Start To Finish of a Pop-Punk Song

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Good morning children. Today...

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we are going to record music for real men.

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I know what you're thinking, and I think the same.

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Enough of that sensitive singer-songwriter Open E and then that: "My life sucks" "Let me tell you how it sucks" What we are gonna do today is different. Is gonna be more like: "Argh My life sucks... Argh Let me tell you how it sucks" And that's a lot more fun.

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And I wore a t-shirt, and a shirt on top of it to blend...

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...with the band.

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The name of the band is DCO Which stands for: Dry clean only. (Which I love) The name of the song is Ugly And the first thing we're gonna do is listen to the one iPhone demo, that they e-mailed me before we did the session.

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Here we go...

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A diagram of Flux Studios.

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Here is the control room.

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This is where I'm speaking to you from.

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And this is where Josh is patching.

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This is the live room.

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Where Ron is gonna bang on the drums, and Connor's gonna be playing bass next to him, even though his amp is in the Iso (booth).

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Which is also the mic closet.

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Then, Joey is gonna be singing and playing guitar.

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Joey is gonna be in the Aquarium, because we want to be able to have Joey and just Joey.

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Not Joey with a lot of Ron in it.

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He's playing guitar in there, but his amp is in the Sound Lock.

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That's the Sound Lock, right here.

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That's where the two guitar amps are.

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And, in every room, there's a bunch of panels.

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Where all the tide-lines and all the mic lines are connecting.

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And they all end up here.

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At that patch-bay.

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That Josh is masterfully setting up.

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This is a modern Grid set.

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So, they are pretty good drums.

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And all the cymbals are new, which means they're gonna be very bright.

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I had the drummer switch his very, very bright hi-hats for the studio hi-hats that are much duller.

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And the reason for that is that he plays very loud, and so...

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And he plays the "hats" very loud. And that's the style and that's cool.

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But with "hats" this loud it's gonna be hard to get a good snare sound.

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Especially since the snare...

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...is made out of air.

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If you look at the snare you can actually see through the snare.

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Because there's...

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I can see you right now.

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All this little holes here are just perforated.

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I've never seen this before.

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I have no idea how it's gonna record it.

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So, I'm making sure that I'm covered, between the "hat" and the snare.

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For this kind of heavy music the ratio between the hats and snare is always a nightmare.

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So, the idea here is to try and get the quieter hi-hats possible, and the most snare, without any garbage in it possible.

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So that I can have a great-sounding record.

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So this is a Yamaha sub-kick, which is a microphone, that Yamaha actually build by looking at what people do and have been doing for years in recording studios, which is take a Yamaha NS-10 speaker and use the speaker as a microphone. By putting it in front of the bass drum the energy from the bass drum will make the speaker resonate and then the magnet will generate some electricity.

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That's a microphone.

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And then you, just amplify that and you get something that goes: Boom! So, it's really great 'cos it gets "boom" in a much different way than any other mics do.

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That's why engineers invented the idea of putting a speaker in front of the bass drum to get a lot of low end and so in this case Yamaha was smart and they've made a product out of it.

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And it's a lot easier, compact and robust than putting an NS-10 speaker in front of the bass drum.

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And also NS-10 speakers, used, actually are more expensive than this thing, I think, at this point.

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So, this is more constructive and it works great.

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And you'll see is a great way to add low end to a bass drum that otherwise would go puck-puck-puck.

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By the way, we need one of this thing. And we'll put a template in the video It's an input list with which cable you're using, what instrument, which microphone, what pre-amp, what converter (If you have different converters) which Pro Tools input (If you have a complicated set up) This is your life saver for several reasons.

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Number one: It's a way to communicate with the guys.

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John was confused about which way was five or six.

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I'm able to tell 'em right away without having to use memory, 'cos memory is expensive.

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Two: In six months, when somebody comes and says: "Wow that drum sounds amazing" "What did you use on the hi-hat?" "I don't know." I've probably would've done 200 sessions in the meantime.

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But this piece of paper will tell me what it is.

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So this piece of paper is awesome We have a D112 inside the bass drum.

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They are like this far away form the beater, looking at the beater.

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Do I know if that's the right spot? I don't know.

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John put it in. So I don't know where it is, but I wanna trust John because John works here which means he's good.

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Then the Yamaha sub-kick, which I explained earlier.

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We have a 57, which is a Shure SM57, on the top of the snare drum.

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And something that I rarely do is a bottom snare-drum mic.

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Because I usually tend to not use it. But here...

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because of the shape of the snare-drum, and the kind of music, I may need it.

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So I put an I5.

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Actually Josh picked an I5.

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We are gonna see what it sounds like.

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84 in the hi-hats.

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KM84 Neumann, nice.

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On the rack-tom which is the one there: a 421.

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On the low-toms: 441s.

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421 is a cardioid, the 441s are hyper-cardioids, so, we should be able to get a lot of presence and a lot of separation from the drums, or at least more than we would with the cardioid microphone.

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And since he's actually play the toms quite a bit, it's important we have a good source sound for the toms.

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And we have two 451AKG condensers on the overheads.

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This are really not overheads. I lied.

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They are cymbal microphones.

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And there's one on the "hat" side.

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And there's one on the right side.

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I always label my drums hat-side right-side, because There's nothing more confusing than left and right.

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'cos whose left? My left? Your left? I don't know. So, there's only one hi-hat.

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So on the "hat" side is that one. And there's no confusion.

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And we are gonna do drums audio perspective...

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...today.

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And then one mono overhead.

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Which is a ribbon.

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To see if we can get a little of a...

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...gentleness in this brash world.

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Why mono overhead? Because, I think I'm gonna use a lot of the close mics because he is a loud drummer, and it's like Argh-Music.

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And so, I'm gonna want presence and in your face stuff.

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And also I want it to sound different from any other record like that, because well, it's been done already that way.

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So we are gonna do it this way and see if it feels better.

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So that's it for the drums, we should probably move on to as soon as this gentlemen are done wiring everything.

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we're gonna move on to the bass.

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We have a B12 amp.

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A lot of people like to buy B15s, and they are nice and they look manly.

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They also sound manly in the room.

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But, for me I agree with myself...

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I like the B12 better because it's smaller and it's tighter sounding.

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Whenever I'm in a different studio, and I use the B15 I have to hi-pass it.

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And also it bleeds, and it's loud.

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It's just a pain.

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So I figured if the B15 is too loud and too fat.

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maybe I wanna try a smaller amp.

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And the B12's been doing great things for us here, at Flux.

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The way the whole system is wired is as follows: Because I want the bass player to be able to be in the room with the drummer and close to the singer, but I want to have the amp separated, so I can have isolation for this kind of music for the bass, what we're doing today...

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We have on the panel, in the live room, a connection where you can plug a bass.

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straight into that connection.

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And that is connected to a super high quality guitar cable that goes under, in the troughs so, we don't have to use any transformers.

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All we use is a very long guitar cable, of very high quality, that that's not pick up any noise because it's well shielded.

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And then we have a little mini patch made for those things, so we can send those signals either from the live room to that booth, or to these booth.

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Which is very practical.

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And here, it comes out of here.

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And I plug it into a U5 DI from Avalon.

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And then the pass through that DI is going to the bass amp.

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And then the DI out is going back into the mic lines and feeding to the Neve.

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I record the DI on the bass on every record.

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Also record the amp, because that's nice to feed the player in his headphones and this amp sound great.

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But I always record the DI because I love having the DI on bass.

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It allows me a lot of flexibility and to get really the sound I want.

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Most of the time, I blend the DI and the amp.

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Let's put the microphone on.

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That's a FET47 The reason why I have a FET47 it's because that's what Josh chose.

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and you have to be nice to your assistance.

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I could have chosen something else but I love this.

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It's great.

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You don't have to spend $4000 or whatever is the cost this days to put this in front of a bass amp.

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It's fun, it's good to have.

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It's a nice piece of equipment.

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It's well-built, and it has history so that feels good.

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But you can get an $800 Clarion or some Shure KSM27 and they'll sound great. They'll sound different but they'll sound great.

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As far as where I put the mic on the bass amp.

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Like everything else, I put it in front of the bass amp.

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This is where we chose to put the guitar amps, I'm gonna use two amps, because I feel that I can get probably more bottom out of one and more personality and grain out of the other.

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We have a Mesa Boogie Rocket 44 which is off-the-shelf, easy-to-get amp.

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Sounds really good, though.

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And then over there is a 50's Gibson.

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The Gibson's distort when you look at it.

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This you can make it do many, many things.

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So this is for me to be able to dial in whatever this doesn't do.

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But this will have the vibe.

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So I'm gonna have two microphones.

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Two Shure's, that I'm gonna put in front of them.

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And, where do I put the microphone on a guitar amp? I aimed for in-front of the amp. That tends to work.

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I don't really care about, and I used to really agonize about where to put it.

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But the fact of the matter it's this, Yes! If it doesn't sound good, I'll move it.

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But most of the time there's so much processing.

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going on after, for this kind of music that moving the microphone this much doesn't make that much of a difference.

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But it feels good though.

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Let's talk about the setup. Because it's and interesting setup.

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So Joey, who sings, will also play guitar at the same time.

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Because this guys they gotta play together, there's where the vibe comes from, I'm not gonna start laying down the drums, and then overdubbing the bass, and overdub the guitar.

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So, of course we're gonna have all the strumming of that electric guitar in his vocal mic, and that's fine by me. I don't care.

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But he's gotta be separated from the drums.

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'cos that drum is loud.

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So, Joey will be in the Aquarium, playing guitar and singing.

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His guitar is plugged into part one of this studio guitar interface system.

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It's really a DI.

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There's a send and a receive box.

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That's the receive box obviously.

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The send box is where Joey is gonna be playing guitar.

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He'll plug his guitar into this little sister of this guy.

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Plug it in.

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And the there's an XLR cable that comes out of that box and it goes into the entire system or snake.

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You know, the stuff that's in the wall in every studio on the connection.

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And you come back of this box and get back into the other box.

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Then we can come back out the guitar level.

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Then, I go into one of our DIs, that we've made ourselves.

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Just a transformer with a black box with our name on it.

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with the P-Touch label on it.

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This is the output of the guitar interface system, which is just a big extension cord, that we can go through our rig.

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Then we go into the DI. The DI gets back into the box, so we can record the DI.

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It's always good to have a DI as safety.

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I rarely use it, but usually when I don't record it is when I need it.

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So I record it, to make sure I don't need it.

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And then the output of that DI, the pass-through.

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Goes into this little box.

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Which also made by Radio.

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And it's an A/B Y-Box So that allows me to have one guitar source and send it to two amps and to chose whether I want to hear A or B or both amps.

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So, I could listen to... here, the Mesa Boogie, the Gibson or both.

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And then you have a bunch of, like, you know, you can lift the ground, or you can flip the phase, and stuff like that.

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And then, I'm gonna put the microphones in front of the amps as I mentioned earlier and I'm gonna assume that the assistants are gonna want them in the next two slots.

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Or I see the left mic and mic 2 open, so I'm assuming that they want the first amp in mic one, and the second amp in mic two.

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The microphones I chose for this amps are: Shure Ribbons 313s.

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We love them. They're really good.

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We've been using SM57s forever.

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But this have more bottom, and they are thicker.

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I don't know, just deeper.

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And we can choose how much hi-end we want.

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It's easy to add hi-end, it's difficult to remove hi-end from a screaming guitar amp.

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So, I like having a mellower sound.

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And a very full sound coming down from the amp.

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I can hi-pass that and I can open if I want to.

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But my teeth don't hurt when I listen to the raw sound, which is nice.

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So two Shure 313 ribbons, on the two guitar amps.

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For those of you who are confused about this, it's a patch-bay.

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It's a big patch-bay.

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So, in studios of this size and bigger basically, every piece of gear in the place is connected to this patch-bay.

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And then you take a cable, and you connect one piece of gear to the other.

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So in this case, up here we have something called far-panel mic-lines.

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Well that's the panel that's all the way back, that all the drums are connected into And because the patch-bay is half normal, the far-panel mic-lines are actually going automatically to the mic inputs of the Neve.

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So, if I plug a microphone into input one over there, on the panel is gonna go into input one on the Neve automatically that's why you don't see a cable in here.

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But then sometimes you just disrupted those automatic connections.

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So for example, the singer is in the booth, so I have to have a connection from the booth to the line on the Neve that I want to use for the singer The way we have it set up today is, output 1-2 is going to our monitor.

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And then to 3,4,5,6,7,8 are actually being used for the Cue system and we have a private Cue.

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So, every musician can make his own Cue so they don't bother me for it.

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So I have bass drum, snare drum bass, guitar and vocal all separate And they have their own mixer and they do their thing, it's awesome.

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Everything in this studio is connected to the back of this thing.

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I'm able to connect anything into anything.

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And, Josh has prepared the patch bay, so we are ready to actually listen to stuff while we're talking.

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Keith setup the SM7, which is a Shure microphone.

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It's really a SM58 but with a different shape. Same capsule.

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And, he set it up and everything is connected so we can start getting sounds.

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While I was setting up bass and guitar Josh setup a session.

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And in this session there's one track per instrument, obviously.

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And all the inputs have been assigned.

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And you'll basically gonna hear everything I hear.

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You'll also notice that Josh has setup the Cue system.

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The way we have it set up here is as follows: Every track is gonna go to separate outputs.

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That will go to the private Cue system.

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So for example, the drums (in green) All drums are going to output 7-8.

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Which is a stereo output and it's pre.

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So I can make a drum mix up here, and then different drum mix for me, down here.

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Here, the bass is going to output 5.

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Because is a private Cue system the bass player can chose how much bass he wants, and how much drum he wants.

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Josh knows that I don't like to send the DI to the bass player. Because it's an ugly sound.

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But it's ready in case the player ask for it.

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And then for guitars, we have the two amps going to...

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the guitar button.

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But no the DI, because that's a really ugly sound.

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And then, for the vocal, just one going to vocals.

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So now they can do their own mix and I can focus on my mix.

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That's about it, so what we are gonna do now is ask the drummer to play.

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In some cases I will ask the whole band to play, so they feel connected and they warm up, and they have fun together.

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But in this case, since we are trying to learn how we do this, I'm gonna ask just the drummer to play.

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And I'm not gonna ask him to play bass drum: boom boom boom Snare drum: bam bam bam 'cos that's boring for him and it doesn't tell me what it's going on in the bass drum when the whole kit is playing So I'm gonna ask him to play the pocket from the song so now I can hear the tempo. How heavy he's hitting, if he chokes the bass drum or not.

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And then, if I have a problem Then, I'll ask him and say: "Hey can you play just the toms for a second?" If I need to figure out what's going on.

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But most likely, I'm just gonna let it jam and warm up and do my thing.

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-Ron -What's up? So just play the song.

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-Don't worry about the Cue -Mhm.

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Because I gotta do my levels.

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So don't even put your headphones on, so don't blow your head off.

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-Alright -Right? And, just play, have fun and...

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-Stop before you get tire of it, OK? -Alright Alright. Rock'n'roll.

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He's playing the cymbals a lot.

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There's something that goes on with drummers whenever you push your microphone that you want to hear, that instrument they will not play at that moment.

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It's a rule. It works great.

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-Can you hear me? -Yeah, I got you.

00:22:33
Could you play some of those toms. That it'd be awesome.

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Not like that, that's boring.

00:22:37
In a pocket, but do a two-ah-pocket.

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When, then you play a tom fill in the end. Different fills.

00:22:42
So I can hear how they feel with the rest of the set. Thank you.

00:23:44
How about.. I have everything up, but just want to do a quick balance. Can you play the song, please? So..As I expected that snare drum is going to be "super-fun"! but...not bad. The rest is not bad I'm not gonna do any compression I'm not gonna do anything like that. I want to record this raw so, that everybody gets to play quickly and also so that, I can probably do some more intricate processing later, to compensate maybe for some of the idiosyncrasies of the current instrument.

00:25:17
Let's see.

00:25:42
So, I tried to record the balance.

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As you noticed, in ProTools my faders are zero.

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I don't always do that but in this case it's practical because I know that when we're gonna start to mix I just push all the faders at zero and I have something that resemblances a drum-set.

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And I'm doing my balance here on my sense to ProTools This faders right here are my sense to ProTools.

00:26:01
I have the mic pre-amp up here and then it goes to through this whole thing (You notice I don't use any EQ).

00:26:06
And then I'm just balancing here my drum-set so that it's, you know, sounds like a drum-set-ish.

00:26:11
And then I go from there for the mix, or maybe I'll change that once I hear the other instruments, but right now I have a drum-set coming through my speakers and it sounds good, and I'm happy with it.

00:26:28
Bananas! Awesome.

00:26:30
Now I'm gonna torture somebody else.

00:26:32
-Sounds good, man -Thank you so much Connor, just play something that vaguely resembles the song and then, I mean, as resemblance as possible and then...

00:26:43
Then I'll tweak the bass amp sound here (because it's right here) And then if you like it, cool. If you don't then we'll have to have you come and tweak it for us.

00:26:51
So, just play your thing and then I'm gonna tweak for you.

00:26:55
Ready? Rock'n'roll.

00:27:32
That's the DI.

00:27:47
Connor What are the settings like on your bass? Right now it's just, I have one volume knob.

00:27:55
-You only have a volume knob? -All I have is a volume knob Could you make the bass a little bit less bright Right here, all I have is the one vibe I can turn it down.

00:28:07
All the other settings are on the amp.

00:28:08
Turn it down I don't have a lot on the headphone either.

00:28:13
-I'll fix that -OK Go for it.

00:28:24
-Can you hear yourself? -Yeah -Now I can hear it. -Do you like the sound? Yeah That's good news. Can I hear the two of you together, like, on the verse for example? Yeah Take it from top.

00:29:03
Bananas In my headphones I need it way up. I can't hear it.

00:29:08
You hear yourself? Like very low. When I play by myself with the drums, I can't.

00:29:13
You have a knob on that white thing to your left.

00:29:16
Look to your left. Not, the other left.

00:29:18
And there's a knob...

00:29:21
that says bass.

00:29:23
-Cool -Try that one How's that? Better Cool. And if you want, I can give you definition by adding the DI on it, check it out That might be better. Let me hear how it sounds with the drum.

00:29:40
And you know, the Cue... Actually you know what? The Cue is a stereo mix for the drums and it's probably gonna sound awful. Like, all cymbals.

00:29:46
I wanna remove the cymbals because you're gonna hear them in the room.

00:29:51
I'll keep the toms low and then I will keep just the main drums.

00:29:57
What have just happened is that, since Connor sound came out a lot thinner than what I'd expected from that bass and it doesn't have a tone control.

00:30:04
That is "what you see is what you get".

00:30:06
So, I've plugged it to the amp but it sounded really thin to me. The DI sounded very thin.

00:30:11
So, what I did is I tried and cooked some low-end from the amp.

00:30:17
Because the amp can do that and keep the DI as clean as possible.

00:30:20
I may use a re-amp system later.

00:30:23
I don't know, we'll see when we grow up.

00:30:25
But I was able to get some sort of a pleasant sound out of the bass by using the amp.

00:30:29
If I was just doing DI this would be really painful.

00:30:32
So, the combination of the two is to me good enough, that we can make music and it's supposed to be raw, and the whole thing sounds very raw and I like that.

00:30:40
But now we have some bass from the bass.

00:30:42
Which makes sense since it's called bass.

00:30:45
OK, Joey can you play, like, the verse into the chorus or something so I can get the guitar tone going be careful with your levels 'cos the levels are gonna change.

00:30:53
I don't want you to get deaf on this.

00:30:55
Rock'n'roll.

00:31:01
It's a DI.

00:31:04
So I'm gonna record it, but I'm not gonna listen to it.

00:31:15
Mesa Boogie.

00:31:30
The Mesa Boogie has a bit of a head-cold, check it out! The Gibson's right.

00:31:53
The two of them together, I like so..

00:31:55
I'm just gonna keep them this way.

00:32:07
Joey, do you like it? Yeah, you can hear yourself, right? And you dig it. Alright, let's check that we have the vocal life.

00:32:16
Let me see if I can hear you.

00:32:18
Check, check, check. Hey, there I am.

00:32:21
Hey! Check, check...

00:32:23
Can you play the guitar but without singing, so I can hear the bleed of the guitar in your mic? -Sure -OK, go ahead OK, I can manage that.

00:32:37
It's probably better if you get really close to the mic.

00:32:40
Do you need a boom stand or are you OK? -No, this is fine -Yeah? Alright. So, can you sing and play at the same time "por favor"? OK.

00:33:29
The urge is to put a compressor on here. And we could but we have a lot of headroom so I'm just gonna bring the levels down and then I'll do processing later.

00:33:36
Because, It's a high energy band and they're about, like: Grrrh! I'm not gonna refine this. I'm not gonna...

00:33:42
I could put a compressor on the vocal. That would make my life easier or I could just bring the faders down, because I have headroom.

00:33:47
It's digital, I don't care about noise especially with this kinds of guitar, noise is not a big problem.

00:33:51
So, I'm just gonna lower my levels while they play altogether so I can get to the recording part as soon as possible.

00:33:57
So that they don't have to wait for me to, like, "finesse" stuff.

00:34:00
And then...

00:34:02
we get to hear the song and maybe it'll change somethings for me.

00:34:05
I'm gonna ask them to play the whole song, altogether right now.

00:34:09
Why don't you play the whole song altogether right now? -Ronnie -Yeah If I were to be bold and say: Hey would you be willing to try a different snare? -What would you say? -Yes Oh, fantastic. I'll be right there.

00:36:22
This is the stand that I'd like Ronnie to try.

00:36:24
It's a GMS.

00:36:25
We call it the blue-meanie.

00:36:29
Because it's blue and it's... mean.

00:36:31
And the reason why I would like to switch the snare, it's because I think that the snare that he has right now sounds a little bit like paper.

00:36:37
It's probably great for live.

00:36:39
But, right now it's just going: Puff! Puff! And this probably will have a little more: Mhmf! So let's see. Maybe yes, maybe no.

00:36:47
Don't know 'til you try. Let's try.

00:37:16
Alright, for reference, this is what the previous snare sounded like All in favor of old snare.

00:37:31
All in favor of new snare.

00:37:34
Let's make a record! Because Josh is smart, he knows how I work, he made a group called the tracking group, which is for tracking.

00:37:43
And what that does is that, now I'm ready to do another take I'm gonna do a play-list.

00:37:49
And everything is gonna go away. But it's not gone, it's just gonna slip right under here and I can refer to it, if I want to.

00:37:55
But I can keep adding layers on layers on layers, and do takes and takes in the same spot so when it's time to edit I can cut and paste in between the different takes.

00:38:04
So, that's cool. Guys, you're ready to rock? Here we go.

00:40:06
-That sounds Bananas! -I f***ed up a little.

00:40:08
Slight, nobody noticed. So, are you all comfortable with your Cue system? Is it fun to play with this Cue system? OK, is there anything I can do? Would you like some compression in your Cue? Yeah, you. You qualified.

00:40:24
Tough guy. Alright cool.

00:40:26
Neh, I don't go that way.

00:40:29
Awesome. I love the song.

00:40:32
And I love the energy of it.

00:40:34
And I'm wondering if you guys would be open to, like, maybe a couple tweaks here and there? So, intro, big tom thing, verse, right? And that:(singing) Awesome.

00:40:47
Then you have kind of a pre-chorus kind-of-thing going.

00:40:50
The part before you hit the chorus.

00:40:53
The...

00:40:54
It just goes...

00:40:59
OK, so...

00:41:01
let's agree to call that the pre-chorus, ok? Because that's really what it is, kind of.

00:41:06
-Then, you go to the chorus -Yeah Which is...? Alright, now... (singing) OK, great.

00:41:34
That's awesome.

00:41:35
Now, play the intro of the song.

00:41:57
What if you just mirror that? What if that part that you play after the first chorus was you're intro, verbatim? Like, the same thing.

00:42:05
So, we just start...instead (singing) you just start... (singing) yeah (singing) That's pretty awesome, right? -I liked that, that's cool. -I think that's awesome.

00:42:45
Because what it does is that you get to the the matter sooner.

00:42:49
and also, when I hear it again, I'm like: Hey! That's my old friend. The intro is back.

00:42:55
Awesome.

00:42:57
So you do that. Then, you have your second verse.

00:42:58
Now, you do some funky stuff in the second verse.

00:43:01
can you play the second verse now? Alright. So, I think that...

00:43:35
The whole beginning of that verse, with the stops is awesome.

00:43:39
And...

00:43:40
...the pre-chorus, I don't think you need to do all that stuff.

00:43:44
-This? -Yeah We haven't...

00:43:48
There's no way anyone will have had time to get bored by then, because the song is 48 seconds So...

00:43:56
So, why don't we create...

00:43:58
I like the stops you do at the beginning of that verse, that's awesome. It recharges the energy.

00:44:03
But the pre-chorus, and I think you should, and I'm gonna use a very technical term, I think you should go balls out.

00:44:11
Just like you do on the first pre-chorus So, mirror those two parts.

00:44:15
Let's all focus and define what the pre-chorus is.

00:44:18
Joey, play the pre-chorus by yourself.

00:44:20
It's this.

00:44:35
That's the pre-chorus, cool? The first one and the second time we play the same way.

00:44:40
Cool. Now, after the second pre-chorus.

00:44:42
In most structures comes the second chorus which is why we love pop-music.

00:44:47
So, in that chorus, you do a cool stop there.

00:44:52
Great. Keep that.

00:44:54
Then, you finish the chorus.

00:44:55
But then you have a weird thing when you play footballs, like, you play long chords.

00:45:07
What I propose is this, make your selection at anytime, either you do it for real or you don't do it.

00:45:14
If you're gonna do it for real everybody stops. You just play...

00:45:18
No drums, no bass. Maybe the root.

00:45:21
But no more pocket. You just go...

00:45:23
If you're gonna do that stop there Let's try and like... (sound) Like, hold note and vocals, hold notes and vocals. Then you get back into the groove.

00:45:32
Or you just don't do it.

00:45:34
But what's going on right now it's basically the energy is going down.

00:45:37
It's not really justified. And I'm not getting a feeling out of it.

00:45:40
You want to try just two rings? Yeah. Let's try it! Take it from the second chorus, into the... yep.

00:46:23
I like it. I think there's need to be something You need a fill to get out of it.

00:46:29
It needs to be sucked back in, right? Yeah.

00:46:31
Rehearse that, from the hold notes.

00:46:34
One, two, three, and...

00:46:55
-It's like a little... -Yeah -There's a hop -There has to be a hop Here's another suggestion...

00:47:00
What if you punctuate that last beat? So, (sings) (singing) It's not gonna work.

00:47:11
(singing) You'll have to do a stop.

00:47:17
If you do a clean stop. Everybody stops on that beat.

00:47:19
Then you don't need a fill.

00:47:21
The silence is the fill. Try it.

00:47:45
Bananas I love it. OK, let me play-list this.

00:47:52
Tuned, right? I was feeling that too.

00:47:54
Yeah, I mean, if you feel like it...

00:47:56
-Tuning is wonderful -I'm gonna have to...

00:47:58
pull out. Is that gonna make a big noise? Ahm, yeah.

00:48:02
(laughs) Just pull out.

00:48:07
(laughs) That was... priceless.

00:48:15
Ron, here's a tip.

00:48:18
If you want to make everybody's life easier later, when we grow up, if we get to edit this I don't think we're gonna edit this because it's so beautiful as it is but if we were to edit this, When I start the recording you hear a number of clicks.

00:48:33
Always start in the same place.

00:48:35
Like, always leave four bars of clicks.

00:48:37
You know what that does? It's that, when we get to edit, they all start in the same spot.

00:48:42
So, you can cut and paste between play-lists.

00:48:44
It's nice! Alright, you're ready? So picked the number... and then you still do your count-off but in your head, the minute the click starts know where you are.

00:48:56
And if you have a good engineer he will always start the transport in the same spot.

00:49:02
So everybody knows where they are. Yo? Alright. Here comes the click.

00:49:15
What happened? You started a bit early.

00:49:18
Yeah, dude. There's four beats in a measure.

00:49:20
(laughs) Sorry...

00:49:25
-This measure, there's four - I got it. Alright What's rushing your playing? Hey, it's not a given. OK? You're ready? Here we go.

00:51:29
That was fierce.

00:51:32
Let's see if it works. It may work, it may not work to double this guitar.

00:51:36
It's basically the same part. You do the same part every time, right? -Yeah, straight. -OK, great.

00:51:41
So, the reason why I want to double it, it's to put in stereo, besides the many, many, many cymbals there's not much in the stereo field.

00:51:50
So it'd be kind of wide.

00:51:52
We can chose how wide we want it and then we are gonna record it. We may or may not use it.

00:51:56
but, since it's gonna take two minutes and fifty seconds it's worth it.

00:51:59
-Sounds good. -OK, great.

00:52:01
That's a long song for us.

00:52:04
OK, good to know.

00:52:07
Side note: if you notice here, I have the lead vocal on input.

00:52:11
So, that I could hear him because.

00:52:12
The only way I could hear him right now is through his vocal mic.

00:52:15
But if I do that he's not gonna be able to listen to himself sing so what I wanna do: I'm gonna duplicate his track Like this.

00:52:22
For nothing else but to be able to listen to him live.

00:52:26
in the room.

00:52:27
and we can communicate that way.

00:52:29
-Ready? -Yes, sir.

00:52:31
I'm gonna give you the same count off.

00:52:51
It's pretty cool.

00:52:53
It's great. You know, I have other ideas.

00:52:56
We will see at the mix when we get there.

00:52:58
but I think we can do something really cool with this.

00:53:00
-Sweet You felt comfortable with what you've just played? There were a couple of fuzzy parts but they can be pushed back together very easily.

00:53:06
-OK -Cool.

00:53:08
So now, let's talk about vocals.

00:53:10
Do you have any background vocal ideas? Or vocal ideas in general? Yes, so I have that: (guitar sounds) It's an echo, called-response. I'm not a hundred percent on it.

00:53:20
I'd like to get your input. But then there's the other one so in that pre-chorus kind of part, going...

00:53:35
And have 'em a little bit at the background.

00:53:37
I don't know what justice it will do.

00:53:40
I mean, this is no censorship we got to try it. I just... I like get to keep it just crude.

00:53:46
But I like the answer, is cool.

00:53:49
Yeah, the: (guitar sounds) Alright, let's...

00:53:57
Let's start there, that's easy.

00:53:59
I then normally all the other times they sing harmonies.

00:54:02
-What kind? -Like, when we play live.

00:54:12
That one.

00:54:13
OK, that sounds great.

00:54:17
Are you comfortable singing without playing guitar? -Yeah, 100% -Ah, great.

00:54:21
Well, we have a track. Let's just record you.

00:55:15
That sounds good.

00:55:16
Yeah, but it conflicts with the lead, I think.

00:55:19
I think it falls too low.

00:55:21
OK.

00:55:24
-Could it just be straight? -Try that You want me to push you in just those two lines? Mhmm, no...

00:55:31
-Chorus? -Yeah.

00:55:32
-Chorus you got! Here we go! That's great vibe, man. That's really great.

00:57:00
It's grrrr. I love it We're doubling what you just did.

00:57:13
Awesome. Let's hear.

00:57:26
Yeah, it sounds way better.

00:57:27
OK, here we go. Ready? Cool.

00:57:42
Would you please be kind enough to give me a double of the lead on the choruses? -Absolutely -Unison with the lead, OK? Here we go.

00:58:06
What took you so long? Let's get the guys so you can do the answer before you get out.

00:58:11
-OK. -Yes, wait...

00:58:14
Here we go! Cool. Is there another place? Do you think is worth it to do it at the part that's right after that? Or no? Just one? -It feels a little cliché -OK I kind of like that not cliché.

00:58:43
Yeah, I'm cool with that.

00:58:44
Alright, so you'll come...

00:58:46
-...and listen to your masterpiece. -Sounds good Don't forget that this is just microphones into pre-amps.

00:58:55
No EQ and no compression. Nothing.

00:58:57
This is not the way it's gonna sound in the end.

00:59:00
This is the raw material we have, so that we can make a record out of it. Still sounds great to me. I love it And I'm using both guitars right now so you can hear how it feels to have both guitars play at the same time OK, so we're just gonna listen to, like, does it feel good the playing? Are you happy with your performance? Is it true to the song? That's what we matter about. The sound...

00:59:21
that's the next chapter. When we grow up later.

00:59:24
OK? And I'm gonna play it loud...

00:59:27
because you've just been wearing headphones for a while.

00:59:28
Which means you're legally deaf.

00:59:31
So I'm just gonna blast it basically. Hold on to your socks.

00:59:34
Here comes the song...

01:01:22
-How's that feel? -It's fat as s**t OK, fat as s**t is good to me.

01:01:27
I'm gonna mute that last phrase. It's gonna be like this.

01:01:39
Awesome man.

01:01:40
-Thank you very much. -I'm happy with it man.

01:01:42
-Thank you very much. -Thank you.

01:01:46
Cool. Sold.

01:01:47
Do you have any idea of what was happening behind your back? No. (Laughs)

00:00:07
Good morning children! Today we are going to mix a song that we recorded ourselves.

00:00:12
Why does it matter that we recorded it ourselves? It matters because of one simple thing.

00:00:16
We will not be able to blame anyone for it being badly recorded thus, having a bad mix.

00:00:21
So, it means we have to have a good mix.

00:00:42
The song it's called "Ugly" by band DCO, which means "Dry Clean Only".

00:00:48
And the first thing we're gonna do is edit the vocals, because we did several takes.

00:00:52
We did do several takes.

00:00:53
Yeah.

00:00:54
We need to pick one.

00:00:56
Here are the vocals.

00:00:58
We're gonna go in play-list mode.

00:01:00
These are all the takes.

00:01:01
So here's the trick, though all the doubles and everything were done to take 6.

00:01:05
Probably, it'd be smarter, whenever there's a big double to keep take 6.

00:01:09
You're kind of a machine, though. You were very consistent.

00:01:11
So, I don't know.

00:01:12
So the first thing I'm gonna do: Duplicate the play-list.

00:01:15
And call it "Comp".

00:01:18
ProTools has the good taste of putting number 6 here.

00:01:20
But I want to put it here, so that, we can actually think from 0 to 6.

00:01:24
So, the way I like to do this: I like to not take forever.

00:01:29
Because you could take a day doing this.

00:01:32
Basically, we're gonna start listening to what we have.

00:01:35
And then, if something doesn't please you, or me then, we'll look for an alternate elsewhere.

00:01:40
-Makes sense? -Yeah OK. Let's listen to it.

00:02:09
How's that first verse? The mislead by "liberate devotion" (the third line) there should be a take where there's like a little squeak in the vocal.

00:02:18
Would you like it to be squeaky? -Kinda -Let's squeak So, this is take 4.

00:02:48
I like the last squeak, but I like that second phrase better in 5 or 4.

00:02:55
Yeah, this phrase here I think is the best one so far.

00:02:58
So, since we agree, let's promote it higher grounds.

00:03:02
And the squeak in this third phrase, you like it better here.

00:03:05
-Yeah -I think you're right Problem is that the end of the word, here on take 4, doesn't match with your double.

00:03:10
So, what we would do here: Take 4 has the squeak and then we switch back to take 6.

00:03:15
So, you match the doubles.

00:03:17
-You're OK with that? -Absolutely The intro of take 5.

00:03:26
As opposed to take 6.

00:03:33
See, I like it shorter, And also your first note is more in tune here so, let's just take 5 here and promote it.

00:03:40
We can listen to this 4 phrase.

00:03:47
This is take 5.

00:03:54
That's more in tune and also you have a little "Grrrghh" Yeah, real man's music.

00:03:58
I vote for 5, unless you have a veto on me.

00:04:02
I think you killed the chorus, but we should still check.

00:04:06
And here comes take 6.

00:04:23
Awesome. Take 4.

00:04:38
I think I like the beginning of 4.

00:04:40
Yeah, this is much better. And also this last phrase here.

00:04:43
So, how about we do this? This is good. This is actually what I was looking for energy-wise And here also...

00:04:49
So, I'm gonna do that.

00:04:50
Awesome. Verse two.

00:04:52
Traditionally take 4 it's been a good alternate, so why don't we listen to take 4 now? -Sure -Here we go I dig that.

00:05:25
The first phrase especially.

00:05:27
Let's see 5 just in case.

00:05:54
How about I give you a deal first two from four and last two from five.

00:05:58
The last phrase is so much better.

00:06:00
So let's do that. Boom.

00:06:03
Alright let's move on to the chorus.

00:06:19
That's pretty awesome. How do you feel? Just the word "king" We can pick it from elsewhere.

00:06:25
Listen to 5.

00:06:32
Doesn't have the same shine.

00:06:33
Three just in case, for entertainment.

00:06:41
I can of like the way the first phrase stops in 3.

00:06:45
OK.

00:06:45
So we are doing the opposite of what we were going to do.

00:06:48
Which is we're gonna only replace stuff we don't like, and right now we're building it from scratch.

00:06:52
-Which is fair -That's how we roll, yo! Ya know what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying.

00:06:56
Take 3, you like this part.

00:07:02
Let's see from here what we can do.

00:07:04
This is take 6.

00:07:13
4 -That phrase is good. -Second one, yeah.

00:07:23
The first phrase from 6 I think is better Yeah, I agree with you.

00:07:25
We've got what we need here.

00:07:27
First phrase here.

00:07:29
Second phrase here.

00:07:32
There you go. Take 6.

00:07:46
OK, cool. Let's listen to 4 on that.

00:08:00
Four! And then, I wanna give you a little help from your friends.

00:08:05
Here.

00:08:06
'cos you guys were so excited that there's a little bit of precipitation.

00:08:11
Check it out.

00:08:25
See, that's a little...

00:08:26
So, what I'm gonna do is take it and you see that my Nudge here it's at 100 samples, so, I'm just gonna push you back a few hundred samples, for entertainment.

00:08:43
Maybe, I pushed it too far. Here we go.

00:08:50
Yeah.

00:08:50
OK, cool.

00:08:52
The first thing I'm gonna do is create a bunch of Stems So we're gonna need, one for the bass drum, one for the rest of the drums, one for the bass, one for the guitars, and the one for the lead vocal and one for the many background vocals.

00:09:09
So, that's six stereo stems.

00:09:11
Usually I should have a template.

00:09:14
But I'm too lazy to have a template.

00:09:16
You think about that.

00:09:17
So we're gonna do BD STEM DRUM STEM and then, good.

00:09:33
So, you know, I'm gonna mix this.

00:09:36
Pretty much on the box, except for the summing part.

00:09:38
So, I'm not gonna use any hardware.

00:09:40
I'm just gonna use a Dangerous 2bus+ to do the summing.

00:09:44
But everything else will be done with plug-ins.

00:09:46
To be able to hit the 2bus+ I have to send my different stems to the different inputs of the 2bus+.

00:09:53
So, bass drum is gonna go to A 9-10 Which is going to a Dangerous music C8 and then that's going to my 2bus+ Drum 11-12 13-14 15-16 and then the other C8 is on the C 9-10 There you go.

00:10:17
We're not gonna use all 16 Stemming because there's not enough instruments for that.

00:10:22
But this should be just fine.

00:10:24
And then I'm gonna set up a bunch of busses.

00:10:30
sequentially.

00:10:31
You noticed that by using shift+Option+command I was able to assign bus 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9, 10 and 11,12 with just one click.

00:10:41
and I'm gonna name this two.

00:10:45
If you're in a hurry, you can go into the audio setup right here, and into the bus.

00:10:51
And then, you can name them here.

00:10:53
Which is faster because you can hit the tab.

00:10:58
Bass Stem...

00:11:01
We are good to go.

00:11:05
The last thing we need is a return for the Sum.

00:11:10
So I'm creating one stereo aux input and one stereo track.

00:11:14
Right here, the Aux Input is coming back from my 2bus return which is always in B 15-16, in this room.

00:11:21
Then I'm sending that to a bus.

00:11:26
There you go.

00:11:29
I'm gonna rename it Print Bus and the Output, so everybody can listen to it.

00:11:39
This is call sum.

00:11:41
this is called "Ugly" Put your name on it, so you own it. There you go.

00:11:46
Save the session as so you can always return to the old one.

00:11:52
All this busses and tracks have to be solo saved so, when I solo something in the track I can still hear music.

00:12:00
And I wanna put this on input, right here.

00:12:03
I'm going to use my regular color coding.

00:12:07
Which is: Metro Sexual Blue for the stems.

00:12:11
And bright red for this so that in my track here I can see what's going on. This is a bunch of drums.

00:12:17
This is bass.

00:12:18
This is a bunch of guitars. Although this should be brown too because that's how we roll, you know.

00:12:23
There you go.

00:12:24
And then the lead vocal and then the background vocal, which we'll make orange.

00:12:29
Boom! Now we know what's going on.

00:12:32
Great.

00:12:35
One more thing is... we need to assign the kick to the kick stem, the drums to the drums stem.

00:12:44
Although I'm probably gonna use the sum here.

00:12:47
Send that to the stem.

00:12:49
I might as well do it now.

00:12:52
Drum sub.

00:12:54
Send that to the stem.

00:13:04
To the stem.

00:13:06
Your lead is going to the lead stem.

00:13:11
And this is going to the back stem.

00:13:15
Save.

00:13:17
Press play.

00:13:19
And nothing happens.

00:13:21
Number one mistake when creating your track in ProTools.

00:13:24
You want to create an Aux but you make a track.

00:13:27
That sucks.

00:13:29
So, I could be lazy It's happened before, and put all this tracks on inputs.

00:13:34
And then I would have sound there.

00:13:37
Or I could be a good citizen and create the six stereo aux inputs again, and do that. We're gonna do this quick so that you don't suffer.

00:13:56
And the fact that in ProTools You can not convert a track to an Aux, or an Aux to a track It's called a feature It's designed to keep you on your toes and make sure you pay attention.

00:14:06
So, I'm gonna set up my limiters.

00:14:09
We have the Sonnox. Which is nice and fat.

00:14:15
And I'm giving myself a little bit of security here.

00:14:19
To prevent the red light from coming on Of course the advantage of the stem is, now I can just mute them the vocal here without having to fish for it.

00:14:25
Which is... nice.

00:14:28
Let's listen to just the drums and then the drums and the bass, to get an idea of what's going on.

00:15:19
I'm going to break my rule and I'm gonna start with the drums.

00:15:26
Let's make a sub out of this.

00:15:29
Make sure that has the right track type.

00:15:31
Call it bass drum sub.

00:15:35
Solo safe the two source tracks.

00:15:37
Make sure that we send the bass drum sub to the stem.

00:15:41
Why would I create a sub here since I have a stem here? Just for head space.

00:15:47
I know that I'm gonna have a bass drum sub, and a drum sub, and probably a drum crush, here.

00:15:52
And they all hang here.

00:15:54
And then, when I'm mixing the whole song or the balance between instruments I have the stems here which all hang together.

00:16:00
If I have a control surface I can select those on the control surface and have quick tactile here, or I can just focus on just the drums.

00:16:08
So, it's just a question of thinking of the instruments as a whole or thinking as the mix as a whole.

00:16:14
And those are two different head spaces.

00:16:15
In this case this is just the bass drum.

00:16:19
This is the inside.

00:16:25
Pretty fantastic. And this is the bottom.

00:16:31
I like that very much.

00:16:32
Maybe a little less sub.

00:16:39
and then, right there in the middle just a little bit of a cut, in the low-mids.

00:16:45
So it's got more "umm" and more "pok" and less of that "woolly" thing.

00:16:51
Without.

00:17:10
That's a nice bass drum.

00:17:12
From my experience with this kind of music you people, like the bass drum to go chk! chk! chk! chk! Yeah, there's a lot of click sounding.

00:17:23
How style accurate you want to be? I mean, you want to be your own thing or you want to be...

00:17:27
What you wanna do? I want it to sound like this song and not like any other song.

00:17:32
So, we have the option of doing this.

00:17:40
It's not forbidden.

00:17:41
But maybe we wait until we see this in the sauce.

00:17:44
OK, fair enough.

00:17:45
What I wanna do is I want to compress it a smidgen.

00:17:49
Why am I compressing it? Good question.

00:17:52
The reason for that is: I think I can get a little more "umff" and little more steadiness in the bottom.

00:17:58
if I compress it a little bit.

00:17:59
And also I get a little more click.

00:18:01
And so, we can get a little more of that sound.

00:18:03
Without having to go crazy.

00:18:05
Check it out.

00:18:08
Not that much.

00:18:16
Let me level match.

00:18:24
So, if you have a hard time hearing it, check it out.

00:18:28
That, check it out.

00:18:29
Without.

00:18:37
So it's more steady.

00:18:39
What that's gonna do is gonna help us keep the bottom there through out the song.

00:18:43
Because it is consistent and I can rely on it.

00:18:46
As opposed to a lot of music in this style Where the verse sounds great and then all of the sudden, the chorus the bottom goes away from some reason which I hate.

00:18:55
And, we can do if that's what you want.

00:18:56
But we can try maybe to keep the same bottom fat, through-out the song.

00:19:01
Even though the chorus is gonna go like, "Ghhh" I think I would like that.

00:19:05
You would like that.

00:19:06
Bass drum no processing.

00:19:13
With processing.

00:19:21
So I don't know if this is the final thing but this is a good starting point.

00:19:24
Now I can listen to the other drum sound against this.

00:19:28
So, rest of the drums.

00:19:30
If I solo the rest of the drums I will get nothing because they are no solo saved.

00:19:34
If I solo saved them I won't be able to hear them one by one.

00:19:37
Hence the conundrum.

00:19:38
So in this particular case what I'm gonna do, it's solo save the sub, for now.

00:19:43
So I can do this.

00:20:15
I'm gonna do something I never do I'm gonna use the bottom snare mic.

00:20:18
Never happens.

00:20:22
For this reason.

00:20:29
It's kind of cool.

00:20:35
Maybe not that much.

00:20:39
OK, I dig that.

00:20:40
I'm going to create a mono sub, called SD SUB Let's not forget to send that to the drum sub.

00:20:51
I'm gonna solo save the two snares.

00:21:04
It seems that when I turn on the bottom snare the top snare gets thinner, probably because I forgot to flip the polarity on the pre-amp when we did record it.

00:21:12
And you what? I like it.

00:21:15
If I like the sound of it no harm done by having the wrong polarity.

00:21:18
It helps.

00:21:18
I'm just playing with phase.

00:21:20
Let's see the two of them together.

00:21:26
So, this could use some compression too.

00:21:28
I'm gonna copy this one.

00:21:35
Without.

00:21:58
It's good enough to give it presence and make sure that doesn't sound like a mistake.

00:22:01
Toms we'll see when we grow up, later in life.

00:22:04
And then let's listen to the overheads.

00:22:09
I'm gonna make a group for the overheads.

00:22:12
They are really cymbal mics but let's call them overheads.

00:22:25
It may be a little wide and a little bit documentary, right? So, let's just reset this a little bit.

00:22:31
It's nice to have the option, but I think it's too much.

00:22:44
It's less like a cartoon.

00:22:45
Let's listen to the overhead by itself.

00:22:54
Not necessarily the more useful stuff in the universe but what if we crush it? I'm gonna unbutton this Kind of a natural crush track.

00:23:23
And all those tracks together.

00:23:35
Tough choice.

00:23:36
So, do we want more presence? Or do we want more "umf"? I like the "liaison", if you will the sauce it gives but I don't want it to take away from the actual presence of the two drums.

00:24:01
Because a lot of the music like this, I hear the drums are far away and kind of mushy I don't like that.

00:24:08
I would like this to have more like a pop-ier drum sound and then the rest is punk enough for jazz.

00:24:14
If you know what I mean.

00:24:15
Alright, here we go.

00:24:16
Let's compress the whole thing.

00:24:19
I've seen Vance Powell used this on drums. Must be good.

00:24:22
Something you have to be very careful about.

00:24:24
Check this out. This is without.

00:24:35
Obviously better, right? The reason why you think is better right away is because there's 4dB's of gain right here.

00:24:40
In the default state of this compressors.

00:24:42
So, you'll have to be very careful about not getting fooled by the fact that a lot of plug-ins are set with default settings that are designed to make them feel good, because that's the point.

00:24:53
But since we're scholars and real men, we're gonna listen at the same level.

00:25:09
Not as obvious, is it? So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use a little bit more of the compression.

00:25:20
Without.

00:25:30
So, I lowered the threshold.

00:25:32
Which allowed me to raise the gain to match the level in and out.

00:25:35
And this actually gives me even more punch, which is nice.

00:25:38
So, I'm gonna use this.

00:25:39
Is this the final setting? Probably not.

00:25:42
But now I can mix into this.

00:25:43
And use this kind of a push back to get the drum sound that I want.

00:25:48
I want something that's messy right.

00:25:50
We don't want this to be super clean.

00:25:51
But we do want the definitions.

00:25:53
So, it's gonna be a balancing act between the two goals.

00:25:56
What I hear here is that it's kind of burying my bass drum.

00:26:06
But we have this amazing tool called the fader.

00:26:08
I shall use it here.

00:26:15
And then maybe we should brighten the bass drum.

00:26:17
OK, great. Let's do that.

00:26:20
What I'm going to do is to actually EQ it after the compressor.

00:26:24
Why? If I EQ a bus into the compressor the compressor is gonna push back against that bus.

00:26:30
Not necessarily a bad thing.

00:26:31
But in this case I don't want to think about that.

00:26:33
I like where it sits. I'd just like it to be brighter.

00:26:36
So, I'm gonna make it brighter.

00:26:37
And I like to use this guy.

00:26:40
There you go.

00:26:57
That's the sound we heard before.

00:27:14
It stays dirty enough.

00:27:15
I'm not fully happy with this drum sound.

00:27:17
So, I'm probably gonna EQ, with the same EQ and then we'll get back to it when we have more instruments in it.

00:27:23
But I know, it's too dull.

00:27:25
So, I'm gonna open that.

00:27:36
OK, good enough.

00:27:38
So, let's turn the bass on.

00:27:39
And see what that does.

00:27:46
We have a DI.

00:27:52
And then we have the amp.

00:27:59
A lot of the mud on this mix comes from the amp of the bass.

00:28:02
So, I'm gonna remove that stuff.

00:28:05
Two-hundredish Exactly two-hundred. Here we go.

00:28:19
I think I'd be fun to have a little bit of DI.

00:28:21
Let's talk about the bass sound the way you hear it.

00:28:24
Just the amp.

00:28:33
But we can have a blend of the two.

00:28:43
Without the DI.

00:28:49
And how about something of this style.

00:28:53
Just saying. "No" it's a perfectly fine answer. Check this out.

00:29:09
Together.

00:29:30
A little distortion on the bass DI.

00:29:31
Can I hear with the drums? Very good question.

00:29:34
Yes you may. Here we go.

00:29:49
It doesn't have to be this exact distortion sound but I think a little bit of distortion on the bass would be nice.

00:29:54
So maybe less bright.

00:30:11
He has a very dynamic playing style.

00:30:14
So, what I'm gonna go is I'm gonna compress him.

00:30:16
I'm not gonna compress him for tone, I'm gonna compress him for level.

00:30:20
Let's start with the DI one.

00:30:34
There.

00:30:50
The goal here is to keep things steady.

00:30:52
There's nothing magical about it.

00:30:54
Keep a medium ratio. Like 2:1, that's fine.

00:30:57
And then you lower the threshold until everything is taking care of by the compressor, but not too much.

00:31:02
And then, if there's too much attack, then you speed up the attack, so that, the compressor catches more attack.

00:31:07
Like this.

00:31:13
That kinds of kill the "grrr" thing.

00:31:14
Without.

00:31:18
It's more fun.

00:31:20
The faster the release the more it's gonna pump and bounce, and the slower the release the more it's gonna stay steady.

00:31:26
So you'll have to make sure that it's long enough that you get your effect but not too long that it gets mudded.

00:31:30
Over time, you'll get it.

00:31:39
I think that does the job well.

00:31:41
Amp.

00:31:51
Without.

00:32:00
Here, I feel like I'm smothering it a little bit.

00:32:02
So I'm gonna speed up the release.

00:32:12
Here's with a very slow release.

00:32:22
Feels a little pressure cooked.

00:32:24
With a faster release.

00:32:33
It's better. And the two...

00:32:44
As a reminder, we started here with the bass.

00:32:57
With the drums.

00:33:16
It's more listenable.

00:33:18
And it gives a better bass.

00:33:19
Let's see if we want to tweak it latter.

00:33:21
Then, we have "le guitarre".

00:33:25
The one that Joey played live is this one.

00:33:29
So, we have.

00:33:36
That's fierce. And then we have this one.

00:33:43
The two of them together.

00:33:47
There's a little bit of a mask when you put the two of them together, obviously.

00:33:53
So, let's remove it.

00:34:00
I'll show you where it is.

00:34:10
But, now without.

00:34:20
Just a little cleaner.

00:34:22
I'm assuming it's gonna be the same here.

00:34:27
The balance is different this way. Sounds different.

00:34:29
More of the bright end.

00:34:36
Copy this.

00:34:49
With the bass.

00:35:02
Guitar could be a little more aggressive.

00:35:04
Can guitars ever be too aggressive? Not in my world.

00:35:08
So, I want to put all this stuff into a sub.

00:35:12
Which I'm gonna make stereo and call it guitar sub.

00:35:15
And, I'm gonna try some you never know it may work.

00:35:18
Solo safe it, so I can keep soloing the guitars independently.

00:35:21
And then Universal Audio has this thing called the Maximizer.

00:35:24
And I really dig it, sometimes on this kind of stuff.

00:35:27
Can't forget to send the guitars up to the guitar stem.

00:35:30
There you go.

00:35:41
How you dig that? You dig that? Definitely more aggressive.

00:35:44
I think it needs more EQ.

00:35:55
The guitars could be more open.

00:35:58
As in more open as a gentle way of saying: brighter.

00:36:25
So, I'll open the top here with my favourite top opener.

00:36:30
And then here, just remove a little bottom.

00:36:32
If I go too far or something hurts you, let me know.

00:36:35
I'm just trying to imagine what it is that would make you happy just like you're girlfriend does. Just saying.

00:36:56
So, we plugged the guitars straight into the amps, so we've got the sound of the amps.

00:37:01
Yeah.

00:37:01
How do you do when you play live? Same thing.

00:37:04
And what's the amp? It's a Peavey head with a Raven Cabinet.

00:37:10
Like any poor punk musician.

00:37:12
OK Are you comfortable with this sound? Does it sound like you or does it sound too far from you? I like it for this song just because it's not an overly aggressive punk song.

00:37:23
So the crunch is nice.

00:37:24
Rather than a heavy distortion.

00:37:27
Let's listen to someone else.

00:37:28
Let's see if we are even in the ballpark of the stuff you like.

00:37:31
And we are probably not.

00:37:32
So we are gonna switch to the devil.

00:37:35
Right here.

00:37:36
And, we are gonna listen to some stuff.

00:37:37
So, I have a Green Day track, a Weezer track and a Rancid track.

00:37:41
Which one should we...? Which one is the most relevant? Probably that Green Day track for guitars.

00:37:47
Alright, fair enough.

00:37:48
Let's hear the Green Day track.

00:37:56
It's loud. I'm gonna lower it, so we're more or less at the same level.

00:38:37
There's a lot of stuff about this that's great, and there's a lot stuff about this that is great too but it's not necessarily my thing.

00:38:44
But I'm happy to do what ever you need.

00:38:47
So, I like the fact that we have something below 80Hz that makes me happy.

00:38:54
Here there's not a lot below 80Hz which is fine. It's a style. It's cool.

00:39:00
It's just not necessarily what it makes me the happiest on a daily basis.

00:39:04
But that changes a lot of the balance of things.

00:39:07
There's also a phenomenal amount of guitars.

00:39:16
As a reference we were here.

00:39:22
We're still quieter. Actually, we are too quiet.

00:39:24
Let me hit this a little harder.

00:39:26
Like four.

00:39:28
I give it a little gain so we can hit the meters on the right spot.

00:39:43
First things I'm hearing is that the guitar is a little too thick.

00:39:46
And I can't bring them forward.

00:39:55
OK, as a reference we were here.

00:40:06
This is one of those tracks where the "bam" goes away in the chorus.

00:40:09
This is nice.

00:40:14
And then.

00:40:17
But this is a good sounding one, in this style.

00:40:19
I kind of dig this. What else you've got? Just for entertainment.

00:40:22
Weezer.

00:40:28
Let's listen to this one.

00:40:34
That guitar sounds great.

00:40:48
But this is really awesome.

00:40:55
OK, I get the vibe.

00:40:56
So, we are gonna make it less hi-fi less stereo, and all that stuff.

00:41:00
-And just be a little more... -Real Just manly. Despite the hat.

00:41:13
Should just be more anchored and to do so, I'm gonna put it in a mono Aux input.

00:41:19
Call it bass sub.

00:41:21
Don't forget to put it on the bass stem.

00:41:24
And I'm gonna crush it together.

00:41:32
A standard edition tool for this task, is made by our good friends at Universal Audio.

00:41:37
Hi.

00:42:01
Cool.

00:42:12
I'm really, really, really tempted to add more distortion.

00:42:16
I just...

00:42:17
-I agree. -OK, good.

00:42:44
That's fun.

00:42:45
-Yeah, you like? -Yeah

00:00:00
I'm gonna add a little space here on the guitars.

00:00:02
Not a lot.

00:00:04
Just call it: Guitar delay.

00:00:06
I think it's gonna be delay. (Hence the name) Goes yellow because I'm OCD.

00:00:12
and I've been making them yellow for a minute.

00:00:24
Darker.

00:00:27
OK, that's cool.

00:00:29
See how that feels.

00:00:39
Without.

00:00:52
A little less demoe This is a little bit too thick.

00:00:55
Let's see what happens if I hi-pass.

00:01:05
Listen to the connection between the bass and the guitars.

00:01:21
They don't hang in the same spaces anymore.

00:01:23
There's more room for the bass to be forward, which we gonna need, and then, there's more room for the guitars to be loud without taking all the room.

00:01:30
Even though it's below 68 So in the mess obviously we are losing the bass drum.

00:01:55
We're probably gonna lose the drums, they're gonna sound dull and no fun.

00:01:59
We knew that was gonna happen, because it always happens.

00:02:02
But we like the bass sound and we like the guitar sound.

00:02:05
-We like the guitar sound? -We like the guitar sound.

00:02:07
Which may change too.

00:02:10
but right now I have to find a way to make this bass drum more...

00:02:15
boomy or punchy or whatever it is that word that we're looking for.

00:02:20
So, what I'm gonna do is duplicate this sub.

00:02:24
So, now I have two bass drums.

00:02:28
The second one I'm gonna crush like crazy.

00:02:30
Let's listen to just the second one.

00:02:50
Well, that sounds awful but how does it sound with this guy.

00:02:56
The two of them together.

00:03:02
With the bass.

00:03:18
With guitars.

00:03:57
Just trying to get that "tic tic tic" kind of bass drum.

00:04:00
Alright, good. Why not? Drums.

00:04:13
Let's do the same thing with the snare drum that we just did with the bass drum.

00:04:25
So we have a direct signal and then we have the crush signal.

00:04:28
Crush signal sounds like this by itself.

00:04:34
We can do better than that.

00:04:43
Just the direct. Which already had a little bit of compression but just for positioning.

00:04:52
Just the crush.

00:04:56
Two of them together.

00:05:05
All the drums.

00:05:18
Bass drum still too fat.

00:05:20
Let's see if we lower the sub.

00:05:31
OK, this is a good direction.

00:05:33
What happens if we take the two bass drum subs, the two snare drum subs, the ride cymbals and we put those into a new sub which we're gonna make mono that we are gonna call drum crush.

00:05:51
That we are going to move all the way here.

00:05:58
That drum crush is gonna go to the drum stem.

00:06:01
And we're gonna use the 160 on this probably.

00:06:04
Because since the beginning of the history of the world the DBX160 is been used to crush drums. For good reason.

00:06:10
Sounds pretty good.

00:06:11
I'm gonna show you the aux, right here.

00:06:14
I'm gonna copy the mix from here into this aux.

00:06:19
I'm gonna make sure the aux is pre so I can change the mix to my liking.

00:06:24
And I'm gonna copy to send It is send E.

00:06:30
So now the exact mix that is on my main mix for the drums...

00:06:35
...are going to the drum sum it's also been copy to the drum crush I can alter that.

00:06:40
So for example I know I'm gonna want more snare drum and bass drum and probably less of the cymbals so I can already lower the cymbals a few dB's.

00:06:49
Into the DBX and it sounds like this.

00:06:52
Just the DBX.

00:06:59
Well that is what people call punchy.

00:07:01
Here's with the rest of the drums.

00:07:09
Without.

00:07:20
With the bass.

00:07:29
Nobody will get hurt, if I actually hi-pass all the drums here, the same way.

00:07:38
Here you go.

00:07:44
So the snare drum could use some opening, a little bit.

00:07:48
So I'm gonna copy the Pultec here.

00:07:52
Not that much.

00:08:04
And with the guitars.

00:08:11
Let me make a group of those two bass drums subs, the drum sub and the drum crush.

00:08:18
that we're gonna call DRUM VCA.

00:08:21
There you go.

00:08:22
I'm gonna turn that group off.

00:08:25
Create a VCA assign it to the drums.

00:08:31
That way I could control the level of all the drums.

00:08:33
plus all processing, proportionally right here with the bass.

00:08:47
How are we doin'? Very nice. Ok, very nice.

00:08:51
Give me a second to check out you're references to make sure I'm not taking you in the wrong side of the world.

00:09:02
We're still way, way, way fatter than this.

00:09:05
Are you OK with that? -100% -OK great.

00:09:15
OK, and then...

00:09:30
Alright we are gonna refine this.

00:09:32
But it's starting to turn into a song.

00:09:34
OK, let's see how you sound on top of all this bashing The snare drum is too loud, I apologize.

00:09:47
I'm gonna group this two snare drums.

00:09:50
Snare.

00:09:52
Which is a great way to call your snare group.

00:09:55
And I wanna do the same with bass drum, 'cos you never know.

00:09:57
Alright that's more like it.

00:10:30
Alright.

00:10:32
Since everything else is thick, this is clearly too thick.

00:10:46
And you are playing guitar at the same time, which is pretty awesome.

00:11:04
Definitely need to open the top of this, to match the rest of the madness.

00:11:26
I'm also gonna limit the vocal.

00:11:28
Right now I'm just compressing it.

00:11:30
And it's giving me a center, but there are peaks that I'm not catching.

00:11:33
So, I'm gonna turn the limiter on.

00:11:45
Like that, I have the feeling that...

00:11:48
Inflator is gonna help us give it that inflated feel.

00:11:56
A little bit of brightness.

00:12:21
A little bit of a slap delay kind of thing.

00:12:24
I'm gonna make it mono and call it "mono slap".

00:12:27
To give you more of a space.

00:12:29
So it doesn't sound like the booth so much.

00:12:35
We know this one.

00:12:37
We know it works flawlessly every time.

00:12:43
Let's not forget the colors so we know what is what I could even dig a little more mids out.

00:13:17
This was an SM7 microphone which is not a condenser, but it's perfect for this stuff.

00:13:23
But, it's a dynamic.

00:13:24
And we're not use to hearing dynamic in solo on records.

00:13:28
I could accelerate the compressor a little bit.

00:13:42
And then I could tuck the vocal in a little bit.

00:14:01
At this point for some reason I can not explain, I feel the urge of tightening things together by compressing them together on the 2bus.

00:14:09
For centuries and centuries, people have been using this thing to tight things together.

00:14:14
Some people call it "glue" but somehow there's a negative connotation to glue, as far as I'm concerned.

00:14:20
So, I'm gonna wide open the attack.

00:14:21
so that I can let some of that punch go through because, that's what I'm looking for.

00:14:25
And then I'm gonna tighten the threshold until I get that.

00:14:28
Kind of, like, pressure.

00:14:45
So this is whithout...

00:14:57
Listen to the relationship between the different instruments, and especially the bass drum.

00:15:00
You're gonna tell me: "But you could have lowered the bass drum" Yeah, but it's not quite the same.

00:15:05
Because here, every time the bass drum hits, the whole mix gets affected together.

00:15:11
If we listen to the verse, for example.

00:15:13
Without.

00:15:41
It helps a low-mid problem by nuthering it, a little bit.

00:15:45
It's still bringing us a little closer to what this other records are, so that, Joey can play for his peers without having to explain that the guy who mixed it wore a hat, like this one. You know what I'm saying? This is great but we are only listening to 80% of the track.

00:15:59
Let's put the other background vocals in.

00:16:06
That needs to be a little compress so we don't get those peaks.

00:16:09
So I'm just gonna turn on the limiter, and be holy-unholy.

00:16:21
Even more un-holy.

00:16:25
OK, that's less of a pain.

00:16:27
I'm gonna create a space.

00:16:29
I'm actually gonna send everybody to it.

00:16:37
I'm gonna copy the settings from the Echo-boy.

00:16:40
Put another Echo-boy.

00:16:44
Paste the settings.

00:16:46
Solo safe.

00:16:49
Make it yellow.

00:16:51
Send it to the back stem.

00:16:53
And to think that, we all decided to do this job because we didn't want to do the same thing everyday.

00:16:58
Here we go.

00:17:02
That wouldn't be too much.

00:17:10
Without.

00:17:14
It's a little rough.

00:17:19
Then, there's the all-important chorus double.

00:17:29
Since it's on the same mic, at the same time, the same day, by the same person I'm just gonna copy this and make it less bright.

00:17:47
And there's a little bit of a peak at 5ks so, I'm gonna tame that with a SupreEsser here.

00:17:54
I should have made you move away from the mic.

00:17:56
So we don't have the exact same singer with the same mic, at the same spot.

00:18:00
But you know what? I didn't.

00:18:03
And so, we shall fix it.

00:18:25
Pretty good.

00:18:27
Toms.

00:18:29
Hi, com' here often? My supernatural instinct tells me that they play somewhere around here.

00:18:37
Let's see what it sounded like raw.

00:18:45
Let's make us a group.

00:18:47
Just for entertainment let's listen to just the drums.

00:18:51
Alright, so (makes a sound) I'm too lazy to go and edit this by hand so we're gonna use an automatic "by-handy" call an expander.

00:18:59
Avid makes a really good one. It's call the Pro-Expander.

00:19:02
It says pro, must be good.

00:19:04
Rack tom.

00:19:07
Here you go.

00:19:15
I'm looking for the threshold point where just the tom is above the threshold, and then I'm heightening the ratio so that the difference between on and off is big.

00:19:23
Makes sense? I'm also gonna speed up the attacks so I get the very top of the tom.

00:19:29
Higher threshold.

00:19:32
Higher threshold.

00:19:37
And a slyly slower release.

00:19:42
I'm not using a gate because the difference between on and of is huge and in this case I kind of like the buoyancy of it all.

00:19:48
And it doesn't bother me if there's a little bit of bleed.

00:19:50
Actually, it's probably gonna help a little bit.

00:19:52
Let's see the mid tom.

00:19:59
That's nice.

00:20:00
And the low tom. Does he hit the low tom? Or did we record it for entertainment only? Entertainment only! We shall nuke the low tom.

00:20:08
Thanks for coming. See ya'.

00:20:11
There you go. With the toms sounds like this.

00:20:21
There's a little bit of resonance at the bottom of the mid tom.

00:20:23
We are gonna get rid of it, like this.

00:20:29
Lower.

00:20:33
Listen to the "mhmhmh" thing.

00:20:45
Those toms sound great.

00:20:46
In the context of the whole drum set, with the drum crush, to see the balance of the toms versus the rest of the set.

00:20:55
Too thick. Both of them.

00:21:01
I'm gonna use a shelf here and here.

00:21:06
They probably sound horrible by themselves but I don't care because I'm not gonna listen to them by themselves.

00:21:20
With the bass.

00:21:49
That's snare drum makes the whole set feel, maybe still, a little too thick.

00:21:54
So, why don't I try this.

00:21:59
Just a smidgen, same thing I just did on the toms, here.

00:22:03
Just a little bit.

00:22:06
See what it does.

00:22:12
So, this and this.

00:22:14
So, this is with the correction.

00:22:34
I'm still feeling that we are a little bit low-mid rich for what this track is gonna get played against.

00:22:42
We've got plenty of bottom.

00:22:43
But still, I'm thinking maybe that a little general curving of this stuff will give us more of a radio (whatever that means) sound.

00:23:04
Without.

00:23:15
Interesting.

00:23:16
I'm feeling that maybe it'll be smart to just try a little of that saturation here.

00:23:38
That's one option.

00:23:39
So, that's a certain sound.

00:23:41
Let me move this stuff up, here.

00:23:44
So, that's one sound.

00:23:45
Well, we can try another saturation like this dude.

00:23:57
Without.

00:24:25
This is thinner.

00:24:26
And since our problem is everything is so thick.

00:24:28
Maybe the thinner one is actually a better look here.

00:24:32
How about we try this? Just to see. You never know.

00:24:49
I like that.

00:24:50
I have an idea. It may or may not work.

00:24:52
I want to try and create space around two instruments.

00:24:55
I wanna try and create space around the vocal, that is only on when the vocal sings, and then some space around the drums in general.

00:25:05
I could push this guy here (the overhead).

00:25:08
But I'm not feeling the sound of it.

00:25:25
Maybe a little more.

00:25:36
Before I do the space thing, let's see if we can get a little more energy.

00:25:39
by speeding up the release of the main compressor.

00:25:43
It's now on automatic, which is fine.

00:25:45
It's basically program-depended.

00:25:47
But let's see what happens if I use a faster one.

00:25:50
If we get more of that...

00:25:54
...thing.

00:26:37
I get a little more life out of it.

00:26:39
It's less mothered.

00:26:40
It's the same principal we discussed on second instrument earlier.

00:26:44
It's not night and day, but I like this better.

00:26:45
Plus the master engineer it's gonna crush the hell out of this.

00:26:48
So, why not let it breath for now.

00:26:50
So, let's do our space thing.

00:26:52
If I create a new track and I'm gonna make it stereo. I'm gonna call it "lead verb".

00:27:00
voilà. And send into the lead stem.

00:27:04
Make it yellow.

00:27:06
I put something short, like the EMT.

00:27:12
Be short.

00:27:13
So, I'm gonna solo it so you can hear it.

00:27:28
In the sauce.

00:27:51
So listen to this: (makes a sound) All the attacks and everything.

00:27:55
Without it they're raw.

00:27:56
With it, they're a little more gentle.

00:28:17
So, I like the sound of that.

00:28:19
Of course then Joey is gonna chase me with his guitar over his head because you can hear the reverb and the halls.

00:28:26
I understand that.

00:28:27
But it's not necessarily a problem.

00:28:29
We have solutions for this tremendous problem.

00:28:32
We're gonna gate it using Avid's standard rocking gate, and then we are gonna teach the gate when to open.

00:28:40
I'm gonna use a send from the vocal.

00:28:43
I'm gonna use bus 15.

00:28:44
I'm gonna call it "vocal key".

00:28:48
I'm gonna set the key input of the gate to 15.

00:28:54
Boom. By turning this on the gate is now listening to the lead vocal.

00:28:59
I gotta make sure to send some signal and make it pre, otherwise nothing is gonna happen.

00:29:04
Every time Joey is singing on this track this send will send that signal to the gate, and tell the gate: "Yo, Joey is singing. Open." And then when Joey is not singing it will close.

00:29:17
Which means that the reverb will only be on when Joey is singing.

00:29:20
So, for those hits, the reverb is gonna get cut by the gate.

00:29:24
Sounds like this.

00:29:32
Et voilà.

00:29:33
Without.

00:29:49
In the track, it sounds like this.

00:30:05
-Are you OK, with that? -Yes.

00:30:07
So this is gonna allow us to have more sauce but no left overs.

00:30:14
Let's do something for the drums.

00:30:17
Let's mute the rest.

00:30:30
Let's try and put some reverb on just the snare.

00:30:33
And by reverb I don't mean any of that "shh" stuff.

00:30:36
I just mean, some space.

00:30:38
So let's call it that. It's just a space.

00:30:41
Here you go.

00:30:44
Traditionally, the Lexicon's been doing a great job for that.

00:30:54
Drum stem.

00:30:57
So, now I have control of how much of the snare I'm going to send to that reverb.

00:31:12
Let's adjust the sound.

00:31:13
Less bass, more "ptsss".

00:31:22
Without.

00:31:35
That creates a little bit of that.

00:31:38
As opposed of everything being so vertical and so real, there's a little bit of dream because even punk rockers dream.

00:31:48
-You dream in colours? -I do.

00:31:49
There you go.

00:31:51
Here's the whole track with that little sauce.

00:31:53
And then I will mute it.

00:32:26
By having those little things, in-between the hits, it feels more like a band being in the same room.

00:32:32
It was a band being in the same room but the amps were separated.

00:32:34
Now we are replacing that separation so, but we can chose exactly the tone we want by adding a little bit of sauce.

00:32:42
So I'm feeling that the vocal's a little loud on the chorus because of everything that happens at the same time.

00:32:48
So, I'm gonna automate that quickly.

00:33:19
And I feel that the second verse is also too loud.

00:33:21
So let's do that and see.

00:33:49
And then, the rest of the balance we are gonna solve, I think, by the guitars.

00:33:54
like this.

00:34:06
How about a little crescendo? I'm being technical.

00:35:10
Let's do that again.

00:35:30
In this chorus it's too much. I'm gonna lower that.

00:35:41
One more thought.

00:35:44
I'm feeling that here I don't want to care about the references because I like where we are going here It's got it's own sound.

00:36:01
And it's Joey's sound.

00:36:03
And it's great.

00:36:04
And it sounds like them in the room. I was there.

00:36:06
However I feel that, because everything has come up in energy, that the guitar is now a little bit... (for a lack of a better word) ...metrosexual.

00:36:16
So, what I'd like to do is to use this DI right here.

00:36:25
So, for example.

00:36:26
Thise guys have this amp which really does not suck. Check it out.

00:36:37
A little brighter.

00:36:45
That could sound like you, right? I know it's not a Peavy.

00:36:48
I know they don't have the Peavy knock-off.

00:36:51
-It's too bad. -I know.

00:36:52
We'll just have to do with the Marshall one, and then we'll lobby for the Peavy knock-off as soon as possible.

00:36:58
Actually Peavy amp is not that bad.

00:37:00
I'm gonna group this two, so that they hang together.

00:37:03
Like family.

00:37:05
Call it: "GIT DI" Boom.

00:37:09
And so now, I can shuff them in the mix a little bit.

00:37:13
And I'm panning them full left and right.

00:37:16
So that, I can have as much of that space as possible.

00:37:18
We have three instruments, all of which are completely in the middle, except for the guitars.

00:37:22
So I might as well just take advantage of that Maybe a smidgen too bright for me.

00:37:49
I agree.

00:37:51
If we want it both ones to do the same thing without having to go back and forth, there's a trick.

00:37:54
Let me show you.

00:37:56
If you go into the group in Pro Tools.

00:37:58
And instead of following globals, you remove the follow globals now you can decide everything that is grouped.

00:38:06
In here, we can decide the volumes and the mutes.

00:38:11
And all the plug-in controls are gonna be grouped.

00:38:13
So now, when I change parameter on one of the amps, say the brightness or treble, it changes on both. Isn't that wonderful? Let's see in the track how much of that brightness we want.

00:38:48
Little less volume, right? By the presence...

00:39:20
With more presence it blends better with the other sound.

00:39:23
Alright, I think we have enough that I can print a version of this mix and that I can send it to your colleagues.

00:39:30
Brothers in arms, fellow punk-rockers.

00:39:32
And see what they say.

00:39:34
This is the nicest things that it'd ever been said about them.

00:39:37
Alright. Let's do that.

00:39:39
Let's select the whole track and print.

00:39:43
Maybe one more thing.

00:39:45
I know I said I was gonna use all plug-ins and I used all plug-ins except for the 2bus, but on the 2bus+ there's there's that Paralimiter thing, that I really like, and so I like to try it.

00:39:55
So let's just get a verse.

00:39:56
and I'm just gonna turn it on and put a little bit of it and see if we like it better with or without.

00:40:14
The with, without.

00:40:31
With.

00:40:39
Definitely with.

00:40:41
Just thicker and more exciting.

00:40:43
So, here we go. Print.

00:40:47
Any last comments? This is it.

00:40:49
-Thanks.

00:00:08
Good morning, children.

00:00:10
The poet said: there's no writing, there's only re-writing.

00:00:13
And it's the same for mixing.

00:00:15
There's no mixing, there's only re-mixing.

00:00:17
Or as we call it in the business: recalling.

00:00:20
Today, we have Joey from DCO and his track Ugly, who's back because apparently I did not nail the mix the first time.

00:00:28
Let's see.

00:00:29
So Joey, how you doin'? -I'm doing great. -He's doing great.

00:00:36
What's the problem? My drummer Ronnie wanted just a little snare sample layered, some vocal, maybe to make it sound a little more pop vocally, a little vocal tuning, just a little more space around the vocal.

00:00:50
OK Let's open the session and see what we can do.

00:01:39
First thing to do if you're using analog summing or if you're recalling an in-the-box session that's been sleeping for a long time and you've done changes to your computer is to compare what you're listening to, to what it was.

00:01:51
So, in this particular case what we've just listen to is the print.

00:01:54
It's on this red track over here. It's the print track.

00:01:57
Which is fed by the print bus, conveniently.

00:02:00
If I press input...

00:02:01
I'm now listening to what's going on today.

00:02:04
And what's going on today is all those tracks are going to those blue stems.

00:02:07
Those blue stems are assigned to separate outputs to my Dangerous Music convert AD2A and that's going to my Dangerous Music 2bus+, with a tiny little bit of the Paralimiter, coming back in and being printed.

00:02:24
So, by switching this input monitor button on and off I'm actually able to listen to the other day.

00:02:34
Today.

00:02:39
Strikingly similar.

00:02:40
Let's listen to that again.

00:02:56
For all intense and proposes it's the same -So, snare sample. -Snare sample.

00:03:03
Let's start with the snare sample.

00:03:05
I will mute everything but the drums and the bass.

00:03:10
Now it's the time to select what my source it's gonna be for the snare sample.

00:03:14
Obviously we're gonna probably to pick something that has to do with the snare, otherwise it turns into experimental music.

00:03:20
In this case I think that what would be smart is to duplicate one of the subs.

00:03:25
If you remember, this is my snare sub this is my snare sub crush.

00:03:29
So, either is fine. They're identical.

00:03:32
So here, this track "SD SUB.dp2" is gonna be just my snare.

00:03:36
To be able to focus on what we are doing, I'm gonna mute the drum crush.

00:03:40
Because, otherwise it makes noise.

00:03:41
If I don't mute it sounds like this.

00:03:45
If I mute the drum crush sounds like this.

00:03:50
So now, what I'm gonna do here? Well, first thing I'm gonna make it loud.

00:03:58
That's the original snare.

00:03:59
Then I'm gonna choose my plug-in.

00:04:00
My plug-in I'm gonna use today is a Swiss plug-in It's called Up-trigger 3.

00:04:07
And so, this is gonna listen to the snare track and replace it.

00:04:10
With the sample that I choose.

00:04:12
Let's pick a basic sample.

00:04:15
I have my own library, that I've made with a friend of mine. I like the sound of it.

00:04:24
I like that.

00:04:26
Let's try that.

00:04:27
So now, I need to adjust the trigger.

00:04:29
Basically tell the plug-in: "Yo, listen to that, and that only" So, if I listen to what's coming in to the plug-in I hear this.

00:04:42
So I'm gonna do what the plug-in says.

00:04:43
I'm gonna click anywhere to create a filter-band.

00:04:45
Check it out.

00:04:47
And I'm gonna use a hi-pass filter.

00:04:48
And that's gonna allow me to do this.

00:04:57
So, basically I'm trying to find the most amount of energy centered around the snare.

00:05:00
I could for example try to get rid of the cymbals by having a low-pass filter too.

00:05:11
So that is gonna tell the plug-in: "Look, this is really what we are most interested in." "Everything else is decoration." So, I'm gonna remove the input filter monitoring, if you will.

00:05:21
And adjust the threshold based on the input signal so that I can decide what gets triggered and what doesn't.

00:05:29
Press play, you'll check it out.

00:05:35
It's a little quiet, I'm gonna give some gain.

00:05:37
Let's be wild.

00:05:44
If I put a little bit of the dry signal then you can understand what's going on.

00:05:53
But we don't need to because we have two other subs that have the dry signal. They're here.

00:05:56
They're just muted right now.

00:05:58
OK, so this is what we have.

00:06:08
You've heard that: "pa pa pa ra".

00:06:10
Sounds like a machine-gun.

00:06:12
Great for heavy metal, not great for this.

00:06:14
-Is that what you want? -No No, I didn't think so.

00:06:17
And I'm gonna use the "Level-mod" control on the plug-in to add more dynamics to the sample.

00:06:23
Let's see this.

00:06:27
Could do some more.

00:06:33
OK, a little more.

00:06:39
It's better.

00:06:40
Blended with the rest it should be fine.

00:06:43
Then we're gonna solo the three snares.

00:06:52
So, obviously the balance is off. Let's fix that.

00:06:56
I'm gonna copy the compressors, so it kind of compresses the same.

00:07:00
But I'm not gonna use the crush thing Keep it wide open.

00:07:04
A little more release to keep the sound together.

00:07:09
And some gain. Gain is beautiful.

00:07:11
Alright, let's see.

00:07:13
This is the three snares together.

00:07:29
So, it triggers fine but it's not the right pitch.

00:07:34
It's a little too bright and it's not doing what we are looking for.

00:07:37
So, what I'm gonna do is change the pitch of the sample to match and to fill in the bottom of the snares.

00:07:44
Let's see.

00:07:58
Check it out.

00:08:12
-Is that what you're looking for? -Does the job.

00:08:14
So, there's a little bit of noise because it's so unbelievable compressed.

00:08:17
I'm gonna, basically shorten the sample and give it a little bit of a fade.

00:08:30
Not bad, check it out.

00:08:50
Because I'm using a sub...

00:08:52
...this sub. Let's call it "SD replace".

00:08:58
Because it's going to the drum crush, just muting it by itself it's not gonna remove all its effect. I have to also mute this.

00:09:04
The send to the drum crush because it is... pre.

00:09:07
So, for me to be able to really tell the difference before and after, the easiest way is to go back to my master right here, and switch between the other day and today.

00:09:15
Isn't that wonderful? And I feel that maybe we can get a little more of clean hi-end on that snare, Just a little bit, just for entertainment, by copying the Pultec from the other snare.

00:09:40
This way.

00:09:45
I know we are looking for bottom but since we added a lot of bottom now there's kind of a balance thing going on.

00:09:51
Let's see if this was a good idea or maybe a horrible one.

00:10:10
Still a little loud, but is this what you're looking for? -Yeah -Yes, great.

00:10:13
I think we definitely could come down a little.

00:10:15
And to come down I'm gonna come down both in the direct sound and in the crush.

00:10:19
That way it's all down.

00:10:21
Let's listen to it without the vocal.

00:10:23
Because Joey wants to enhance the vocal so I can't really base my snare placement on where the vocal is since the vocal is gonna change.

00:10:31
So, let's see how it sounds as a band.

00:10:51
Maybe we can raise the snare drum a smidgen, to re-balance this.

00:11:06
Alright, let's listen to the vocal.

00:11:09
What you mean by pop? You want to sound a little more like Katy Perry? -No, not like K. Perry. -OK I think it just could maybe have a little more space.

00:11:20
I know we gated the reverb last time and the delay wasn't so present.

00:11:25
I think that those things can be a little more present.

00:11:28
So, more like George Michael.

00:11:29
Sure.

00:11:30
OK, no problem.

00:11:32
In-between Katy Perry and George Michael.

00:11:34
Not an option, but not a problem.

00:11:43
The thing is though, on it's own it sounds great, right? And I like the space.

00:11:53
So, why don't we leave this alone and just add something else? Because I feel that, this does what it does musically and it's cool when it dries up, you know? So, all these dynamics are changing and all the stuff we've done I think is good.

00:12:06
-Now you want a little more sauce. -Yeah No problem.

00:12:09
Let's create a new track, stereo, aux, input.

00:12:12
Call it "sauce".

00:12:14
And then we'll see...

00:12:18
Let's now forget to assign it to the right stem.

00:12:20
Hello, there. Great.

00:12:22
So, what could it be? You hear like reverb, or like a special effect, or what is it that you are interested in? Maybe like a longer delay.

00:12:35
OK Subtle, but there.

00:12:38
Why don't we copy Echo-boy (because that's kind of the standard for this kind of stuff) and instead of having the 8th note (the same as the other one we had before) let's make it a quarter note, and go from there.

00:12:49
And I'm gonna mute the other effects.

00:12:51
I'm gonna do this in solo.

00:13:04
A little thinner probably.

00:13:11
So that's not gonna really work for me.

00:13:12
Let's try and see...

00:13:19
Let's go back to the 8th note but lengthen it.

00:13:41
Let's listen to it with everything else.

00:13:51
You know what would be more pop? Raise the vocal.

00:13:55
And I'm gonna do that on the stem.

00:13:56
The reason for that is because is easy.

00:14:06
There's room for more of that effect.

00:14:08
Is the effect even remotely close to what you've imagined? Yes it is.

00:14:12
You want it longer or are you happy with it there? This is what we had.

00:14:23
Or we could do this.

00:14:32
Somewhere in-between? In-between...

00:14:35
...so closer to Michael.

00:14:38
There you go.

00:15:15
So, sometimes is fun to send the delay into a reverb and that allows you to tie the whole thing together, kinda.

00:15:35
For you to hear this is much exaggerated, check it out.

00:15:50
You know what I mean? So there's no reverb on the vocal but it kind has a texture on the delay only.

00:16:20
So this is definitely changing the color of the track.

00:16:23
So, I'm thinking, because of some of the peaks, that I'd like to actually put a fierce limiter before that delay.

00:16:32
So then when you peak, when you have those (makes a sound) thing.

00:16:36
It doesn't excite the delay more.

00:16:38
Check this out, I'm gonna do this and I'm just gonna put a super fast limiter, like this.

00:16:54
Obviously the amount of send into the delay is not enough for this limiter to be able to do it so I'll have to find another limiter.

00:17:00
It's too bad because that's my go-to.

00:17:02
I don't want a mastering limiter.

00:17:04
I don't want a push-up limiter.

00:17:06
I want a top down limiter.

00:17:08
So let's just use the good old Avid Compressor Dyn 3 limiter stuff.

00:17:13
Let's see if it has more range.

00:17:15
So, I'm gonna turn this compressor into limiter by making it infinitive here, making sure the attack is very fast, and let's check it out.

00:17:47
Now I'm gonna raise the gain on my compressor to compensate for the amount of compression and un-by-pass it. You'll hear the difference in the way the delay reacts.

00:18:10
Especially here.

00:18:39
So, it's less distracting but you still get the effect.

00:18:41
In the context of the whole song.

00:19:13
Let's figure out what's that gonna do when it breaks down here.

00:19:23
I propose we tame it.

00:19:25
Just like the others.

00:19:27
We're gonna tame it on the send because if I just lower the return then what ever tail's happening before will get cut, and whatever is going under is gonna get louder in this area here which is not a good look.

00:19:43
So, sauce.

00:19:45
Level.

00:19:46
I'm just gonna take this and come here.

00:20:13
Maybe that whole, less.

00:20:15
Maybe you're right.

00:20:23
Even earlier.

00:20:29
OK, great.

00:20:30
Maybe we tweak this some more, but for now...

00:20:32
...look how he's happy...

00:20:37
Alright, what else Your Honor.

00:20:39
As for guitars...

00:20:41
the DI, kind of become the whole guitar sound and I really liked the amp guitars.

00:20:47
OK, why don't we just lower them a little bit and compensate by raising the guitar itself.

00:20:52
The way I like to do this is turn the trim on this and it'd be better if they've actually were grouped properly.

00:21:00
So, we are gonna modify the groups and make sure that the automation mode is together.

00:21:06
And I'm gonna turn the sub of the guitars trims on.

00:21:10
The reason for that is I know now how much I changed it.

00:21:13
Because I can read. I just took this down 3 dB's and maybe take the whole thing up a couple.

00:21:34
Without the change.

00:21:43
-Yeah? -Good, I'm happy.

00:21:45
Maybe pull that sauce track just down.

00:21:50
Alright, let's try this biggest mission.

00:21:53
Let's do a whole smidgen.

00:21:56
There you go.

00:22:14
So now I feel like we open the top a little more.

00:22:16
Yeah.

00:22:17
The whole mix.

00:22:18
Instead I'm going up to 16k for my 2bus Pultec maybe I'll try 10 or 12.

00:22:27
So, lower frequency from 16 to 12, which is a big jump, but let's boost, so you don't get as harsh.

00:22:33
But you get more "ahhh".

00:22:35
Technical term.

00:22:36
As a reminder, this is just before.

00:22:58
Great, what else? I guess...

00:23:06
...vocal tuning.

00:23:09
-Oh yeah. -Alright Which part? Maybe it's just the opening line.

00:23:17
The opening phrase that I think I have an issue with.

00:23:19
-Here? -Yeah.

00:23:27
It has a little...

00:23:28
It has character.

00:23:31
Let's analyze that character.

00:23:34
here's the fierce Melodyne and we are gonna capture that first phrase.

00:23:45
It's out there. Alright.

00:23:49
This is what we are looking at.

00:23:51
First things first friends don't let friends use the pitch grid or the time grid and then...

00:23:58
That's a little flat, I give you that much.

00:24:02
Fine. And this is a little flat.

00:24:05
Isn't this a pleasant sound? Beautiful sound.

00:24:10
So, it's phenomenal and also fun to do that with the singer in the room.

00:24:14
You do this...

00:24:21
It's fun.

00:24:22
Alright, so are you ready? You're annoyed by the drift.

00:24:25
Yeah.

00:24:25
OK, we have a pitch drift tool.

00:24:30
And then we can...

00:24:39
it's better but...

00:24:44
There you go.

00:24:52
Much better.

00:24:53
So surprisingly much better.

00:24:56
You know that most people will never hear this stuff, right? Yeah, but I will.

00:25:01
So, this is for you and your dog.

00:25:04
Alright, great wonderful.

00:25:06
Anything else? There's one extra hi-hat hit.

00:25:11
Crucial. Where's that? In the big ring part.

00:25:21
-In the hop. -Absolutely.

00:25:23
No, it's important.

00:25:25
It's true. Let's make it more magical.

00:25:27
For everybody to be able to hear this I'm gonna mute everybody else.

00:25:40
The problem is that cymbals are ringing.

00:25:42
Yeah.

00:25:43
I mean, here's the deal, if I do this and cheat...

00:25:57
-Right -This is as un-punk as it gets.

00:25:59
Un-punk. Un-punk.

00:26:00
-I agree. -A new style.

00:26:02
Even if we try to be sly about it...

00:26:09
What else is going on in the track at that moment? Because if there's a big hole it could be interesting.

00:26:13
-That's the silence part. -Let's see.

00:26:19
So that's semi justified.

00:26:21
I haven't heard this on headphones but I know is gonna bug me if I listen to it on headphones. Check it out.

00:26:34
Some fierce foot stomping.

00:26:36
Yes.

00:26:38
This can led foot.

00:26:39
So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hi-pass that gently.

00:26:44
Just for that section though. I'm going to make this.

00:26:49
So, let's start with it off here. Turn it on.

00:27:09
Let's be fair and make sure it's on the drum B.

00:27:21
With the sauce.

00:27:25
Here we go.

00:27:46
What else.

00:27:47
I think that's it.

00:27:49
Alright, so why don't we select the mix.

00:27:54
And I'm selecting the mix as my source creating a new play-list.

00:27:58
That way this two mixes will be exactly the same length.

00:28:02
So when you come home and compare and you tell me: "At 1 minute and 23 seconds I don't like this." It will be 1 minute and 23 seconds on both mixes exactly the same thing so I can compare.

00:28:13
-It's nice. -Beautiful.

00:28:14
Let's print this sucker! Et voilà, again.

00:00:00
Good morning children.

00:00:01
Today, we are going to take some loud music and master it.

00:00:05
Note: I did not say "We're going to take some music and master it loud" Those are, in theory, two different things.

00:00:13
Let's go.

00:00:21
The victim today is DCO, A.K.A "Dry Clean Only".

00:00:24
Which is one of my favorite band names of all times.

00:00:27
And the song is called "Ugly", although the song is not ugly.

00:00:31
Let's take the song and drag it into the time-line of our fierce Pro Tools rig.

00:00:38
I'm gonna master this in-the-box, in Pro Tools.

00:00:40
So that, we can focus on the processing and the thought process behind the processing rather than on the gear.

00:00:46
Because this plug-ins and their little brothers are available to you, like everybody else.

00:00:51
First thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a meter on it so that, you can see the levels.

00:00:56
And this is Blue Cat's fearless meter.

00:00:59
This is what the track sounds like.

00:01:52
It's pop music. It repeats.

00:01:53
It's incredibly loud! Who mixed this? Me? Great mix.

00:02:00
But incredibly loud.

00:02:01
We can see on the meter, here there's an average of -5.6 Rms Despite the incredible blow to my reputation, it is where the master should be, and this is where the mix is.

00:02:12
Alright, so what's the mastering process here? It's already loud. What am I gonna do? Well, I hear some things that I think could be better.

00:02:19
It's gonna be difficult to do because it's so incredibly loud that I don't have any headroom.

00:02:24
Remember, if I use an EQ to raise the bass drum by pushing the middle 3dB's at 100Hz for example.

00:02:32
I'm gonna have to raise it into the limiter It's gonna make the track collapse So, this is actually an interesting case because we are in a situation where I don't have that much leeway but there are somethings I wanna do.

00:02:44
First thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create a process track.

00:02:47
So, I'm gonna send the whole track to stereo Aux I'm gonna call it process.

00:02:52
And then, I'm gonna send the output of that process Aux object into a track that I'm gonna use to print.

00:02:59
And I'm gonna call it "Ugly Fabmaster 1.0".

00:03:05
Because, you know, there might be several versions of this.

00:03:08
I'm gonna put this track on input, so that, I can listen to it.

00:03:12
And I'm gonna send out to my reference converter.

00:03:15
My "Convert-2" by Dangerous Music.

00:03:17
It is the angle and the ultimate quest to have a controlled listening environment, especially for mastering.

00:03:24
Where what you hear is what you get.

00:03:26
I always listen to everything through the same converter.

00:03:30
In this case I'm using a Dangerous Music "Convert-2".

00:03:34
Everything I do, I do through that Convert-2.

00:03:37
If I listen to a demo I listen through it.

00:03:39
If I listen to a record I like, I listen through it.

00:03:42
So, no matter what I listen to, I listen to it through the same exact converter and the converter that I know is perfect for me.

00:03:50
I strongly urge you to do the same thing.

00:03:53
I'm gonna take my meter and put it at the end of my process.

00:03:57
The reason why I'm using an Aux track in the middle here is multiple First, having all my process, all my plug-ins on the middle Aux track leaves the source track clean.

00:04:07
Which means if I want to I can send it to a separate output.

00:04:10
I can send it to another output right here.

00:04:13
For example, put 1-2 and I can now listen to it using my monitor section.

00:04:18
Raw, listen to output 1-2 or processed, listen to my reference converter.

00:04:23
And using an Aux track allows me to go around the Pro Tools pre-fader only plug-in slots.

00:04:28
Which means if I want to do a fade, or things like that, I can do them while keeping my processing clean if I have a limiter on the last slot. She's kind of nice.

00:04:38
First things first, let's prove to ourselves that nothing's changed.

00:04:45
It's still incredibly loud.

00:04:47
What am I going to do here? Well, let's listen again to the first verse and first chorus and focus on relationship between the sides and the center Which is the first thing I've heard when we listened to it earlier.

00:04:57
Do you like the relationship between the sides and the center? And the bottom, the low-mids, where the bass and the bass drum hang out for dinner, is it bright enough? Is it compressed enough? It's now the question. Here we go.

00:05:53
So what are we gonna do? Well, I know what I hear and what I hear goes right now because I have control of the keyboard and mouse, so there.

00:06:00
What I hear is that the guitars, on the sides, are a little forward.

00:06:04
The architecture of the mix is...

00:06:06
I like it. And it sounds really lovely.

00:06:08
But I feel that the guitars are a little too (makes a sound).

00:06:11
They could use some support.

00:06:12
I'm wondering if we could extend the high-end a little bit but that we'll find out by listening to a reference.

00:06:17
So, the first thing to do is to put a diaper onto the master, by putting a limiter at the end, to make sure that we don't clip too hard.

00:06:25
Here's my favorite limiter for this purpose This is the ultimate diaper.

00:06:29
The Sonnox Oxford Limiter.

00:06:31
It is lovely. I recommend you open the attack, so you don't crush all the hard work that you put into it.

00:06:37
Just tucked 0.001dB to make sure we don't clip.

00:06:41
Here we go.

00:06:59
It's fatter. It's got more presence.

00:07:01
Why is that? Because this limiter has a bit of a tone and it's always kind of good.

00:07:06
I always like what it does, which is why it always ends up being last on my chain 98,89% of the time.

00:07:14
So, this thing does something fun.

00:07:17
What? I don't know.

00:07:18
Send them a postcard and maybe they'll answer Now, I'd like to start working in the MS mode.

00:07:22
Sum and difference mode.

00:07:25
And I'm gonna use the new Brainwork V3.

00:07:29
Sum and difference is when you work on middle and sides as opposed to left and right.

00:07:34
For those of you who are confused, let me explain in one simple step.

00:07:39
This is stereo...

00:07:45
This is just the center...

00:07:51
And this is just the sides...

00:07:59
So, in this sides, even though displaying the sides in the middle, you hear the content that is on the sides.

00:08:04
Namely the guitars, because they're pan left and right, and the reverbs and stuff. Check it out.

00:08:17
So now the possibilities are great.

00:08:18
Could EQ this? If you wanted to.

00:08:34
This EQ has a solo function that let's you hear what you are doing.

00:08:38
It's kind of disruptive, if you're not use to it.

00:08:40
Sometimes is useful and sometimes it drives me insane.

00:08:42
In this case I'm gonna leave it on so that you hear what I'm doing.

00:08:45
I'm gonna remove this EQ because that's in poor taste. There you go.

00:08:51
You have the stereo width control here.

00:08:54
What's a stereo width control? It really is a side level.

00:08:58
Meaning, with this button you decide how much of the sides you're gonna have in the signal.

00:09:03
Meaning, if you have more sides it's gonna feel wider.

00:09:06
Right? More sides, wider? Check it out.

00:09:09
I'm starting at 100% I'm gonna go all the way to 400%.

00:09:12
It's fun.

00:09:25
In my case I think that the guitar's a little loud.

00:09:28
Don't tell Joey.

00:09:29
So, I could lower them.

00:09:39
Of course there's a problem: If I lower the sides, I lose width.

00:09:43
So, what's my choice.

00:09:44
My feeling is that if I lower the guitars a little bit, if I lower the sides a little bit, I'm lowering the guitars by lowering the sides because the guitars again are panned hard left and right.

00:09:55
So say, 10%.

00:09:57
This is where we started.

00:10:11
Already it does this, a little bit, right? And then, use the center EQ to enhance the parts of the center signal that I feel could help make a better relationship between the vocal and the guitars.

00:10:25
So, for example, I'm gonna solo the center and listen to the vocal and try and find that vocal with this EQ and touching just the center, raise that vocal.

00:10:34
Like this.

00:10:47
Flat.

00:10:58
So we get that lift, right? And then, I remove the solo.

00:11:02
Without the correction on the center.

00:11:17
Notice the difference? It does that shape that I was looking for.

00:11:21
As a reminder without any of the EQ meaning, without the 10% less on the sides and this EQ, it sounds like this.

00:11:40
You can hear the relationship between the vocal and the guitars being more something that I would do.

00:11:45
And then let's not forget that we started with nothing and this is the raw track, the mix.

00:12:04
And that's the difference between nothing and 2dB's at 4k shelf on the center channel, a little bit of the sides down and a limiter that supposedly does nothing.

00:12:15
And that's a big difference. I'll play it again.

00:12:17
Raw.

00:12:31
It jumps out of the speakers more.

00:12:33
It sounds more like a record.

00:12:34
We are on the right track.

00:12:36
Now, what else could we do to this? Good question.

00:12:39
I still feel that we can enhance, polish the tone of the track more.

00:12:45
Now, I don't want to polish too much.

00:12:47
This music is supposed to be raw.

00:12:49
"Grrr", like real men.

00:12:51
However this is recorded by somebody who tends to like things to be pretty hi-fi.

00:12:59
Let's find a good mix between hi-fi and Sex Pistols.

00:13:02
How's that? So, I'm gonna use the Dangerous Master Bax.

00:13:07
Love this thing.

00:13:08
Right now the left and right work together.

00:13:10
I'm gonna remove that link and I'm gonna go into MS also.

00:13:13
So I can still decide just like you saw, here, on this EQ I can still decide to do things differently on the sides and on the middle.

00:13:21
I'm gonna hi-pass, a little bit.

00:13:38
I'm hi-passing at 18 I'm actually gonna go up to 24 on both sides. See what it does.

00:13:42
Listen to the bass raw listen to how it moves this way.

00:13:46
But listen to how certain noise take out more than others.

00:13:49
Without and listen with.

00:13:51
Also listen to the morphology the shape of the bottom of the track, with there a hi-pass filter at 24Hz.

00:13:58
Check it out.

00:14:11
Notice how that peak at 90...

00:14:15
I play it again.

00:14:16
That goes away and things feel more together, why is that? Why would a hi-pass filter at 24Hz, 6dB's for octave, like the Bax does, do something to your signal at 90Hz? Well, there's a lot of reason for that but my personal philosophy is that if you don't need it cut it out.

00:14:35
Because if it's there, you're making your converters work harder and you don't want your converters to work harder especially not your iPhone converters.

00:14:43
You know what I'm saying? You people are gonna listen to your track on iPhones and iPads or worse.

00:14:50
I don't think there's anything worse. Maybe there is. Send me a postcard.

00:14:53
But overall if there's too much stuff at the bottom your playback system is gonna struggle.

00:14:58
So, it's a balance.

00:14:59
If you're doing a hip-hop record do you wanna hi-pass at 30 or you wanna explode the speakers in your escalate? You choose.

00:15:06
In this case I have a strong feeling there will be no escalates involved in the listening of this track, consequently, I can hi-pass the bottom and gain a little bit of energy.

00:15:14
You may need really good headphones or really good speaker system to be able to tell the difference here.

00:15:20
But for me it's important.

00:15:38
Let's listen to the hi-end.

00:15:39
What happens if I enhance the hi-end with this EQ? This is a Bax EQ, Baxandall EQ instead of being a shelf that just raises in plateaus the Baxandall EQ just keeps gently going up, up, up to the sky.

00:15:53
I already raise the center in my BX-digital EQ.

00:15:58
and I loved the sound of that. That was very nice.

00:16:00
So why would I wanna raise the hi-end again in this EQ? Well, because it sounds different.

00:16:06
and it's gonna do different things that I can't do with the other EQ and the combo of the two is a nice combo, at least in my experience.

00:16:12
Let's check it out.

00:16:13
Let's link them, so we can hear easily what it does.

00:16:16
From 0dB's of gain to 5dB's of gain on the 18k band on the Bax.

00:16:34
Pay attention to the relationship between The hi-mids, the vocals at the top of the snare and the low-mids.

00:16:41
Now, you may not hear it be brighter but when I turn it off you may hear that track is gonna feel a little bit muddier Check it out.

00:16:50
Without, with and then without.

00:17:13
Crazy, right? Well, not that crazy. Not Joker crazy.

00:17:16
But crazy kind of like... your mother in-law crazy? Depending on your mother in-law. Anyway.

00:17:22
Let's talk about the 18k thing.

00:17:25
You can't hear 18k.

00:17:26
If your been making music for more than 10 minutes at modern levels or if you've been listening to those iPad headphones you're listening to right now.

00:17:35
against my better judgement you can't hear 18k.

00:17:38
You can kind of feel 18k maybe but you can't hear it. Your dog can, you can't.

00:17:42
Your 2 year-old can. You can't.

00:17:44
So why is there an 18k setting here on the Bax? Because 18k is the turning frequency but it gently kind of, like, goes slower And also, there's harmonics, you can feel those harmonics.

00:17:55
I play it again so you can re-focus on it.

00:17:58
18k is not a crazy thing to have on an EQ like this.

00:18:02
It actually let's you enhance that air thing and it's pretty high up that's why we have 5dB's of it.

00:18:09
But it's listenable.

00:18:10
So again, without, with and without.

00:18:34
The fact that I can raise 18k 5dB's on the Bax and not have a nose-bleed means that the track was probably mixed a little dark.

00:18:44
And the track is probably mixed a little dark because we were probably listening way too loud.

00:18:48
Who ever mixed this has really bad monitoring habits.

00:18:54
I mastered the previous DCO record.

00:18:55
I didn't mix the previous DCO record.

00:18:57
but I mastered the previous DCO record, so I might as well, see what this new track which it was done in a very different environment than the previous track is gonna do tucked against the previous record.

00:19:08
Because that's what's gonna happen to them.

00:19:09
Their fans are gonna listen to this record after having listened to their previous record forever and ever and a day.

00:19:16
The way I do that is I go to my desktop, Then I drag a master that I know worked out.

00:19:21
I'm dragging it to my receptacle track here.

00:19:24
And I'm actually gonna re-name this "Ref".

00:19:28
If I have the green button on I'm listening to today.

00:19:35
And if I have the green button off I'm listening to the previous master.

00:19:45
So, level-wise I'm in the same realm.

00:19:47
Obviously, not mixed by the same person.

00:19:49
So I'm not too bright, not too dark.

00:19:51
The levels are very healthy.

00:19:53
I can hear the vocals very well and the snare drum doesn't sound like some sort of a plastic tub hit by a spoon.

00:20:00
So, we're making progress.

00:20:02
I think I can get a little bit of aggression.

00:20:05
If I listen to their previous music it sounds like this.

00:20:20
And today.

00:20:34
Obviously I like this look better but there's something charming about that density of the other mix.

00:20:41
So, how would I achieve that? I'm gonna un-link it.

00:20:45
I'm gonna add some 360 to put a little bit of that mud on the sides.

00:20:49
This is from 0 to +5 at 360 on just the sides.

00:21:13
So now, when we started the guitars were too loud.

00:21:15
But really, they were probably a little too forward and a little too bright.

00:21:20
And now with this 360 added we're more in the realm of what they were doing without losing any of the quality gained and the transients, the definition and the fact that it doesn't hurt your eyes Again we started our mix, from here with nothing.

00:22:19
Nice.

00:22:20
Now, I still want to add a little bit of aggression.

00:22:23
I just want to feel like a real man with hair everywhere.

00:22:26
We're gonna memorize this setting.

00:22:27
+5 at 18.

00:22:30
Not difficult.

00:22:33
Lower that and let's go to 7.1 and do the same trick I did before with 18 by raising slowly and see how it feels.

00:22:50
You hear those (makes a sound) coming out? Not gonna work.

00:23:00
You'd say: "Why don't you do that just on the sides and keep +18 in the middle?" Good thinking.

00:23:07
So, I'm gonna keep +5 at 18 in the middle, go to 7.1 on the sides and raise it again.

00:23:28
So difference between 7.1 and 18 on the sides only? We're getting into some super geeky stuff right here So this is 7.1 and then I play 18 and then 7.1 I'm gonna play it on the intro so you can really focus on the guitars.

00:23:59
Why not? Without any of the Bax.

00:24:14
So now the guitars are coming back up.

00:24:15
Let's go back to the digital.

00:24:17
I like the tone of them but they're going back up.

00:24:19
So, let's remove a couple percent of the sides so we can regain some of our balance.

00:24:32
Alright.

00:24:33
We started here.

00:24:52
It's getting more exciting.

00:24:53
Gotta be careful not to go too bright.

00:24:55
Oh, but we have a reference.

00:25:07
We're on the edge.

00:25:08
One thing I heard here, is...

00:25:19
Hear that "Color"? So, we have several options for that problem.

00:25:22
We could speed up the attack on the limiter.

00:25:26
But I kind of like it what it does like this.

00:25:28
What I wanna do is use a compressor.

00:25:31
There's many compressors that can do this.

00:25:32
This one is pretty awesome.

00:25:34
We're gonna train the compressor to listen to that peak.

00:25:38
To do so, I'm gonna turn the side-chain EQ on and I'm gonna listen to it.

00:25:43
and I'm gonna listen to that area.

00:25:58
Let me locate.

00:26:10
There it is.

00:26:13
Sometimes you're looking for the harmonics and it's the fundamental that's bothering you and sometime you're looking for the fundamental and the harmonics is really bothering you, and sometimes you just wanna go to bed.

00:26:22
In this particular case that is genuinely offensive sounding So, now what I'm gonna do is remove it from the signal and put it in a side-chain.

00:26:30
So now, I'm gonna feed that to the compressor.

00:26:37
Being careful not to crush the whole track.

00:26:41
Faster.

00:26:44
I need a little bit of make-up gain so I can hear exactly the same thing.

00:26:49
Without.

00:26:53
I'm making progress.

00:26:54
Again, this is without.

00:26:56
Listen to the "color blind".

00:27:01
With.

00:27:11
It's doing too much to the rest of the track though, so I'm gonna have to speed up the release and then go a higher threshold, I don't need that much.

00:27:28
It's doing very good things. Check this out.

00:27:41
It's tucking all those peaks a little bit in an elegant manner and it's making it some more style accurate.

00:27:47
meaning less well-recorded.

00:27:49
Without anything.

00:28:09
I like it.

00:28:10
It makes it somehow more together.

00:28:13
We lose a little bit of the definition but actually I kind of like it better.

00:28:17
I always make absolutely sure that I'm listening at the same energy level so that I don't get fooled by the fact that it's louder.

00:28:25
And when you're not 100% sure here's a good trick.

00:28:27
Listen to it without gain.

00:28:29
If you like it better compressed without extra gain meaning when the compressor is going softer, you're in really good shape.

00:28:35
Let's listen without the compressor.

00:28:51
I like the sound, the togetherness of it better, even though I'm listening to it quieter which means I'm doing something right.

00:28:57
So, let's give 1.8 dB again back.

00:29:00
Let's listen to this again.

00:29:09
Previous record.

00:29:20
Overall I'm happy.

00:29:21
It's a little bright.

00:29:22
So, I'm gonna chill out on this, for example.

00:29:32
And then, I can't help to wonder what it would sound like if I did some fattening of the center.

00:29:52
It's a little too high starts becoming a problem on the snares.

00:29:55
and maybe 131...

00:30:06
Without the Bax.

00:30:21
It's nice! Maybe a half dB less on the sides of the 361 As a reminder we started here.

00:31:07
It's good I like.

00:31:08
So we have +2dB's at 4k shelf.

00:31:12
We have 3dB's at 18k in the middle.

00:31:15
5dB's at 7.1k on the sides.

00:31:18
3 (and change) dB's at 361 on the sides for the guitars.

00:31:23
1dB at 131, a little bit of hi-passing.

00:31:27
Some tucking in of the peaks right here.

00:31:30
and then nothing on the limiter.

00:31:31
Now let's look at the level.

00:31:34
So, you might think that these are pretty broad strokes.

00:31:38
Sometimes it ends up being a half dB and it does all the difference.

00:31:41
When the music is that loud and that dense you tend to use more EQ to be able to feel it.

00:31:46
If it's a wide open, uncompressed, totally transparent, gorgeous you put a 3rd of a dB at 10k and you're like... (makes a sound) It all depends on the material.

00:31:56
So, let's look at our level right now.

00:31:58
This is your level, right here.

00:31:59
The harmless level, the average level.

00:32:01
Which is how loud music feels.

00:32:02
So the apparent level of the music.

00:32:05
Let's listen to the intro and look at the levels.

00:32:31
Now, let's look at the new version.

00:32:33
You noticed 5.60 Rms.

00:33:01
You've noticed that the numbers are not that different.

00:33:03
So, all that level is apparent, more that it is actual real.

00:33:07
Well, it gets louder obviously because you raise an EQ 2dB's only at 10k or at 4k you're raising 2dB's and part of the spectrum is gonna make the signal louder.

00:33:18
But it's not that much energy for the system to take care of and process and handle.

00:33:23
So we've got a lot of apparent level.

00:33:26
for low-cost in headroom.

00:33:28
Again flat.

00:33:34
Processed.

00:33:44
There's a science and a habit to take to make sure that if you're gonna do those moves you're gonna do them for good reason and it's not gonna cost you too much level or too much headroom so you don't have to crush the song.

00:33:55
So, in this particular case it feels louder than our previous master does it not? Let's check it out.

00:34:11
What happens if I lose a half dB? Here.

00:34:31
Nobody is gonna die, and I'm not crushing it as hard.

00:34:35
This is the kind of stuff you can't do when the artist is in the room because if he sees you lower his master, all of the sudden, the manly-hood is in danger.

00:34:44
This is at 0.

00:35:11
The real test would be.

00:35:13
raise it 0.5 dB on the output and lower 0.5dB on the input and do a true A/B.

00:35:18
But that's a pointless A/B because nobody is gonna listen to it. With your 0.5dB's down, everybody listens to it on stump.

00:35:24
So, in this particular case your mission, my mission (if you wish, you accept it) (and this Pro Tools system will self-destruct in 30 seconds) is to create the best listening experience for your end-user.

00:35:36
And in this case, I think these people are looking for loud as hell and loud as hell is what we're gonna give 'em.

00:35:43
Last step: Create a new play-list. Name the song.

00:35:47
There you go.

00:35:49
Select the track and print it.

00:36:04
So there you have it an already extremely loud mix because of extremely poor level handling on behalf of this sub-par mixing engineer.

00:36:14
Two or three little tweaks allow us to go from a very good mix to something that can be delivered and competes against their previous record and what's going on in the field right now.