Ryan Hewitt Mixing Template

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Curve Bender gives me a real thick bottom end and a really beautiful, open top shelf.

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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.

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You know, if I need a little more aggression, in-your-face, at the end of the day on the mix.

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The NTI I use almost exclusively for the top end.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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..

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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.

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Crucial, crucial crucial..

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..to mix with any kind of speed.

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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.

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my two monitoring outputs for my mix, which is Digi 2 and the rough mix, which is Digi 1.

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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.

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Inputs, no so crucial, 1 to 24, and then I have a Burl A/D converter, that I print all mix mixes through.

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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.

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I have crushes for the kick and snare that are dedicated, I have..

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..gate sidechains, if I wanna use them, they're already ready to go.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I have a bass bus.

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I have an Aphex 2 that I use, that's in the rack, over there.

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Andrew Scheps I think uses the same one.

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But that's pretty much, for me, that's dedicated to use it on the bass.

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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..

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I have a mono crush and a stereo crush that's available to everything in the mix, at all times.

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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.

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First echo, pre-chorus echo, chorus echo! Bridge echo! Lead vocal slap! Double..

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Makes life really easy.

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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.

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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..

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..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.

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And then I also have a BV aux, you know, if there's a..

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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..

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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.

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This one is the..

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..that's the kick parallel, dbx 160 into a Transient Designer and an Aphex 204.

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That is the best $150 you can spend.

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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.

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And this is one of my bass patches, the 161 into a Maag EQ.

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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.

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And then another Aphex 204 for the toms.

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If you have this stuff, put it to work! Make it work! Make it earn its keep.

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If I don't use something for a year, it gets sold and I get something new that I'll use.

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So, another sort of philosophy of mine.

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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.

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I don't have every single possible thing in my template necessarily but just the typical sort of channels that I get.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The point of all things, again: making life easy.

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You can come here to, example: my kick drum.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Same thing for the kick drum going to the snare trigger.

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So you notice here, on my kick trigger channel I've got two instances of Trigger.

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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.

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So if I want a roomy kick drum sound I can come over here and it's ready to go.

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And I can print that onto the kick sample room track.

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I've also got a kick sample track that I can print my close-sounding kick sample onto.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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..

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..it's a generic compressor. Whatever sounds, whatever helps your situation for the attack and release envelope will be fine on that.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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We have a snare crush as well.

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And same thing, hardware insert my 1176, Transient Designer, 204 chain.

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It's my typical thing.

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And again sometimes an 1176 in-the-box is gonna be better than that.

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Maybe I don't need the Transient Designer or the 204.

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And I can do that in-the-box and it sounds wonderful.

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So we have toms, a couple floors a couple racks, ride, hi-hat, overheads etc.

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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.

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So, that's what I reach my TG1 for.

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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.

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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.

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This sound really, really works well for me I rarely change it to be perfectly honest.

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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!