00:00:25 It's the Peluso 47 LE,
that's the microphone.
00:00:31 It's the one with the EF 14
tube metal body tube in it.
00:00:36 It's a new microphone to
me and I kind of really like it.
00:00:38 Those are made in
Floyd, Virginia.
00:00:44 I used it on the electric bass earlier
and it really sounded really good.
00:00:50 So that microphone comes in
to the control room here
and it comes back here to this
1073.
00:00:57 This is a BAE 1073,
super nice, sounds just like a Neve 1073.
00:01:05 The EQ button is in,
just to get a little roll-off.
00:01:09 Basically everything is flat,
filters are off.
00:01:11 From there it bounces over here
to this Chandler RS 124.
00:01:17 TS 124 is a model of a
Abbey Road Altec RS 124 that was modified
by Abbey Road,
this was built so that
there's 3 settings on here
for three actually units from Abbey Road.
00:01:33 It's actually really cool,
it's a really beautiful piece of gear
and I really like it,
this one has the detented pots
and it's a kind of mastering unit,
it sounds really great.
00:01:43 And that comes back to the desk
on channel 24.
00:01:48 And why do I bring it back to 24?
Well, because I can get a little
bit of level control here.
00:01:54 So, for Verses and Choruses,
I can adjust the Verse and
Chorus a little bit down to tape.
00:01:59 It's a really good thing
for me because it allows me to...
00:02:01 I'm not saying I'm doing the
vocal rides for the mix but,
a little bit of vocal rides for the mix
I'm actually doing as the track goes down.
00:02:08 I'm actually doing it over
here in this VCA master.
00:02:10 Summing, doing it's thing there.
00:02:14 And then that goes to Bus 24 in Pro Tools.
00:02:18 It comes back into channel
31 and 32 on my desk.
00:02:22 Why does it come back in two channels?
You would say:
"Oh, it's in stereo!"
No, it's not in stereo,
it's in glorious mono.
00:02:28 The reason I bring it back in two channels
is so I can get a little more gain
in the mix bus
by having them in two channels.
00:02:40 And, later,
when we mix,
you will see that I use those two channels
in a completely different way.
00:02:48 One, a dirtier more compressed side
and the other a cleaner side.
00:02:53 So, that is what's going on here,
I'm just basically setting up my
gain stage for later.
00:02:59 A quick overview of the desk will show you,
here on the small faders,
they are all at zero.
00:03:07 This is kind of a plan,
kind of how I wanted it.
00:03:11 A little bit of the guitars
might be turned down a little bit,
the solo might be
turned a little bit up.
00:03:16 A tiny amount, maybe 1 dB or so.
00:03:19 I do have the vocal for this pass
at about +3 or +4.
00:03:23 And that's purely just
to gain stage the vocal
so we can hear the vocal
clearly over the whole mix.
00:03:31 Throughout the day a little bit,
I adjust my 2-Bus compressor,
there's always a 2-Bus compressor
on the mix at all times.
00:03:39 Why would I wanna do that, why would I
want the 2-Bus compressor on my tracking?
Well, I want it to sound like the mix.
00:03:46 And so, that's what I wanna hear.
00:03:48 That's the final process.
00:03:50 So, if I have a
little bit of 2-bus compression,
and it's just a little bit,
I think right now
it's hitting about 2.5 dB of compression
or something like that.
00:03:59 It's an API 2500.
00:04:01 It's my common thing.
00:04:03 I don't really use the console,
some people like it,
I don't particularly care for it.
00:04:08 So...
00:04:09 And I can't patch mine
which is a real bummer.
00:04:13 But, that's kind of how it is,
unfortunately.
00:04:17 Hey Jeff, so obviously you
noticed we changed microphones.
00:04:21 Yeah, that's great!
- The SM7.
- Totally.
00:04:24 Alright, cool.
I'm still working on level some things.
00:05:23 Alright, cool.
In the verse,
I wanna ask you to be a little more
consistent in how far
away you are from the mic.
00:05:31 Same thing with the Chorus.
00:05:34 I realize you're singing a little quieter
in the Chorus,
you might just have to
come a little closer.
00:05:39 The Verse you're singing a little louder,
you could stay back a little bit.
00:05:42 I don't know how far back you are but...
00:05:45 - I think I was jumping around a little.
- You were.
00:05:48 OK, cool, let's go again. Here we go.
00:08:42 Let's get the last line.
00:09:05 Alright man.
00:09:07 I'd like to go ahead and go to the solo
just to give you a little break there.
00:09:11 That's cool.
00:09:12 Alright, cool. Here we go, take 3.
00:09:14 Feeling OK? Need anything?
No, I'm good,
let me turn this up a little bit.
00:09:21 What I'm hoping for is,
I kind of wanna dial in maybe a little bit
more of and effect or something.
00:09:29 I've got this effect going,
it's really dry,
you can hear it like, clear.
00:09:33 And I feel like when
I wrote everything
it was kind of based
around that weird Leslie sound.
00:09:38 I need some of that.
00:09:40 Is that doable Vance, to start to work?
Maybe get some sort of weird
chorusy sort of thing going on.
00:09:50 These two echos are kind of doing that.
00:09:53 I mean, the problem is, I don't wanna put
a bunch of effects on it
that affects your pitch.
00:09:59 You know what I mean?
I want you to
try to sing and then
let us sort of do that.
00:10:04 Unless you feel like you
need that to get the song.
00:10:08 Would it be hard to throw
something on and give it a take?
- Hold on a second.
- Let's try that, and if that's just like...
00:10:15 if it's not working then we just
go back and nail it like this
and dial in the effect on the back-end.
00:10:26 OK, cool. Sing a little bit.
00:10:31 Oh yeah!
- It's pretty cool.
- Alright.
00:10:42 It's a rotary speaker, it's the same idea.
00:10:44 - You know what I mean.
- I love it.
00:10:46 Alright, here we go.
00:13:01 Two lines in the last chorus please.
00:13:04 ...'So hard to escape'.
...'Find another way'.
00:13:14 Actually, give me the whole chorus.
00:13:16 - Alright?
- Cool.
00:13:48 Do you want one more?
Can you beat it?
Let me do one more?
I wanna talk to him real quick.
00:13:57 Jake is coming in.
00:14:00 It sounds awesome, I think you got
the Verses really cool,
I wanna tell you a secret thing to try,
that Vance can't hear,
to see if it's cool.
00:14:09 - I can hear you.
- I know you can hear us.
00:14:11 On the...
Try doing like a...
00:14:16 like singing along with that...
00:14:19 So it's like this annoying sound,
it's probably gonna be super dumb and wrong
but it also is the kind of hook that
maybe will be... you know,
people would get into.
So, try to just like, get into that...
00:14:30 On the Verse...
00:14:32 The hooks,
before you're singing the Verses.
00:14:39 Off the bat?
Yeah, just try in one of the places
and just like, see if...
00:14:45 the gross noise that other
people's bodies could replicate
it's fun or if it's just super annoying.
00:14:52 It seems like that makes
sense after the first Chorus.
00:14:54 Yeah, OK. It's your thing.
00:14:56 There's a lot of places in the song,
energy wise, where I feel like,
as you listening through,
you just throw in
like, 'Yeahs', and that sort of thing,
do a little bit of that.
00:15:06 It feels really vibe and really like...
00:15:09 pushing and fun,
that needs to come across in the voice.
00:15:20 Got it.
00:15:21 Alright.
00:15:23 Drummers.
00:15:41 I love the 'Yeah' though.
00:15:42 It's cool.
00:16:46 It's cool.
00:17:11 There's a little thing
I'm thinking about here,
I wanna talk to
Mike about real quick.
00:17:14 Hey so, I'm gonna throw this to SANmp.
I'm gonna throw this to you.
00:17:18 I wanna take all these choruses,
I wanna make this chorus vocals,
put them in the old, the grinder,
put them as close together as possible,
as a tight as possible,
I wanna make them super double.
00:17:33 You know what I mean?
We'll get back to that in a minute.
00:17:40 Alright cool,
let me get this last line real quick.
00:17:55 I think you can hold that a little longer.
00:18:00 And then not do the high one.
00:18:02 Just two.
00:18:03 Don't do the high one.
00:18:05 Yeah, just go...
00:18:24 Yeah, perfect.
00:18:25 Here's the last one.
00:18:40 That vocal thing, I think it would
be really cool in the turnaround.
00:19:02 Let me check the last line.
00:19:11 One more time in the last line alright?
- Yeah.
- On this one it was just the first note.
00:19:30 Alright, cool.
00:19:31 This thing is gonna be pretty effected.
00:19:34 But I've got a couple ideas. Come on in.
00:19:38 Yeah, I think we'll do some
sort of like really, pointy,
sort of like, you guys together.
00:19:44 Yeah, it didn't like, jump out.
00:19:47 And it's just there,
I don't think at the top.
00:19:50 Just there,
just a little thing that's cool.
00:19:52 There's this thing
that I do every now and then,
I think that
would be really cool.
00:19:56 I'm gonna put a comp together,
I'm gonna take this effect off,
and we're gonna put a comp together,
a performance for the Verses.
00:20:04 Then, we're gonna take the Chorus,
we're gonna make a comp of the Chorus.
00:20:07 And I'm gonna throw it to Mike,
Mike is gonna basically take all these
passes, comp them all together,
we're gonna use a couple tools and
make a big huge super double.
00:20:22 - With what's already there?
- With what's there.
00:20:25 So there will be 6 parts there.
00:20:27 Or 6 pieces of it.
00:20:30 So the Chorus can be really lush
and really crazy...
But
I gotta get a whole take first
before I can build that.
00:20:38 You know what I mean?
We'll comp the whole thing
then we'll figure it out.
00:20:41 And if we don't have
enough pieces to do that
then we'll layer in some doubles.
00:20:46 And then this little...
00:20:50 thing...
00:20:51 That we'll be some sort
of really effecty thing.
00:20:55 And I'll let it be just right here.
00:21:07 It can be in there like just that much,
and it's the kind of thing that...
00:21:11 that we'll be in peoples head
when they're like at a concert.
00:21:13 It's a hook.
00:21:15 Exactly, it will be just
here and that will be fun.
00:21:17 Just a little piece there.
00:21:19 Let's comp this piece.
00:21:21 So, there's stuff going on here
that I should fill you guys in.
00:21:28 Here at Sputnik we have
Studio Network Solutions' San.
00:21:32 SanMP is a really cool piece
of software that allows you
to have the RAID array,
we have this 4 terabyte SSD
RAID array, back in the back,
it's 4 terabytes.
00:21:44 And it runs over iSCSI, which is basically,
SCSI over IP.
00:21:50 It's pretty cool,
it allows Mike and I to share
a pair of hard-drives
that we can pass back and forth virtually,
so to speak.
00:22:00 It's like a network server but it's faster
and also it has access controls,
so you have to log in and log out.
00:22:07 It means that, basically,
he can't writing to mine while I'm
writing to the same one and blah, blah...
00:22:16 Yeah, it's very very fast.
00:22:18 What I'm gonna do is log on to this, here.
00:22:22 In Read and Write, which I just did.
And I'm going to
use the session here
'Save copy in'.
00:22:30 That will be easy.
00:22:32 I guess I'll have to kind
of do it all to Mike here.
00:22:42 And then I'm gonna just...
'Sweet Beast'.
00:22:48 Alright, cool.
00:22:49 So now it's gonna start
copying this session,
it's gonna take just a
little bit to do that.
00:22:53 Once this track...
00:22:54 we have it comped,
I'm gonna pass this comp to Mike.
00:23:00 And he's gonna do some work on it.
00:23:04 Which actually maybe we'll
just have him do that here
and he can show you
what's going on here.
00:23:09 And basically it's just
gonna be some Melodyne
and maybe a Vocal Align.
00:23:15 This is a pretty common sort
of thing for a lot of people.
00:23:21 And this track to me,
since we're putting this effect on,
I kind of really want the
vocal to be really good.
00:23:29 And then we're gonna put this effect on it
and we're gonna mess it up
but I want it to be good before
we mess it up, if that makes sense.
00:23:35 I like to do sort of like
comp vocals by listening.
00:23:39 We're gonna go from the last take
first, to the first.
00:23:44 And we're gonna do probably
two lines at a time.
00:23:47 Alright, is that cool?
Alright.
00:24:07 What was that?
I kind of like it.
00:24:17 OK.
00:24:25 I kind of like how this is monotone.
00:24:33 That's good.
00:24:35 I move it back to here.
00:24:38 A little breakup.
00:24:46 Let's keep going.
00:24:52 That's actually good too.
00:24:58 That's good.
00:25:00 Let's get that one.
00:25:01 So what I do usually is...
I'm in playlist mode.
00:25:04 I'll just go down and I'll just cut one.
00:25:07 On each side of it.
That's telling me that I like that.
00:25:24 It's good.
00:25:28 It's good too. Let's go here.
00:25:31 Alright. And then let's go to here.
00:25:34 So, now...
00:25:37 Here's the first verse.
00:25:48 'My own' isn't so great.
00:25:58 Will this sound like it's a comp?
That works.
00:26:05 Yeah, exactly.
00:26:23 These two lines
are just kind of gonna
be all over the place as far as which.
00:26:28 Because I didn't have the
right lyric sheet out there.
00:26:31 So, you're telling me,
you wrote these lyrics
and then you made all these copies
and...
00:26:39 You said you wanted me to experiment...
00:26:42 It's a little...
00:26:45 That's alright. Fine.
00:27:12 I think what I wanna do here
is, once we finish this,
I'm gonna have you sing
some doubles in the Chorus.
00:27:22 We'll just one after another.
00:27:25 And then I'm gonna
throw it to Mike
and have him sort of patch it all up
and get them really together
and we'll get this super double
thing that is really cool.
00:27:34 The way to really do this
is you do about 18 of this.
00:27:37 But we're not gonna do 18,
we're just gonna do 6.
00:27:44 - I'll create 6.
- That's incredible.
00:27:49 I'm gonna have him do
some doubles real quick.
00:27:51 And then we'll kind of run it through.
00:27:55 We're gonna give it to Mike,
he's gonna do some magic here.
00:28:00 I'm gonna make him do 7 takes,
I'm gonna have him sing to
what it's got so it will be pretty close.
00:28:07 It will just be the sort of standard tuning
and you know, that kind of vibe.
00:28:13 Alright, are you already?
Yeah.
00:28:17 You're just gonna be on the same track,
just sing along with yourself.
00:28:20 - OK.
- Here we go.
00:28:50 Perfect, number 2.
00:29:56 Alright, cool. Hang on one second,
I'm gonna explain something.
00:30:00 So, what I'm doing here is...
I call it the 'super double'.
00:30:04 And what it's gonna be
and how it's actually gonna work
is a little bit like this.
00:30:09 I'm gonna take these tracks,
I'm gonna hard pan them left and right,
and there will be 6 double tracks.
00:30:17 Basically what I'm doing
is taking the lead vocal,
I'm gonna make it really nice, pretty,
then we're gonna take these
doubles, we're gonna pan them out
so it's real chorusy,
and just really thick and wide.
00:30:31 And, not that it's anywhere near done
but it will sound something like this.
00:31:02 It's gonna be really nice and creamy.
00:31:05 I think it's gonna be really cool.
00:31:08 OK dude.
00:31:10 - That's good.
- Double world.
00:31:13 Now, while we're here,
Let's do these 'nanana' things,
we have 6 tracks all set up.
00:31:20 Hold a second here.
00:31:23 I got an idea. It's dumb.
00:31:25 But it might be cool.
00:31:29 Let me hold that mic.
00:31:31 It's got a volume,
it's got volume and gain.
00:31:35 What's this guy?
Volume.
00:31:39 Two, two, two.
00:31:44 Hold on.
00:31:46 One, two. That's stupid.
00:31:50 Here we go.
00:31:56 So...
00:31:59 There you go.
00:32:01 No you guys do that.
00:32:03 You guys do it together.
00:32:06 I can't also put my mouth on it.
00:32:07 Well, it's gonna be hard to get...
00:32:13 We gotta both be right here.
00:32:16 You like that or are we getting it to sound
to literally have your lips on the grill?
Well, keep going.
00:32:22 Pull back.
00:32:32 There you go.
00:32:35 I can hear it, it's fine.
00:32:38 There you go.
00:32:39 It's not enough man.
00:32:40 I know, but I want it to
crunch, its not crunching.
00:32:45 Turn that thing up.
00:32:54 Stay farther away.
00:33:02 Well, just don't worry.
00:33:13 Keep going.
00:33:23 It's gonna hunt your dreams.
00:33:26 OK, let me hear it.
00:33:35 Yeah, something like
that, that will work.
00:33:37 Alright.
00:33:38 Once Jake puts his headphones one.
00:34:00 Perfect, keep going.
00:34:02 Can you give us less pre-roll.
00:34:05 Less? Yes.
00:34:06 It's the chord changes.
00:34:22 And again.
00:34:38 And again.
00:34:49 Great, come on in.
00:34:53 OK, so. Why did I do six?
Well,
I'm a little of a Feng Shui kind of guy.
00:35:01 And like there to be like balance.
00:35:03 So, if we're gonna do
four,
two are gonna be on the left,
two are gonna be on the right.
00:35:10 If we're gonna do five,
five screws the thing up,
one is in the middle.
00:35:13 I want the lead vocal at the middle
and all the doubles on the outside.
00:35:17 I want it to get a little creamy.
00:35:57 I love that part.
00:36:02 "It's that the 'Nana' song?"
That will be good.
00:36:07 I can sing that song.
00:36:09 Alright. So, give me a second here.
00:36:12 I got one little idea with
our 'Na Na nas' here.
00:36:27 Oh, you threw it in on the last one?
Yeah, that's an option.
00:36:32 I think it's good.
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.
