You're handed one track: a singer and his guitar recorded with one microphone and you need to deliver it to the masses. How hard can it be?
What does one do? Why? In this video Fab goes over the process of sweetening a singer songwriter track, turning a quick demo into a viable, listenable, song.
Whether you are recording yourself in your basement or just trying to refine your core eq and compression skills, this video, shot in Presonus shiny new DAW Studio One is for you.
Please download the track and import in the DAW you use to make music. This way you can practice your skills and mix this song using your own tastes, tools, plug-ins and the guidelines provided in this video.
If you would like to know more about Julian Peterson, here is a link to his website.
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.
00:00:07 Good morning children!
Today, we're going to sweeten
a singer songwriter track.
00:00:12 I know what you're thinking:
most singer songwriters are already
very, very, very sweet,
and don't need anymore.
But not ours!
Ours is Julian Peterson,
he's singing "Come On Down",
he sang and played guitar at the same
time, and we only had one microphone.
00:00:27 So how much can you do with that?
What we're gonna do is get it ready for
iTunes, CD Baby, Bandcamp and Spotify.
00:00:33 Name your poison...
Here we go!
Here we are in Studio One. First thing
I'm gonna do is drag my single file.
00:00:40 Here you go...
Drag it in...
00:00:43 And start playing.
00:01:14 It sounds great.
00:01:15 What I'm hearing is this:
I'm hearing a little bit of a mask
on the bottom of the vocal,
too much difference between the guitar
and the vocal,
and it's a little bit dry.
00:01:24 Let's listen to that again,
and see if you hear the same thing.
00:01:53 The first thing I'm gonna do is get rid
of that little mask in the bottom there,
probably in the 300 area.
00:01:59 I'm gonna use the built-in EQ,
drag it on the track...
00:02:03 Here you go.
00:02:28 So this is the track flat.
00:02:39 Hear the "Plenty", "Clean",
"Come on down",
all those little peaks there.
00:02:44 Minus 2 and change dB around 300Hz,
it sounds like this.
00:03:04 It sounds good. I could try
a little lower, just a little lower.
00:03:11 Not as good!
Let's go back to where we were.
00:03:23 I don't think it needs
any extra high end,
or any extra low end,
or any adjustments
other than this little peak there.
But...
00:03:31 there is too much difference between
the level of the guitar in holes
and the level of the vocal.
00:03:35 So I'm gonna compress the whole track,
since it's only one microphone.
00:03:39 Compressing is gonna bring
the loud parts down,
which means that the guitar
is gonna seem louder overall.
00:03:44 I'm gonna use the built-in compressor.
00:03:47 Drop it here...
00:03:55 I think there's Auto Gain somewhere.
Let's get rid if Auto Gain,
Auto Gain is evil.
00:04:01 Take that off, Gain down,
so we can listen at equal gain.
00:04:06 No Threshold,
this is gonna be flat.
00:04:12 So I'm gonna lower the Threshold until
I start kissing the vocal a little bit.
00:04:21 A little lower...
00:04:24 It's coming...
A little more.
00:04:28 That's not enough kissing...
Maybe a French kiss?
A deeper French kiss?
Ouh! It's coming!
I like what it's doing,
I like where it's doing it,
I just want more of it, so I'm gonna
basically go to a higher Ratio,
with the same Threshold.
00:04:56 A little lower Threshold,
just a little bit...
00:05:07 I like that!
I'm going to go for a deeper Knee,
so that I don't hear the difference
between uncompressed
and compressed as much.
00:05:14 It's at 6dBs now, I'm just gonna
bring it up to... I don't know... 12.
00:05:27 That's good.
Check it out.
00:05:28 This is the difference between
no compression...
00:05:45 and this is with compression.
00:06:01 I know it's subtle,
but check this out...
00:06:04 Focus on just
the entrance of the vocal.
00:06:07 This is flat.
00:06:20 With the compression.
00:06:32 It's subtle, but it's smoother.
It feels more like a record.
00:06:35 Also, it's preventing the loud parts
to be much louder than the quiet parts,
thus bringing the vocal and the guitar
back together.
00:06:43 The next thing I'd like to do
is create a little bit of space,
because it's a little dry.
00:06:47 I like intimate tracks, but this is
a little on the heavy intimate side.
00:06:51 So I'm gonna create a new Send...
00:06:53 a new FX Channel...
00:06:55 Call it Verb.
00:06:59 And drag a reverb on it...
like this.
00:07:04 Let's make sure that the Wet Mix
is 100% Wet.
00:07:07 And it sounds like this.
00:07:16 There's too much of it,
obviously,
but that lets me really listen to it,
and I think it's a little too long,
so I'm gonna shorten it here.
00:07:29 I like that.
00:07:32 And probably try less of it.
00:07:43 The point here is not
to put Julian underwater,
or to make it obviously wet.
00:07:47 For me, the point is to fill the holes
in between the little gaps there,
so that it feels smooth.
Check it out! This is with.
00:08:04 And this is without.
00:08:14 Again with.
Listen to the end of the words,
the little picking on the guitar,
the difference in space and presence
on the vocal.
00:08:24 One more time without,
for reference.
00:08:37 And with.
00:08:51 Maybe a tiny bit more.
00:08:53 I like it there, but I'd like to see
what it feels like,
just a little bit more.
00:09:01 Too much!
It's still too much.
Now, I like it where it was.
00:09:11 Of course, this is a matter of taste.
00:09:14 You might have liked it once before, or
twice before, when there was more reverb,
and that's cool!
Make your selection at any time!
For me, I like it dry like this.
00:09:23 But not dry enough that I hear
the holes in between the guitar picking.
00:09:26 So, we've EQ'ed it a little bit,
we compressed it a tiny bit,
we put a little bit of space...
Let's listen to the rest of the song.
00:09:34 What happens here?
The "stuck inside" bothers me:
"She's stuck inside, stuck inside".
00:09:50 I think I wanna do
a little de-essing there.
00:09:53 I'm gonna be able to do it with
a Multiband Compressor like this one.
00:09:58 I'm only gonna use
the high end of it,
to just tame those S's by themselves.
00:10:02 So I'm gonna switch the high mids,
make it wide open,
all the way to the top, and lower
the Threshold on that a little bit.
00:10:11 So, by the way, this is raw.
00:10:16 And this is with a little bit of
compression, just under the high end.
00:10:22 Again, without.
00:10:27 With.
00:10:31 I could lower it a little bit more,
it can stand a little bit more,
maybe I can remove the Auto Speed,
and lengthen the Release a little bit.
00:10:42 So that obviously was too much,
I'm gonna raise the Threshold.
00:10:48 A little more...
00:10:51 I dig that!
Check it out!
Without.
00:11:01 See the presence of the S's,
how much more they stick out
without the Multiband Dynamics?
This is without.
00:11:09 With.
00:11:14 I think I'm being a little brutish.
00:11:16 I'm gonna raise the Threshold
a tiny bit, and a little less Ratio.
00:11:24 That's more like an American kiss!
Without.
00:11:33 Just a little bit!
It's nice!
Ok, I dig that!
Now, I have no idea
how loud this track is.
00:11:48 So I'm gonna take a Level Meter
and put it on my Master,
and look at it.
00:12:03 I'm at -14, this is incredibly low,
at least by today's standards,
so I'm gonna use a Limiter, that
I'm gonna put on, not to limit the track,
but to allow me to raise the level
without ruining it.
00:12:15 And I'm gonna look at the Level Meter
while I do that.
00:12:37 That's good enough.
We're at -8, that's competitive!
So what I did while I was listening,
I was feeling different things.
00:13:42 I lowered a little more of that frequency
that's resonating a little bit.
00:13:46 I opened the Attack of the Compressor,
because I felt it was a little brutish.
00:13:50 And then, I felt that the "stuck inside"
part, the S's were not fully caught,
so I lowered the Threshold again.
We're gonna listen to that again,
to see if those were good intuitions,
of if I screwed up!
As a reminder, we started here,
with no processing,
I leave the Limiter on, so you can
listen to both at the same level.
00:14:07 And no reverb.
00:15:07 Top of the song,
with the sweetening.
00:16:09 I don't think I screwed up!
As a reminder, not only can you
download this track,
but it was recorded
with one microphone. Just one.
00:16:17 In Post, we used a little bit of EQ
at 300 to remove the bump...
00:16:22 a little bit of compression, so that
we don't get so startled
when the vocal comes on,
and also to keep the vocal
and the guitar on the same planet...
00:16:29 a little bit of Multiband Dynamics
as a De-esser...
00:16:33 a little bit of Reverb, just to fill
the gaps in between the picking holes,
and the vocal,
and everything...
00:16:38 And then lastly, the Limiter, so that
the track is competitive
with the latest Britney Spears single
for example.
00:16:44 Et voilà!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
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.
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.
Beautiful work. Small moves done selectively. Great outcome! I am learning to listen here. Best,
Grover
jwebsmall
2015 Sep 01
Got this video when I first started. Didn't understand the finer points.
I waited a year as I learned my DAW and watched it again. Outstanding - I could understand this time what Fab was talking about. It really taught me to listen.
rmoreno
2014 Oct 08
Hi Fab Could you do a video mixing any song in different daw to see the difference!
AdRi__Forn
2014 Jun 16
So easy! Thanks for this "open mind" video
wfgiles
2012 Nov 12
Very informative. Subtle changes add up to make the end product very nice. Thankfully, unlike a Britney Spears single.........
mjponcy
2012 Oct 02
Thanks Fab.
Super helpful. Any chance you'd share mic, placement, and room info for this song? Would really complete the picture as the quality of the tracking makes for a no fuss mix.
Thanks again!
Mike
Becky Jo Benson
2012 Sep 14
Fab,
I can see how the patterns on the compressor and the EQ are very similar to the patterns in Pro Tools 10, and the basic principals are the same. I see that you turned up the gain on the limiter in the Studio One limiter. I'm going to try to see what that does for the volume of a track by turning up the gain in the Pro Tools Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter. THANK YOU for this video, Fab! I was wondering what the 'knee' was for. It makes the compressor line into a little bended 'knee'. And your kissing categories are so FUNNY! You really make learning fun! Becky Jo Benson
gilconmusic
2012 Jul 10
Very effective and efficient use of signal processing to take a songwriter demo (guitar and vocal) to the level of competitive commercial quality and appeal. From a business perspective, I call this video a Money Video.... if you get my vibe...
Thanks for this fantastic video, Fab... would like to see more videos utilizing Studio One inclusively.
Warm Regards,
Cornell
mrsunnycliff
2012 Jul 06
I think a real nice job was done utilizing only a few processors, staying true to the track's genre/vibe... Great quality and senzasenzo comments are completely insane :)
senzasenzo
2012 Jul 06
I find some other annoying things, like a nasty resonance around 800 hz and a harsh breath around 3300 hz on vocals, but I guess that if you start to twist too many knobs you'll end up ruining the mix.. is my intuition right?
KMAR
2012 Jul 06
Hey Fab,
Great lesson. One question I have is how you would process it to form a stereo mix or get a stereo spread from a mono track?
Thanks, and keep those videos coming.
Matt
bortraws
2012 Jul 05
Hi Fab,
Didn't the guitarnoises bother you in the second part right before she starts to sing stuck inside? You can hear 3 loud obvious fret noises. It's a matter of taste but I thought they distracted from the intimacy of the playing. With mastering I think it could become even more obvious.
What I did was cut the exact same passage out of the first part and placed that in the second part. You can do that without taking anything away from the continuity, intimacy or quality of the song. What's your tale on this?
Regards,
Rob
