The mix is set up, and Tony has put together some ideas for where he wants to take the mix. Continuing from part 1, Tony starts automating levels early in the process to begin building the foundation for his vision of "Lifeboats" and continues to perfect the individual tones to support the bigger picture.
See how Tony Maserati:
Does quick, basic vocal rides to address the level differences between the verses and choruses
Auditions multiple approaches to the bass guitar tone, and dials in the Thermionic Culture Vulture for texture on the DI
Comes up with a plan of attack to transition emotionally and sonically from the bridge
Sets up bus compression on his drum group
Creates a parallel compression bus for the drums with an SSL bus compressor
Discusses moving on from ideas
Dials in a API-2500 on the bass bus
Watch legendary engineer, Tony Maserati mix his version of Lifeboats. Only on puremix.net
00:00:00 This also seems like it's
gonna need to be ridden
and I might as well just get into it
and do it right now.
00:00:06 So that you all see what I do,
I tend to turn all of these guys off
when I start my mix.
00:00:15 I usually leave that there.
00:00:16 So, in this case I'm gonna kind of
start with this guy pretty far down.
00:00:20 I'm actually gonna find my spot
in the 'Hook'
that I want this reverb to be at.
00:00:26 And then I'm going to
ride it down for the sections
that are not the 'Hook'.
00:00:33 I just find it to be an
easier way of doing things
because I'm gonna spend
more time on the drier section
because I'm gonna go through it
line by line.
00:00:41 Whereas the 'Hook',
I'm gonna find that one spot,
it's gonna feel great, excellent.
00:00:45 If I need to throw it at the end of lines
I can do that later.
00:00:48 So,
I'm just gonna use the mouse real quick,
because, again, I'm trying to move fast.
00:00:51 So let's do that.
00:01:14 So, that's my mark, there, right?
So 8.4,
we'll turn the automation back on.
00:01:21 I'm just gonna grab this with the mouse.
00:02:10 Real simple.
00:02:11 There's no serious magic going on.
00:02:14 I'm being
super easy and fast.
00:02:17 And I'm just gonna cut and paste
that exact thing
to the next bit.
00:02:21 And I'm doing it because
I'm trying to just move fast.
00:02:25 I wanna get the ideas done.
00:02:27 And you see,
it's basically the same thing,
it's not exactly the same,
we'll fix it later.
00:02:31 But right now,
we just wanna keep things moving.
00:02:33 And we wanna fill this out.
00:02:35 This guy,
or girl,
and for now, I'm just gonna
drag his business over.
00:02:43 A very similar way.
00:02:45 Let's see where that goes.
00:02:47 I also feel like I want
her off to the side.
00:02:50 And I'm not sure which side yet.
00:02:52 And that's because I'm
putting this on a stage
for whatever reason.
00:02:57 It doesn't matter.
00:02:58 I like doing that in my head.
00:03:00 In the same way that I'm
thinking about the room
and what the walls are
made of in that room.
00:03:05 Of course I'm thinking
about what color it is.
00:03:07 And I'm thinking about what lightning is
happening in that room.
00:03:10 Let's hear the 'Hook' for now.
00:04:39 A lot of what I'm doing here
is paying attention.
00:04:43 Paying attention to what I've done
thus far, how it's working.
00:04:47 Paying attention to the arrangement
and how it's developing
along with what I've done.
00:04:52 It's really so important.
00:04:55 And it's not something that
you can teach yourself easily.
00:05:01 It does require a lot of practice.
00:05:04 Because you have to
know which ideas to go after.
00:05:09 That's what takes
the 20 years
that my colleagues and I are
sitting here talking about.
00:05:15 We listened to those before us
and we paid attention to
what they had done by listening
to both their records
and their recordings.
00:05:25 All of those things are going through
my head and you have to do that.
00:05:29 And you have to do it quickly.
00:05:31 Because if you're
chasing ideas all the time
and you think every idea is amazing
you're really
kidding yourself.
00:05:39 It's just not happening.
00:05:41 That's just not the way it works.
00:05:42 No songwriter, I mean,
I'm sure if you ask
the best songwriters of all time,
you know,
how many songs came out just like that,
they would probably say there were a few,
because people are
gifted and that happens.
00:06:00 But generally songs come out
pieces at a time,
connecting ideas.
00:06:07 And that's the same thing
when it comes to a mix,
we have to piece things together,
find out why we're doing
things and see if we like it,
see if it attaches to the other
folks in the market,
or just where this artist is
directing us
by his sonic direction.
00:06:26 That's a lot of what I'm
doing when I'm listening.
00:06:29 I also realize that I do have to connect
our Euphonix Avid controller here
so that I can grab things a little quicker
because there's a couple rides
on these verse guitars
and 'Intro' guitars that I wanna do.
00:06:43 And I don't wanna do them with the mouse,
I wanna do them with the fader,
because I'm used to it.
00:06:46 But overall,
things are going in the right direction,
the bass, obviously, needs some work.
00:06:51 We've gotta develop the drums.
00:06:53 Because right now
they're fine for the moment
but they're not gonna take us
all the way to the end.
00:06:57 And the 'Bridge' got a lot
of different stuff going on.
00:07:00 We should probably
just start listening to the 'Bridge'
starting at the 'Bridge'.
00:07:04 Throughout this process
I might be soloing, muting,
I don't know what's gonna happen.
00:07:08 This vocal clearly looks loud.
00:07:12 I'm gonna jump in on
some of this ARP stuff.
00:07:16 I'm gonna look at the bass.
00:07:18 The bass seems to be OK
but it looks like
he's playing cool stuff
that we don't wanna miss.
00:07:23 I'm missing some cool
stuff so I wanna make sure.
00:07:26 The guitar is kind of sitting
well but I wanna do some rides.
00:07:30 So let me hook up the controller first.
00:07:33 What I've done is, essentially, any track
that I touch now becomes this track here.
00:07:39 So it's called the attention track.
00:07:42 So I set that to be
whatever I touch here.
00:07:46 You remember,
I said that I had a couple ideas for rides
on these guitars,
so we're gonna look at that right away.
00:07:55 And we might just continue to flow
as we go, because now I can grab
a track and do our ride immediately.
00:08:03 And here's my automation settings.
00:08:06 Let's listen from the top.
00:08:07 I'll run around and grab things,
I might mute some things,
but I wanna try to get to that 'Bridge'
as soon as possible, but as I said,
I wanna get to some
work on the bass as well.
00:14:47 You guys probably have heard many times,
don't EQ when you're in 'solo'.
00:14:54 And it's a very very good
and important rule to follow
as often as possible.
00:14:58 But I've got an idea in my head,
I feel like I know how I can build it,
you notice that I'm using
this DI as my main bass.
00:15:07 And I've got the Culture Vulture on there.
00:15:10 And then, I felt like I still
needed some bottom end.
00:15:12 So, instead of trying to EQ it,
out of something that I really like,
I've got these other elements.
00:15:18 So, here's a mic, from the amp,
I wanna listen to that
and see if I can get bottom out of that.
00:15:24 So, here's the bass
with just the DI 'Culture Vultered'.
00:15:50 So you hear the energy that
I'm after that, it's coming through.
00:15:54 Just because he's got
two microphones on an amp,
I don't care,
I'm not committed to use that shit.
00:16:00 I'm gonna use whatever I like,
whatever feels good and goes
along with the ideas
that I'm trying to move forward.
00:16:06 So, I don't need to listen to those
and be magified.
00:16:10 What I did was, I first put and EQ on
and just got rid of everything up top,
and just had sub.
00:16:15 And that felt good.
00:16:17 Then I thought, what happens if I
push that sub, and give it, you know,
some sort of beating.
00:16:23 And that beating
would be against the beating
that was happening here, right?
That's ultimately what I'm trying to do
so that we get a little
interesting thing happening
between whatever this idea is.
00:16:37 And it seems to have happened
in an interesting way, check it out.
00:17:03 It doesn't feel like
all of the sudden I've added bottom end,
there's a connection between them.
00:17:08 Which is really cool.
00:17:10 And that's kind of what I'm trying to do.
00:17:12 So I liked it, so it worked.
I had something in my head, it came out.
00:17:16 Now, maybe it's too loud,
I don't know, we'll see it later.
00:18:44 I'm gonna break here for a minute.
00:18:46 It's obvious to me that
not only I'm going to have to transition
emotionally
from that second Chorus to the
Bridge and then back out
but sonically, right?
Because you can hear the drums are not
way too far away
in this 'Bridge'.
00:19:05 Those drums gotta,
not necessarily come up
in its placement in the room,
maybe a little bit,
but it's also gotta come up
volume wise and grow.
00:19:14 And then, the vocals gotta be worked out.
00:19:16 So, there's quite a lot of issues here.
00:19:19 And I need to get myself some lunch.
00:19:23 So,
I'll be back soon.
00:19:25 So, we're back after the break
and I had to do some discovery on this
because there's quite a lot of tracks
I couldn't listen to
and I didn't want to on camera
but I'll show you exactly what I've done.
00:19:39 I've also formulated some ideas and
things like that.
00:19:42 I'm not sure we quite
finished with a concept that
when I'm soloing
and doing equalization
or fussing around with
a particular sonic thing,
it's generally because
I have the idea in my head
and I think we've got
somewhere good on this bass
but
it sort of
wells up a little bit now.
00:20:04 Its entrance, actually,
seems to be a spot where,
it's just the notes that he's playing,
are just kind of
building a little too much.
00:20:13 And I'm not ready for that,
I still want it to be intimate.
00:20:16 So, let's look at that and I'll show you
what I've come up with.
00:20:19 So, we'll listen one more time.
00:20:36 You could see, I lowered the bass,
that low bass,
remember the EQ that we had there.
00:20:40 I lowered that about, I think it was
6 dB area or something like that.
00:20:45 I lowered it quite a bit.
00:20:47 It's still feeling like it
wells up a little here to me.
00:20:49 In this 'Intro',
I want it to be really just the guitar,
and the piano.
00:20:54 It suits the mood for me.
00:20:56 So I want that to be the main thing.
So this bass,
I think I'm just going to cut it.
00:21:00 And I already did this earlier,
so there we go.
00:21:04 So, I'm muting it, period.
00:21:05 I can fix it later,
I can bring it back in,
I can lower it, I can do anything.
00:21:09 But right now, I wanna make sure
that my vibe is correct
from the beginning.
00:21:13 The other thing is,
I don't care about this other microphone.
00:21:17 I'm good, maybe I'll bring
it in the 'Bridge', I don't know.
00:21:19 So, I wanna make sure that I don't
open something by mistake.
00:21:23 So I'm just gonna make it inactive.
00:21:26 I do that quite a lot,
I'm gonna go ahead and do that on these
guitar tracks as well
because I don't care,
I didn't like the DI.
00:21:34 I don't know that I really
cared or worried about it.
00:21:37 So I'm just gonna keep working
because I like the vibe that I've got.
00:21:40 So let's see if this gets our focus
back on the piano and the guitar.
00:22:02 This sort of eight-note hi-hat thing
that is happening is fine.
00:22:07 It's just not fine enough.
00:22:10 I don't hear it coming forward,
in other words,
being less reverby yet.
00:22:14 So I'm actually gonna go further
and see what happens.
00:22:17 So what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna take this Drum Bus
that all the drums and
percussion are going out of
and I'm just gonna
throw something after it
and mess with it and see what happens.
00:22:28 And in this case I think I'm gonna try...
00:22:32 I like this sometimes.
00:22:35 The McDSP multi-band ML4000.
00:22:39 And this kind of came about
in a really interesting way.
00:22:41 You know, how I cycle around plug-ins
in some ways, has a lot to do with
my team members
at Mirrorball in LA
and what they're using,
what they talk about,
what we talk about together
but also, my producers
will send me
plug-ins on their tracks.
00:23:00 And instead of just taking them off,
immediately,
I like to play with them,
see: 'Oh, this does that'.
00:23:08 And it's the only thing that does that.
00:23:10 And it does it because of this
and I can manipulate it a little bit
and see if I can get it
doing all the things I need it to do.
In this case,
I probably only want this
in this Intro.
00:23:22 But I don't know yet.
00:23:23 So I'm just gonna mess with it.
00:24:00 Let's
leave it for the moment.
So I'm gonna
do a really
bigger move and then
I'm gonna just turn it off
at the Verse.
00:24:39 Probably not really working
but I'm gonna stick with it
because I wanna keep moving.
00:25:18 I'm not mad at it in the Intro,
we hear a click when it turns off.
00:25:23 Obviously, that's gotta be dealt with.
So, it's gonna be done in a different way,
I don't know what that way is yet.
00:25:28 There's something about
what it's doing to the kick
that I really like.
00:25:32 So I wanna go and look at that first
and maybe we'll create a parallel
that we do this on and we ride it.
00:25:39 That might be the way to make this work
but you hear how the cymbal is coming up
and that's really what I was missing,
I was missing the crash and that
sort of thing.
00:25:47 Let's hold on to that
but let's get this kick looked at.
00:25:52 We created this parallel
that I name after the
Alan Smart C2,
which is essentially an
SSL Bus Compressor.
00:26:01 I haven't sent anything there,
so I'm gonna go ahead and send
this kick drums to that
and
I'm just gonna let them
be the way they are.
00:26:13 Let's maybe
think about sending the overheads
and see if we like that.
00:26:21 Maybe we'll send them with less volume.
00:26:24 We gotta keep them on the same side.
00:26:26 So we'll do that.
00:26:28 Let's just see where this takes us
at the moment.
00:27:01 Maybe we'll send this guy,
instead of sending him to our
drum group,
which is then going through the
reverb and all the other business,
let's if we can send them
directly to the mix-bus.
00:27:14 Obviously, we have to
pay attention to the phasing
and make sure that it doesn't cancel out.
00:28:16 So, you see what I did there.
00:28:17 A couple things.
00:28:18 Obviously,
I sent this parallel C2 SSL Comp
directly to our mix-bus.
00:28:25 It doesn't phase out, which is great,
it actually sounds really interesting
but you can see here
that I'm relying on my experience
to believe that I'm gonna be
able to control this gain structure.
00:28:35 Right? It's super dangerous
what I'm trying to do here.
00:28:38 Allowing
this selective bus,
that currently only has the overheads
and the kicks
and the snare,
which I probably wanna have less of,
cause I'm getting it
primarily in those overheads,
and not some of these other,
like the individual hat track,
the tom tracks,
you know,
the room tracks are not going there.
00:29:00 So, it's a drier thing, obviously,
because this has got the Oxford and
the Altiverb on it.
00:29:05 Not to mention I'm
messing with this as well.
00:29:07 So,
it's a real dangerous thing to be doing.
00:29:10 The smart thing to be doing
would be to put the
Altiverb and the Oxford
on their own bus.
00:29:17 And be able to add that in
wherever I want it
and bring back the overall dry level
where I want it.
00:29:24 But, again, I'm kind of experimenting.
00:29:27 For the most part we're doing
something interesting,
I'm not sure exactly if I like it.
00:29:32 I think one of the
issues is the fact that
this is being bypassed completely.
00:29:37 It's sort of this on and off thing
and you can kind of hear that
and it's too much when
it comes on in the Chorus.
00:29:42 So I'm gonna try a different approach
and instead of using the ML4
I'm gonna try something
that I can maneuver
with perhaps just a threshold knob.
00:29:53 So I can automate the
'threshold' knob alone
and that will
do what I need.
00:29:59 Normally I'll probably pick CLA 76
or even a Bomb Factory 76 in this case
but because they don't have independent
control of threshold, input and output
that's gonna, again, box me in.
00:30:13 So, not a good choice in this case.
00:30:15 So I'm always thinking
about gain structure
and how I'm gonna
manage that gain structure.
00:30:19 Managing gain structure
with a reverb in mix
is not a really smart idea.
00:30:25 So, in that case,
finding plug-ins always seems to be
a process for me as well and I know that
a lot of my team members
will have them color-coded
or have them
with you favorites up top.
00:30:38 And to be honest, I think maybe
I trashed preferences too often that
I don't feel like redoing that all the time.
00:30:44 Anyway, I'm gonna put this guy on 'Limit'
and I'm gonna see if I can make
that do something similar to the ML4
but not as drastic.
00:30:54 And then I can kind of
mess with the peak reduction
as opposed to changing
the whole gain structure.
00:31:32 I wanna hear that
without the vocal for the moment.
00:31:36 Just so I can get a grasp.
00:32:08 And now I wanna hear that soloed,
I'm little worried that we are
actually getting a phase problem.
00:32:15 So, I wanna make sure that
that is not happening
and perhaps I'm gonna put
these guys closer together
so I can mess with them together.
00:32:33 That's feeling pretty good.
00:33:05 I wonder if I am getting
some kind of phase problem.
00:33:09 Let's go ahead and...
00:33:11 Well, flipping the phase
probably isn't gonna help,
but let's do it anyway.
00:33:15 See if that's of any benefit to us.
00:33:26 Definitely in-phase.
00:33:28 So that's fine,
I'm gonna leave that EQ there.
00:34:13 We talked about automating
the ML4 on and off.
00:34:18 In this case,
we can probably get away with
automating just the peak reduction.
00:34:23 And we can do so in a more subtle way.
00:34:26 So let's see if that's something
that's beneficial.
00:34:30 In the 'Intro' obviously
we're probably not
gonna get any reduction.
00:34:51 So here's where, to me,
it gets to be too much.
00:34:55 And we wanna try to
reduce that, right?
So, we just did a long listen,
we did a few things, obviously you saw,
I automated the peak reduction
on the LA-2A here.
00:37:46 Again, gross amounts,
I'm not really doing serious detail,
I wanna see if the idea works.
00:37:52 Even the boundaries
are probably not correct.
00:37:54 And those need to be edited.
00:37:56 But I want to
help you realize the subtlety
of how that transition works.
00:38:02 Because we're muting
these room tracks,
we go from a quite
roomy thing to,
still, I can feel a long room
but everybody else has calmed
down and you see the kit there.
00:38:16 And that's really all
I was trying to get to.
00:38:18 So we're gonna continue from there.
00:38:20 Immediately I can tell the bass
is still popping out a little bit.
00:38:24 So, instead of putting
another EQ
you can see that I'm not really allowing
much above
350 Hz, right?
But there's definitely a lot in there.
00:38:37 So, what I wanna do
is I wanna just put a
multi-band on there.
00:38:41 And I use all the multi-bands
but lately I've been focusing
on the FabFilter because
it just does that graphic thing
so I can think less.
00:38:52 My guess is I'm gonna
need to put a little something
in this area here.
00:38:57 The important part is,
again, I want
the guitar, the piano,
I don't want a bass player up this close
in the perspective.
00:39:07 You know?
I want him not quite with the drums,
I'm not gonna put any reverb on him,
although you never know,
I might put a little something on there.
00:39:16 But I just want him behind.
00:39:19 I don't want him in front.
00:39:20 So let's just give it a quick listen and
we'll look at our little display here.
00:39:48 I've changed my mind,
already.
00:39:51 One things of the things that I
only touched upon earlier was:
your ideas have to be as
simple as the
cutlery in your kitchen.
00:40:03 You know?
You pull out something that
works for the job that you're doing.
00:40:10 And,
if it doesn't sometimes
you add something to it
or you use two
things or whatever it is.
00:40:16 You get my point.
00:40:18 They can't be
like 'I have to have
this particular thing'.
00:40:24 You gotta be able to let
the ideas go.
00:40:26 You gotta 'Oh, that's not working.
That was a great idea'.
00:40:29 No it's not, it's just not working.
00:40:31 You gotta let that go.
00:40:33 That's a really important thing.
00:40:35 Letting things go.
00:40:37 And actually, saying,
'Oh, that's a mistake'.
But it sounds better.
00:40:41 That's a long story to the point that
this Verse is slightly
different tha the first Verse.
00:40:47 I wanna actually compare the two.
00:40:49 So I wanna listen to the first Verse
and then I'll listen to the second Verse.
00:41:42 Overall I'm really liking the bass sound
but it still feels too loud to me.
00:41:46 So, in this case I'm just gonna go
to the bass group that we have.
00:41:51 And I'm just gonna lower
them some more.
00:41:53 Maybe I'm gonna add a compressor.
00:41:55 Maybe I'm gonna see if the
compressor does what I need it to do.
00:41:58 There's and API one that Waves makes
that I seemed to have problems
making it work
but then I remember having
problems making the analog ones work.
00:42:07 So, maybe it's just me,
because so many of my
trusted colleagues use it.
00:43:58 So, I came over with an idea
while we were listening to that
but let me tell you
a little bit about what
I was doing while I was working earlier.
00:44:07 Obviously, I added a
little bit more of this RMX
and really trying to figure out
how I'm gonna ride that bass if at all
and definitely the guitar
as well needs some riding.
00:44:20 So, there's a good bit of detail
work that needs to be done
and I kind of mean this particular guy.
00:44:28 Because those guys seem fine.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
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.
great advices for search other way for a better mix. Thank you Tony !
daniel.page
2021 Feb 25
Your ideas have to be... as simple as the cutlery in your kitchen
Pearlpassionstudio
2021 Feb 25
Great tutorial. Seems like you have many things going on, but definitly following through your vision, shaping the mix, working your plan...Looking forward to the next session. Thanks
