After the first Pro Member Mix Fix Episode response, we asked the pureMix Pro Members once again to send us sessions recorded in home studios with common problems that we all deal with. Distorted tracks, tracks with excessive bleed, you name it, we wanted it.
When we heard Adrian Szendel's submission of "Some Summer Day" by his band "Six Of One," we called him right away. Without hesitation, Adrian packed up his car and drove from Cleveland, Ohio, to New York overnight and arrived at Flux Studios the next day to be a part of the shoot!
The track has some new challenges. It was built from a song idea from Adrian's writing partner, Tim DeHuff. That song idea that sparked "Some Summer Day" happens to be one mono track, containing drums, tabla, bass guitar, and electric guitar!
In this episode, watch as Fab and Adrian discuss the song's background and create a plan of attack to bring "Some Summer Day" to life.
See how Fab Dupont:
Dissects a session when he receives it to figure out what the session contains
Sets up the session with his personal taste and feng shui, setting himself up for an efficient and productive session
Discusses the mix with Adrian, who is attending the mixing session
Uses DECIBEL to set his loudness early in the session
Finds the tempo of the session
Places the audio on the grid to help with marker placement and drum replacement
Inserts samples from his personal sample library to sweeten the Kick and Snare
Sets up a parallel drum crush bus
Watch Fab Dupont, mix "Some Summer Day" from Six Of One. Only on pureMix.net
00:00:00 Good morning children!
Welcome to the second edition of
the Pro Member Mix Fix.
00:00:05 Today we have Adrian,
who was kind enough to actually,
just at the tip of the hat,
drove in from Ohio
to bring me his files,
willing to subject himself to the
torture of hearing someone else
screw with his session
in front of a camera.
00:00:32 So tell me a little bit about the song
and then, after that,
we're gonna open the session,
I'll have some questions,
because,
you know, you have your
way of doing things, I have my way,
then I'm gonna ask you
what my boundaries are, what can I do.
00:00:44 And then I'm gonna mix.
00:00:46 And then you'll come back
and listen to the final mix
and tell me how much you hate it.
Does that work? Alright, cool.
00:00:51 So, how did the song come to be?
What is it?
The song started from
a guitar player
that I was in the band with,
Tim, from Connecticut.
00:01:03 He has a habit of coming up
with little bits and pieces.
00:01:05 So he'll go down 3 o'clock in the morning
with his guitar an play little pieces
and he has a folder
that he calls 'Scraps for Adi',
Adi that's me.
00:01:17 And every once in a
while we get together
and he'll give me the stuff
and I'll take these pieces home
and then as I'm listening to them
a song pops up.
00:01:27 I took
a piece of his
song that he had started.
00:01:33 It was just a little loop,
a thirty seconds loop.
00:01:36 Guitar loop?
Guitar loop and a little bit
of percussion.
00:01:41 And,
I took that off the CD
and I just bounced it into Pro Tools
thinking I was gonna build the song
and then when it was done
I would just record the thing again.
00:01:54 You know, make it right.
00:01:55 But it started to sound good.
00:01:57 OK.
00:01:57 And
I took it kind of as far as I could
but there's a lot
that I'm still learning from Puremix.
00:02:04 OK, good place.
00:02:06 Alright.
00:02:07 - It's a been a godsend.
- Oh, thank you!
So, I'll open the session
and it's called
'Copy', so we had you export it
as a copy
so that we make sure
we have all your files.
00:02:19 'Some Summer Day Basic Tracks 44.1'
and then the date.
00:02:24 And so, I wanna do a quick
listening through
and I'm gonna make sure that
I understand what's going on.
00:02:30 I don't have those plug-ins.
00:02:33 I don't have Addictive Drums
but I don't think that we need it.
00:02:36 Right?
OK, so let's look at this session.
00:02:38 First thing I'm gonna do
is 'Save As'
and name my crime.
00:02:46 And I'll call it 1.0.
00:02:48 OK, so now it's my territory.
00:02:50 And... I don't have to
look at all this stuff.
00:02:54 I'm just gonna keep bars and beats.
00:02:56 And I go from there,
I'm gonna keep 'markers'.
00:02:59 Alright, cool.
So I see two sections.
00:03:02 We do need the instruments.
00:03:04 OK, let's just press play and then
I'm gonna ask you questions.
00:03:28 So, the track that is muted here,
it says 'original loop',
it should probably be on, right?
So, we have drums, bass, tabla,
and that guitar loop
all in one track.
00:03:44 One track?
Merry Christmas.
Let's keep going.
00:04:00 So, it says 'not used',
can I mute this one?
Yeah.
00:04:03 Yeah, basically you
can get rid of it.
00:04:05 So, I'm just gonna keep it here
just in case I find something
interesting in it.
00:04:08 How about 'bass4'?
That one should be muted as well.
00:04:17 OK, I'll make it inactive.
00:04:19 OK, cool. I see the accents in the fills.
00:04:21 Alright, let me look at
the session's session.
00:04:26 I don't need the comments
because I know what's going on.
00:04:29 Let's keep listening and see when
you come in with your vocals.
00:04:32 It a little later.
00:05:22 The cymbal overdubs,
makes a lot of sense.
00:05:27 Then we have this thing here.
00:05:31 A Xpand 2.
00:05:32 Yeah.
00:05:33 I built-in plug-in, it sounds great,
good choice.
00:05:35 I think I put the description
of what it was but...
00:05:38 '7th Melody, mod-wheel'...
00:05:40 Wealth of information.
00:05:42 Much more than I usually get.
00:05:44 And then, the cymbals
have the 'Room' on them.
00:05:47 - Yeah.
- Cool.
00:05:52 I'll make them stereo.
00:05:58 And that's Addictive Drum?
- Yes.
- OK, great.
00:06:01 There's nothing on the other drum tracks.
00:06:03 No, that's not true.
00:06:05 There was this...
00:06:06 I'm not even sure why
that's there at the end,
to tell you the truth.
I don't know how they got there.
00:06:11 Because it says 'snare drum',
but it's a cymbal.
00:06:15 Details. So, let's see.
00:06:28 Is it a different pattern?
It's probably in the
mixer of Addictive Drums,
it probably was a
send or something.
00:06:37 We don't really need that.
00:06:39 There's no kick, no snare, no hi-hat.
00:06:41 Tom, tom.
00:06:44 No toms.
What is all this?
That was the same thing,
for some reason
it just popped up there
but I don't know why.
00:06:50 OK...
00:06:53 The overheads
and also, there's a bus...
00:06:57 For the Addictive Drums and that...
00:07:00 And all this music in the back,
after the end of the song.
00:07:05 Well, I was using it because
I had to take little pieces...
00:07:08 I just kept moving them over.
00:07:11 Thanks for coming.
00:07:13 I wanna get rid of this
so I don't feel tempted
to go do stuff with it.
00:07:16 I think that this is all
making a lot of sense.
00:07:20 I am gonna probably do
something like this
to keep things simple.
00:07:24 I am going to get rid of the
stuff that has nothing on it.
00:07:28 So the snare, we
know, is a mistake.
00:07:30 Let's get rid of those things.
00:07:32 Make inactive.
I never delete anything.
00:07:34 I hide it.
00:07:36 Because you never know,
somebody might call and say:
'Hey, that was supposed to be there'.
00:07:41 'I meant that'.
I'm gonna get rid of this.
00:07:44 This is your cymbals, the direct
and the overhead, and the room.
00:07:48 I have the MIDI for this.
00:07:50 There's the intro keyboard.
00:07:52 I'm surprised the MIDI came too.
00:07:54 Yeah, you know,
Pro Tools is very reliable that way.
00:08:01 Right, a little 'Zarathustra', you know.
00:08:03 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' intro.
00:08:05 I have the MIDI there so maybe I'll be
tempted to offer you different tones.
00:08:08 Let's see how it feels at that moment.
00:08:10 I just like the fact that it starts
and modulates
immediately when
the guitar comes in.
00:08:14 I like it too.
00:08:15 I like it right away.
00:08:17 OK. I think
I have enough information
to be dangerous.
00:08:21 Is there anything on the tambourine?
No.
00:08:23 There's nothing on
the tambourine track.
00:08:24 I was gonna push shaker
and some other percussion
but when I tried, there's something
in the background already.
00:08:31 - Of the loop?
- Yeah.
00:08:34 This is MIDI drums that you programmed.
That's where you programmed the cymbals?
OK, great. I'm gonna take
this out of my consciousness
and I'm gonna
mix this and maybe do a little bit of
additional, kind of like, sweetening.
00:08:48 And then, when I'm done,
I'm gonna play for you and
we'll see the look on your face.
00:08:54 I can't wait.
00:08:56 Alright, good. Awesome, let's do this!
First things first,
I'm gonna do a little bit of a Feng Shui.
00:09:03 So, I am gonna create two tracks.
00:09:07 One stereo aux input
and one stereo audio track
that I'm gonna put to
the right of the session.
00:09:12 One is gonna be my Sum Bus.
00:09:14 One is gonna be my Print track.
00:09:17 I'll make them red.
00:09:20 And make sure that the Sum Bus
has a Bus,
hence the name, attached to it.
00:09:27 And make sure that this is like that.
00:09:30 I'm gonna name them because
that's the kind of people we are.
00:09:33 And call this one 'PRINT'.
00:09:37 And, put this on input
and make sure that everything relevant
goes to those buses.
So, 'Output 1-2'.
00:09:44 These have been disabled
but I may use them.
00:09:47 I use Bus 1-2 which Adrian used
as a send to his reverb.
00:09:51 So, I'm gonna disable that.
00:09:54 I'm planning to do my own sends
to my own reverbs.
00:09:58 I am gonna study what he did.
This master here is irrelevant
because we're not gonna use it.
00:10:03 And there's a sum mix of the vocals
but it seems that the vocals
don't go to it.
00:10:08 So I wanna get rid of that.
00:10:12 There's a background submix,
it has a channelstrip on it,
probably I'm gonna get rid of that too.
00:10:19 I'll take the whole thing
and send that to my sum bus
and make sure
I still have sound.
00:10:27 So, I do have sound.
00:10:34 And then I know I'm gonna
need a limiter
so I'm gonna put the Sonnox Limiter here.
00:10:40 Where are you?
Sonnox
Limiter.
00:10:47 I wanna a nice, bouncy and gluey
kind of sound.
00:10:50 I'm thinking I'm actually
gonna use a Fairchild
as my Mix Bus compressor,
I'll use this one.
00:10:56 And probably I'm gonna use a Pultec,
because that's the sound.
00:11:03 And there's probably
gonna be a tape thing,
so probably the A800.
00:11:09 There you go.
00:11:10 I made this arbitrary choices
based on experience and I know
what this thing sounds like.
00:11:16 Since I have the sound in my head
I thought,
let's just bring out the basic stuff.
00:11:22 So, right away...
00:11:35 It's get vibe.
00:11:43 The Pultec is giving
it a little bit of gain
because this Pultec has
a little bit of gain
but we're not gonna
be OCD about this.
00:11:48 So the next thing I'm gonna do
is organize that stuff
in things that make sense.
00:11:53 The challenge of this track
is this one loop that does everything.
00:11:57 So I'm gonna color code the
stuff the way I usually do it.
00:12:00 I noticed there's a bass submix,
I'm interested to know why he did that.
00:12:04 The vocals,
these are the lead vocals right here,
and these are the
background vocals I believe.
00:12:10 Well, they say background vocals,
that's nice.
00:12:12 There was a lot of doubling,
which was part of that sound,
which is cool.
00:12:16 I'll bring this down to here.
00:12:18 The reverb and delay, so...
00:12:21 There was an EQ and a compressor
into the reverb,
probably because the
stuff was a little peaky
and he probably wanted to
make it sound more smooth.
00:12:28 I think I can do
that another way.
00:12:29 There's a delay here but
I didn't see anything going to it.
00:12:32 I'm gonna get rid of it.
00:12:33 And then,
we have those cymbals with their rooms,
which I'm gonna put with the loop
and color differently
so I know what they are.
00:12:43 And then,
there are synths.
00:12:48 I'll make them pink,
that's what they're supposed to be.
00:12:51 I'll put them next
to the guitars
and then the click
go here and hang out.
00:12:56 And then I know I have a
rough mix of this somewhere.
00:13:00 So I'm gonna label this 'ROUGH'
and I'm gonna go fish for it.
00:13:04 It's in my 'Downloads' folder
and I have a folder of the session here.
00:13:09 I'm gonna make a 'Bounces' folder
where all the subsequent
mixes should be.
00:13:14 And there it is.
00:13:16 Notice that I'm actually
taking the time to organize myself
so that I know where things
are and I'm not worried about
losing files and stuff.
00:13:27 And I'm gonna import this MP3,
which is how we got the mix,
into Pro Tools.
00:13:33 Pro Tools is gonna do its job
and convert it.
00:13:37 I'll put it in the beginning
and start listening to the rough
so we get a vibe of where it was.
00:14:27 So I pulled my Decibel prototype plug-in,
hopefully by the time this
video is out Decibel will be...
00:14:32 real, well, that's the plan,
otherwise I wouldn't be showing you,
to know a little bit about
where Adrian parked his mix
and to see the kind of dynamic
range he was able to get out of it.
00:14:41 And also for me to get my bearings
on the level of the session versus the level
of the printed mix.
00:14:47 And then,
I wanna keep listening to the song.
00:14:49 I get the vibe of the pocket now
and also of the guitar, better.
00:15:56 This was recorded or printed
with an average level of -18 ish.
00:16:03 So, that means that it's somebody
who has experience recording
with analog equipment and
knows where a 0 VU should be.
00:16:11 My system is aligned at -18,
this all makes sense.
00:16:14 Since we're working
all in digital today
should I shoot at -18
or should I just mix for Spotify level?
I don't know yet.
00:16:24 I wanna think about that.
00:16:25 So, I'm hearing, I love the vocals,
I love the vibe of it,
the first thing I'd like to do is
try and find a tempo for this thing
so I wanna just
play it and tap tempo it.
00:16:48 So depending on how
much coffee I had today
it's either 81 or 82.
00:16:52 Let's take a quick look at it.
00:16:53 There's no telling that the stems
are starting at the downbeat
so this can be a little bit of
a trial and error kind of vibe.
00:17:00 Well, there's a click in
there, let's listen.
00:17:02 Let's go where the drums are playing,
let's solo the click and the drums.
00:17:12 The click is automated
for some reason,
I'm gonna remove the automation.
00:17:23 It's shifting.
00:17:36 It's 82 but clearly we have
a downbeat issue.
00:17:39 So I wanna
select everything,
get rid of this, get rid of that.
00:17:45 I don't wanna touch the mix
so I'm gonna make an all track group
and call it
'TIME ADJUST' so I know that
that's what it's for.
00:17:53 And make it just an edit group
so it doesn't get in the way
when I try to move faders
later and I forget what I just did.
00:18:00 And then,
I wanna go in here and
try and find the downbeat.
00:18:04 First, listen to the music.
00:18:12 So, that's a nice downbeat right here,
let's put this
downbeat on bar...
00:18:17 six.
00:18:19 Let's look at it.
00:18:21 The grid has to be on,
otherwise it serves no purpose.
00:18:24 Then I'm gonna put my nudge
into samples
because I have a feeling that may be some
drum replacement happening here,
so I like this stuff to be
right on the beat.
00:18:49 Let's make sure that my
downbeat is my downbeat,
not that I'm not off.
00:18:54 Here's the vocals.
00:19:01 Let's see where the diamonds...
00:19:02 That sounds like a downbeat to me.
00:19:09 And sure enough
I'm on an off beat.
00:19:13 I'm on beat 4 so I wanna
move it back one beat.
00:19:16 If you wanna be 100% sure,
make sure you're in relative grid mode
and then you can go
in bars and beats.
00:19:23 I'll make it 1/4 note.
00:19:26 Hit one thing and
now you're in heaven.
00:19:34 So I think it's safe to
say that this is verse 1.
00:19:36 I'm not gonna use this marker
to mark the first one because then
the other markers will have
the wrong numbers.
00:19:42 I'm gonna use this marker here...
00:19:46 to mark the Intro.
00:19:48 And rename it.
00:19:56 I'll get rid of the names so
I can see what's going on.
00:19:59 I have a little
Pro Tools dock here
and have a shortcut to
get rid of the names
and get rid of the clip gain so
I can see my waveform easily.
00:20:07 And my top of song will be
somewhere in here.
00:20:12 And I wanna rename it as such.
00:20:28 So I did the opposite of
what I said I was gonna do.
00:20:30 Let's rename this guy.
00:20:34 And here we go.
00:20:47 We have that here.
00:21:16 It's a little loud right now
and I don't wanna get
used to that level
so I'm gonna make a Master Fader.
00:21:22 I'm gonna assign
it to the Sum Bus.
00:21:24 And then I'm gonna jack that down.
00:21:27 Have you heard about jacking down?
I've heard about jacking up,
but jacking down
must be a French thing.
00:21:32 Let's go from the Verse.
00:22:37 That's a badass Chorus.
00:22:38 So, I call it 'Shout Section'
because, you know,
he's shouting.
00:22:43 So that's great.
00:22:45 And we have this little purgatory here,
like an interlude.
00:22:50 I might suggest
to get rid of that.
00:23:07 That turn around was dope.
00:23:19 Let's call this section 'RIFF', right?
And then this one...
00:23:25 So let's call it again 'RIFF'
but this one 'RIFF 1'
and then here...
00:23:34 The same thing, so let's call it 'RIFF 2'.
00:23:37 And then this one, let's call it 'RIFF 3'.
00:24:01 That's kind of a Re-intro
and there's a little bit
of a shine from the synth.
00:25:27 Here's the turnaround again.
00:25:28 I love the turnaround,
it's so garage,
like 60s garage, I love it.
00:25:50 I'm anticipating that
this is the Outro riff.
00:26:35 And a fishtail ending, awesome.
00:26:38 So, 'END'.
00:26:39 Cool.
00:26:40 So, I know already that I have some
suggestions for Adrian on the structure
but to be able to advocate
for those suggestions
I'd better make this sound good.
00:26:49 And then,
since it's gonna sound good,
and Adrian is gonna go:
'Oh, yeah, that's a good idea,
let's cut half my song out.'
Let's see how long the song is right now.
00:26:58 It starts more or less at zero.
00:27:00 It's like 4:20.
00:27:02 That doesn't need to be 4:20.
00:27:04 I don't have a problem
against 4:20.
00:27:05 But this song doesn't need to be that long.
00:27:07 It could be more essential.
00:27:09 So, let's start looking at what I think
is the crux of the song.
00:27:14 Obviously we have a
a structural in position,
which is, this most of the song.
00:27:32 And it's all in one track and it's mono.
00:27:35 I like the bass drum,
the snare sounds like somebody
with brushes or something.
00:27:38 The bass is rocking,
the bass is...
00:27:47 It's got a lot of vibe.
Then these accents...
00:28:00 That's super original.
00:28:01 So, I wanna enhance that.
00:28:04 Then we have that guitar.
00:28:05 So, this is where you
have to make a decision.
00:28:07 So first, I think I'm gonna stay
at -18, so I wanna
get my meter and create a new profile.
00:28:14 I don't a -18 profile.
00:28:17 I'm gonna call it 'Classic Mix'.
00:28:21 With just one 'i'.
00:28:23 There you go.
00:28:24 And no dyslexic issues.
00:28:26 Boom... Call it that.
00:28:28 And, I'll calibrate the VU at -18.
00:28:32 Then I work with that. I'm gonna save this.
00:28:35 Close it.
00:28:36 And then I'm gonna use
stereo meters.
00:28:39 Like this. So, I have this for a ref.
00:28:46 I already dig this.
00:28:48 For those of you who
are wondering about -18,
is is the classic alignment.
00:28:52 Basically, when the world moved to digital,
somebody,
probably at Digidesign at the time,
now know as Avid,
picked some alignment
so that the interfaces
could interface,
hence the name, interface,
with the analog gear.
00:29:05 And they picked -18.
00:29:07 So they set kind of a standard.
Also, -18 is great.
00:29:10 Eighteen dB is a lot of headroom,
at least for tracking
and so when you align
your entire system at -18
and you work with analog gear,
say for example I wanted to
print this to a tape machine,
if keep my average at -18,
when I'm gonna hit
the tape machine,
it's not gonna freak
out the tape machine.
00:29:27 I don't have to pad it,
because the tape machine is used
to getting a reference of +4 dBu
equals 0 VU.
00:29:33 And since we have,
my system is aligned at -18,
I'm using an HDX system for this,
everybody is kind of
speaking nicely together.
00:29:41 I don't know what Adrian has at home
but he has in his
consciousness
to keep the stuff at -18,
which means it's
compatible with everything.
00:29:50 I am mixing 100% in the box
but since I have his rough,
and his rough is hoovering at -18 ish,
I wanna keep it there,
we're civilized people that way.
00:29:59 Let's not forget that my
sum master is down 6 dB
because I just wanted
to make sure I was not
blasting myself while I
was making the markers.
00:30:08 This little window here,
I have a rendition of this window
right here on my dock.
00:30:13 So I wanna I use the dock instead
so you don't have to look at it.
00:30:16 I just use it to navigate,
so if I wanna go to the Verse,
I click the button.
00:30:21 I'm on the Verse.
00:30:22 So let's go back to the drums.
00:30:42 Aha, Adrian uses
the 'Page' scrolling thing which I don't.
00:30:46 So it freaked me out for a second.
00:30:48 No more 'Page' scrolling.
00:30:50 It seems to me that it is
and exact perfect loop.
00:30:53 So, if I were to wanna augment those drums
I wouldn't have to
worry about the entire track.
00:30:59 I could worry about one of
the loops and then copy/paste.
00:31:02 That would be kind of neat.
00:31:04 If I had to do the entire track
I am pretty positive I am
way too lazy to do that.
00:31:10 But one or two bars
and I'll make sure that
everything is nicely
phase aligned and sounds good.
00:31:16 that would allow me to have
extra control over the drums,
that's interesting to me.
00:31:22 So let's look at one bar here, or two bars.
00:31:36 It would be kind of cool for example
to be able to have the kick
and then the big snare
and have the other snare, the ghost snare,
separate.
00:31:43 Several ways to do that.
00:31:45 I could use ApTrigga,
but I think that's probably
a little over the top.
00:31:49 What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
create two mono tracks.
00:31:53 And I wanna start fishing
for sounds that I dig that go over this.
00:31:57 I'm not saying that it's
absolutely necessary to do this
but I think it would
sound a little more modern
and in-your-face.
00:32:03 We're gonna call
this the 'ADD KICK'
and we're gonna call this
the 'ADD SNARE'.
00:32:09 I'm gonna go to my 'Sound Bank',
"Samples",
Would it be interesting
to have an 808 on this?
I think it would.
00:32:29 Maybe not that obnoxious but...
00:32:33 That's a little light.
00:32:42 You know what, let's give peace a chance.
00:32:47 So now comes the game.
00:32:49 Let's see how tight that was.
00:32:52 Not very.
00:32:53 And that's cool, because
it was played or something.
00:32:56 So I wanna align it.
00:32:57 This is despicable.
00:32:58 Don't my mom I'm doing this,
but this is gonna help.
00:33:03 The two of them together.
00:33:08 And...
00:33:11 Let's see if some
quantize was used on that
at the original idea.
00:33:15 I'm copying this.
00:33:18 And this.
00:33:23 Sorry.
00:33:33 I'm just gonna make
Pro Tools loop this
so I don't have to
stop every time.
00:33:36 And to do so I'm gonna disconnect
my selection from the transport.
00:33:40 Like this.
00:33:41 And then now, every time I press play,
no matter what's selected...
00:33:45 It's gonna play there.
00:34:07 That's gonna help a lot
but there was no quantize
so I have to align it
by hand and then I'm gonna
have to move it
one by one until I'm happy with
how it resonates.
00:34:16 This one is the same.
00:34:19 This one is not.
00:34:21 And, as you can see there,
primarily, in-phase ish
at the onset.
00:34:35 A good way to make sure you're
not screwing up is to use IBP
and to flip the phase on that.
00:34:46 Much better, I'm gonna lower that a little.
00:35:01 Progress.
00:35:02 I love the tabla.
00:35:03 We'll sweeten that later when we grow up.
00:35:05 Right now, I'm gonna find a snare.
00:35:09 Is there something in my snares
that's gonna work?
That would be fun.
00:35:24 But, Adrian probably
would have a heart attack.
00:35:47 So these are all snares
and sounds that I basically print
when I'm the mix and there's something
that grabs me.
00:35:56 Then I will go and get that
and put it in my folder
and put my name on it.
00:36:01 Because it's my snare.
00:36:02 And then, later when I grow up
and I make another song,
I can go and get it.
00:36:08 That's not mine.
00:36:10 That's a sample from Spike,
Spike Stent,
amazing mix of that No Doubt song.
00:36:15 Let's use this one.
00:36:18 Let's see what this does.
00:36:19 I'll put it on the snare track.
00:36:21 And I'll try to align
that, I'm gonna swap them
so I can do the visual thing.
00:36:25 Yes, you could do this
and tap to transient.
00:36:28 And then go down
and then align it that way.
00:36:31 That's also a way of doing it.
00:36:33 But that's what adults do and
there are no adults in this room.
00:36:42 But you know, it kind of works, amazing.
00:36:47 I'll brighten it later.
00:36:52 Just to show you,
just so that,
you know, we agree.
00:37:00 You go here.
00:37:03 Transient, you go down,
you paste.
00:37:06 But that's assuming that
your sample is in-phase.
00:37:11 Let's see.
00:37:23 It feels late to me,
I'm just gonna do
what I've been doing
for the beginning of my life.
00:37:28 I'm gonna do it by hand.
00:37:32 Because that's the kind of girl I am.
00:37:39 And then I'm gonna use the relative grid
go move it to the right
place in the second time
because that's
clearly a one bar loop
doubled, except for the guitar
and this is where we are.
00:38:02 So that works.
00:38:03 And now, I can
have control of
these two things.
00:38:17 So, one thing that would be elegant
is that if the first
snare was a little quieter
and I'm gonna show my
clip gain info again
so to give it a little bit
of the same movement as well
the loop is.
00:38:35 And the second time doesn't
have to be the same.
00:38:51 OK, that works.
00:38:52 So, I'm gonna group those clips
and I'm gonna
just ruthlessly
copy/paste it everywhere.
00:39:00 Let's no forget to get
back to linking my timeline
and my transport.
00:39:16 It works, right?
It's nice to have the samples come later
so it gives a little
of an up and down vibe.
00:39:21 And then, Cmd+D is your friend.
00:39:31 I'll deal with the ending later.
00:39:39 I'd like to sweeten that loop.
00:39:41 And the thing is that the tabla is the key.
00:39:43 I'm just gonna focus on the loop.
00:39:52 So, I'm thinking of opening
up the top a little bit.
00:40:08 And then maybe do a little bit of like,
some vibey kind of...
00:40:13 To try and give it more attitude.
00:40:18 It's a little too much attitude.
00:40:39 OK, maybe like, run it through
like, the Studer.
00:40:43 A little loud,
to make it shine, maybe.
00:40:48 Seven IPS.
00:41:11 So we started with the
loop sounding like this.
00:41:25 So, this kind of nuked the bass drum
but I don't really care
because I have this one.
00:41:35 That bass drum is a little too fat.
00:41:38 So, I wanna change that.
00:41:40 I'm not too worried about
phasing in the bottom in this case
because I'm nuking the bass drum
on the loop.
00:42:06 I may have chosen the
wrong bass drum, let's see.
00:42:15 I dig that, let's see with the snare.
00:42:19 To not work in solo,
let me mute everybody else.
00:42:22 See you two later, people.
00:42:43 So let's see the vibe with the rough mix.
00:42:55 It seems like we're in good shape.
00:42:56 I'm gonna set up a submix
to make all this work together.
00:43:00 'DRUM SUBMIX'.
00:43:04 I'm creating a drum submix to be able
to get more unity
or try and make everything feel like
they hang.
00:43:11 One way to do that is to use
a trusty 33609.
00:43:25 But it's a little pumpy,
I wanna be a little gentler.
00:43:46 I'm not happy with this,
I'll do it again.
00:44:03 OK, so, the other thing we could do
is brighten that a little.
00:44:28 And then we could try
to give it a little bit of 'oomph'
by having also a
parallel 'DRUM CRUSH'
and see what we put on it.
I wanna start with just the fake drums.
00:44:39 I have a feeling they all look fake
but you know what I mean.
00:44:42 My default...
00:44:43 Aha, so Adrian's defaults
are different from mine
and these carry from session to session,
which is lame.
00:44:49 Thank you Avid! So there you go.
00:44:51 These are my fake drums
and that's my sub and that's my crush.
00:44:57 And my crush is here
and I'm gonna jack it up
and I'll put my
trusty dbx 160.
00:45:09 For you to hear what
I'm doing I'll put them
in PRE mode so you can
hear just the 'CRUSH'.
00:45:19 And maybe we'll put a
little bit of that too.
00:45:28 And then I'm gonna tuck it under.
00:45:55 I gotta be careful with my levels,
I'm being a little bit overt here.
00:45:59 I like the relationship between the Crush
and the Sub
so I'm gonna make a bus,
call it 'DRUM SUB+CRUSH'.
00:46:09 And I'm not gonna follow globals,
I'm gonna decide
what this group is gonna do.
00:46:14 I'll do the solos, although the solos
are not gonna work that way.
00:46:17 Automation mode is cool, this is cool.
00:46:19 I do this and now I can
lower them in concert
and make sure I don't
paint myself into a corner
from the beginning of the mix.
00:46:25 Let's bring up the meter
to make sure we are not
painting ourselves into the
corner by being too loud
just with two instruments to start with.
00:46:47 Let's assume that this
is gonna work out.
00:46:49 Let's look at what the Mix Bus does.
00:47:01 This is not moving much
but it will when more energy goes into it.
00:47:05 I raised the threshold a little.
00:47:10 This I know I'm gonna need
some 10 kHz, some 5 kHz.
00:47:15 And a little bit of 'oomph' at the bottom.
00:47:27 This is all very reasonable.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Fab Dupont is a award-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 received many accolades around the world, including wins at the Victoires de la Musique, South African Music awards, Pan African Music Awards, US independent music awards. He also has received Latin Grammy nominations and has worked on many Latin Grammy and Grammy-nominated albums.
I absolutely LOVE everything Fab does! But I can't help but notice when he creates (and balances) new elements like drum additions or crush tracks, their output assignment is not through the SUM bus initially. The SUM master fader is -6 as he states early in the video. He is a total pro and I'm sure he catches this later in the series! It's something to watch out for when working with summing and print busses. I've gotten through a final print only to discover some element was only going to Output 1-2 and thus didn't even make it into printed mix :(
Pearlpassionstudio
2020 Aug 06
Very interesting tutorial. Love your professional approach ...Great job Fab.
flandybob
2020 Aug 05
Nice song! Reminds me of the first Robert plant & strange sensation album
ruudjacobs
2020 Aug 05
Amazing solution for that mono loop, really makes it come alive. Looking forward to the rest of the series!
