel processing in a way,
but I'm just copying the track, because
it's faster and easier.
00:12:43
So on this track, all I'm doing is
a little bit of Devil-Loc.
00:12:48
Check it out.
By itself, without the Devil-Loc...
00:12:53
And with.
00:12:57
It's just a little more exciting.
00:13:00
So I have this less processed version
of the snare
and the very processed version
of the snare.
00:13:05
Less processed...
00:13:08
More processed on the original track...
00:13:13
The two of them together...
00:13:19
Without the small one...
00:13:25
With.
00:13:31
We started the snare here.
00:13:38
It's definitely more exciting.
00:13:40
So the whole snare... like this,
with the whole set, sounds like this.
00:13:51
Great! And then I added some reverb
on that snare.
00:13:55
I added some reverb on that snare,
because everything else is so dry
and in your face,
I wanted really the whole track
to feel like this:
our stereo Reaktor thing here...
00:14:05
the snare here, but with a lot of air
on top of it...
00:14:09
so that I can put the vocal
in front of the snare,
at least for it to feel that way,
since I didn't have an anchor
in the low-mids, in the middle,
with a bass drum very often.
00:14:17
I didn't have a real strong center.
So I wanted to really feel that distance
by pushing the snare up in the air
using reverb.
00:14:25
Check it out. Without the reverb...
00:14:30
With.
00:14:47
See how it does this, basically,
and the toms too, because there's
so much tom in the snare,
especially now that I'm compressing it,
that everything is moving back.
00:14:55
This is great.
00:14:56
Now... that probably happened
after a minute.
00:15:00
It's okay if when you do your drum set,
you don't have the vision of doing that.
00:15:03
It'll probably happen to you that you
wanna push some instruments back
when you feel that everything's crowded
and you've done all the EQ'ing
and all the compression, probably
too much compression,
that you should be doing, and then
you're gonna say:
How am I gonna make space?
Well, this is one of the ways.
00:15:17
The way this reverb is set up
is really super simple.
00:15:20
It's the factory default setting
on the Sonnox. That's it!
And I just shortened it a little bit.
00:15:27
I maybe tweaked things here and there
just to change the tone of it,
but I didn't agonize for hours,
I just put the Sonnox on,
put the reverb in it,
and moved the buttons so that
it feels high,
meaning I'm high-passing it.
00:15:41
I'm having high Diversity, so it feels
really wide
and it's fairly short, so it doesn't put
any garbage in my session.
00:15:47
And it sounds like this!
Now check it out in the whole track.
00:16:05
I'm gonna play a couple bars
of the whole song with the reverb,
just the reverb on the drums on,
that one reverb.
00:16:11
And then I'm gonna mute it.
You'll see right away.
00:16:28
Do you see how it just does this
when I mute the reverb?
and everything feels 2 dimensional
and cardboardy?
So imagine doing that with all
the little reverbs I'm gonna show you.
00:16:37
That's really the trick. Pick where
you're gonna place your instruments.
00:16:40
A bright high-passed tail on the snare
or a drum set
makes it feel a little backwards,
and a little up.
00:16:46
Of course, I will include the settings
for this plug-in in the download.
00:16:51
So that sounds good!
The other tracks in the drum set are
pretty much sitting there
and not doing much
and providing some ambience, if that.
00:16:59
But, here's a couple
of interesting things.
00:17:02
I'm using parellel compression, and
I'm using it in the same manner
as I did in the
"Advanced Parallel Compression" video,
meaning I'm using an Aux send
on my drums,
and sending that Aux
to my Drum crush bus.
00:17:13
On that Drum crush bus,
I have a dbx 160, which crushes.
00:17:18
I'll mute the direct signal.
00:17:24
Without the dbx...
00:17:33
It's a gentle kind of velvet
kind of crushing.
00:17:36
And then, some EQ here.
00:17:41
You noticed that without the EQ,
the tom becomes a little muddy.
00:17:44
Check it out.
00:17:48
With.
00:17:53
Last on this track is a limiter,
the Oxford Limiter.
00:17:56
And as you can see, it's doing
supposedly nothing.
00:17:59
This is with.
00:18:05
And without.
00:18:12
It's definitely doing something, right?
Without...
00:18:19
With.
00:18:25
It's punchier!
So what happened here is
I probably put the Oxford in
because I couldn't get the 160 to do
exactly what I wanted,
then I jacked it up,
then I hated it,
then I brought it back down,
and it was like, ok,
then why do I need it?
Then I removed it, and I realized that
I missed
what it was "not supposed to do", since
it's not supposed to do anything,
and instead of arguing with it,
I just left it on and moved on.
00:18:48
So now, if you put both
the direct sound, which is this...
00:18:54
and the crushed sound...
00:18:58
together...
00:19:09
It sounds lovely!
One more point of interest is when
the kick does play from time to time,
it is augmented with Slate Trigger here.
00:19:25
Without the augmentation.
00:19:30
This is the sound
of the augmentation...
00:19:34
Hear that punch?
And then the two of them together.
00:19:40
Without.
00:19:43
With.
00:19:47
It just gives a little more
of that "Prrr!" thing like this.
00:19:50
One last thing...
00:19:52
because we're here to have fun,
in this break here, I did this...
00:20:00
Cool! So what I did here is I used
the snare track,
the second one actually,
and I'm gonna zoom in on this...
00:20:06
and I instantiated a send,
a Drum FX send.
And if you see...
00:20:16
It just goes up on that one hit.
00:20:18
And I'm sending that to another bus
that has an EMT 140 reverb on it
and a PanMan from Soundtoys.
00:20:25
So when you hit it, it sends the snare
into that reverb, which is very long,
and then PanMan is making the reverb
go away.
00:20:31
So with just the drums,
check out the reverb on the snare hit.
00:20:40
And then with the song,
it sounds like this.
00:20:48
I love those little details, because...
00:20:51
as the mixer and producer of records,
it allows me to be creative
and do fun stuff.
00:20:56
B, as a listener,
it keeps me on my toes.
00:21:00
Depending on your listener's
attention span,
he may or may not be paying attention
of that particular effect,
every single time he's listening
to the song.
00:21:09
Let's say he misses it the first time
he's listening to the song,
because he's thinking of his girlfriend
at that particular moment in the song.
00:21:15
I don't know that they would with
this song, but, you know...
00:21:18
maybe the next time around, he's not
thinking about his girlfriend
at that particular moment,
and he catches that reverb.
00:21:23
And that's the thing! People say:
"Oh! I hear new things every time
I listen to that song."
I want that!
So I always put little nuggets like that
all over the track,
to make sure that nobody gets bored.
00:21:33
As a reminder, this is what the drum
set sounded like
when we started this mix.
00:21:58
And this is where we are now.
00:22:25
Enough banging on stuff,
let's pull on some strings.
00:22:29
The guitars of this whole album
are completely insane,
and this is a good example of that.
00:22:34
There's many of them,
here are the principle ones.
00:22:37
There's this riff right here...
00:22:47
And then there's this thing right here.
00:22:58
Yes, that's a guitar!
And then there's this guy.
00:23:16
Which apparently was recorded in Paris,
if I can believe what's written
on the track.
00:23:20
So, let's go back to the first one.
00:23:22
How did we get to this level
of madness? Good question.
00:23:25
It all started here... this one track.
00:23:34
When he tracked the guitar,
there was a DI,
there was a Coles on a Mesa Boogie,
and there was an SM 58
on the Mesa Boogie.
00:23:42
So, the DI sounds like this.
00:23:50
His pedal rig is pretty intense.
00:23:53
And then the Coles, which is a ribbon
mic, on a Mesa Boogie amp.
00:24:06
And then, the 58
on the Mesa Boogie amp.
00:24:19
So they all provide a different blend.
00:24:21
My choice was this...
00:24:30
Obviously as you can see, there's
a bunch of processing on every track.
00:24:33
Let's look at that.
00:24:35
On the DI, I'm compressing.
00:24:37
I'm gonna compress all that stuff to
make sure it's a big ribbon of sound.
00:24:40
I don't want it to do this,
or I just want it to be
a block solid core of sound
in the middle of my track.
00:24:48
Because there's so much stuff around it,
if it gets too dynamic,
I'm gonna lose it.
00:24:52
So I'm gonna compress
quite a bit of it.
00:24:57
3dBs on the Softube plug-in.
00:24:59
And then, a little bit of EQ.
I'm getting rid of the high-end.
00:25:06
Because I am physically allergic
to the sound of high-end on DIs.
00:25:10
Then...
00:25:12
This is the Coles.
The Coles are awesome.
00:25:15
This is flat.
00:25:21
The next thing I'm doing is using
the Oxford Gate on the Coles track
to cut the noise out in between
the notes,
and make the cuts even more abrupt
and unnatural.
00:25:32
Without...
00:25:36
With.
00:25:42
Subtle, but nice.
00:25:44
Then the same compressor as on the DI.
00:25:52
Then, I'm using the Pultec Pro
to give it a little more body.
00:25:59
Without...
00:26:04
With...
00:26:10
So, a couple of points at 200Hz,
and 1.5 points at 100Hz.
00:26:15
Just bottom.
00:26:16
It's a Pultec EQ, it's not
a precise EQ,
it's a broad curve tone kind of EQ.
00:26:21
And I hear this little nose on...
Check it out!
Check out the phrase...
00:26:33
Do you hear how there's a little bit
of a nose thing here?
That, I know, is gonna be a problem,
so I'm removing it with the Oxford.
00:26:46
That's it! Just a little correction.
The two of them together...
00:26:56
Just the Coles...
00:27:00
Since I have low-passed the DI,
I'm able to put it loud enough that
it actually gives body and precision
without making a mess.
00:27:09
Just the Coles again.
00:27:14
With the DI...
00:27:20
Now, the last one is the 58.
00:27:27
Compression.
00:27:30
I'm using the same compression
on all 3 stems,
to make sure that they compress
the same at the same time,
so I don't get some weird phase thing
going.
00:27:37
Then I did the same thing I'm doing
on the DI,
which is removing the high-end
so I can use it for girth,
and removing that "Mmm" thing.
And it sounds like this.
00:27:51
With the other two.
00:27:59
You might tell yourself: why am I
bothering with that third track,
since it's so quiet
and it doesn't do much?
But it really does more than you think.
00:28:06
This is the trio,
and then I'll mute it so you can hear
what happens
when I mute that puny little
third track.
00:28:23
It does this.
00:28:24
Now... I'm sending those 3 tracks
to a bus.
00:28:29
And to glue the stuff together,
and to further mold that track
with the rest of the song,
I'm actually processing more.
00:28:38
I am low-passing...
00:28:47
What happens here is
you make a fat sound.
00:28:50
Because it's fun, and you're supposed
to do that,
and also this is one of the main
instruments in the track.
00:28:55
Then, you turn something else on,
like for example
the main percussion instrument.
00:29:03
And then you realize that they have
resonances in the same spot.
00:29:05
So you have to adapt your fatness
to the fatness of other tracks.
00:29:11
How you decide who's prevalent
really depends on what you have
for breakfast that morning.
00:29:16
In this case, I decided to compromise
a little bit on my guitar.
00:29:20
But you'll see, I'm making up
for it later.
00:29:33
You see what it does, right?
It allows you to do this.
00:29:36
The guitar no longer feels like
it's fighting with the percussion,
it's actually feeling like
it's floating above.
00:29:42
The next thing I'm doing is I'm
limiting a little bit with the Massey.
00:29:48
Check it out.
00:29:55
Without.
00:30:01
With.
00:30:06
I'm further reducing the difference
between the peaks and the average,
so that I can put the whole thing
a little louder,
without taking too much space
and hurting my eyes,
and making it sound
even more unnatural.
00:30:18
And then, the space, because this is
all very dry.
00:30:20
So I put a little bit of EchoBoy on it.
00:30:23
Without...
00:30:26
With.
00:30:35
This is Standard preset, 1/8th note,
at tempo,
just a little bit of a trail, so it
doesn't feel so dry and so demo-y.
00:30:43
But I didn't stop there.
00:30:44
At the beginning of the mix,
that's where we were.
00:30:48
And we were happy with that.
00:30:49
Because you make the sound,
and you're happy with it,
but then, as everything else grows,
your main sound gets a little...
00:30:56
taken over, right?
And we thought that there were
not enough wolves in the pack.
00:31:02
I didn't really feel attacked as much
once I reopened the mix the day after.
00:31:07
So what we did is duplicate the Sub,
and take the exact same Send,
so the same exact blend of these 3 guitar
tracks is being sent to another bus.
00:31:18
And on that bus, we decided
to go medieval.
00:31:22
Namely, the first thing we did...
00:31:25
is put the Plug & Mix Degradiator on it.
00:31:28
So we started here...
00:31:35
Then we added this.
00:31:44
It's definitely nasty sounding, which
is what the plug-in is supposed to do.
00:31:47
Then, we EQ'ed it to get what we want
from that nastiness.
00:31:51
Without...
00:31:55
With.
00:31:58
What we wanted is that medium-y,
in your face thing.
00:32:02
Then, the same limiter as the main
guitar Sub, so it breathes the same.
00:32:14
The two of them together.
00:32:20
Without the new one...
00:32:27
With.
00:32:35
Then we thought: This is great,
but it's lacking a little bit of...
00:32:39
"corones."
To do so, we created another Sub.
00:32:43
On that Sub, I had an idea to try
something.
00:32:46
You might take this. Check it out.
00:32:55
That is so nasty sounding!
And in the track, it does this.
Without...
00:33:02
With.
00:33:08
So how did I get that sound?
I used Melodyne for what it's not
supposed to be used for.
00:33:14
I captured the entire track on a bus,
so I used the Transfer and captured
the entire track on a bus.
00:33:20
Then, I selected everything on that
track and brought it down an octave.
00:33:24
So if I listen to just that stem,
with Melodyne...
00:33:30
And if I bypass Melodyne...
00:33:38
Now there's a cool sound
I haven't heard before.
00:33:40
Then we EQ'ed it a little bit...
nothing major. This is without.
00:33:47
With.
00:33:51
We actually made it fatter and
hi-passed the bottom for garbage,
and then the limiter, so that it has
the same breathing quality
as the other 2 tracks.
00:33:58
The 3 tracks together sound like this,
for most of the song.
00:34:07
And in context...
00:34:19
Pretty cool!
And then, at bar 65,
here in the breakdown,
we decided that we were gonna use
that crazy Melodyne sound
and feature it. Check it out.
00:34:38
The idea came, because originally,
that breakdown sounded like this...
00:34:49
And we thought...
00:34:51
No! We're real men, we're gonna do it
like real men do.
00:34:55
And we did this instead.
00:35:08
So what's going on here is,
temporarily for those 4 bars,
I'm reorganizing the blend
of the 3 busses.
00:35:15
Instead of having the main bus principle
and the other two colors,
I'm jacking up the Melodyne bus
and bringing the other two down,
just for that one section.
00:35:23
You can see it in the automation
when I play the track.
00:35:37
And that's it!
It took us about 40 minutes,
and every time I play the song,
everybody ask:
How did you get that sound?
That's how!
The last thing is one last bus, that
I'm feeding the sum of these 3 busses to,
so it's my fourth bus, it's my main
guitar bus.
00:35:57
You'll notice it's mono.
00:35:58
It's my way to be able to regulate
the sound of everything,
without being bothered
by the automation I just created,
and also to tune the tone
of the entire mass of sound
and compress it a little bit together
to give it some togetherness,
while listening
to the rest of the track.
00:36:16
It's just an extra layer of control,
for the control freak that I am.
00:36:20
It's important to note that a lot
of the punch of that sound
in places comes from the synth.
00:36:28
You'll notice in this section
for example...
00:36:34
that it becomes really insane and heavy.
00:36:36
That's because of this guy...
00:36:41
Being melded with these guys...
00:36:47
Without, the guitar just sounds
like this.
00:36:52
But with it...
00:36:58
It's pretty nasty.
00:37:00
The synth came to me like this.
00:37:10
I'm giving it a little bit of EQ,
but all this was done listening
to the guitar tracks
so that the synth enhances
the guitar track
and doesn't get in the way.
It makes it bigger,
but doesn't really register
as its own lead entity.
00:37:24
So, without the EQ...
00:37:29
With...
00:37:33
Just a little bit of low-mids cleanup.
Again, without...
00:37:38
With.
00:37:43
Then a little bit of the compression
and the saturation
from the Oxford Dynamics...
00:37:53
Notice that I'm using
a very wide open attack,
so that the attack goes through,
and then the tail gets compressed
a little bit, so I get that punch.
00:38:05
Without.
00:38:10
With.
00:38:16
Then, because I wanted to blend
with the guitars,
I put a reverb on it, a tail. Flat...
00:38:24
And with the tail...
00:38:28
For you to be able to hear exactly
what the tail does,
I'm gonna mute the guitars
for one second.
00:38:35
Flat...
00:38:39
With.
00:38:43
And with the guitars...
00:38:52
I like what the Lexicon 224 does,
that kind of like "Shhh" thing,
without taking too much room.
00:38:57
And then I have an Aux that sends
this keyboard
into one of the Softube reverbs
to give it a tail...
00:39:06
and a really wide, industrial sounding
kind of stereo space. Without...
00:39:16
With.
00:39:23
In the track...
00:39:34
Without the synth, it's not the same.
00:39:43
The other element in this section
are those fuzz, super gated guitars
that sound like this...
00:39:55
All I'm doing here is adding
a little bit of "Oompf"
using the VOG from Little Labs.
00:40:01
Without, it sounds like this.
Listen to the "Prrr!" in the middle,
... that "Prrr!" thing gets really
enhanced with the VOG.
00:40:07
Check it out. Without...
00:40:13
With.
00:40:20
It adds that "Grrr" grit to it.
I love it for that.
00:40:24
And a little bit of Maximizer from UAD.
00:40:27
Without, it sounds like this.
00:40:35
And with.
00:40:43
A little saturation, a little grit,
a little anger,
just what we needed.
Here comes the wolf!
You may notice that
in this pattern here...
00:40:54
so what Grand Baton has done is,
I'm assuming,
is he took two separate takes
for the side thing
and then he copied the same take on
the two tracks for the middle thing.
00:41:07
So the side thing sounds stereo, because
they're two separate takes,
and then the "Boomp!" is mono,
because it's the same take.
00:41:14
It's very smart.
00:41:15
That way, with just two tracks,
I'm able to go...
00:41:20
Great movement. Listen to it
in the track.
00:41:30
Cool production.
00:41:31
Sometimes you have to make tough
decisions.
00:41:33
I love those synths,
and they sound great.
00:41:35
But on our little naughty place there,
if you check it out,
I'm actually muting the synth.
Check it out.
00:41:51
With the synth,
it would sound like this.
00:42:03
I felt that A, that Melodyne
down the octave guitar sound
is so gnarly that I wanted
to feature it,
a little bit of pride in there,
and second...
00:42:11
I felt that having that synth there,
even though it's awesome,
it's really hard to throw away
something so great,
would undermine how hard
it hits when it comes back.
00:42:19
It doesn't hit as hard when you have
the synth the whole time
because it's not as big of a break.
00:42:24
So we agonized over it a few times
and then I won, I took it down.
00:42:27
Alright, so that's it for the aggression,
let's talk about the vocals.
00:42:31
He came in with this track of vocal,
exactly as such...
00:42:52
Nice and thick recording,
I hear no problems.
00:42:54
I just hear that everything else
in the track is nice and thick,
so there's no room for this kind
of vocal,
so I'm gonna have to compromise
somewhere.
00:43:01
So first thing I'm doing is obviously
removing that thing
that you probably heard, a little
cotton. It's not cotton, it's fatness.
00:43:07
but because our ears have gotten used
to this enormous amount
of low-mids and low-end,
everything that comes in that has
anything in that area
is gonna feel really muddy or thick.
So I'm gonna remove it.
00:43:17
This is what it sounds like
with my correction...
00:43:19
a few dBs at 200Hz.
00:43:26
As a reminder...
00:43:30
Do you hear that nose?
With.
00:43:41
It makes it more even,
almost compressed sounding,
because there's nothing sticking out.
00:43:46
Then I decided to compress it
a little bit using the Oxford,
using a 2-level compression.
00:43:52
First, a compression to situate it
in the track,
and then a limiter to get rid
of the peaks. It sounds like this...
00:44:02
So "I had... breaker"...
Check it out. Without.
00:44:10
And then with the Sonnox.
00:44:17
You can see the red gage react
to what I want it to react to,
which is the peaks that are gonna
hurt your eyes
if you put the vocal in front.
00:44:28
So the settings are simple.
00:44:30
I kept the actual Ratio, Attack
and Release from the default.
00:44:33
I just lowered the threshold and made
the gain up to what I needed it to be,
and then the limiter has a short Attack,
a slow Release, and a lower Threshold.
00:44:42
Then I set up the Threshold so it only
catches the peaks that bother me,
but not the average level of the vocal
when he's singing.
00:44:49
It sounds like this. You can also look
at the gage
to see who does what and when.
00:45:09
It works!
Then, I'm shaping the tone
with a little bit of the Pultec.
00:45:14
I'm opening at the top,
3 clicks at 10k,
and removing a little bit
of the mud still at 200
with this super gentle EQ.
00:45:26
Without.
00:45:31
With.
00:45:36
And then, for color,
because I got it that week,
I wanted to try this out and I really
dug it. So this is without... the bluey.
00:45:49
And this is with.
00:45:56
I don't think I've ever used as much
compression as this
on any record before this one.
But this wants it, right?
So the way I did it is I slowed
the Attack down
so I still get some presence,
and then I...
00:46:08
sped up the Release so I get
real spank, but not clamped.
00:46:19
Without.
00:46:25
I didn't do a very good job
at level matching.
00:46:27
Let me raise the level here.
This is without.
00:46:36
With.
00:46:42
It's that sound! It's kind of cool.
00:46:44
I bring it back
so I can get my mix back.
00:46:47
That's it! But that didn't work...
Check it out.
00:46:51
No matter how loud I put it...
00:47:07
It's just the wrong tone for the song.
00:47:09
It's nice to have and it's a good
anchor, but it's just not happening.
00:47:12
So then I duplicated the track
and that's when I went medieval on it.
00:47:17
To go medieval, I used a Plug & Mix
Degradiator.
00:47:24
So as a reminder, the track flat,
with no processing sounds like this.
00:47:34
Fine. Then... I "Degradiated" it...
00:47:44
Not super subtle,
but terribly efficient.
00:47:46
Let me start from scratch
and show you this.
00:47:50
So we started here...
00:47:55
I reduced the Bit depth to give it
that crunchy vibe...
00:48:03
Then I hi-passed, which is what
the Telephone does...
00:48:10
And then I crushed it.
00:48:19
Then I'm adding a little bit of this
with a Pultec.
00:48:22
So without...
00:48:24
And then with...
00:48:29
And then I took a copy of the 1176
from the other track,
so that they breathe the same...
00:48:39
And then the two of them blended
sound like this...
00:48:47
Without the crush...
00:48:52
So of course in the track, it sounds
like this with the two of them.
00:49:10
That's the right sound for this track.
00:49:12
Obviously, it's too dry
and we're gonna address that,
but the Degradiator allows me to give
that grit and that vibe
and that weird tone that let the vocal
cut through
and have its own exact sound that goes
with this record and nothing else,
which I dig.
00:49:26
To create the space around the vocal,
I have three effects.
00:49:30
I have a Chorus,
made with a Roland CE-1 from UA.
00:49:38
Without.
00:49:44
You can hear it most on the held notes.
Check it out.
00:49:53
It's got that "Rrrr" 80s' vibe.
Then, a little bit of a delay.
00:50:03
Again the preset, 1/4 note, at tempo,
a little bit of feedback,
a little bit of high-pass and a little
bit of low-pass,
so the delay is in the middle like this
and doesn't take all the room.
00:50:20
And then a standard Oxford reverb...
00:50:23
to do this...
00:50:42
I picked a 3.6 second.
00:50:44
I could have picked 3.7, or 3.5,
depending on my mood.
00:50:48
The idea is to make a long reverb,
so that on the held notes
it's got a cushion under him.
00:50:53
And in the track, it sounds like this.
00:51:12
Without...
00:51:31
The reverb provides the cushion
and the trail,
so it doesn't feel so abrupt when
everything else is in your face.
00:51:38
Again, back on...
00:51:58
Cool!
On this record, by artistic choice,
the vocal is mixed quite a bit lower
than most of my mixes actually,
and maybe quite a bit lower
than most mixes these days.
00:52:10
The reason for that is we wanted
the record to hit you and scare you.
00:52:14
And I think it does just that.
00:52:16
If I had the vocal front and center,
nothing could hit as hard, because
the vocal would be in your face
and not the drums, or not the guitars.
00:52:23
Si it was a conscious choice
to lower the vocal a little bit.
00:52:27
Now I like front and forward vocals,
so I had to fight with myself.
00:52:32
Fortunately, between me and myself,
I got to win,
and I got support from Grand Baton,
to be able to lower the vocals low
enough that I get the energy,
but not low enough that it feels
like a mistake.
00:52:45
On the background vocals...
There's two sets, there's these...
00:52:56
So obviously I'm washing them
in a little bit of 140,
and I'm also using the same reverb
as I have on the Lead.
00:53:05
The rationale on that is I have
all my reverbs separated.
00:53:09
All my vocals go into one reverb,
all my background vocals go into
another reverb, or set of reverbs,
keyboards and guitars go
in separate reverbs,
everybody goes in separate reverbs.
00:53:19
If I want two instruments to go
into the same exact reverb,
I duplicate the reverb.
00:53:24
That allows me - number 1 -
to check the impact of the reverb,
on that one section,
or that one group of instruments,
which is cool.
00:53:32
Second, when I print my stems,
that allows me to print my stems and
be perfectly accurate with the reverbs.
00:53:38
If I bring my background vocal stems,
I don't hear the snare drum
in the same reverb because everybody's
going to the same reverb.
00:53:43
It's a good trick if you print a lot
of stems,
and if you like to really craft
the space, instrument by instrument.
00:53:50
On this background vocal,
really nothing is happening.
00:53:53
I'm tilting it a little bit
using the Tonelux...
00:53:59
Without...
00:54:03
It probably seemed like a good idea
at the time...
00:54:06
I'm not exactly changing the course
of modern music here.
00:54:08
I'm doing this too. This is...
00:54:10
Clearly, because there's so much stuff
going on,
for that "Wah Ooh! Wah Ooh!" to get
through, I had to make it bright,
and not too fat, so I could jack it up.
So without the EQ...
00:54:24
Obviously, that's not gonna fly...
00:54:26
because it's gonna conflict with
everything else. Check it out.
00:54:32
With my EQ...
00:54:38
It just goes over and doesn't take
any room. It's great.
00:54:41
And then, for the dynamics, I'm
expanding to get rid of the noise
and make it more abrupt
like I did earlier.
00:54:47
And then I'm compressing and adding
a little bit of saturation.
00:54:49
Without...
00:54:54
With...
00:55:00
Just a little more in your face.
And in the track, it sounds like this.
00:55:12
I also panned the two tracks
hard left and hard right
so they can find their spot and
stick out,
since this is kind of a hook.
00:55:20
It's drastic, but I like it.
I do that a lot.
00:55:23
Then, on the other background vocals,
I decided to use the same trick
as I used on the Lead vocal,
using Degradiator from Plug & Mix
to make them aggressive sounding.
00:55:38
And this too...
00:55:42
And the combination of the two...
00:55:50
We're also sending that track
into Plug & Mix Dimension 3D,
which is kind of a like
80s' style Chorus. Check it out.
00:56:02
I'm gonna mute the reverb,
so you can hear just the Chorus.
00:56:05
This is without.
00:56:12
And then with.
00:56:18
It's an emulation of
Roland Dimension D Chorus from the 80s
that had 4 positions, here it has 3.
00:56:25
And it lets you just make things
a little more shimmery.
00:56:28
I'm also sending the output
of that effect into the reverb.
00:56:32
So I'm sending the vocal
into the Dimension D,
and I'm reverbing the Dimension D,
not the direct sound.
00:56:39
It sounds like this.
00:56:47
So the reverb is actually affecting
something that has a Chorus on it,
it gives it a little crazy vibe.
00:56:52
And then there's this EMT 140
on the direct sound.
00:57:01
And in context, it sounds like this.
00:57:09
If I remove the reverb
and the Dimension 3D from that track,
it sounds a little dull.
00:57:19
It's cool, but it's not fun.
This is fun.
00:57:29
We've seen just about every track,
except for the bass.
00:57:32
And it's around here somewhere.
There's some...
00:57:35
little like 1-note guitars
and tiny little percussions,
but the bass is kind of cool.
I wanna show it to you.
00:57:45
If you remember, the electronic drum
that sounds like this...
00:57:50
This bass is gonna give it the bottom.
00:58:03
And there's another bass
that's just a little crazy low attack.
00:58:08
Like that.
00:58:09
It sounds like an 808.
And it's tuned too.
00:58:15
And the three together sound like this.
00:58:23
And then, one last percussion
instrument is that shaker.
00:58:37
Those are all the main elements in
the mix that make it sound like this...
00:58:58
Crazy.
00:58:59
At the beginning of the mix,
I mentionned I has some 2-Bus processing
after my Dangerous 2-Bus. So these
are my notes from the actual session.
00:59:07
Out of the HD I/O to the 2-Bus...
00:59:11
2-Bus is flat, meaning no +6,
no Mono buttons.
00:59:16
And the output of the 2-Bus is at -3dB.
00:59:18
Then I go into my Dangerous Liaison,
which I'm using as a router
for my outboard.
00:59:23
There is a Fatso, which is from ELI,
and I have all my settings,
this is the way I write things.
00:59:29
Input, Output, and every single setting
on the box is written down.
00:59:33
If I don't write down every setting on
the box, I will screw up when I recall.
00:59:38
It's a bad idea to assume that
you will remember
what this is gonna be
like 6 months from now,
even if you always, always, always have
that one button always in this position.
00:59:48
I guarantee you there will be one mix
where you don't have it in that position
and you will spend 6 hours
trying to recall it.
00:59:54
So I always write every single setting
on every single piece of gear,
even the ones I don't use, so that it's
always recalling just right.
01:00:01
So Fatso, LTD2, which is a Neve 2254
emulation from Chandler,
a Bax from Dangerous Music,
and then, on fifth,
it's my Manley Stereo Pultec emulation.
01:00:13
And then coming out of there
goes back into my 2192 UA,
back into Pro Tools to get printed.
01:00:19
I have one last limiter right here,
that does nothing.
01:00:22
I use it to offset the level,
so that I can dance around
-18/-16 on my whole mix.
01:00:30
Now, what I'd like to do is show you
all the different effects
of the different pieces of hardware
on the 2-Mix,
so you get an idea
for why I'm using 2-Bus processing.
01:00:41
I'm gonna loop these two bars.
01:00:52
Because they're so gnarly! Let's listen
to what the 2-Bus processing does.
01:00:56
So, first thing is to clear
the Dangerous Liaison
so we start from scratch.
01:01:02
It sounds like this.
01:01:10
It still sounds great!
Then I'm using the Fatso
in parallel processing.
01:01:14
What I'm doing is I'm compressing
the track
and removing any annoying transients
in the high-end using the Warmth setting.
01:01:20
The Warmth setting is really
a high-end limiter.
01:01:23
The Bus Compressor has
a very open attack,
so it's pretty gentle, and the Tranny
adds some low-mids.
01:01:28
It's a great little compressor.
01:01:36
Then, I'm flipping control,
so 1 becomes 2,
which allows me to put the Fatso
in parallel processing, like this.
01:01:44
It sounds like this.
01:01:46
Without...
01:01:48
Turning this off
turns the processing off.
01:02:04
Listen to... (singing)...
01:02:09
just the thickness and the girth of it.
Without...
01:02:18
With.
01:02:27
Everything is a little heavier.
01:02:29
You'll notice that my Return amount
is at 9 o'clock here.
01:02:33
I could choose to have more,
I chose to put it here,
because that's where I was pleased.
I'm gonna show you what happens
when you start slowly raising
the parallel processing.
01:02:41
This is the blend knob.
It lets you take this signal
and blend it with the direct signal.
01:02:47
So it lets you blend
the Fatso-ized signal
with the non-Fatso-ized signal
and do the parallel blend.
01:02:53
This is what it sounds like.
01:03:10
I dig it there because it does
density, but it doesn't change...
01:03:15
too much of the dynamic of the track.
01:03:17
Then, I'm using these 2 LTD-2s,
the 2254 knockoffs from Wade
at Chandler, which sound great.
01:03:27
What's going on with the parallel
compression
is it's thicker and more dynamic,
so it goes... (singing)
That hit kind of sticks out
a little bit.
01:03:37
Which could be fun, but for here,
I really want it to be dense,
I want it to go... (singing)
I want it to be one block of sound.
01:03:45
To do that, I'm adding a little touch
of compression from the LTD-2.
01:03:49
As a reminder, without...
01:03:57
With.
01:04:05
You can see it on the needle actually.
01:04:07
You can see it react more to that hit
and it makes it more together,
more dense, thicker.
01:04:22
As far as the settings go,
it's pretty simple.
01:04:25
The Threshold is wide open.
01:04:28
So basically, I'm deciding how hard
this is working
by how hard I'm hitting it on the input.
01:04:35
The Attack is wide open,
and I use the Auto-Release because
I like the way it sounds.
01:04:39
The only thing that I tend
to adjust,
when I'm doing this thickness thing,
is I put a little gain up
so that I match the level
with and without,
so that when I compare, I'm actually
hearing at the same level, as always.
01:04:54
Without the LTD-2, and the Fatso.
01:05:04
With the two of them...
01:05:11
Cool! Then I have a Bax.
01:05:14
What I'm doing on the Bax is I'm adding
2dBs at 84Hz,
and I'm hi-passing the very bottom.
01:05:20
So I'm saving some energy
at the very bottom,
and adding 2dBs at 84Hz,
so I get even more girth.
01:05:26
And then on the high end, I'm gonna add
about 1dB at 4.8,
and a low-pass at 28k, so I don't have
to bother my converter
with all that high-end
that I don't hear,
that only your dog hears,
if your dog is only 2 years old.
01:05:40
So this is what it sounds like
without the Bax.
01:05:48
With.
01:06:09
You can feel it make it even denser.
01:06:11
The key here for me is to add density
to the bottom and the low-mids
without making it muddy or boomy.
I just want it to be thick.
01:06:20
Then, I have a special fondness
for the Manley Pultec
because of the sound of its transformers.
They're really clean,
but still do that transformer thing,
and that 20Hz band is awesome.
01:06:31
So what I'm doing is I'm adding
2.5 clicks at 20Hz
and 2.5 clicks at 16k.
01:06:38
That's one of the rare settings
that I use on everything.
01:06:40
I just love the way this sounds,
it's kind of like an effect.
01:06:44
Without, it sounds like this.
01:07:13
So every little touch is very subtle.
01:07:15
But if I bypass the whole chain,
you'll see the difference.
01:07:54
Alright! That's a lot of stuff
to chew on already.
01:07:57
Time to practice!
Download the stems,
and make them go "Rrrr!"
Et voilà!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
- UAD : Precision Enhancer, Precision Maximizer, 1176LN, 1176 RevA, Pultec Pro, DBX 160, EMT 140, Lexicon 224, Roland CE1, Little Labs
- Sonnox : Oxford EQ, Oxford Limiter, Oxford Dynamics, Oxford Reverb
- Soundtoys : Devil-Loc Deluxe, Pan Man, EchoBoy
- Softube : TLA-100A, Tsar 1, Tonelux Tilt
- Plug and Mix : Degradiator, Dimension 3D
- Massey : L2007 Mastering Limiter
- Slate Digital : Trigger
- Metric Halo : Thump
- Celemony : Melodyne
If you would like to know more about Grand Baton, please visit:
Fab Dupont is a Grammy winning NYC based record producer, mixing/mastering engineer and co-founder of pureMix.net.
Fab has been playing, writing, producing and mixing music both live and in studios all over the world. He's worked in cities like Paris, Boston, Brussels, Stockholm, London and New York just to name a few.
He has his own studio called FLUX Studios in the East Village of New York City.
Fab has been nominated for Grammys 6 times, including two Latin Grammys and has received many other accolades around the world, including Victoires de la Musique, South African Music awards, Pan African Music Awards and US independent music awards.
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