Tony Maserati Mixing Lifeboats Episode 1
01h 06min
(30)
In part 1 of this addition to the Lifeboats series, Award Winning Engineer, Tony Maserati, opens the multitrack for the Will Knox song, "Lifeboats", and takes us all the way from hearing the song for the first time, to a completed powerful and energetic mix with his signature sound imprinted upon it.
Watch as Tony:
- Discusses his process starting with his vision of the song.
- Sets up the session with his template and workflow
- Listens to the song for the first time to gather ideas
- Experiments with drum sounds
- Discusses the importance of ear training
- Mixes the song in sections to flush out his ideas
- Dials in the lead vocal sound early in the process
Watch legendary engineer, Tony Maserati mix his version of Lifeboats. Only on puremix.net
Learn More About The Lifeboats Series Here
Once logged in, you will be able to click on those chapter titles and jump around in the video.
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:1 - Start
- 00:19 - The Process
- 00:58 - Workflow Setup
- 01:40 - Session Setup
- 07:55 - First Listen
- 10:44 - Mix Ideas
- 11:50 - Experimenting With Drum Sounds
- 13:29 - Supplementing the Artist’s Vision
- 24:20 - Early Mix Methodology
- 29:16 - Tweaking The Guitar
- 30:01 - The Importance of Ear Training
- 36:58 - Mixing in Sections
- 47:06 - The Backbeat Guitar
- 56:50 - Making The Lead Vocal Pop
- 1:00:57 - Lead Vocal Reverb
00:00:00
Hi, welcome to Puremix!
I'm Tony Maserati
and today we're going to be mixing a song
from beginning to end
by the artist Will Knox
called Lifeboats.
00:00:19
I'm not sure
how this will be paced later
but I'm gonna go pretty fast
because I've already got a lot
of ideas for this track
I've only heard it
about three times at this point
but there's a lot of similarities to
some of the other music that I've mixed
and I haven't listened to a real rough yet
so I'm gonna be doing that in the process,
I'm gonna implement
my template
so that immediately
you can see how I get started
and how I move rather quickly,
my assistant usually does
the templating for me
but in this case I'll do it
and I'll show you how I do it.
00:00:58
I keep my template
on Dropbox, along with my samples.
00:01:03
So that I can get them
no matter where I am in the world.
00:01:07
And today we're here in New York city,
at Flux Studios,
so
I'm using my computer
with a chassis
with an HDX card in it.
00:01:18
Obviously, I'm working in Pro Tools
and I've got some
Euphonix controllers here,
which I'll be using as well.
00:01:25
So let's get right into
getting this mix started.
00:01:30
Essentially, the assistant has
imported the tracks
and it's all raw, coming out 1-2.
00:01:35
That's where we're at.
00:01:37
You're gonna see it from
the minute I see it.
00:01:40
So, the first thing I do is,
I import my template from Dropbox.
00:01:46
So, we're gonna go ahead and do that.
00:01:49
Here's my Dropbox
and I'm gonna grab my template
and this is the last one saved by my team.
00:01:57
And it should have all
the things in it that I want.
00:02:00
In this case I'm going to
import
just my busses first.
00:02:08
And by busses I mean
my mixbusses,
the ones that go to my print tracks,
I'm also importing
my basic
groups
which allows me to jump back and forth
between a summing situation
or an 'in-the-box' situation.
00:02:25
Most of the time I mix
in my room in Los Angeles
and in that room I have
hardware inserts.
00:02:34
I have 32 hardware inserts
and then 32 channels of summing.
00:02:39
In this case we're gonna stick with
the 'in-the-box' mix
here at Flux.
00:02:43
I also have two print tracks,
as you can see, they're named
'Song Name'.
00:02:48
It's a brand-new template for this song.
00:02:50
I have 2 print tracks, one is maximized.
00:02:53
The unmaximized file
I call
the Master.
00:02:58
And that will be my master print track,
it will have a playlist of
all the versions that I do.
00:03:03
And then I have
what I call the 'L2 version',
the maximized version.
00:03:09
And that version will just go to
the producer and the artist
as a reference.
00:03:18
Let's rename these print tracks
because more than once
I've recorded the first pass
as 'Song Name',
so, we're gonna put in
'Lifeboats'
and do that on both of these
print tracks, as I said,
the unmaximized and the maximized.
00:03:37
I'm also gonna send that
print track out to A1-2
so you can hear it
and so you all can get it
on the screen there.
00:03:49
I'm gonna need to
set my
views
the way I like them.
00:03:55
Actually, I like to show all
the inserts
and all of the sends.
00:04:04
And that's because generally,
my session shows up
with the client's inserts
in A through E
and them all my plug-ins will go
E through whatever that is, G.
00:04:17
I can't see that far.
And the same goes to my sends.
00:04:21
It's just typical that the
client and the producer
will use the first bank,
and I'll use the second bank.
00:04:27
That way I can tell what I'm doing.
00:04:29
In this case we're going there
and for you to be able to hear it
I need to send to you at B11-12.
00:04:38
So, I've imported
just a part of my template, so far.
00:04:43
And that part is
the print tracks and the
necessary mixbus system,
internal mixbus system,
as well as
the aggregating groups,
we can call them.
00:04:56
Which are auxes and I'll occasionally
put plug-ins or inserts
on those as well
and then they all go, as you can see,
to what I call mixbus,
and that then gets summed internally.
00:05:09
I'm now going to import
my effects.
00:05:12
And same template.
00:05:14
Only this time
I'm going to grab,
we're gonna go down and grab
from here.
00:05:24
There we go.
00:05:25
We've got all of our
effects busses at this point.
00:05:29
We've got the drums up top,
percussion, bass,
guitar,
keyboards,
and then vocals at the bottom.
00:05:37
As you can see,
all of the instruments are
going out A 1-2 at the moment.
00:05:41
So that we can monitor.
00:05:43
I'm gonna change that.
00:05:44
I'm gonna go through,
you can see I've got myself in Input,
on my print tracks.
00:05:49
And that way I can listen
through my print system.
00:05:54
In this case I might have
the Ampex 102
doing a little sort of tape emulation.
00:06:02
But, again,
I'm not gonna get too deep with it
at the moment.
00:06:06
I might put a little bit of this
UAD
Shadow Hills on here.
00:06:12
And I think I have a preset in here,
somewhere here.
00:06:15
That looks like it.
00:06:17
But I changed it since then.
00:06:19
So, again,
this is just the rough thing to get me
in the ballpark that I can
pay attention to the song.
00:06:26
Now, I'm gonna just quickly
go ahead and
send all my drums
to my drum group.
00:06:33
And in fact I'm gonna send
the percussion there as well
just to move this along.
00:06:38
That can go in here.
00:06:41
And same thing,
I'm gonna just send all the bass
to my bass group.
00:06:47
And obviously, normally my second
would be taken care of this for me.
00:06:52
But we wanted to demonstrate to you
the tedium as much as
the creativity, right?
Because that's what's this is about,
this is a lot of
methodology that we all have to
understand.
00:07:06
And that methodology gets me
through the day.
00:07:08
And it's also a methodology that
I've been working on
for over 20 years.
00:07:16
It's something that
you all create over time.
00:07:20
You'll get through it and
figure out what you wanna do.
00:07:23
As you can see, I skip some things
because I'm not quite sure what
I've got left here.
00:07:28
My lead vocal, I call vocal group
and it looks like I've got a harmony here
and I'm gonna put that on my
BGV group.
00:07:36
All my FX, as you can see,
already go to the FX group.
00:07:39
Let's listen to these guys,
it looks like they're some Arp things.
00:07:44
Let's just send those
for ease of use
to the synth output.
00:07:51
And we call sort of parse that out
better later.
00:07:54
Let's just have a listen,
listen see if it's working.
00:08:28
The recording is great.
00:08:29
We're gonna be able to just jump right in
and be creative immediately.
00:08:33
Which is really important,
if I spend, you know,
four hours cleaning and fixing,
trying to figure out what's happening,
it's not good for me,
then I've wasted all this creative energy.
00:09:32
So, normally it takes me
several listens to just
come up with some ideas.
00:09:37
And generally what I'll do is
listen through and as it's playing along
I try not to stop,
so that I
continue to just accumulate
ideas as I'm going.
00:09:48
And sometimes I write
them down on a pad,
sometimes I'll just
commit them to memory.
00:09:54
And sometimes I'll stop
and try something out,
and then keep going.
00:10:44
So I stopped at the Bridge,
obviously there's a big shift there.
00:10:49
And
I've got a few ideas immediately about
where I want the drums to go.
00:10:56
All too often I think,
young engineers in particular,
they start digging into the kick drum.
00:11:02
They start trying to get
their perfect kick drum
or something like that.
00:11:07
Or the perfect snare drum.
00:11:08
Or, obviously, if it's a Club track
or something is a straight-up
Pop song,
then that kick drum
is extremely important
so I understand that.
00:11:18
But in this case,
obviously, I have to
come up with my purpose
based on the song, the genre,
where I think it's gonna
be played on the radio.
00:11:29
What's gonna play in front of this,
what's gonna play in back of it.
00:11:33
Those things are all extremely important.
00:11:35
For now I just wanna sort of
come up with ideas
and play around a little bit
and see where that takes me.
00:11:42
So, I'm gonna work off the Aux groups
that I've created
and see what happens with the snare.
00:11:48
I've also got
a parallel drum bus here
that I'm gonna use occasionally.
00:11:55
I'm not quite sure what I've got thus far
but generally you'll find that I focus
primarily on the room tracks,
when it comes to drums,
I'll look at overheads,
I focus on the overheads
to tell me where the sound should go.
00:12:12
I tend not to
go straight to the kick drum
because I can put any
kick drum I want on a song.
00:12:19
Really what I care about is,
what was the intention
and the overheads will tell me that
probably more than anything else.
00:12:26
I'm gonna just go ahead and pan them
as they denote there.
00:12:30
I'll just take a quick listen
in a section that's got a
little bit more energy to it.
00:12:35
And let's have a listen
to those overheads.
00:13:29
Originally,
as we played it the first time,
I heard in my head,
I kind of wanted the drums
to be quite far away.
00:13:37
I'm also not sure I want the drums
to come in where they're coming in.
00:13:41
In this particular track
I probably have more
more say than I normally have.
00:13:48
When a producer and the client
send me a piece of music
generally the only way for me to make
an arrangement suggestion
would be,
I would mix it the way they have it
and then
I would do an alternate.
00:14:06
So, on my first pass or
wherever I came up with the idea
to change that arrangement
I would do an alternate
and let them listen to it
and...
00:14:16
And a lot of times
they'll come back and say:
"I love the idea,
but we need a transitional thing here.
00:14:22
See if you can find one."
That sort of thing.
00:14:25
Or a lot of times they'll say:
'No, we like it the way we had it."
And I gotta be ready
for that at any time.
00:14:31
I think that's a really important
issue that
also, again,
young engineers don't quite get.
00:14:39
We're doing this
to help
and artist
get their ideas to fruition.
00:14:46
Get the vision that was in their head
when they wrote the song,
to get that out.
How they wanna treat
and connect with their audience.
00:14:56
It's not necessarily my audience,
I'm lucky enough to have an audience,
and happy about that.
00:15:02
But really,
it's that artist's
audience that we're trying
to connect to here.
00:15:08
So their vision is the most important one.
00:15:11
My job is to give them alternative ideas.
00:15:14
Some that they haven't thought about.
00:15:16
Some that might be creative
in and of themselves.
00:15:20
That bring their mood
in better focus.
00:15:24
Because that's what I'm trying to do.
00:15:26
I'm trying to focus their idea,
focus their motion,
focus their mood.
00:15:31
Everything they put into the song
is supposed to support the lyric
and support that mood.
00:15:38
That's what I'm trying to do.
00:15:40
Every time I sit down.
00:15:41
So now, originally, as I said,
I had an idea.
00:15:45
I want these drums to be far away,
I want them to be...
00:15:48
Because there's a mystery
in his voice for me.
00:15:51
So,
I want the drummer to sort of be
quite a distance away.
00:15:56
So, upon listening to these tracks,
immediately I can tell
I'm gonna need to add some ambiance.
00:16:02
Let's work on that immediately.
00:16:04
Because the drums sound good as they are,
I'm gonna lower the room track a bit.
00:16:08
Which is strange
considering what I just said
but the room track is
sort of bringing in the walls.
00:16:16
I can tell the room here
was not a large room.
00:16:20
You know,
I venture to say 25 feet,
but I can't say for sure.
00:16:27
And ceiling height seems good
but again, we're not talking 25 feet up.
00:16:32
And I can hear the room size.
00:16:34
What I wanna do is
get rid of that small room
and somehow get it to be
maybe under a bridge
in a quiet night
somewhere where the highway
isn't that loud about.
00:16:50
That's kind of what I'm looking for here.
00:16:52
Sort of real night, sort of dark,
you know, in the back.
00:16:58
This guy is adding beat and groove,
his color really is about
what I put on it.
00:17:05
So let's mess around
with that a little bit.
00:19:05
I'm messing around
here and coming up with
different things that I hear in my head.
00:19:10
That's another major point
that I'd like to make here.
00:19:12
The work that you do
is gotta come from an idea
in your head.
00:19:17
If you're searching,
and it looks like I'm searching here,
obviously,
but really, I'm searching
for the right tool
to give me the sound that's in my head.
00:19:27
If you are listening to a mix and you say:
"Oh, let me go and make
that kick drum sound better."
Then you're gonna have
a good sounding kick drum
but you're not gonna have a good
sounding mix
and it's not gonna represent
what the emotion is in the song.
00:19:41
So, I've already formed in my head
what I want it to sound like.
00:19:45
This Altiverb I've chosen
I really like.
I use it all the time.
00:19:51
And it has a room
called 'Allaire'
which is a wonderful studio
that I've been to.
00:19:56
Cello Studio, some really great rooms.
00:19:59
And they're impulse responses,
of course,
that the folks from Altiverb
have been doing around the world
for many years.
00:20:06
So, I like it.
00:20:08
Now again, don't forget,
I'm not necessarily gonna plop it
on this Aux with the
drums and mix it from there.
00:20:18
This is just my idea stage.
00:20:20
I may create a whole new Aux
just for the Altiverb
and send it directly from each channel
so I could have just the right
amount from the hi-hat track.
00:20:32
Right now I just got it on the group
because I want to move fast.
00:20:36
And what I'm looking
for in the second reverb
is I'm just looking for
something that's a little brighter.
00:20:41
So, again, we have to think about this
from, you know,
how to fill in
the soundscape that's in our head.
00:20:53
Whether it's a painting
or a piece of music,
you know, shades create depth
and lightness
and darkness is closer,
lightness is further away.
00:21:05
That's essentially what I'm doing
for the second reverb
I'm looking for something
with a little more lightness.
00:21:11
I don't wanna it to affect
the Altiverb that I have,
but I wanna a little
more lightness out of it.
00:21:16
So, that's what I'm gonna be looking
for in the second reverb.
00:21:19
So, I just have to find
the reverb that I have in my head
on one of these guys.
00:21:26
Oh, I bounce around so many times,
I can't hear it in my head,
but I'm gonna try this one.
00:21:31
I don't know why.
00:21:32
And oh, good, I have presets
which I didn't think I had
so I'm gonna try for
something quite large
which will normally be dark.
00:21:42
So I'm gonna have to
change the characteristics of it
but let's maybe try one
of this ambiance settings
and see if we can't
get it a bit brighter as well.
00:21:54
So, I'll do that like this.
00:21:57
And see if that helps our cause.
00:22:01
We also, obviously,
are gonna change the mix.
00:22:05
Get rid of this.
00:22:07
And let's see where that could take us.
00:22:41
I also want the drums to be
quite a bit lower.
00:22:44
I'm gonna lower that Aux a bit.
00:22:47
And then go back to the whole mix
and let me get a perspective again.
00:24:01
I'm searching for what's in my head.
00:24:03
You can see that my basic setup
is, I show the track list on my left.
00:24:09
I keep my faders so that
it always comes up in a place that's not
cumbersome, it doesn't block anything.
00:24:16
So the basic workflow is quite important.
00:24:20
Now, this is how I do it.
00:24:21
And I do it this way because
I've got used to it.
00:24:24
And I can move fast
and find things easily and etc.
00:24:30
You also see, as I'm playing,
quite often,
I do quite dramatic movements.
00:24:36
I'm not looking to do
detailed work.
00:24:38
Another young engineer, mixer,
producer problem is that
they start looking at details,
again, like the kick drum,
way before anybody
needs to be doing that.
00:24:53
Details are something I do...
00:24:56
I've already printed 5 mixes
before I get too deep in the details.
00:25:00
I mean, I'll do rides on my first pass
just to say:
'Oh, OK, where's that..."
like, in this case,
we have this Arp part,
I've really gotta find a place for that.
00:25:10
It's gonna require a lot of rides,
some ideas on
compression and FX and things like that.
00:25:15
But for now,
I'm doing broad strokes,
I need to get through.
00:25:20
So, I really wanna
just control that vocal.
00:25:23
I muted the Arp.
00:25:24
I want the vocal to be controlled,
I'm gonna lower the
background part significantly.
00:25:29
I really just wanna focus on vibe.
00:25:31
That's all I'm trying to do here.
00:26:29
Again, really quick, fast movements here.
00:26:32
And you noticed I'm not pushing up
the things I wanna hear,
I'm bringing down the things
that I hear too much of, right?
Because I know that the thing
that I wanna hear will come out.
00:26:43
It's the same thing I
do with equalization,
I do a lot of subtractive equalization.
00:26:47
And will see a little bit of
that as I work through this.
00:26:51
And I'll turn off things really quickly
because they just don't need
to be heard at the moment.
00:26:57
I can go back and
think about it
if it's...
00:27:00
you know, in this case we've got a DI
on the bass,
we've got a bass amp
and we've got two mics on the bass amp.
00:27:07
So, for now,
I'll probably just grab the DI
and I'll listen to the other parts later.
00:27:12
I just to get through them
and get my vibe going.
00:28:18
A couple things that are
happening as I'm working:
So, first, immediately, I feel like
these groupings here,
of this guitar,
I'm gonna want an Aux for.
00:28:28
We'll create that real quick
so I'll call that
'VrsGtrsAux',
is that what that is?
And I always name my Auxes
Aux
because what tends to happen is,
say you wanna import something,
if you don't know it's an Aux
you're gonna have to see an audio file.
00:28:51
It's just again, a lot of what I'm doing
is stuff
to move me faster.
00:28:58
So, see now, I just created an Aux
with that name.
00:29:03
So now there's a bus
with that name,
down here.
00:29:07
And I didn't have to really
jump through hoops to do it.
00:29:13
I'm gonna use that later,
I don't know what for.
00:29:16
At the moment I wanna
get this guitar right.
00:29:18
Because to me, this whole bit here,
I'm liking the drums,
the distance on the drums,
I'm really liking that.
00:29:24
The problem is that
this guitar is a bit much for me.
00:29:28
So I'm kind of working around
and you can see that the
microphone names are there.
00:29:39
I wanna play these
different microphones and the DI
separately.
00:29:45
Obviously, part of the other thing
that you need to be doing,
those of you who are just starting out
or in your...
00:29:56
the phase of learning,
and obviously you are because
you're watching this.
00:30:01
You need to do ear training, right?
You are,
you are in jobs right now that
maybe some of them are,
you're assisting.
00:30:11
And you think it's a boring job
or it's a menial job, or whatever.
00:30:16
Some of you are engineering
but you still don't, you know,
getting it yet.
00:30:22
You need to be doing exercises.
00:30:26
So, essentially...
And by this I mean,
you need to
learn the sonic imprint
of the equipment you have,
you need to be studying the manuals,
any information you can
about what professionals think about it
and how it was made.
But also, you know,
specially, of course, microphones.
00:30:48
So here,
it lists the microphones and the DI.
00:30:52
You know, back in the tape days
we used to have to
write down detailed lists
of how far away the microphone was,
which microphone,
the serial number
of the microphone would be
written down as well.
00:31:07
All of this information
had to be written down
because the engineers
thought of it all as some sort of
sonic imprint.
00:31:15
Right?
And if they liked that sonic imprint
they wanna be able to get it back.
00:31:20
But it's also something that your
ear becomes familiar with.
00:31:25
And it's easy to demonstrate here
when I show you these two microphones.
00:31:30
You hear the 57
and if you've worked a lot
with an SM57
you knew that that's
what it's gonna sound like.
00:31:39
When I first heard it I was like:
'Oh, that's an SM 57."
When I heard the 421
or something like that,
when I heard that I was like:
'Yep, that sounds correct.'
And that's because my
ear remembers that sound.
00:31:52
It's been a very long time since
I placed an SM57 in front of a guitar
but,
again, it's a sonic imprint.
00:32:00
Your ear will get used to these things.
00:32:02
They will get used to the compressor,
that you use.
Your ear will understand that.
00:32:06
And in fact, your ear can even get used to
the digital stuff that you use today.
00:32:11
You're used to how it reacts,
you're used to the speed
all those kinds of things
your ear becomes familiar with.
00:32:19
And they're the things
that you use
when you're coming up
with an idea
on implementing.
00:32:24
'Oh, let me bring that sound I remember
into this particular thing.'
And that's why
myself, my colleagues,
can work so fast.
00:32:34
We have a significant toolkit
and a sonic
memory
that can bring us to things faster.
00:32:44
But let's listen a little
bit to these two
microphones so I can
demonstrate the idea.
00:33:07
I'm gonna A/B between the two.
00:33:09
That was the 57 by itself.
00:33:11
Let's to the 121.
00:33:26
Simple,
you can hear the difference really easily.
00:33:28
Let's quickly listen to the DI.
00:33:35
Those should all be
recognizable things,
that should be part of your ear training.
00:33:41
You should be able to hear
that in your head before
you actually the heard that audio track.
00:33:47
Because they are classic
representations of what they are.
00:33:53
And that's something that
your ear should get used to.
00:33:57
And you should practice.
00:33:59
And it does take practice.
00:34:01
And a lot of repetition.
00:34:04
In this case I'm gonna kind of focus on,
I think I want the dreamier one,
which is the 121 for me.
00:34:11
And again, I'm gonna just do
stuff that I probably wouldn't do
normally
because I just try to work fast.
00:34:20
Actually, let me see
if I can do it here.
00:34:22
I need a 'Vintage Amp Room'
and I think that
these guys have it.
00:34:27
Here we go.
00:34:30
And I'm gonna leave it mono actually.
00:34:32
Again, of course,
I've got this Aux over here
that I can use for other things.
00:34:37
But at the moment I just wanna
focus on this particular sound
because it's so important in the Intro.
00:35:24
This is kind of funny because
I'm taking
an amp simulator with a 57 on it
and putting it on a 121
amped microphone.
00:35:32
Which is really kind of
ridiculous
but it doesn't matter
because it's what's in my head,
that all that counts.
00:35:50
And now you see why I'll do it.
00:35:52
Because I don't care what it says,
in the end,
that microphone
that was used in the recording
is doing what it's supposed
to be doing
but what I hear in my head
is a different story
so I'm using the 121 microphone
and this amp simulation
to get the thing that
I wanted in my head.
00:36:12
That's all that matters.
00:36:14
Nothing else.
00:36:53
This actually brings use right to
something that's kind of interesting.
00:36:57
Sections. As I'm listening down,
when I'm playing,
before I actually do anything at all,
I think about sections.
00:37:05
And
the form of the song and
the development
of that song over time.
00:37:11
And I wanna make sure that
it compels you to listen
the whole time, that's my gig,
to compel
an audience
to listen to this guy, sing this song
in this way.
00:37:27
That's my gig.
00:37:28
As it's going down
I'm always thinking about:
'Oh, in this section I could do this'.
00:37:33
And you see an automatic
thing happened here.
00:37:36
I created something that
kind of jangles a little bit
in that Intro, right?
And then, it goes down,
it gets darker.
00:37:43
Now, this plug-in doesn't have a mix knob.
00:37:46
So I'm gonna have to emulate something
that's sort of in between
this
and this.
00:37:53
And that might be a combination
of these two things.
00:37:55
I don't know.
00:37:56
But let's see what we can do,
more than likely I'm gonna
just throw a little verb on this thing
to set it back
when that verse comes in.
00:38:07
I'm gonna make this stereo.
00:38:09
I don't know why.
00:38:10
And I'm gonna load in my
friend Dave Darlington,
who I just love.
00:38:16
And I'm gonna try this
'Vox Hall' that he's got here.
00:38:19
It's just quite a bit longer
than I really wanna be
but I'm gonna really
take down the wetness.
So, very very little.
00:38:27
Let's listen to that in solo,
super quick.
00:38:30
Again, this will be the verse.
00:38:37
And you hear that thing spread out too.
00:38:40
Which is really what I'm looking for.
00:38:41
So, it will come down to get dark.
00:38:44
And now this guitar is actually
gonna be in the 121,
for this section.
00:38:48
So they're gonna play together.
00:38:53
And want him to be
level-wise
light
and not as bright as that first
Intro section,
let's here these two together.
00:39:09
Perfect.
00:39:11
Let's listen to the Intro
to the Verse.
00:41:28
I didn't stop purposefully
because I wanted to demonstrate that,
although I really need to go back
and continue working on that
guitar idea,
I pretty much know in my head
what I'm going to do
so, I'm fine.
00:41:43
I've worked enough, the idea is working.
00:41:46
I like the way that the Verse opens up.
00:41:49
The Intro is still not special enough
but I have in my head an idea
of what I'm gonna do to make that happen
And I'll thrown down there, real quick,
as a matter of fact,
just so I can show you,
I'm just gonna take that same
H-Verb, from Waves,
and
I'm gonna copy that in
and I'm gonna have a lot less of it
on there
and I think that that's gonna help me.
00:42:12
I'm also gonna bring
that guy way down as well.
00:42:16
Now you see that my
levels are so general,
I'm just doing whatever.
00:42:20
As long as it's in the ballpark I'm fine.
00:42:22
I'm gonna come back later and redefine.
00:42:24
This might also be a little long.
00:42:29
Again, with reverbs, delays,
things like that,
you've gotta think about, not only
where the walls are in the room.
00:42:37
You've gotta thing about
what's on them.
00:42:39
So, is there a glass wall here?
Or a brick or stone wall?
Is it wood?
Is it finished wood?
Is it unfinished wood?
Is it rough?
Is there a baffle of some sort,
or diffuser?
What does the ceiling look like?
How high is it?
What's the make-up of it?
All of those things
are what I'm thinking about
when I put a reverb on.
00:43:05
And that's exactly what
I'm trying to say here.
00:43:08
The ideas gotta be in your head
so that you work fast.
00:43:12
So, as far as this reverb
for the 57 on the Intro,
and I assume that's a Reintro
before the second Verse,
I want the time to be a little lower.
00:43:21
I actually want the early
reflections to be a little louder
but I don't want to dig in at the moment
and find those.
00:43:29
Maybe increasing the
pre-delay would help.
00:43:34
But let's see, reducing the size.
00:43:41
Before I do that, actually,
that's really funny I did that
because I'm so excited to be
coming up with this
and I'm liking the ideas
that are happening.
00:43:49
But the point I was
making earlier is that
I try not to stop
the play of the music
is because
I always wanna be listening to the song.
00:43:59
Not to any individual thing necessarily.
00:44:02
But
everything has to relate to each other.
00:44:04
And that happens both
texturally
in one moment
and over time.
00:44:10
Right?
So we want to be paying
attention to the time factor
as well as the one moment.
00:44:18
When I was playing the song longer
I went to these drums and I muted
the rooms in the Intro and the Verses.
00:44:27
And that's because,
originally, if you noticed,
I had it all muted.
00:44:30
And that's because it
didn't sound right to me.
00:44:33
But I thought:
'Let me try that in the Hooks'.
00:44:36
And it may be just the thing
that just sort of
pushes those drums a
little bit further in the Hooks
and brings it right back down
in the Verses.
00:44:45
And it kind of did that.
00:44:46
And again, there's a lot of
massaging that could go on here,
I could be EQing these
room tracks as well.
00:44:51
At the moment I'm not getting into that.
00:44:53
So let's play it from the top
and see if our drum mutes
and our guitar ideas are working.
00:46:28
I'm liking what's going
on with those guitars,
I'm not sure about the balances yet.
00:46:32
I'm liking what's going
on with the drums.
00:46:34
I like the fact that the rooms
open up
in the choruses
maybe a little too soon.
00:46:40
I guess they come in
the B sections currently.
00:46:43
So,
we'll decrease the levels of those rooms
but that seems to be working as well.
00:46:48
What's bugging me at the moment
is the main guitar
that's sort of doing the back-beat beats.
00:46:54
And the vocal
is getting in my way.
00:46:56
I've got get to this Arp parts as well
and figure out why there's two of each.
00:47:03
That sort of thing. So,
you'll see me do that in the next round.
00:47:06
Let's look at this guitar.
00:47:09
Because I think
the work that we did
in the Verse,
the Intro and the Verse guitar
has actually given me an idea.
00:47:16
And the drums
has given me and idea of where that
back-beat guitar should be sitting.
00:47:24
It's actually not far
from where I want it now.
00:47:26
So I'm gonna work on that first,
I'll look at the vocal
and then we'll continue from there.
00:47:31
And again, part of what I try to do
is allow things to lead me.
00:47:37
So, if the work we did on the drums
and the other guitar
leads to me a good hook guitar
that's exactly what I want.
00:47:45
Let's listen
with the track
and then I'll come back and solo it.
00:48:20
So, you can hear, that guitar is
just doing that simple back-beat thing.
00:48:24
Obviously, in the Bridge,
he's doing something else.
00:48:26
And we've got just the two microphones.
00:48:29
The 57 and the 121.
00:48:51
Immediately I am gonna use both.
00:48:54
And
I want this one to
be a little saturated.
00:49:02
You know what,
Waves makes something,
it's a stomp thing that they have,
which is really kind of funny,
but I like it
because it has one particular pedal
called 'Metal'
that really just sounds ridiculous.
00:49:18
So, this is what it sounds like.
00:49:48
Let's see if that helps.
00:50:23
I wanna hear how that sounds in the track.
00:50:25
The sustain might have
come up a little too much
with that 'Metal plug-in'.
00:50:29
So, we'll try something else.
00:50:30
Let's hear this in the track first.
00:50:58
My feeling is that the sustain
has come out a little too much.
00:51:01
Let's go to something
that just does some simple
sort of crunchiness
and maybe we'll try saturation knob
cause that's not a hog on my system.
00:51:52
So, you could see
I'm trying to finesse this
and I'm not having a successful time.
00:51:57
So, I may abandon this altogether.
00:51:58
I give myself
periods of time.
00:52:01
Two minutes, three minutes,
ten minutes the most.
00:52:04
If I don't come up
with an idea I move on.
00:52:06
You can't be married to anything.
00:52:08
But what I did here was,
I tried Saturation knob,
that's kind of doing what I want,
I don't have that long sustain
that the other plug-in had.
00:52:15
So, that's a good thing.
00:52:16
But the bottom end,
when combined with this guy,
it's just too much,
I don't need that much bottom end.
00:52:22
So, I'm decreasing that
starting in and around
that 185 area
and also doing a shelf on the bottom.
00:52:31
And then,
I just felt like, I really,
I don't wanna bring
too much of the sustain
but I don't want this popping up,
I want it to be part of
that clean one.
00:52:40
So that's really all I'm looking for here.
00:52:43
I also pushed
the 57 off to the left a little bit.
00:52:47
I have to figure out what
my levels are gonna be.
00:52:49
So I need to hear a
little more of that guy.
00:52:54
You know, a lot of times,
I think I heard this
from a mastering guy,
if they have a piece
of gear that they like,
say it's an LA-2A with a tube in it,
or some other
piece of gear that has great
transformers or something like that.
00:53:08
They would run through it
without actually doing anything.
00:53:12
They wouldn't push the knobs,
they wouldn't boost or cut anything,
they wouldn't compress.
00:53:18
They would just run through it.
00:53:20
And that used to happen all the time.
00:53:22
And recently
a young mastering guy,
friend of mine,
put a plug-in on
but didn't do anything,
didn't affect any change.
00:53:35
And I thought:
'What are you doing that for?"
"I just like the way this one sounds!"
And thought, that's just brilliant,
I love that.
00:53:44
And I started to do the same exact thing.
00:53:47
And part of it, of course,
I'm joking.
00:53:51
You know,
these guys who make plug-ins,
whether it's Waves
or UAD
or Softube,
all the guys,
they're listening
deeply
to the sonic imprint
and they're measuring the sonic imprint
of the equipment that they are
referencing.
00:54:16
There's no reason why
it wouldn't have some
sonic imprint immediately,
whether you are boosting or cutting.
00:54:23
So it's kind of interesting to work
with programmers in that way
and pay attention to that.
00:54:30
I'm gonna go ahead
because I wanna this guitar to have
a bit of a bite to it
but I wanna it to be what would be
considered warm bite.
00:54:38
I'm gonna throw this Scheps
Neve EQ setup that he's done.
00:54:44
And see if I like it.
00:56:16
Immediately, again,
I wanna show you my flow
because I really try not to stop.
00:56:21
I try to keep things moving
and facilitate some of the
ideas that I hear in my head.
00:56:27
You saw me boost
3 dB on this piano
in this transition section,
I don't even know if that's the
sound that I was hearing.
00:56:35
But I know that that's in there.
00:56:37
I've got something else in there,
I've got a bit of an organ piece.
00:56:41
But something is in there.
00:56:43
And I wanted to hear more of it
so I just boosted it.
00:56:45
I'll come back to it later.
00:56:47
Again, that's why I'm just
keeping it moving.
00:56:49
I don't wanna stop.
00:56:50
And now I hear this vocal,
it needs a little something back there.
00:56:55
I love the dryness
but I need a little something
and I don't know exactly what it is yet,
I'm kind of feeling like it might be
some thickness
and I don't know how I'm going
to get it at the moment.
00:57:10
I'm just gonna try this
guy for the moment.
00:57:13
And push that
and really bring down the 'bit'
so it's crunching a bit.
00:57:17
And see if we can get
a little width out of this.
00:57:21
And see if that gives
us any fun on this vocal
because I don't want him
to have reverb per se,
I really want him to just surround you
in a very intimate way.
00:57:33
I'm gonna add this eight-note
that I call 'dark eight',
in fact, it started on my team,
we share templates,
and this I think came from
one of my guys, James Krausse,
great young engineer.
00:57:56
OK, and then this is a width
thing that I just put the Lo-fi on.
00:58:01
Let's see if that works to our pleasure.
00:58:04
I'm gonna turn the 'dark
eight' off for the moment
and see where this sits.
00:58:14
So you can hear immediately
that was like...
00:58:17
... coming out of two speakers.
00:58:20
Not pleasant, but we're not done yet.
00:58:40
I just wanna give you a sense of
what this sounds like all
by itself so here we go.
00:58:50
So you can hear that
there's not a lot of body to it.
00:58:53
It's all sizzle and grizzle up there
and that's all I want.
00:58:58
I'm gonna try and de-ess that a bit.
00:59:00
And we're gonna call that
one a day for the moment.
00:59:04
All this is subject to
both my client
and my thoughts later on.
00:59:16
You know, I've gone around and around
on a lot of plug-ins,
like de-essers,
I used to use Massey, I used Waves.
00:59:24
You know,
I tend to just sit on something
until there's a problem in it
and I'll do something else.
00:59:31
I like using the Waves one
because it grabs just sections as well,
that's really cool.
00:59:36
So, we're gonna leave those two guys on
and we're gonna move on.
00:59:40
In fact, let's only play from
the second Verse at this point.
00:59:51
Sorry, I have to stop and hear that piano,
I brought it up 3.5 dB
I don't even remember if
it's the thing I'm looking for.
01:00:46
Again, as it's playing,
I'm coming up with ideas about
where I wanna go on different parts.
01:00:53
I immediately hear that I want
a sort of dull, hollow reverb
on this vocal and,
you know,
back in the day, there used to be
this reverb the AMS RMX.
01:01:06
And,
you know,
there is a long history about AMS
as far as their delays,
their sampling delays,
that sort of thing.
01:01:14
You can read about that on-line,
I'm sure it's really simple.
01:01:17
But there weren't a lot of reverbs
back on those days.
01:01:19
And this one was always considered
one of the better ones
because of its
construction, its DSP.
01:01:25
It didn't have a lot of manipulation
that you could do to it.
01:01:28
And a lot of the old stuff didn't.
01:01:30
And that sort of made you come up with
layers of things.
01:01:34
So, quite often we would layer
a Plate with a digital,
with a delay,
going into the Plate,
and that sort of thing.
01:01:42
So you have to get used to that.
01:01:44
Now, we can manipulate a reverb
to the nth degree
but I still like to play with
those ideas of layering things
and I think you saw me do that
on the guitars as well.
01:01:53
So let's find
a sort of dullish kind of sound.
01:01:57
I like to use pre-delays a lot
when I want my vocal
to continue to be here.
01:02:03
And that pre-delay just sets
it back a little bit
so the reverb isn't right on top of me.
01:02:08
In this case, again,
I don't want a lot of top end
so I'm gonna
bring that stuff down.
01:02:12
And we'll do the same with
the high frequency dampening.
01:02:15
We've also got an EQ on there
that were kind of loping off stuff.
01:02:20
And I threw this A800 from
UAD on just for good measure
and one of my favorite presets
is the 'Cassette Deck'.
01:02:28
Don't ask me why.
01:02:29
I just love that preset.
01:02:31
And sometimes,
if I want a little more top end
or a sizzler top end,
I put it on 15 IPS.
01:02:38
And leave it at the tape setting
that they have.
01:02:41
So let's listen to this
just briefly and see if it
does anything for us.
01:02:46
I kind of feel like it might be
something that should come from
the eight note
that I've got on that lead.
01:02:54
So maybe I wanna send very little,
you know, very low level of it
on directly from the channel.
01:03:01
And then let's go down to
the 'dark eight'
and let's add more from there.
01:03:07
And in this case
I might just bring it down a little bit.
01:03:11
Let's see what that does
right away in the track.
01:03:14
See what happens.
01:03:33
Here's the moment I think
you all should go over
when you're watching this.
01:03:38
Remember we listened to the overheads,
and in doing so I had mentioned
that those overheads told
me about the room
that those drums were in.
01:03:49
I then put the drums into
a slightly different room.
01:03:53
Right?
But
the mark of that drum room
is on the tape,
it's on the tracks.
01:04:02
There's no way to remove that.
01:04:04
It's the sonic imprint from that room
with those microphones, of course,
and I'm kind of digging
where that's going,
it's matching with the guitars
in a nice way.
01:04:13
I like the dryness
of a couple those Arp parts, as well.
01:04:18
It goes along well with the vocals,
so the Arps and the vocal
are really dry and the bass is
kind of dry, and it's kind of cool.
01:04:25
But the drums and the guitars
are in this space.
01:04:29
And then we can also play
with this new RMX
because what I've tried to do is
make it be part of that room as well.
01:04:36
In other words,
you know,
acoustic rooms are not all perfect
and
the energy that's in them
is also dependent on the audience
and how big that audience is.
01:04:49
And how loud that audience
is, etc, etc.
01:04:52
If you've ever gone to an amazing show,
in one of those great rooms,
the room itself
lightens up, you know.
01:05:00
It vibrates more at the
Chorus of a great song.
01:05:05
And it's wonderful to watch.
01:05:07
And it's wonderful to be
in the presence of.
01:05:10
And that's one of the reasons, of course,
we're all into
doing what we do.
01:05:14
So, as I'm working on this,
that reverb came out of
our listening session to those drums.
01:05:22
That's it. That's where
that reverb came from.
01:05:24
And I'm thinking about its pre-delay
and how short was it.
You noticed I chose
a two second decay,
I think, did we bring that down
even further
with some dampening?
Maybe.
01:05:36
So we've got some dampening,
two second decay,
but it's quite dark
we've got more EQ here.
01:05:43
All of that is me trying to make it
interact
with that drum room
so that they play well together,
so all the energy moves
similarly.
01:05:53
That's what I'm trying to do here.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Software
- Altiverb 7
- BF-76
- EQ3 7-Band
- FabFilter Pro-DS
- FabFilter Pro L
- FabFilter Pro MB
- FabFilter Pro Q
- GTR Stomp 2
- H-Reverb
- iZotope Ozone 7
- Lo-Fi
- McDSP ML4000
- Mod Delay III
- RVerb
- Softube Saturation Knob
- Sonnox Oxford Reverb
- SoundToys Decapitator
- SoundToys Devil-Loc
- UAD Ampex ATR-102
- UAD Chandler Curve Bender
- UAD Fairchild 670 Legacy
- UAD Massenburg Design Works EQ 5-5B
- UAD Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor
- UAD Softube Vintage Amp Room
- UAD Studer A800
- UAD Teletronix LA-2A Legacy
- Waves API 2500
- Waves Doubler 2
- Waves Kramer HLS
- Waves Kramer PIE
- Waves L1-Limiter
- Waves REQ 6
- Waves Scheps 73
- Waves SSL Channel
- Waves SSL Compressor
Tony Maserati is an American record producer and audio engineer who has worked with many mainstream artists including Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Jason Mraz, James Brown, Mariah Carey, Notorious BIG, Black Eyed Peas, Destiny's Child and more. His work encompasses worldwide sales in excess of 100 million units. He won an Award for his work on Beyoncé Knowles' No. 1 single, "Crazy In Love", a Latin Award for Sérgio Mendes's Timeless (2006)
Maserati attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts for production and engineering. He relocated to New York City during the early days of the record-making business in New York City and was trained by the technical and engineering staff of legendary Sigma Sound Studios as well as the steady stream of R&B, Dance and Rock luminaries who booked the rooms there.
Beyonce
Alicia Keys
Gallant
Shawn Mendes
Lady Gaga
Jason Mraz
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