Transcript

00:00:07

Hi kids, this is Mick Guzauski, your substitute teacher again, haven't been for over year since you've had real teachers.

00:00:15

I got something today that I'm really proud of, it's a mix I did for Jamiroquai.

00:00:21

This is one of the most pleasurable projects I really ever worked on.

00:00:24

Musically it's great, people are great to work with.

00:00:27

I'm really happy to share this with you.

00:00:31

This is a song called 'Vitamin' I'll play the mix first.

00:00:34

And then we'll start going through it.

00:04:54

I'm gonna go through the mix in the order that I set things up and work on it. We'll just recreate the mix that way.

00:05:01

When I first get the tracks in there's always a rough mix.

00:05:05

And these guys have very good rough mixes so I had a really good model of where the mix should go.

00:05:09

So I listen to that a few times, you'll see what each track is doing.

00:05:14

I hope to put this together.

00:05:15

I start with the rhythm sections.

00:05:17

So, let's start with the bass, the bass is on two tracks, one is the direct clean bass and the other one is the same bass distorted.

00:05:25

Here's the direct bass.

00:05:33

Here's the bass effect.

00:05:41

Both together.

00:05:50

On the main bass we have the C2 compressor to keep it solid in the track.

00:06:17

You can see this compressor is really doing very little.

00:06:19

It's only a couple dB compression but what it does is, by bringing the higher level notes down a couple dB some of the softer, more subtle elements of the bass are relatively up.

00:06:31

So it's just cuts in the track a little better.

00:06:33

I'll play it once with the compressor, once without.

00:06:52

So you can see with the compressor it's just basically more even it will sit a little nicer in the track there.

00:06:58

Let's go to the drums here.

00:06:59

The bass drum is a sampled bass drum as well as the snare.

00:07:03

The hi-hat and the overhead are live.

00:07:13

So that's the kick drum, I have a little bit of the subharmonics synth to give it a little subsonics there.

00:07:19

I'll play with it once.

00:07:33

I'll play it again with it but I'll really overdo it so you can hear what this plug-in is doing.

00:07:46

If you're playing through a system with response below 40 Hz you definitely heard that.

00:07:51

OK, now, let's move on to the snare.

00:08:03

And on the snare I'm using this Oxford Transmod.

00:08:06

What this does is, it follows the level of the signal, it accentuates the transient.

00:08:11

Rather than operating above a certain threshold so it's always changing the envelope shape of the signal.

00:08:17

Because the threshold is set really low now, like -80, so pretty much anything that hits it gets really enveloped.

00:08:27

You can see it's increasing the level of the transient of the snare by about 2 or 3 dB.

00:08:31

So with it we have...

00:08:45

It's just giving the snare a little bit more punch.

00:08:47

After that there's a little bit of EQ.

00:08:50

Just adding a little bit of depth to the snare on 160 Hz.

00:08:55

And a tiny bit of a little crack around 2500 Hz.

00:09:09

Now here is the hi-hat and overhead, which are live.

00:09:24

On the hi-hat I'm just cutting off pretty much everything except for the way up on top end.

00:09:30

This other hi-hat track I'm just adding a little top but this one is giving it more of the body.

00:09:46

And more of the meat of the cymbal there.

00:09:49

Overhead is mostly hi-hat.

00:09:55

I decided to hi-pass this one quite a bit.

00:09:58

I can turn the EQ off and you can hear.

00:10:11

The mic sounds really close, a lot of low-end in there, which I really didn't want in the hi-hat.

00:10:18

And we're getting the body of the hi-hat from this one anyways.

00:10:25

It sounds more natural that way.

00:10:28

The ear is gonna go towards the one with a lot of high-end because you're being brighter so it pulls you in that direction.

00:10:34

It's panned a little bit to the left where the hi-hat would be from the drummer's perspective.

00:10:38

The other hi-hat mike is in the center to sort of give it a little bit of a spread not just the point source, having the high-end coming from a little more left and then the cymbal more in the center.

00:10:49

It's sort of like if you hear the cymbal in the room, you hear the direct sound, which has most of the high-end coming from where the cymbal is but then you hear the room coming from all around.

00:10:58

So it sorts of simulates that.

00:11:00

So, I'll solo the whole drum-kit.

00:11:02

Drums and bass together here.

00:11:21

There's actually nothing on the bus of the drums on this one but on a lot of the songs of this album I do process the Bus, sometimes with an EQ, sometimes with parallel compression, it just depends on what it needed.

00:11:35

This just sort of worked having a natural sound, not really overemphasizing the attack, not EQing it, it just sort of sounded nice the way it was.

00:11:44

That's also a point that I like to make about mixing because I think that a lot of times you get the best mix by not doing a ton of stuff, just having the balances correct, having the sounds natural.

00:11:57

And in other cases you really wanna process it.

00:12:00

I think the song and the performance dictates that.

00:12:03

This drums are really dry in this mix and the reason I did that is because I wanted to keep the rhythm really solid and punchy and have the rest of the instruments sort of flow over it, there's some reverb, longer reverbs on the vocals and other instruments.

00:12:16

But the rhythm section is just really tight and I wanted to keep it that way.

00:12:21

Now, let's go on to the percussion.

00:12:42

A little percussion reverb, medium length.

00:12:45

I think it's a Valhalla Plate on there.

00:12:48

To give it a little space.

00:12:53

Here it is with the percussion reverb.

00:12:55

A little over 2 seconds, a tiny bit of pre-delay.

00:13:07

This gives it a little ambiance.

00:13:09

On the next conga or bongo that comes in there I think it has the reverb recorded on it.

00:13:26

That conga part is on 6 tracks, close mic, left and right and stereo, which is like the overheads of the conga and then reverb return.

00:13:35

That was given to me like that.

00:13:37

The only thing I'm doing is just delaying the reverb a little bit, like it would have pre-delay on it.

00:13:42

It's not 100% delay, there's only about 32% of the delay in there with a little feedback on it, just to give it more space.

00:13:50

I'll take that in and out.

00:14:05

It just sort of gives it a little more space.

00:14:07

I don't know how much it really means in the final mix with it being that low.

00:14:13

And we have a couple shakers here.

00:14:22

And triangle.

00:14:54

And that's all the percussion tracks together and I lied about one thing, that's not quite the order I set up, I did bass, drums and then went to keyboards, the percussion I put in a little later.

00:15:04

The next thing I put in is the main Rhodes here.

00:16:16

We have drums, percussion, bass, guitar and keyboard.

00:16:19

Maybe I shut the percussion off.

00:16:33

That's where I started the mix from.

00:16:35

I think when I actually did do the mix I had the Rhodes quite a bit louder than that because that's what would sound correct if it was just drums, bass, piano and guitar but as you'll see later, there's a lot more information in that range that works with the Rhodes.

00:17:03

I chose the Valhalla Plate but I have it pretty long there.

00:17:08

I'm not exactly sure why because I wouldn't have done that straight off the bat.

00:17:12

I would have had to wait more things in there to use that kind of reverb.

00:17:16

If I was just listening to drums, bass and guitar I'd probably have that more like in there.

00:18:07

I think when I started putting these synth tracks here in later is where I thought the guitars could use more ambiance.

00:18:23

Mixing is a process where you set it up where you think it should be first and then modify everything throughout when you hear other elements come in and how they all work together.

00:18:33

You can never really mix by just setting something up and forgetting it and leaving it there because it's always gonna interact with another track in a different way.

00:18:42

I'm sure with the guitar dryer or shorter reverb and then when we got to these parts I used a longer reverb.

00:18:57

I'll get that Rhodes back in here.

00:19:18

Now we have drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and lead vocal.

00:19:45

So now that we have that, we're playing the lead vocal back with all the processing in the final mix, but when it was first in there I usually just, if it needs EQ...

00:19:56

I EQ it to smooth it, maybe a little bit of reverb.

00:20:00

All the other stuff, the fine points of it, are done later on.

00:20:05

Let's go to some of the other instruments.

00:20:13

There's synth strings.

00:20:50

Those are the next elements to go in.

00:20:53

We have some real strings.

00:21:12

On the solo that's here.

00:21:33

See when the strings switches to that other track, how much lower it is, it's because that's exactly when the lead vocal comes in.

00:21:39

At that point.

00:21:48

So they are up front, sort of leading everything at the beginning and then they're dropping back when the vocal comes in.

00:22:01

Those are the strings for the breakdown section.

00:22:10

I shouldn't call it breakdown, it's sort of a sax solo, sax solo section there.

00:22:36

OK.

00:22:37

Processing, the strings I'm cutting really low, like below 30 Hz for room rumble.

00:22:43

Rolling off above 10 kHz because I didn't want it to sound too bright and too airy there.

00:22:49

A little bit down in the mid-range just it feels a little bit smoother sounding.

00:22:59

Rather than using the send and return since this reverb is only gonna be on the 2 tracks that are bused here, I just went through an Altiverb plug-in and just set the mix in the plug-in itself.

00:23:31

Just a very slight chorus enhancing the stereo width just a little bit.

00:23:37

It's not doing that much but it helps in there.

00:23:53

And you can see there's a big ride on the strings.

00:24:21

That's what we're listening to there.

00:24:23

I'm taking out a little bit of the mid-range, taking out a little low-end.

00:24:26

I think these EQs were on when they sent me the session.

00:24:29

And then I used this EQ in addition to them on the Bus of the strings they're being fed to.

00:24:35

Usually if I get a session and there's plug-ins on it and the processing is right I usually don't take it off or change it, I usually would just, once the mix is closed and I wanna just tweak a little bit I put something on to add to it rather than start from scratch if it sounds good to begin with.

00:24:53

And we have one more group of keyboards to listen to here which are really nice effects kind of stuff.

00:25:19

That one doubles the melody there.

00:25:21

The melody of the backgrounds.

00:25:34

That one going into the Bridge.

00:25:36

The reverb of the keys, being sent on this, it's not just in the bus because I'm using the send and return on a couple of them, going on the 'keys verb'.

00:25:44

This is...

00:25:46

UAD Pure Plate, it's EMT 140 emulation.

00:25:50

It's just a really nice rich reverb. I just really like it on those.

00:26:19

I'll show you what part of the song we're in while this happens.

00:27:31

On reverb I use both sends and inserts and I'll use and insert if it's only one track or an audio subgroup that's got a couple tracks to it that all need the same reverb treatment rather than setting up another bus and a return going back to this subgroup I just put a reverb in there and do the mix within the plug-in.

00:27:51

If there's several tracks in a group of tracks feeding a reverb and other tracks in that group aren't, they need different levels of reverb than I'll use a Send and Return so you have a separate mix to the reverb.

00:28:04

Right now I don't remember why I did this separately because these reverbs are sort of similar sounding.

00:28:23

Oh, that's why! If you hear this reverb.

00:28:27

On this Juno track.

00:28:34

First is with that out.

00:28:36

There's some stereo movement in it too.

00:28:42

This was about a year ago, I don't remember everything I do until I look at it again.

00:28:47

But, anyways, that's what that is.

00:28:50

So that pretty much takes care of the keyboards, there's a piano solo at the end here...

00:29:23

On the piano solo I use, the 1176 from UA...

00:29:38

To control some of the peaks, some hit really hard, so it doesn't jump out of the track too much, a very little compression.

00:29:53

And...

00:29:54

A little bit of EQ adding a little bit of body down here, between 100 and 200.

00:29:59

450 in there and then a little top end definition.

00:30:02

Cause this is the solo.

00:30:04

Then the keys verb.

00:30:06

Just a little bit of it to give it a little ambiance.

00:30:20

I've pretty much gone through all the instrumental tracks except for the brass section.

00:30:24

The brass section here is sent to a Bus treated all the same with Altiverb and an EQ.

00:30:47

Teldex convolution on the Altiverb.

00:30:50

I'm running it a 80% of its normal decay time, chopped out a little bit just because one of the brass sounded a little more room rather than a large chamber, this room can get pretty long if I have it 100% where it's sampled.

00:31:08

A boost there where the brass needs to really fit in the mix there.

00:31:24

I'll play the brass with both plug-ins bypassed.

00:31:33

Now with the EQ.

00:31:41

I'm cutting off some of the top to get rid of some of the edge of the brass, because one of them is really warm in that spot.

00:31:46

That's without the reverb, of course.

00:31:55

In the mix.

00:32:09

OK, so the sax solo on the song.

00:32:20

That one ended up on a send and return.

00:32:22

No idea exactly why I did that but I did.

00:32:27

Because it's only on that one track.

00:32:28

EQ is...

00:32:46

EQ really sounds a lot more subtle than it looks.

00:32:48

I'm just taking some top off.

00:32:50

And this is just really getting rid of rumble, just subsonics stuff, there's nothing in the saxophone down at this frequency.

00:32:58

Compression.

00:33:00

1176.

00:33:08

Lots of compression to keep that sitting in the right spot of the track.

00:33:29

Let's listen to it in the track with the compression here.

00:34:26

It tends to go in and out of the mix without the compression.

00:34:29

It just captures it to really stay there.

00:34:31

We're gonna go through the lead vocals now, there's a vocal and a double.

00:34:34

I'll just gonna be soloing the main vocal and go through all the processing that's on it.

00:34:47

First thing on there is a gate set with a very low threshold.

00:34:50

Because this vocal went through tape so I just put that to get rid of any tape hiss.

00:34:55

It really didn't need it but when the vocal was soloed I heard it so we got it out of there.

00:35:03

The next thing is the EQ.

00:35:06

What I did here was cut off the low end below 60 Hz, way way below where he's singing because there's some room rumble on there.

00:35:14

You can here a mic pop.

00:35:22

And then cut out a little bit about a little over 700 Hz.

00:35:26

That makes a difference when it's doubled.

00:35:37

There's a little built up there when you hear both of them.

00:35:39

So I just took that out a little bit.

00:35:41

This is pretty much inconsequential, about a half dB.

00:35:46

0.4 dB.

00:35:48

The next thing is multiband.

00:36:06

This is a multiband compressor, you can set the upper and lower limit of the band, the slope.

00:36:13

What it will do is it will cut or boost according to the dynamics, right now it's set to cut energy that exceeds a certain amount of a certain band.

00:36:24

This low band here is...

00:36:31

That's just cutting a little bit of that 200 Hz.

00:36:35

It's cutting it dynamically so the vocal doesn't get thin.

00:36:37

There's still some of that frequency in there.

00:36:39

But if it gets out of perspective this starts cutting it.

00:36:45

OK, where he's singing harder.

00:36:51

We're dealing with taking a little out of that band there.

00:37:03

So you hear the body of the voice rather than having that "Ahh" come out too much in the track.

00:37:09

The high band here it's for de-essing but it's not really hitting the threshold.

00:37:17

This is just to cut the extreme highs back but I just set it, it didn't need it.

00:37:21

The next thing we're going through is a compressor.

00:37:36

Well, what I'm doing with the vocal is, he sang pretty smoothly and I wanted to compress it but really not look for a character of a compressor, just to even it out.

00:37:47

This is a great compressor for this because it's super clean and the knee is adjustable so you can make it attack very gently, go into compression very gently.

00:37:56

The characteristic of the compressor is very transparent.

00:37:59

You hear it compressing a little but you don't hear it changing the sound and it doesn't really sound drastic even when it's compressing quite a bit.

00:38:06

Here we go.

00:38:23

It just evens it out without really changing it much.

00:38:25

Sometimes on vocals I use a compressor with more character, maybe some harmonic distortion.

00:38:30

Whatever sounds good for the track, this one I just thought it should sound really hi-fi and real this present.

00:38:35

The de-esser and that is just to keep sibilants under control.

00:38:46

There's good Ss right there.

00:38:54

You just hear how it controls the Ss, keeps them down but doesn't affect the high-end where there isn't an S happening.

00:39:01

And that's pretty much the processing on the vocal, a little reverb.

00:39:10

The reverb is automated on this too.

00:39:12

Because we only wanted it on some.

00:39:30

The reverb on this is the Pure Plate, again.

00:39:33

The UAD Pure Plate, one of my favorites.

00:39:41

I have two Pure Plates, the settings are pretty close.

00:39:45

One is on the keys and one is on the vocals and the reason I use two rather than one is because I'm mixing to, on this one, 11 subgroups and I like to return the effects to the proper subgroups so at the end of this, when I make stems, each stem has it's proper effect on it, if we cut the vocal stem, we're not not hearing the reverb of that on the keyboard stem.

00:40:09

Everything has its separate sends and returns, I takes a little longer when you're setting it up, not much, because you can pretty much copy a plug-in if it's gonna be the same setting and it just keeps everything nice and neat if you need to make different versions and different stems.

00:40:23

Next let's go to some of the background vocals.

00:40:27

Quite a bit of stuff going on here.

00:40:30

This is one group of backgrounds here.

00:40:35

OK, we have here...

00:40:36

The Bus going to the stem or to the subgroup is called 'girl bgs' and we see that this one here is set directly to that bus and has effects on it.

00:40:53

Repeats, a lot of reverb.

00:41:04

EQ.

00:41:13

I use the ValhallaPlate on this because you can set, they have different materials that they simulate.

00:41:19

I wanted a more bright reverb on that background where the Pure Plate is real warm, on this one I wanted a little bit of a spike in there.

00:41:26

OK, that is compressed.

00:41:35

Which is just holding it tight but it's also reducing the level quite a bit.

00:41:39

I mean, it's a hard thing to A/B in here, how much the compression is actually doing.

00:41:45

And how much it's really just cutting the level.

00:41:51

And then the last thing is Echoboy for some repeats.

00:42:02

In context with the track...

00:42:11

It's with the lead vocal so we're not hearing much, I can accentuate it a little bit.

00:42:25

That's what that's doing.

00:42:26

Now, the other backgrounds, pre-stereo pair, is doing these parts.

00:42:32

They are coming back on a sub.

00:42:43

The same ValhallaPlate, a little shorter.

00:42:54

I'm using the SSL E Channel from Universal Audio, a low frequency cut-off, and a high-pass just to put the stuff in the mid range a little bit and a little compression.

00:43:09

And...

00:43:10

a tiny little bit of Echoboy there.

00:43:46

This one too is part of the 'girl bgs' track, I don't know why I have this track separately down here.

00:44:02

That's just the high part of that.

00:44:04

Which has...

00:44:15

Which has a little bit of EQ from this.

00:44:19

High-pass and low-pass filter.

00:44:20

Again, the E Channel.

00:44:22

From UA.

00:44:24

And...

00:44:25

The good old ValhallaPlate, just a little shorter.

00:44:29

So that's the 'girl bgs' bus, now we have another...

00:44:33

Another girl, Hazel here will sing a lot of the backgrounds and I can just solo all that.

00:44:39

All her vocals are bused to one sub.

00:45:13

On her is an UAD SSL.

00:45:16

High and low pass filters.

00:45:18

And a little EQ adding a little top below where the cut-off is so it shelves up and then cuts back a little bit.

00:45:25

The shelf up is around 10 kHz, which of course is gonna start below that, the shelf looks sort of like that.

00:45:31

And the low-pass is going down at 9 kHz, so what's happening is...

00:45:38

you see a little bit of a shelf up and then a cut.

00:45:41

It gives a little presence in there but takes off some of the really high stuff.

00:45:45

This is one thing that I've done quite a bit on this Jamiroquai album that I usually don't do. I usually like very transparent and bright backgrounds.

00:45:53

But the way they have this in here with a lot of vocals and a lot of room for the high-end to happen didn't quite sound right as the backgrounds were really extended on the top end, I thought it would sound better a little mellower.

00:46:08

So that's why that's done.

00:46:10

And then also this has a de-esser on it.

00:46:17

Sibilance here.

00:46:24

And a Valhalla Plate.

00:46:26

The reason this SSL plug-in is on here, usually I would use a separate EQ and compressor, there's no reason why I wouldn't use this but it was on here already and it sounded good so maybe I tweaked it a little bit, I don't know but as I said before, their rough sounded really good, they had some processing on things and unless it was something I really wanted to change I just keep what they had if it sounded good to me.

00:46:52

That's why it's there.

00:46:53

Then we have Jay, backgrounds, Jay is the lead singer.

00:47:00

I'll solo that.

00:47:10

In this case the Valhalla room is first.

00:47:14

And right after that is this BF76 and this is compressing a lot so what happens here then is when he's singing there's not all that reverb on the vocal but as soon as he stops the tail comes way up because of that compressor.

00:47:54

So you really hear that reverb come up after the direct sound.

00:47:59

This is the SSL channel that was on there.

00:48:01

An Echoboy that I put on there to give a little...

00:48:04

a little repeats.

00:48:07

And that's pretty much all the elements.

00:48:10

And how this whole thing goes together.

00:48:13

One interesting thing on this project, on the brass and the lead vocals they recorded it to Pro Tools in the session and then transferred it to tape I believe it was an ATR 102, and then back to Pro Tools. It's going to real tape, rather than some kind of simulation, which warms it up nicely.

00:48:32

All these tracks are sent to the groups as we discussed before, here are the audio subgroups.

00:48:37

Bass, no processing on it, drums, no processing. Percussion...

00:48:42

it's adding a little top end.

00:48:44

A little air there.

00:48:45

Usually I put processing on these busses once I get the balance, get everything there and then if one group of things need a little more top end or a little more body or compression as a group, that's when I put it on the sum group.

00:49:01

Strings, this bx_solo, this is a plug-in from Brainworx, it's a stereo widening plug-in.

00:49:07

I'm just widening the synth strings and the strings a little bit with those.

00:49:13

The girl backgrounds, a little EQ cutting the low-end off below any of their fundamentals.

00:49:20

And that was because when we sighted it, in things of the individual tracks, I had it where I thought it would be good and then, putting the whole mix together I thought: "OK, I could use a little more top overall on that group".

00:49:34

Or maybe there was a little of a rumble in the bottom.

00:49:38

But rather than going back and changing everything in the group I'm just doing it on the sub.

00:49:43

The same with the de-esser there.

00:49:45

That same thing is pretty much on all the vocals.

00:49:48

Oh, a little LA-2A on the lead vocal, which was done after the other compression.

00:49:54

And I probably did that more for character because I know I'm using that FabFilter C2 that's very clean on the lead.

00:50:06

And this has got a really nice warm characteristic.

00:50:09

Also, a Microshift is on there mixed almost dry.

00:50:14

Microshift is slight pitch-shift on each side, an electronic double.

00:50:20

Just a slight bit of that on the lead vocal.

00:50:23

The lead vocal is already doubled but I think this spreads it a little and makes it a little fatter That's pretty much what I did in the bus on the subgroups.

00:50:32

Now the Stereo Bus, we have all these subgroups summed into the Stereo Master through the Mix Bus and on it we have this EQ which is cutting up a little 25 Hz just to get rid of any subsonic stuff.

00:50:48

Cutting back a little bit about 150 where there's some mud in there.

00:50:53

A little presence boost around 3.2 kHz.

00:50:57

A little high boost around 16 kHz.

00:51:00

And then it goes from there to this Manley MST from UAD.

00:51:05

I really like this equalizer.

00:51:07

A nice thing is this thing has really really nice air and presence on top.

00:51:12

I'm using a 16 kHz boost for this a little bit.

00:51:15

And then cutting back maybe 0.5 dB on 180.

00:51:19

And a little boost around 47.

00:51:23

We're boosting the low-end and then the EQ before is cutting it below that.

00:51:27

We're getting a nice heavy bottom end but not a lot of subsonics.

00:51:31

And then going through this FabFilter Pro-L which is a limiter but we're really limiting very little.

00:51:47

Just hitting about 1 dB so there's no clipping.

00:51:50

No appreciable amount of limiting is being used because that's how I send it to mastering, I give the mastering engineer some room to work.

00:51:58

I usually send a mix to the clients first and that's a lot more limiting so it's as loud as a commercial record but then I send one less limited to the mastering engineer so he's got some room to work rather than send something slammed and brick-walled, they can't really do anything with it.

00:52:15

I'll play some of the mix without the EQ and we'll turn each one on.

00:52:37

It's pretty subtle but it helps a little.

00:52:39

A little bit of bottom and air.

00:52:41

So now, I just wanna show some of the automation.

00:52:44

I put every channel on volume automation view so we can see any volume automation.

00:52:51

See, in most channels there's none none that's on audio there.

00:52:55

There's quite a few things that session came to me with.

00:53:00

There's one I did, I rode the piano solo, right there, so that's on that channel.

00:53:06

Here, the Memory Moog was sent to me that way.

00:53:10

You can usually see because I do the automation with faders so it looks like these and when they do automation for the arrangement before they send it to me you can see it's mostly just done graphically.

00:53:22

You can see where they did that.

00:53:24

We kept their automation, it's pretty much part of the arrangement.

00:53:27

We have those strings come up drastically and everything.

00:53:33

And then my automation is mostly on the subgroup.

00:53:38

Percussion rides in the Bridge.

00:53:41

There's guitar rides in a few spots, string rides in quite a few spots.

00:53:47

Brass.

00:53:48

Lots on the vocals.

00:53:50

I pretty much get mixes in the groups first.

00:53:53

I do the final rides on the groups and then if things within the group aren't gelling then I'll go back to the group and fix things in there.

00:54:02

I guess it's sort of my old-school way of doing things when I used to do sessions with 16 tracks or 24, however.

00:54:09

I try to get it really close going to the dozen or so groups I have and then do the final tweaks on that.

00:54:17

I do the tweaks usually on the Audio groups instead of the VCAs because if I do on the VCAs and there's processing on the groups I'm changing that because we're hitting it at different levels, changing the compression.

00:54:33

The Audio Groups are the final level control before it hits the Mixbus.

00:54:37

There's a couple situations that I would do it differently, do it on the tracks that are feeding that.

00:54:43

Suppose there's drastic moves and there's reverb and delays on it, if I'm doing the move on the group I'm doing it at the return of the effect so the effect is changing and if I do it before that the effect, our return, is at a constant level.

00:55:00

A lot of times I'll do vocal rides on the actual track rather than on the group, if it's gonna affect the reverb or delay on it.

00:55:11

OK, let's listen back to the whole mix now.

00:55:14

You can see the automation and listen to the song.

00:59:37

Remember, take your vitamins!