Ryan Hewitt Mixing Template
53min
(31)
Grammy Award winner Ryan Hewitt walks you through his ingenious mixing template, showing you how he sets up every session to work with his unique hybrid mixing workflow that allows him to mix quickly and get incredible results every time.
Instead of having to search for plugins and IO settings that he needs for every mix, Ryan has developed a starting point that puts all of his favorite signal paths at his fingertips.
After stepping through his template track by track, Ryan demonstrates how he sets up a song and applies his mixing workflow to every track.
In this tutorial, Ryan will teach you how to:
- Use both analog summing and analog processing chains as hardware "plugins"
- Mix with multiple parallel processing tracks to create the perfect sonic color for a mix
- Keep sessions neat and organized with color coding, bussing, and printing stems
- Create super clean and perfectly synchronized drum trigger tracks
- Use stereo bus processing to simplify the entire mixing process
- Differentiate sections of the lead vocal performance with unique and shared processing tricks
- Stop looking at the meters and trust your ears to create excitement and energy in the mix
- Printing mixes both with and without analog tape and limiting his clients are expecting to hear
Learn how Ryan uses his mix template then download his original session file (with plugin settings!) as well as translated versions of his template using stock plugins as inspiration to create your own custom mixing template based on his trademark mixing style and tricks.
Once you have seen how Ryan does it, you can download his personal template perfectly translated for the following DAWs:
- Pro Tools
- Logic Pro X
- Studio One
- Cubase
- Ableton Live
Parts of this site and some files are only accessible to pureMix Pro Members or available to purchase. Please see below our membership plans or add this video to your shopping cart.
Once logged in, you will be able to click on those chapter titles and jump around in the video.
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:16 - System Setup
- 01:29 - Stereo Bus
- 03:07 - I/O Setup
- 10:00 - The Template
- 10:51 - Drums
- 20:28 - Bass
- 23:04 - Guitars
- 23:57 - Keyboards
- 24:09 - Vocals
- 26:09 - Background Vocals
- 26:46 - Color Coding
- 27:31 - FX Returns
- 32:41 - Print Tracks
- 34:01 - Recall Phase Check
- 35:03 - Using VCAs
- 37:27 - Using The Template
- 40:19 - Import The I/O
- 42:58 - Import The Template
00:00:08
Hey I am Ryan Hewitt and we're here
at my studio
at House of Blues in Nashville,
Tennessee,
to talk about the template I use
for mixing
in my hybrid sort-of situation, here.
00:00:16
My system is based around my D-Command,
here,
to control Pro Tools
and my Tonelux summing box,
over here,
to take stems and put them all together.
00:00:27
To me it sounds better, fuller, thicker,
but the theme of this video is that
there's really no right answer:
if you are in-the-box: that's great!
if you've got a summing box:
that's wonderful!
If you've got a console: you're ahead
of the game, in my opinion.
00:00:40
All these things are applicable
to just about
any situation you could possibly find
yourself in.
00:00:45
The way I work with my summing box
is, I take stems out of Pro Tools,
so I have a pair of drums,
a pair for bass, electric guitars,
acoustic guitars, keyboards,
miscellaneous things like effects and
horns and strings,
a background bus and a lead vocal bus.
00:00:59
So I think that's eight, if I counted
correctly.
00:01:01
So I have 16 channels over here,
on the way from Pro Tools
into my summing box, I use
some hardware processing.
So the drums
typically go through my API 2500
and then my Massive Passive EQ,
the guitars go through the Manley
Pultecs, over there,
the acoustic guitars go through my
NTIs, over here,
and the background vocals go through
my MAAG EQ2s.
00:01:29
So on the stereo bus of my Tonelux
summing mixer
I've got a variety of compressors and
EQs available to me at all times.
00:01:37
My typical setup is the Smart C2
going into the Curve Bender
and then into the NTI EQ3,
it's a vintage NTI
equalizer.. I guess if '90s is vintage,
now.. it's vintage!
The C2 gives me that sort of VCA
smack-y
compression that everyone loves on
radio mixes, these days.
00:01:54
The Curve Bender gives me a real
thick bottom end
and a really beautiful, open top shelf.
00:02:00
And sometimes I'll cut a little bit
at 400Hz if things are getting a little
boxy and muddy
and then sometimes I'll boost a little
bit in the mid range, like
1.8 or 2.8 I think it is.
00:02:12
You know, if I need a little more
aggression, in-your-face,
at the end of the day on the mix.
00:02:16
The NTI I use almost exclusively for
the top end.
00:02:20
The 2.5k shelf really opens up
dark tracks
on occasion, people will send me
tracks that sound like this, you get to
mixing and you gotta open them up,
so, this does a wonderful job of that,
before I even get into
individual EQs
on the channels. I feel like
if I open everything up, I have less to
do in-the-box with
plug-ins or hardware inserts, which
we'll get into, later.
00:02:44
And then the air band on this, on the
stereo mix is like [sound],
just makes it really pretty and open
on the top end.
00:02:51
That's sort of the vibe I like. I like
really open top,
I try not to get excessively bright,
'cause that can get offensive,
so, this really helps me
get things going before I even get
into detail-oriented things
in-the-box or with hardware inserts.
00:03:07
The heart of my system
really comes from
my I/O setup here, in-the-box.
00:03:11
To me the downfall
of a lot of sessions that I get to mix
is that people are very disorganized
in Pro Tools. They don't name things,
they'll send random things to
busses here and there and it's like:
Bus 1 and Bus 7 and Bus 42..
00:03:28
it's like: 'Where is bus 1 going to?!"
and then I have to scroll through all
this crap
and look at everything, to figure out:
'Oh!
That's going to a delay!' or 'that's
going to some sub-group
no longer being used.'
I am hyper-aware of keeping everything
organized
in my sessions. I am probably
being slightly
hypocritical and you might find
something, later on,
that I messed up in my session, but on
the whole,
the goal is to keep things very
organized, streamlined, minimized,
so that we can find our way through
complicated sessions.
00:03:58
Crucial, crucial crucial..
00:04:00
..to mix with any kind of speed.
00:04:03
If we look at the output page on my
Pro Tools session
I have all my outputs set up to feed
the summing bus, here we have drums,
bass, guitars, etc.
00:04:13
my two monitoring outputs for my
mix, which is Digi 2
and the rough mix, which is Digi 1.
00:04:20
They come up on my Crane Song
Avocet, over here,
wonderful-sounding box!
And then I have a handful of outputs
that will go to my analog effects,
so I have a Yamaha analog delay, a Delta
digital delay,
stereo spring reverb and a mono
spring tank.
00:04:36
And then just some weird esoteric
things, I have a sidechain feed
for when I do stems, which we can
get into at some point,
I have a reamp out if I wanna reamp
a bass track or a guitar track,
and then I have an alignment output
that's always
available to go to my tape machine,
so I can spot-check the alignment
as we're about to print.
00:04:55
Inputs, no so crucial,
1 to 24, and then I have a Burl
A/D converter, that I print all mix
mixes through.
00:05:03
But now, here's where things get
a little crazy:
in the busses
of course we have our outputs
as we did on the output page
and then I have all my busses that I use
on a daily basis,
just ready to go at all times.
Everything's named,
everything that's in the template
is already routed
but here you can see, if I'm gonna mix
in-the-box completely,
which occasionally I do, if I've got a
million recalls to do
with a very picky client,
I may just stay in-the-box and then my
drum bus gives me a place to
EQ and compress my drums as I would
with my Manley and my
API, over here. Let's open all this up
so you can see everything.
00:05:40
I have
crushes for the kick and snare that are
dedicated, I have..
00:05:45
..gate sidechains, if I wanna use them,
they're already ready to go.
00:05:49
I have a stereo drum crush, I have a
stereo drum distortion,
drum verb, drum echo,
kick trigger and snare trigger so I can
make my samples.
00:05:58
They're already ready to go on all the
drum tracks, so I can
duck them if I need to and send them to
the trigger, if I need to.
00:06:05
I have a bus for printing the snare
and kick triggers,
'cause I like to.. I don't like having
them run live, I print them
and then fix them, make sure they're
sample-accurate.
00:06:15
I have a bass bus.
00:06:16
I have an Aphex 2 that I use, that's
in the rack, over there.
00:06:20
Andrew Scheps I think uses the same one.
00:06:22
But that's pretty much, for me, that's
dedicated to use it on the bass.
00:06:26
I have a lead vocal crush, I have a
stretch module that I use
on the vocal, a lot..
it's like a
Dolby kinda thing, exciter,
sounds wonderful..
00:06:34
I have a mono crush and a stereo crush
that's available to everything
in the mix, at all times.
00:06:38
If I need a little more of something,
I can make it louder by
throwing it through that compressor.
For processing
I have 'guitar room', 'guitar reverb',
'guitar echo',
'verse echo' for the vocal,
so these are now going to vocals.
00:06:51
First echo, pre-chorus echo,
chorus echo!
Bridge echo! Lead vocal slap!
Double..
00:06:55
Lead vocal room, Lead vocal verb,
chamber, plate, chorus!
So those are active, all the time!
Another theme of my videos will be
being able to make decisions quickly
and push faders up and move
without having to think about things.
Without having to mouse around
'Oh! I need an echo!'
Click, click, click, click, click, click, click..
00:07:14
..boom! Name, dadadada..
Ok, we just wasted a minute.
00:07:17
So, if you have these things in a
template, that you typically use,
you're ready to go! I may not use
all of them, all the time,
I may not use the settings that I have
in my template,
I hope I don't, 'cause that'd be pretty
boring.
00:07:30
But they're available, I can push a
fader, I can push a button,
they're ready to go. It's not like
scrambling to find something.
00:07:37
So it just, again: make life easy for
yourself. Put these in a template
the way you like to have them. The
way you like them arranged, etc. etc.
00:07:45
Makes life really easy.
00:07:47
And then I have a bunch of extra busses
that are unassigned to things
so if I am in the middle of a session
and I need some Dub Echo, I've got
extra busses that I can fly, in there.
00:07:57
And then I've got even more random
busses at the bottom.
00:08:00
If people give me multi-miked
acoustic guitars
or multi-miked electric guitars
my assistant Will, will..
00:08:08
..bus those down to a stereo pair or a
mono pair, for me,
so I can just process one thing
and not have to EQ six different
guitar mics
that are scattered all over the place.
I just:
'Give me one thing, please!' And then
I can process that, individually.
00:08:23
And then I also have a BV aux,
you know, if there's a..
00:08:25
pile of background vocals, I'll
typically process those together as well
and these days I actually have a few
different BV auxes
depending on what they're doing.
If there's a big stack of 'Oohs'
I'll process those together
and there's a big stack of harmonies in
the chorus
I'll process those guys together.
Moving on to hardware inserts..
00:08:42
I use, because I have all this gear,
I like to use it,
I make it earn its keep, in here,
and so I've got sort of a template of
hardware inserts, the things that again:
I use every day,
patched up in proper order and making
life wonderful with analog
loving goodness.
00:09:00
So my TG1, I use it almost all the time,
that will alternate with a 33609 so I
just move a patch, you know,
two holes over and I can have my other
compressor that I love so much.
00:09:12
This one is the..
00:09:14
..that's the kick parallel, dbx 160
into
a Transient Designer and an
Aphex 204.
00:09:19
That is the best $150 you can spend.
00:09:21
It's an Aphex 204. Now they're gonna go
up in price, watch!
Snare parallel is an 1176 through a
Transient Designer and an Aphex 204.
00:09:30
And this is one of my bass
patches, the 161 into a Maag EQ.
00:09:36
And then we just have some other
things that I like to use
on various things, these sort of
go to different places during different
mixes, depending on
what I need for that sort of vibe.
00:09:47
And then another Aphex 204
for the toms.
00:09:50
If you have this stuff, put it to work!
Make it work! Make it earn its keep.
00:09:55
If I don't use something for a year,
it gets sold
and I get something new that I'll use.
00:09:58
So, another sort of philosophy of mine.
00:10:01
If we open up the template session,
which I have here on the computer,
I can show you
where all these busses and inserts and
outputs.. where everything goes.
00:10:12
I don't have every single possible thing
in my template necessarily
but just the typical sort of channels
that I get.
00:10:18
People send me drum tracks with
20 mics on them
and having enough
analogous tracks in my template
will let me
transfer all that sort of setup
into the session itself.
00:10:32
You can see I've got a million things
here: I've got
kick in, kick out, kick sample,
kick room,
everything you can possibly imagine
in stereo and mono guises.
00:10:41
So we can come over here
and we have stereo overhead, we have
mono overhead, stereo room, mono rooms
and then just extra random things,
down here.
00:10:49
The point of all things, again:
making life easy.
00:10:52
You can come here to, example:
my kick drum.
00:10:55
My kick goes out of the drums,
output here,
and then it has all these aux sends,
pre assigned to it.
00:11:01
So anything I can possibly use on the
kick microphone
is assigned already, so I have the
drum reverb
the drum echo, I have the kick gate
sidechain, the kick trigger sidechain,
the snare trigger sidechain,
kick crush, drum crush, drum distortion,
mono crush, stereo crush.
00:11:17
So all of these things are ready to go,
I can push my button here on the console
and bang up that send and it goes where
I want it to go.
00:11:25
The gate, the trigger and the snare
trigger are deactivated here
By default they're off, saving a little
bit of CPU power,
so now, to take it a step further
if we open up that kick gate send
I wanna use that sidechain on the
kick out mic
or room mic, to only open when the
kick hits, for example.
00:11:43
I can activate that send and it's
already turned up, it's ready to go.
00:11:47
Make life easy!
I think the same thing for the
kick trigger
and for the snare trigger.
00:11:52
We can step to that next, in fact.
00:11:54
Part of my template is having Steven
Slate's drum Trigger plug-in ready to go
'cause inevitably I'm probably going to
augment the sounds that are there
with some samples.
00:12:03
So I've got my favorite kick drums
loaded
and then on the snare trigger I've got
my favorite snare drum loaded.
00:12:08
Maybe I don't use any of these
sounds, because they're not appropriate
but at least everything is set up
all my settings here are sort of my
typical go-to settings
and just ready to go, so it's easy.
00:12:19
So now, of course on Steven Slate's
Trigger
what you put into the left input
is the trigger, what you put into
the right, is the suppression.
00:12:26
If I come over here to my snare
drum,
I've got the kick trigger setup
and panned to the right,
so it will suppress the snare drum
sound
going to the trigger, so I don't have,
you know,
lots of errant triggers for the kick
drum.
00:12:40
Same thing for the kick drum
going to the snare trigger.
00:12:44
So you notice here, on my kick
trigger channel
I've got two instances of Trigger.
00:12:49
The first one is for all the
close-sounding mics,
which you'll see here
and then the second one is for
a room sound.
00:12:57
So if I want a roomy kick drum
sound
I can come over here and it's ready
to go.
00:13:02
And I can print that onto the
kick sample room track.
00:13:05
I've also got a kick sample track
that I can print my close-sounding
kick sample onto.
00:13:10
Just moving down the line, so here I
have my kick crush which is a parallel
compression channel that I add back to
the original sounds.
00:13:18
In this instance I have a hardware
insert
as I was discussing before,
in the I/O setup,
it's a 160X followed by a
Transient Designer
and an Aphex 204.
00:13:27
So a bit of compression,
a bit of transient shaping
and then a bit of subharmonic
addition
if I need that on the kick drum.
Typically I do.
00:13:36
Sometimes I decide to go with just
the software insert
and that works just as well. I have
1176s I like and
things like that. No wrong answer.
dbx 160, you know..
00:13:45
..it's a generic compressor.
Whatever sounds,
whatever helps your situation for
the attack and release envelope
will be fine on that.
00:13:52
And then we come along with
the snare drum, top and bottom,
same thing all the appropriate sends
except
of course we have the snare crush
send, here.
00:13:59
And also I've noted here,
my..
00:14:01
the way I do my individual crushes
for the kick and snare,
I do pre-fader sends because I want that
to be a static balance, a static sound
that's going to help the snare drum out.
00:14:13
And I lean on the crush sound for
extra smack,
extra sustain.. whatever those
close mics don't have
I reach for that parallel compression
for that sound.
00:14:24
We have a snare crush as well.
00:14:26
And same thing, hardware insert
my 1176, Transient Designer,
204 chain.
00:14:31
It's my typical thing.
00:14:32
And again sometimes an 1176
in-the-box is gonna be better than
that.
00:14:36
Maybe I don't need the Transient
Designer or the 204.
00:14:40
And I can do that in-the-box
and it sounds wonderful.
00:14:43
So we have toms, a couple floors
a couple racks,
ride, hi-hat, overheads
etc.
00:14:49
These are all just sort of generic
tracks that I might get
from someone who's recorded
an album.
00:14:53
More fun stuff comes over here with
the stereo drum crush,
so again: this is pre fader
from my sends, I like it to be a static
balance
that moves along with the whole
drum kit.
00:15:06
I'll show you how I do that
in just a second.
00:15:08
Every drum channel has a send
to the drum crush, so
if I want to send it there, it's ready
to go, at all times.
00:15:14
Typically I just put the close mics
in: kick, snare,
toms, overheads,
the room sometimes sneaks in there
if I need more excitement, like if...
00:15:22
the close mics will be pounding that
compression
and if the room needs a little
more excitement
or a little more depth,
I'll throw that in there, too.
00:15:30
But generally I like to think of this
and actually Vance Powell
had the most wonderful
description of what you use
a drum crush for, and he's like:
'It's to make it come like,
in your face,
to get really close!' If the drums
sound too far
and nasty, a really aggressive
sound.
00:15:49
So, that's what I reach my
TG1 for.
00:15:52
This is a hardware insert
because they don't make the
plug-in anymore, which is sad,
but they do have the Zener, the UAD
guys came out with the Zener plug-in,
it's very similar to the TG1,
now at least I have a software option
for that.
00:16:04
But typically I go with my TG1
I put this EQ after it, I pull
a little bit of 450 out
just to sort of clarify that stuff,
keeping it from getting too boxy,
this is sort of my generic setting and
sometimes I add just a little bit of top
to make it smacky or whatever.
00:16:18
The phase response is pretty linear
so it doesn't
give me any smear with the original
sounds when I blend it back in
so that works pretty well.
00:16:25
Coming along, lots of drums stuff!
This is crucial 'cause most drum
recordings are really bad these days, so
I need all these different tools
available to me to make them
sound really good..
00:16:35
so I have a stereo drum distortion
channel that I really lean on,
sometimes,
again: if I need something aggressive,
if the drums don't have like a tone,
if they don't have a sound, if it's like
[sound]
I'll lean on this drum distortion thing
and get it really
again: aggressive and nasty.
00:16:52
One of the things I really love
to do with this channel
is, I have like sort of a pre-emphasis
curve.
00:16:58
Typically I don't wanna distort the
top end stuff
to keep clarity up there so I roll
off a lot of top end
and again I pull out a lot of
500 to keep it from getting boxy
and then, distorting sub-harmonic stuff
sounds awful and mushy
so I get rid of a lot of that on the way
into the distortion.
00:17:15
The typical distortion I use is the
Culture Vulture plug-in.
00:17:19
This sound really, really works
well for me
I rarely change it to be perfectly
honest.
00:17:24
It gets pretty nasty, the only things
I'll really change is this
filter on the output
and that makes a whole difference
in how it combines with the dry tracks.
00:17:33
And then again I'll put another
EQ after it
to give it another sort of mid-range
aggression bump
and then this moves quite a bit,
depending on where the
center frequency of the kick drum is,
but
the goal here is to get an extra
bump on that bottom
that's different from the close mics,
it gives it more length, to me,
sometimes actually what could be
interesting on this distortion thing
is to flip it out of phase,
'cause it will give you a whole
another tone
whether it's in phase or out of
phase with your close mics.
00:18:00
It's something to experiment with
and I should actually have
a plug-in on here that I can flip the
phase with. And my favorite
and my favorite plug-in for doing that
is..
00:18:09
the Tonelux Tilt. So this is now gonna
be part of my template.
00:18:14
But I'm gonna turn these filters off and
just have it here for the polarity
invert.
00:18:20
So, it's a cool plug-in.
00:18:22
I am moving right along. I have a
dedicated drum reverb
and my typical go-to thing is the
Softube TSAR reverb,
sounds sort of an AMS RMX
to me
so grainy, nasty reverb.
00:18:32
My other one that I really like on
here is the UAD
Ocean Way Drum Room Reverb.
00:18:37
That thing sounds incredible!
And if someone doesn't give me any room
tracks or if their room sounds like crap
I'll typically go and put the Ocean Way
sound on there and..
00:18:46
and make like sort of a natural
organic-sounding room.
00:18:49
The default settings sounds really
wonderful to me!
Changing these mics up, changing the
distance and the predelay
can make a huge difference in your
drum sounds.
00:18:57
That's another thing to really
experiment with.
00:18:59
But anything like D-Verb works great,
any reverb plug-in you have that you
know how to use
will suffice for this, it's really not
that important.
00:19:07
So moving along, a thing I've been into
recently is
putting some slap on the drums.
00:19:11
So I've created this drum echo
to have by default
and it's just a typical short,
distorted kind of Echoplex sound
around 100ms is typically good,
sometimes it's cool to put it in time
with the track to get like a [sound]
like a little in-time kind of thing
if you need
an extra contribution to the groove
of the song.
00:19:31
This can really, really help.
It's really cool.
00:19:34
The Echoboy I think sounds wonderful
but really any echo will do,
it's not important what it is.
00:19:38
Hardware stuff is great, I use my Yamaha
analog delay occasionally for this.
00:19:42
I think the Echoboy sounds wonderful.
It's a great plug-in.
00:19:45
And finally for drums
coming out of the Pro Tools outputs
into the summing bus
I put a little limiter on it in case
I get a little too excited about
my drum volume coming out
in the middle of the song
I don't have to back things off as much.
I just put like this
sort of brickwall thing on the end so it
doesn't clip the output of my converters
it's probably destroying everything
down the path but that's
not really a worry. I like the sound
of that kind of thing
but clipping out of Pro Tools is not
the most beautiful sound of the world.
00:20:11
And again, any sort of brickwall limiter
will be fine, you just put like,
put it down a half dB so you have
a tiny little bit of headroom coming out
of Pro Tools and you should be fine.
00:20:20
Next is just a bunch of percussion
tracks,
again, so they can just have their
sends pre-determined
and I can import those settings into
my session.
00:20:30
The bass gets a little interesting:
typically you're gonna get 2 bass tracks
from your tracking engineer,
typically a DI and an amp, maybe
2 amps
as I like to do on my session, like
a clean a dirty.
00:20:40
By default I have the UAD
Little Labs IBP available
on those tracks,
'cause typically they're not gonna be
perfectly time-aligned.
00:20:47
Even if you have one available when
you're tracking
you may get down the road and
see like:
'Ah, I can still tweak that a little
bit!', so..
00:20:52
Those guys are available,
they're deactivated
so that they don't take up any
DSP until I need them
but they're ready to go.
00:20:59
And actually a hint on the
IPB, and I don't know why this is
but I found that
for example we have these two
bass tracks,
if I'm gonna use the IBP
I put them on both tracks
and then I adjust one and then
the other to see where
it's going to be most effective.
00:21:18
Even if I am not using one of them
I still need to have them on both
so that it sounds right and
I don't know what that's about
but that's just sort of what I found,
so..
00:21:25
I keep them on both tracks, there.
00:21:27
Again,
this is not always used but I have
it available to me
I put both bass tracks on the bass
bus
and the bass bus goes to 2 aux
returns.
00:21:38
I have a 'bass mid' and a 'bass lo'.
00:21:40
And when I need it, when there's a
really weird bass sound,
or there's an exceptional need in a
particular song for
separate treatment of the midrange
and the
bottom end of a bass, I can go
and do this.
00:21:52
Typically I'll start out with one aux
return with the bass
and try to make it happen with
a very simple
single compressor, single EQ
and so on.
00:22:00
If it's giving me issues, if it's not
sitting in the mix properly
like if the low end is fighting with
something or
the midrange is fighting with something
I'll break it out in two
different aux returns
and now the midrange, I am not crossing
them over and separating them
like a crossover would
but I am just affecting them
differently, so
one channel may have like a very
aggressive midrange
EQ and the compression will be
fast,
like a dbx 160 or something like that
to get like this really..
00:22:27
..to tame that midrange and make it
pop like,
like Flea's for a good example,
I did this on
Stadium Arcadium record
where I would compress the midrange
really aggressively
and make it stick out, and then
the low end
I can boost that and then have
a slower compressor on it
to make that sort of do it's own little
dance with the kick drum, for example,
and then I have another aux return
for my Aphex
if I am not getting the finger noise
that I want out of a bass track,
for a particular mix,
I can send it into this Aphex
and I've got it dialed to my sort
of bass sound.
00:22:59
I can just dial that up at any moment,
see if that works
and if it doesn't, it just goes away and
I find another solution to that problem.
00:23:06
Next we have all the guitars
so I have a bunch of acoustics
ready to go
mono tracks and then stereo aux
returns
if I have multiple mics on a particular
acoustic guitar.
00:23:15
The sends are all set to go,
the room, the reverb,
the echo, the plate,
the mono crush, the stereo crush.
00:23:21
And then all of these of course are
going to go out of the acoustic
guitar outputs into my summing box
through that NTI EQ up there.
00:23:28
And then we have a bunch of
electric guitar tracks.
00:23:30
They're gonna go out the electric
guitar output through my Manley Pultecs
and again through these reverbs are
all available.
00:23:37
And again I have a handful of
stereo aux returns in case
four of these microphones
are on one part.
00:23:43
Please, get some kind of summing box
and put all your guitar mics together.
Get your sound when you're tracking it,
please, please please! You're gonna do
yourself and me a favor!
Because that sound will always be
there: commit to the sound
it's a wonderful thing to make a
commitment in Pro Tools.
00:23:58
Then we have a bunch of keyboard tracks,
they could be piano, Wurlitzer,
harp, string ensemble, whatever you
want. It's all ready to go.
00:24:06
Same thing: got a bunch of sends.
00:24:10
Now, things get a little more exciting
here, with the vocals.
00:24:13
I typically.. people will give me a lead
vocal track, in most cases.
00:24:17
And I like to split it out because we
can, in Pro Tools,
into 3 different parts: the verse, the
chorus and the bridge.
00:24:24
That way I can process them differently,
we can have a slightly different sound
in each of those section to
differentiate even further
the verse from the chorus and the
bridge.
00:24:34
And I can have my effects going to them
in different proportions to, again,
differentiate those sections, make a
new, exciting vocal sound
in the chorus, for example.
00:24:43
And I can do that without automating
things, 'cause I can
say: all right, here's my verse sound,
here's my chorus sound,
this is the effects for the verse, this
is the effects for the chorus
and I don't have to dick around with
automating that stuff when I'm just
trying to get a balance
and a vibe going in the song.
00:24:58
If I had to start automating things
to get there
then I am doing it wrong and I am making
way more work
for myself than I need to.
00:25:04
Yes, I can automate all those things
but do I need to?
This is gonna be cooler.
00:25:08
As we were discussing before, in the
I/O setup
I have an echo for the verse, the
pre-chorus, the chorus, the bridge,
the lead vocal slap, as well.
00:25:16
Now, again: this may not be
the verse echo, but it's named that
so I know where everything's going, it's
labelled, it's easy to find.
00:25:24
I have all the lead vocals sent
to the stretch
which is that exciter I was talking
about before, wonderful box.
00:25:30
I have a dedicated lead vocal
room sound,
a lead vocal reverb, and a lead
vocal crush.
00:25:35
When I worked for Phil Ramone
for a while
he would yell at me
if I put anything into the lead vocal
reverb.
00:25:40
He's like: 'you're ruining the lead
vocal reverb sound!
It's gotta be its own thing, don't put
the snare drum in there, please!'
So I've sort of brought that into the
modern age
and done that as a separate send.
00:25:51
It doesn't always happen, but it's there
in case I need it.
00:25:54
The plate, however is universal, you've
seen it on the acoustic guitar and such
and I bring that into the lead vocal
as well.
00:26:00
Sometimes the lead vocal verb is
another plate
again: to keep that clean
and isolated from all the other crap
that's gonna be thrown in there.
00:26:07
And of course the lead vocal goes out
the lead vocal output.
00:26:10
So, next on the hit parade is the
background vocals.
00:26:14
Probably the last thing before we
get into all the
returns from all this junk that we've
sent everything to.
00:26:20
Again, just generic stuff, some
harmonies, some BVs,
and then a BV aux
and again, sending to stuff that
I would typically use
on my backing vocals.
00:26:29
And they could be
contributing into those
echo sends
into the slap, they have a doubler
that I like to use,
the room, the verb, the crush
and the plate.
00:26:38
So these are things I'll typically
use on the backing vocals.
00:26:41
Not always but they're available,
ready to go.
00:26:44
And then I have the BV aux
down here
and that's a sort of case-by-case
basis, whether I use it or not.
00:26:48
You'll also notice, before I get
into these returns
that I've got everything
color coded.
00:26:53
Easy to find, all my sessions have
the same color coding.
00:26:57
There's blue for drums,
purple for percussion, brown
for bass,
light green for acoustics,
dark green for electrics,
blues for keyboards,
red for lead vocal, orange
for backing vocals
and then the other thing sort of get
miscellaneous color tones as I need them
When I bring this stuff into my
sessions
I further differentiate
you know, shades of blues and greens
and such so I can see like:
'All right, these 6 tracks are a sound
for the guitars..
00:27:23
..these 2 tracks are the piano sound
for the piano.'
So on and so forth.
00:27:29
Just so I can quickly find what
I am looking for
scrolling up and down through
100 tracks.
00:27:33
After all the tracks are said and done
we have all these returns from all
the junk
that you've seen on the aux sends,
so far.
00:27:39
First I'll put my lead vocal stuff
'cause that's what I wanna grab,
first.
00:27:43
In my template they're in a typical
sort of
level that I like them at, that I found
to be useful to me,
the lead vocal crush,
typically I'll use this CLA-76,
it sounds fine.
00:27:55
And as Andrew Scheps has said,
in his video,
'what these sound like on their own
doesn't really matter,
it's how they contribute to what you're
putting into them'.
00:28:02
This gets sort of nasty, medium-slow
attack
and a quick release
this is my typical setting for my
vocal crush.
00:28:10
I sometimes substitute the Fairchild
model on here
that sounds pretty good, a lot of times
and the attack will vary, depending on
how angry I want to vocal to sound.
00:28:18
If I want them to sound nice and pretty
it's gonna get a slower attack
and if I want it to be a little more
angry, it will get a faster attack
and an all-button ratio.
00:28:26
So this will change a little bit.
00:28:28
This is sort of my go-to beginner
setting.
00:28:31
Then I have the 'stretch' on an aux
return.
00:28:33
This is a hardware insert, it's a
500-series obviously module that's
like a Dolby exciter that we used
to use back in the day.
00:28:38
This is a lot more versatile
because you can step through different
sidechain filters.
00:28:42
So you can add low end with it,
you can add top end
and there's different corner
frequencies as to
what gets excited
and it's very dynamic so depending
on how much you put in there
it will affect that signal differently.
So,
I hope they make a plug-in of that,
that'd be a really wonderful thing.
00:28:58
And I put a noise gate after it 'cause
it's kind of a noisy box.
00:29:02
And then we have that sort of
the mono crush and the stereo crush,
it's available across the whole mix from
any channel that
I need to make louder.
00:29:09
I have the Fairchild 660 here.
00:29:12
Set pretty aggressively, as you can see!
But I typically don't need to put a lot
of that signal in there,
to make it effective.
00:29:19
And then on the stereo one, same thing:
1176, slow attack, fast release.
00:29:23
To be able to add a little bit more
presence
in anything that I stick in there,
obviously it makes it louder because
you're adding,
This will get pretty aggressive too,
in the limiting.
00:29:32
I never look at that meter. I don't
wanna know what's happening there.
00:29:36
I can just turn that fader and it makes
things louder
and that's what we want, at the
end of the day.
00:29:40
It's very exciting! So then we have
our guitar effects,
I start with the Valhalla room
that I really like
for that room sound. Got a couple
presets that I like.
00:29:49
This short bright room that I've
created
works really well for me on guitars,
it just sort of adds a little presence
around them,
makes it exciting. Guitar reverb is
typically this BX20
UAD plug-in, sounds really nice,
it's really long, so if you need
something that's more detailed
this is not your guy. But if you want
something vibey and vintage-sounding
this thing is great!
Another Echoboy instance on the
guitar echo,
I turn the MIDI on by default so it
maps to the session's tempo,
I typically start with an eight note.
00:30:18
Again: no rules, this is just sort of a
starting template for me.
00:30:22
And sometimes it turns into a slap
or whatever.
00:30:24
But typically is pretty dirty, I usually
have the saturation up around here
to get things kind of aggressive, get
the party going, you know.
00:30:30
All the vocal processing is next.
00:30:33
The verse echo, pre-chorus, chorus
bridge echoes, lead vocal slap.
00:30:37
And again, just sort of some
rudimentary setups
on these, nothing fancy
but this is sort of a starting point
for a lot of stuff.
00:30:46
And then finally just that
lead vocal slap,
typical sort of 100ms thing
with an aggressive
saturated, tape machine sound.
00:30:54
And then we have more of the
background vocal stuff.
00:30:57
The doubler, the vocal room, the vocal
verb, the chamber, the plate, the chorus
I typically use as my doubler, it sounds
really good.
00:31:04
The fixed doubler is really good, too.
I have that
in another template, that I use.
00:31:08
And then I put a width thing on this,
makes those background vocals
a little wider-sounding.
00:31:12
It helps things out, a little bit.
00:31:14
Again, the Valhalla Room on the lead
vocal, sometimes I put the
UAD EMT 250, sounds really great
on vocals, for room.
00:31:21
Lexicon 224 sounds great for vocals.
00:31:25
On the chamber
Altiverb has this sample of East
West Chamber no.5
as it used to be called:
'Cello Chamber 5'.
00:31:32
I was actually there when they did these
samples
so I made sure they were done
properly.
00:31:35
And they sound awesome!
And I think blindfolded I could tell you
the difference
between the 3 different chambers.
00:31:40
They're pretty great.
00:31:43
I cut the low end out before
it goes into the chamber
and the same thing on the plate,
it just sort of clarifies things
a little bit.
00:31:50
EMT 140, typical plate sound, sounds
awesome,
I widen this one up a bit, too,
make it a little
superhuman sounding, sounds good!
I have a chorus set up
for acoustic guitar, that I really
like.
00:32:02
Dimension D is awesome!
And again I widened that one out
just to
make it sound a little more
supernatural.
00:32:08
Then I have some aux returns
for my analog effects:
the Yamaha 1005
analog delay
sounds awesome,
Delta Labs Effectron thingie,
stereo reverb, stereo spring,
you know: junk that I have in my rack
that I've collected..
00:32:21
..occasionally they get used,
you'll see by default
I keep them muted, 'cause they're
noisy
and if I don't use them I don't want
that noise contributing to my stereo bus
Some rudimentary utility stuff here:
my alignment output
that I can send to the tape machine and
check the alignment before I print it.
00:32:37
I have a channel dedicated to the
rough mix
set up so it goes to my Digi 1
output on my Avocet
and then I have my mix printing tracks.
00:32:46
I have the mix going straight to the
A/D converters on my rig
and then I have another one that goes
to the tape and then to my Burl.
00:32:53
So that's what I send to my mastering
and the non-tape, if you will,
is just sort of a safety, in case
some went wrong with the
tape machine and I didn't notice that
as it was printed
or at the end of the day that saturation
really isn't helping us,
I have sort of a safety print
that's not going to the tape machine.
00:33:09
And then I have my loud track..
00:33:11
I'll take that mix, printed through the
tape machine
and copy it onto another track
and bake in my loud box.
00:33:18
I use the FabFilter Pro-L
typically 6dB of gain to
sort of make that full master thing
to send to a client.
00:33:25
I found that when you send a mix
to a client
they wanna hear it
as loud as something they're gonna
reference.
00:33:31
If they've got to turn their volume up
they're gonna get a little upset.
00:33:34
It kind of irritates me a little bit
that the people can't be bother with
that, but
this is the age we live in, and so
I don't ever send a mix out
without making it a little bit louder.
I can't make it
screaming loud, like mastering guys do,
but
you gotta improve upon that a little
bit, send it to someone.. you know,
the 'audio planer' as my friend
calls it. Just
cut off all the peaks,
make everything a little louder so that
when you put it on into the car
it's rocking, at that point.
00:33:59
Now this little thing here, this phase
check channel,
because I use all this analog hardware
I have my summing box, I have all
these EQs and effect and I have all my,
my hardware inserts,
when I do a recall a week later or a
year later,
how do I know it's perfect?
What I do is, I bring
what's coming off my summing box
I bring that back into the converter
into my Digi converter, I just A/B
my non-tape mix with this phase check.
00:34:27
I use this Time Adjust plug-in to back
time the mix
to match what's coming off the console
and I flip it out of phase, as you
can see, here.
00:34:36
And I make as much of that disappear
as I can. And we've gotten
to the point where it's like 99%
perfect. You know, of course reverbs,
things that have time..
00:34:47
..modulation on them, will never cancel.
00:34:49
But the multitude of tracks you have
that don't have that on it
will phase cancel and then you know
you've got like a..
00:34:55
..a pretty great recall.
00:34:57
Most people wouldn't know if it
was 80%
but I like to get it as perfect as
possible, 'cause it's just sort of my
..my OCD talking!
The next thing and
one of the most important things
to the way I structure my
setup here, is to have a whole bunch
of VCAs.
00:35:15
This sort of comes from working on
SSL, back in the day,
we'd have 8 VCAs in the center
of the console
and your drum mics are all the way
over there
and then some other stuff all the way
over there.
00:35:25
And you wanna be able to mix in the
sweet spot, between the speakers
so you'd assign those things to the VCAs
like you'd have
one with the drums, one with the bass,
one with the guitars
and you can make macro moves
on those VCAs like whole groups of
things can be ridden
or adjusted in the balance, on the fly,
sitting in front of the speakers.
00:35:42
Because we can make as many
VCAs as we want
I've taken it a step further
and made a VCA for every conceivable
group
that I have
so drums, percussion, bass, acoustics,
electrics, keys,
strings and horns
and then there's miscellaneous garbage
that may not fall in these categories.
00:35:59
BV VCA, Lead Vocal VCA
and then we have a master VCA, here,
that control all those other VCAs.
00:36:06
So if my mix is like, jamming along
and stuff is too loud
I can just grab that master VCA and
turn everything down.
00:36:13
Without having to again
grab the whole group and then do
this and 'oh crap!
maybe that doesn't need to be turned
down!'
because it's a return or what have
you..
00:36:20
this master VCA
is assigned only to the source tracks
of the music.
00:36:25
And they will be pulled down
all together
like if I am hitting my bus compressor
too hard
or just the stereo bus if it's blown
up
and getting distorted in an unfriendly
way
I can grab that master VCA and just
yank it down a dB or 2 dB and see
how it sounds.
00:36:38
This is really crucial to my gain
staging
because I don't wanna overload
the tape machine
I don't wanna overload
my stereo bus processing
so this sort of helps keep a handle
on everything
and there are times where I had to pull
it down 5 dB
you know, it's just, things have gotten
a little out of hand
and I got a little excited, things are
getting a little loud and fun
and then you look at the meter and
it's like [sound]
completely smashed! So,
I can just reach over there and grab
that one VCA
and everything is back into reality
land. So,
that works really well for me.
00:37:09
When I bring these into my
session that I'm gonna mix, I have
to then create
these groups. That unfortunately I don't
think it can really be part of the..
00:37:16
..the template.
00:37:18
But I do have like, you know..
00:37:19
..the rudimentary drum tracks,
percussion, bass etc.
00:37:22
set up in these groups. So,
sometimes it works, sometimes
it's a little dodgy
but we just deal with that on a case-
by-case basis, to make it all work.
00:37:30
So one of the challenges using a
template
is importing all that stuff into
a session that someone gives you.
00:37:36
What do you keep, what do you throw
away, how do you sort of manage
the things you're given with the things
you want to put
into that session.
00:37:45
So, there's a number of ways of
doing it,
they're all annoying.
00:37:50
It's a little tedious, that's why I have
my assistant doing most of this work.
00:37:53
So I might screw some of this
up
but the general gist is..
00:37:59
..let's back up for one second.
00:38:00
When someone sends me a session,
I sort of have a list of demands,
I have a ransom note
that I send to the client to say:
'this is what I'd like to see from you'.
00:38:07
If you gotta stack a plug-in on
something that makes a sound, that's
your thing,
print that sound! I ask that they send
that
and then send me the file without that
stuff. On a playlist.
00:38:17
So I can easily A/B
with and without their version of
what it should sound like.
00:38:22
If I don't like what they've done
I can go back to the original source
material and effect it that way.
00:38:27
If they insist on sending me plug-ins
still activated, I'll leave them on
there
and I'll listen to them and decide,
thrown them away or modify them
or whatever,
sometimes I don't have the plug-ins
and then I am
out of luck in that department.
00:38:42
But..
00:38:43
..when I import all my template stuff
it's gonna blow some of that away.
So,
depending again on what's happening
in their session
I might approach things differently.
00:38:53
So if they have a lot of stuff
maybe I'll import all my
template stuff without doing the
plug-ins
so I won't affect that
and then I can go on a case-by-case
basis
and just say: 'Ok,
I used these plug-ins on this stuff'
so I'll import those separately
in a second round of importing,
if that makes sense.
00:39:11
You just sort of have to play things
by ear and see
what's gonna work in that instance.
00:39:16
It will change every time and
something will inevitably get
messed up and you just
gotta go back and re do it or
import something from their session.
It's just
the nature of the beast, at this
point!
But I have a basically-empty session,
here,
that I was given by Blink 182,
there's no plug-ins,
this was something I recorded
in 2003..
00:39:36
..and this was probably the last
session we had
where everything was still coming
up on a console
So I was mixing.. I was doing rough
mixes on an SSL
on an API or something,
depending on
what studio we were at. So it's a
relatively simple session
as these things go: drums, bass,
3 electrics,
a phase guitar in the verse, an
acoustic guitar,
some effect-y things,
vocals, lots of vocals,
then we have like a B3 and some
keyboard-y stuff down here, tambourine..
00:40:08
whatnot..
00:40:09
What I'll do is I'll show you how
I import stuff
into a very basic session.
00:40:12
So, the first thing is:
click on the bottom track
so that all my stuff
goes to the bottom and is not
in the middle of the session
sort of messing up the flow of things.
00:40:22
All right, so the first thing we do
is get the I/O setup in.
00:40:26
So I got a template for that
go 'Import Settings'
and then we find my latest
I/O
'RH I/O' for the mix..
boom.
00:40:39
So I have my I/O setup specifically
for my inputs
and we gotta import, do the same thing
again for each bloody page..
00:40:49
..and so the trick I use here is, so
they've got this rough mix going
on outputs 1-2.
00:40:55
And I use outputs 1-2 for my drums
so I delete my drums
and I rename this one: 'Drums'.
00:41:07
So that way I don't loose their panning
and their level on all that
sort of stuff, when I change everything
around.
00:41:12
We come over here, we do the same
thing.
00:41:17
'Delete existing paths', yes.
00:41:20
So now everything is all over
the place.
00:41:23
So I'm gonna delete all this junk
that we don't need, right off
the bat.
00:41:28
I don't care that they're being used
'cause I am not going to use them.
00:41:33
We're gonna delete 'Drums'.
00:41:35
Rename this..
this is the tedious part.
00:41:38
And you get better at it with time
so now I've got all my outputs lined up
in a row. Great.
00:41:44
I got my busses..
00:41:46
..they look like they're all in a row,
which is nice. Yeah, so.. I've got
everything lined up
exactly as I have it
for me it's crucial that all this stuff
be in exactly the order
that I want it in. Because then it
makes all the sense
when I put the aux sends in particular
places
the return in particular places,
it's all..
00:42:03
lines up, it's all in the same order.
The 'Verse echo' is
always followed by the pre-chorus
chorus bridge lead vocal..
00:42:08
I'm super anal about this stuff and
I really
have to have it in the right place.
00:42:13
Much to my assistant!
So we gotta do the same thing
for the inserts.
00:42:19
I go on my inserts, I don't care about
mic preamps
or hardware latency
delay.
00:42:23
So then I always make sure this is
ticked,
down here: 'Session override current
I/O setup'.
00:42:27
So that no matter what I open,
it will open as it was
the last time it was opened.
00:42:32
To sort make things a little
bit easier.
00:42:35
Also make sure that the 'Compensate
for output delays' is on.
00:42:39
Make a default output bus.
00:42:41
To go to the drums..
00:42:43
and you have to make it for stereo
as well.. drums.. great.
00:42:48
Don't care about any of that..
..don't care about any of that.
00:42:50
'Audition path' I make through my
lead vocal output
so that it doesn't go through any EQs.
00:42:58
Ok! So that's importing all the
I/O setup.
00:43:01
Now we're gonna go import all
my template stuff,
so all of the aux sends, all of
the aux returns..
00:43:06
Solo isolate, colors,
blablablablabla..
00:43:10
'Import settings' we're gonna go to
my Dropbox folder..
00:43:15
to my templates, to my latest mix
template..
00:43:21
..I don't care about that..
00:43:23
'Match tracks'.. let's make it a little
larger, if we can.
00:43:27
The things that are in the template
that are named
typically with the things that are in
a typical session, should line up
easily, I hope!
Usually I have my assistant go
through and
rename everything to the things
I like, so: kick,
snare, snare bottom,
guitar 1, lead vocal etc.
00:43:43
This has already been done, because it's
one of my sessions!
So it's already organized and ready
to go.
00:43:49
Of course, it's not always gonna
line up
so you're gonna have to manually
go through and
line up what's in your template
to what's in the session, on occasion.
So..
00:43:58
we're just gonna go through that
right now and do that
I don't know that you see everything,
but:
you're gonna of course have to click
on all the things you want
in the new session, that are
on your template
but are not already in the session.
Like the trigger,
the sample tracks,
sample room,
kick crush, snare top and bottom
have gone to where they need to,
trigger, sample, sample room,
snare crush,
toms, hat, overheads, room..
00:44:23
..oh! In fact
what I like to do is take mono tracks
that are stereo, like room left/right,
overhead left/right,
I like to put them on a stereo..
00:44:31
track, so I can save faders on the desk.
That's
pretty important to me, so I don't care
about these, necessarily.
00:44:37
So, let's see.. do we have any other
drums that are not covered.. yes!
We have,
the squash, we have the mono room,
that's why I have these extra
room tracks.
00:44:46
We'll fast forward to this, you can get
this in high speed.
00:44:53
Ok, so I got all that stuff
and now
everything else is stuff
that I'm gonna add,
so my lead vocal crush,
the stretch,
all the other crushes,
the effects,
so I just go: zoom! Done!
Ok, I do not want the tempo
on meter map
and I don't want everything to be
imported. So now,
what do we want to import?
Let's assume that there's a rough mix
happening in the session. So,
I'm not gonna mess with
volume automation, pan or mute.
00:45:18
'cause that will just be depending upon
their rough mix that I want to attempt
to preserve,
we'll see how that comes out.
00:45:24
I want main outputs,
I want send outputs,
I want plug-in assignments,
I want plug-in settings
automation,
so on..
00:45:36
Don't care about that, we do need
hardware inserts,
we do need input assignments, because
we have all these effects returns,
there's no sidechain assignments
to speak of,
track active.. we want track colors..
00:45:49
so they go to our new color scheme..
00:45:52
we need the solo safe, record safe
for all our
effects returns,
we'll bring in mix/edit groups
and we'll click 'ok'
and see how we do.
00:46:07
He's thinking about it,
for a moment..
00:46:13
It's brought in all the junk
from my template and strewed it
like at the end of the session.
00:46:19
He's brought in all my settings, all
this other crap that I've asked for. So,
now we stick the things in the
proper place.
00:46:26
I like to have my drums at the top,
starting with the kick drum
and moving through snare drum, toms,
cymbals, room and then any kind of
miscellaneous junk.
00:46:38
I'm gonna put my trigger up there,
where did it go?
So we got the
kick sample..
00:46:45
so here's all my kick stuff,
I'm gonna put that up here,
in a specific order, 'cause I want
my kick track first
then the trigger aux,
then the sample, sample room
and the crush, right?
Then we're gonna come down here
and grab all my snare drum stuff
and stick that up here.
00:47:01
Same thing,
always in the same order, so you know
exactly where everything is
all the time. Then we're going
to take
the overhead up here,
our stereo overhead, so I can change
that up,
then we're gonna take our stereo
room,
up here..
00:47:15
and then the rest of the drum gak
put that at the bottom of the drums
stuff.
00:47:22
And then we have our bass stuff.
00:47:25
I can put that below the bass tracks.
00:47:29
And then we should just be left with
all the effects returns.
00:47:33
Oh, we have our BV aux, so we're gonna
put that below toms,
backgrounds, 'cause I'm gonna use that
on him.
00:47:40
What is this guitar delay doing,
here?
That is doing nothing, so we're gonna
delete that.. 'cause we don't care.
00:47:48
I live dangerously!
Ok!
The rough mix I put down here
after my alignment output..
00:47:59
let's just have a look, see here..
00:48:02
lead vocal crush, so here's all
our effects,
this is all looking good
our alignment output..
00:48:08
I should have brought in
'Track active state',
we're gonna mute
these guys here..
00:48:14
we have our rough mix, we have
our phase check, that can be inactive,
our print track, our VCAs.
Ok!
This is all looking good.
00:48:25
And then we need to go
I also have my assistant set up
all my preferences
so everything comes back exactly
the same.
00:48:32
As I like it every time. So that the..
00:48:34
..the little regions in the tracks
should be the same color as the
track itself.
00:48:41
I want to put in all my percussion
up here, with the drums
just so things are a little bit more
organized.
00:48:49
These will go in different places,
depending on what's happening
but today we'll put them up here.
00:48:56
And these should all be
purple,
'cause that's how I roll.
00:49:06
So we have our kick.. oh, look at this!
We have all our aux sends..
00:49:08
isn't that amazing?
We have our trigger stuff,
we have aux sends again..
00:49:13
we have our inputs, which is great
so when I am ready to print those
kick samples
for example, it's already set up
to the proper input
to get that bus happening.
00:49:22
We have our hardware inserts,
something didn't wind up with
an output.
00:49:28
Ok!
'cause I wanna have these overheads
as a stereo track, right? So I'm gonna
drag these down to here
and then I'm gonna blow these away.
'cause I don't care!
Same thing with the room, take this
on a stereo room track
and get rid of these guys.
00:49:47
Ok, so all the other drums are
happy,
everyone's got their output assigned.
00:49:52
Percussion looks happy although we
should have
these reverbs available, here.
00:49:57
And this echo, available here.
00:50:00
And just to be complete, we should
also have
these, as well.
00:50:05
Although typically not a factor.
00:50:09
Ok, we have our bass assigned to
the bass bus.
00:50:11
We have both of our mid
and low busses, we have the Aphex,
we've got the guitars and we know that
these are left, right and center so we
can pan these accordingly.
00:50:21
We have our 'phase guitar', which did
not get
some love from the template, so we'll
set that guy up
to go out of the proper output.
00:50:30
In fact I'm gonna put him out of the
acoustic guitars
'cause he doesn't play a huge
role
in this record, and then we need
these guys up here..
00:50:40
sometimes it's just easier to
'option-drag' stuff,
to copy it from one track to another,
which is what I'm doing, right now.
00:50:47
Let's see, we have some more
guitars, here..
00:50:50
it's a bridge guitar thing..
I can make that a funky color.
00:50:54
Then put him out of the acoustic
guitar, as well..
00:51:01
'Travis vocal'! So he needs to
be orange,
that what color my backgrounds are,
he needs to go out of the background
vocal output
and we might come back and import
some stuff so that that
makes sense..
00:51:16
in our color scheme and outputs
and stuff.. Travis vocal delays..
00:51:21
yeah he should probably get that, too.
Let's see..
00:51:24
'Chorus synthesizers', these should go..
ideally for me..
00:51:29
just below the guitars
and then we have some more percussion
and those guys can go
by default up there with more
percussion stuff.. ok!
So, Tom's..
00:51:40
..outro vocals..
00:51:42
are all of a piece so I'll process
them together
through the background vocal aux,
so these guys
don't need any of these effects,
anymore..
00:51:53
..and then we will solo isolate
all these,
so they go through this background
vocal
bus, by themselves.
00:51:59
We have some 'Mark harmonies',
we have Tom's chorus vocals, we've got
a stack of those
'cause it's that kinda jam.
00:52:05
Make those all a slightly different
red from the
lead vocal's, perhaps.. that are in
the verse.
00:52:11
Travis' vocals, they can go below
the lead
but he's also in the verse so he'll
stay in that
general vicinity
and then we'll give him all these
effects, as well.
00:52:22
Because we wanna be thorough
like I ask my assistant to do.
00:52:32
All right!
And generally I like to clean up these
tracks so, like if there's nothing
playing on a huge area, like this,
I'll clean those up just so I can see
at a glance what's playing where.
00:52:42
And this was a consolidated session
that came from the band,
I asked him to make it this way,
intentionally,
so that I would have..
00:52:51
make sure we had everything coming from
the band.
00:52:53
This is a very clean session,
not a lot going on..
00:52:57
So this is all looking good,
I'm happy with where this is at,
it looks
at a glance, like.. everything that
I need is here.
00:53:03
I'd be happy if my assistant gave this
session to me to mix
but you can see, there are certain
things that'll take a little bit of time
to set up at the front,
but there's a bit pay off in the back
of having everything ready,
all the time.
00:53:13
And no: it's not gonna be 100%
bullet-proof, 100% useful or..
00:53:18
..or..
00:53:19
you know: perfect!
But..
00:53:21
..we have most of what we're
gonna need
the vast majority of the time.
00:53:25
There have been very few instances
where I've needed to add things
and if I do it's for a very specific
creative purpose
and it's like: 'All right, I am super
focused on making this
dub echo on the drum'.
00:53:35
To me, it helps me get my
results much quicker.
00:53:38
When I have all this stuff
to fall back on, so..
00:53:41
I hope this helped you and
you can download my template
on the website and enjoy it..
00:53:46
..happy mixing!
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- Software
Ryan Hewitt is a Grammy winning engineer, mixer and producer with a credit list spanning all popular genres of music.
Ryan found his love for music and recording working along side his father, famed remote recording engineer David Hewitt.
After earning a degree at Tufts University in Boston, Ryan moved to New York City to work at Sony Music Studios. Opportunities then took Ryan to Los Angeles where he began working with The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rick Rubin. This led to Ryan engineering and mixing the Peppers’ multiple-Grammy-winning double album, Stadium Arcadium.
Rick and Ryan have continued to work together on a number of projects with artists such as Angus and Julia Stone, Brandi Carlile, Lady Gaga and Johnny Cash, as well as three albums and three live DVDs for The Avett Brothers.
Blink 182
Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Lumineers
The Avett Brothers
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
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