Now that all the tracks are in the mix, the parallel chains are added, and the balance of the mix feels great, Vance begins diving into the fine details of "Live And I Learn" by The Weird Sisters.
Watch as Vance:
Explains his listening levels and how he uses multiple monitors at different stages of the mix
Discusses the importance of taking breaks and getting enough sleep
Cleans up the low mid in the vocal with a FabFilter Pro-MB multi-band compressor
Dials in his Bricasti M7 across the El Capistan vocal delays
Sets up a pair of PCM42 delays across the guitar solo for dimension
Explains some automation ideas with the vocal effects that he has to add scene changes to each section of the song
This is your chance to join Nashville legend Vance Powell and The Weird Sisters at the world-famous Blackbird Studio and watch them craft "Live And I Learn" from Start To Finish.
00:00:23 Now, all the while here I've
been listening really pretty loud
I don't know, maybe 87, 88, 90 dB,
something like that.
00:00:31 So what I'm going to do here
is normally I would just
sort of take a little break
I would turn my fader down,
on my Avocet.
00:00:39 You might not be able to notice but
on my Avocet these are little red dots
and that's where one of them was.
00:00:44 This is my sort of rock'n'roll volume.
00:00:47 I do have
all the volume possible right over here.
00:00:51 I don't hit that one very often.
00:00:53 But during tracking we might.
00:00:55 But that's what I've been listening at.
So now I turned down to here
and usually I will work
here for just a little bit
before I go to the NS10s.
00:01:07 And then when I go to the 10s
I hit the Dim
and I dim to exactly the same spot.
00:01:13 Pretty quiet.
00:01:17 About 75 or so.
00:01:21 Then the last one I have is down here.
00:01:24 This is really quiet.
00:01:27 You can't tell but it's really quiet.
00:01:29 Here in a minute maybe I'll get my
Spl meter.
00:01:34 I'll do that right now.
00:01:35 There's a little program
called Spl Meter.
00:01:39 It's crazy.
00:01:41 They actually have calibrations
for the iPhone, which is pretty great.
00:01:44 Slow response, A weighted
and then go back to my
loud volume.
00:01:58 That's 94.
00:02:00 So that's my loud volume.
00:02:02 Here's my quiet volume with
the Proacs.
00:02:11 That is 85.
00:02:14 Which is great.
00:02:15 Then
if I go to the NS10s,
if I Dim...
00:02:31 77.
00:02:32 And then my very last setting is here.
00:02:42 And that's 72.
00:02:44 So
I'll start getting tones
up loud so I can feel
the woofers hit me and kind of
all that.
00:02:52 I'll turn down
I'll turn down and
I'll turn down again.
00:02:55 I'll spent a lot of time
somewhere here
or
lately I've kinda been
living a little bit here which is
right at 75.
00:03:09 That's kind of
where I mix at.
00:03:13 Tracking is a completely different story.
00:03:18 You know, you've got to
track with volume cranked up
to be able to hear all the things,
you know, that you've got going on.
00:03:24 My normal sort of
thing is I would probably
do everything we've been talking about
in the first hour to hour and a half.
00:03:33 The only effects I put on,
a little bit on
are this little delay
on Izaac's vocal.
00:03:39 That's it, no reverb,
nothing else anywhere.
00:03:43 There's only a couple
of EQs here and there.
00:03:45 And I would try my best to
sort of work this way for a while
until I start digging into the mix.
00:03:51 Usually I take a break
when I need to let my ears relax.
00:03:56 So I can go to this quieter mix position.
00:04:00 And
when I do that I go get a soda, go get
a coffee, I talk to my partner
I talk to Mike, I talk to Cohen,
you know, the guys here at the studio,
come back, I sit down,
play the track after walking away.
00:04:13 That means I completely walk away
and now I'm back.
00:04:17 And
that gives me a little bit of air,
a little bit time to let my
you know, brain sort of clear out.
00:04:26 I come back,
I'll hit play
and I'll listen and see if I
completely am missing the boat.
00:04:32 And I have had that,
I've completely kind of, you know,
single-channeled myself, piece at a time,
to a point where the
mix didn't work at all.
00:04:40 Then I just start turning things
down and seeing where things are.
00:04:43 So I'm just kind of
listen to a few things,
I do have a couple
little secret, little tricks
that I could talk about here in a
minute with the electric guitars.
00:04:55 I have a box that was
made by Richard Dodd
that is called the Motone.
00:05:00 It's a really brilliant box
that I have no idea what it is
or how it works or anything
but whenever I turn it on electric
guitars I'm always happier.
00:05:10 So I'm going to get that involved,
I'm going to get some
more vocal effects involved.
00:05:15 And then we'll actually start mixing.
00:05:20 We're already mixing but we'll start
sort of getting into the point where
I'll be ready to do a static pass.
00:05:27 And what that means
is that in my mind
I've run through the track
and know where the faders are.
00:05:33 If you notice here I got a pencil,
and an eraser and I've got little marks
and I'm going to get some
cue tips here in a minute and some,
you know, alcohol, I'm gonna clean my
marks off, where my console is marked up.
00:05:48 And I'm gonna start figuring out
where the vocal has to come in at the top,
where it's up at the chorus.
00:05:53 And I'll just mark them.
00:05:54 The console doesn't have fader automation,
it's VCA.
00:05:57 So you know if I move it and
I kind of won't know where it is,
I have to jump through some
hoops to see where it is.
00:06:04 I'll show that too.
00:06:05 We're back here,
taking a little break,
I got my ears back down to
sort of nice and quiet.
00:06:11 And I want to just run
through my balance a little bit.
00:06:16 So I'll take just a little bit to
change a few things here and there.
00:06:20 And if I do anything whacking
crazy I'll tell you all.
00:06:24 Go here.
00:06:27 Let's get started.
00:07:07 A little bit of EQ on the guitar.
00:07:19 Maybe a little reverb here.
00:07:28 A little bit of PCM 70
chamber there on the horns.
00:07:49 A little bit of EQ on the kick.
00:08:18 Let me show you one thing,
this is the Richard Dodd box.
00:08:40 Again, super subtle but
just cooler tone to me,
it just adds a little bit of tone.
00:08:46 We've been going pretty
hard the last few days.
00:08:48 We're kind of a little
slow for how we would normally do this.
00:08:52 But there are a couple of things
I want to talk about.
00:08:55 One is, getting some sleep, getting rest
not blasting your ears
all day all that stuff.
00:08:59 You definitely need to do that and you
definitely know when you call it quits.
00:09:03 I definitely know when I call it quits
cause I can't make any
decisions about anything.
00:09:08 We'll be back and I'm
gonna finish this mix,
tomorrow.
00:09:14 Alright, so...
00:09:15 It's a new day, it's new morning here.
00:09:17 I'm going to
get my speakers at the
low level that I want,
I wanna hear where we're at here.
00:09:25 I remember I had some ideas
for the end, which is going
to be those Moog echoes.
00:09:30 But I just need to kind of
listen to the track this morning
and see where we're at.
00:09:59 One of the things that's been bugging
me a little bit is there's just a little
sort of a weird bump in the
vocal down low here on his
vocal that's kind of bugging me.
00:10:10 I'll see if I can use
the Fabfilter Pro MB,
the multi-band, to sort of clean it up.
00:10:53 Basically I'm trying to get a
little more balance with that
richness in there and take a
little bit of it out when it needs.
00:10:59 So...
00:11:30 Sometimes I like to do
sort of odd things like
send just the echo to the reverb.
00:11:36 So, this is the vocals dry,
reverb wise,
but I'm going to send the echo,
the Strymons,
to the M7, to the Bricasti.
00:13:01 Just a little EQ
to take a little of that
mid-rangy stuff out.
00:13:22 I wanna use the
same sort of effects for the doubles here,
where we have the doubles.
00:13:28 And then here, where we have
Gabby's little harmonies around here.
00:13:41 I'm gonna roll here, pass this.
00:13:43 Still listening.
00:15:04 Alright cool, so here at the solo,
the solo is
electric guitar, obviously and keys.
00:15:11 And I've just put them on
a stereo track here because
I kind of like what's going on there
but I think maybe we might
be able to do some cool.
00:15:20 Maybe with a little bit of processing.
00:15:23 So let me just fool
around with some things.
00:16:04 So this is my PCM 42 pair.
00:16:07 And it's a little bit of a delay,
it's going to add a little
three dimensional thing to this.
00:16:37 I love that.
00:16:46 I have one idea.
00:17:27 I'll come back to that.
00:17:59 OK.
00:18:00 This is a Strymon Volante.
00:18:32 Alright, I gotta be honest,
I think we're going to leave it dry.
00:18:35 It's just this is pretty cool as it is.
00:18:38 Let's leave it alone.
00:18:42 I love the explosion at the end.
00:19:58 There's a couple
things I didn't push here.
00:20:27 I had an interesting conversation
last night or yesterday on Facebook with
some people I know,
on some recording group.
00:20:36 They were going on and on about
kick mics and like fetishing over
the crotch mic and
blah blah blah and all this.
00:20:45 And one guy was like: 'It's just a bunch
of bullshit, that never sounds good.'
I gotta be honest,
I think he is completely wrong.
00:20:53 That's just because I don't think they've
really sort of gone down all the path.
00:20:57 I know for me what this,
the 'sprinkle to taste mic'
or the 'crotch mic'
or whatever you want
to call the Ampex.
00:21:05 What it's doing to the
track is pretty awesome.
00:21:08 That cool ring in the Keplinger,
the side of the steel,
it's not there without it.
00:21:15 I think it's pretty cool.
00:21:16 You know if you have a track record it,
so what.
00:21:19 You know, if you don't like it
turn it off.
00:21:21 And as a mixer
a lot of times I'll get things
like that and I'll be like...
00:21:26 But
it doesn't mean it's wrong.
00:21:28 If you don't record it
you won't record it.
00:21:33 You can't really put it back later.
00:21:35 Might as well record it,
it's pretty easy.
00:21:37 I'm gonna turn off the Moog echoes,
this is just for the end.
00:21:40 And then I'm gonna leave the M7 off,
the vocal, till the chorus.
00:21:46 So the first verse will be pretty,
it's not dry because it's got
the tape echoes on it.
00:21:51 And then I'm gonna leave the Volante off,
I didn't think that was anything worth,
to be honest with you.
00:21:58 And then,
when the first chorus
happens I'm going to just
make the vocal a little bit
bigger by turning on the M7.
00:22:05 And then back off
and then back on
for the rest of the track.
00:22:09 And then at the end,
when
he goes up to the higher register,
I'm going to turn on the
Moog echoes to sort of
spread it out a little bit,
to give it a little more space.
00:22:20 But beyond that that's kind of the whole,
that's kind of the whole thing.
00:22:25 I'm just going to run through
a few more times here.
00:22:28 Top to bottom.
00:22:29 And take a listen to
everything at this volume.
00:22:34 And then we're going
to talk about writing
some static automation
and things like that.
00:22:47 OK, first thing,
the very last horn hit here,
it's right on time,
it's perfect, it's just a little loud.
00:22:54 I'm just gonna clip gain it.
00:23:07 One thing I want is
a little bit of EQ here.
00:23:10 Just a hair.
00:23:18 Yeah, just a little buzz.
00:23:25 And then I'm taking a
little bit more of this reverb.
00:23:54 I've sort of stayed away from
putting EQs on the guitars,
I'll actually do a little bit here.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Vance studied electrical engineering in Missouri and started his career in live sound as a front-of-house engineer. In 2002, he moved to Nashville in order to become studio manager and chief engineer at the legendary Black Bird studios in Nashville. In 2006, he co-founded Sputnik studios along with Grammy-winning engineer Mitch Dane, still in Nashville.
Vance Powell has won 6 Grammy awards working with rock artists such as The Raconteurs, Kings of Leon, Jack White, Pearl Jam, The White Stripes, The Dead Weather and more.
Powell's domain of expertise is definitely mixing and producing rock music. As shown in his pureMix videos, Vance likes to experiment and create new fuller and exciting sounds using all kinds of pedals, echos, analog outboards and plug-ins. Vance was used to recording to tape and definitely has an analog approach that makes him commit to fewer good sounding tracks rather than piling up takes in Pro Tools.
His goal is to make something new and warm that fits the band's vision with upfront snare drums and powerful guitars. Rocking.
