Transcript

00:51:39 And just because it's the bottom of the guitar, it's kind of the top of the bass, kick or where the floor tom is ringing or whatever is kind of all coming together there, it's just murky crap that's eating headroom.

00:51:24 I mean, look at how I can pull that down 12 dB, I'm not going to but I could pull that down 20 dB and that doesn't affect the content of the excitement of the mix at all but when you put it back you realize how much bloat there is at 117.

00:50:52 This is the type of thing that I'm notching out before the Print.

00:50:33 You find sort of turbulence, like there's a different tone happening in between two frequencies that you care about, or there's, for whatever reason, this group of elements causes some sort of aharmonic activity that just eats headroom and doesn't do anything for the presentation of the song.

00:50:22 When I'm listening to these frequencies, the reason that I'm choosing them is sort of where you find the frequency that doesn't seem to be adding anything to the musicality.

00:49:52 Or it's an extension of the analog EQs that I'm using where I can't get as notchy with the particular gear I have.

00:49:34 Usually a cut in this case, the only time that I sort of engineer technically, correctly, the rest of the time I'm like just grabbing knobs and turning them until they stop, but once I move over into the box on the Print Path, it's kind of like voicing my Tape Machine to hear it the way I wanna hear it.

00:49:27 Like, if I'm not stacking EQs and I know I want just to put it across the entire mix, like a low-mid dip.

00:49:20 Things that I feel were loading up in a weird way in the analog domain and I'm just running out of EQ bands or whatever.

00:49:10 I'm gonna use the UA console on the way in because I can print some of the plug-ins and kind of get a little tweakier again about the mid character.

00:49:06 Along with an Apollo that is really just for processing.

00:49:01 With a Burl B2 and a Lavry Blue that I'm listening out of.

00:48:56 I use a separate Pro Tools rig running on a Laptop over here at the moment.

00:48:48 The way that I capture what I'm doing in the analog domain is back on a 2-Track device the same way that I would with an analog tape deck.

00:48:16 So when I move over to screen sharing and looking at the Print Path, which is a separate Pro Tools Rig, what I wind up looking for is just the almost mastering style of moves, just to get the tilt right, it's kind of an extension of the 2-Mix EQ that I'm using but I don't use anything notchy enough, sort of tweak head enough, so I use broader strokes at the console and then get a little more tweaky in the digital domain because it's good for that.

00:47:13 And on the Camilo Silva I'm using the .3 attack and the auto release, so kind of going after a different aspect of the mix, kind of riding the levels more than just knocking them around.

00:47:08 On the console I'm using the 1 millisecond attack and then the .3 release.

00:47:04 So, that Camilo Silva gives me a different time constant as well.

00:46:54 It's how it relates to the mids and then the mids hang in there and I want the mids to kind of start to dance with that low-end that I've added.

00:46:46 It's kind of to start to make the whole thing dance with that new low-end that I've now kind of injected back into the mix that I'm working on.

00:46:39 On the Print Path the Camilo Silva compressor is really just kind of catching some of that physicality.

00:46:37 And a little bit of the Air band at 15 kHz.

00:46:23 One I moved back to working on the 2-Mix EQ I wound up with taking down a little bit of 150 in this particular genre but moving up some 40 and the sub on the Maag, whatever that is.

00:46:00 OK, so I'm listening to 2 EQs and a compressor on the Print Path itself now, running into 96 kHz in a Burl B2 coming out of a Lavry Blue listening to it again at the center section so it doesn't look like anything has changed but we're hearing a completely different interpretation of the things that I have created before.

00:44:18 You know, my Print Chain, by flipping back and forth here, just by listening to external 5 on the SSL At this point I'll be listening to the returns of the 2-track and will hear what I'm doing to the Print Path.

00:44:12 And I can compare between just the 2-Mix and the external.

00:44:04 So this is where I change to listening to the externals at the center section and I'm listening to what's coming back from the whole chain.

00:43:58 And I listen on the externals the same way I would if I had a 2-Track machine set up.

00:43:47 Having that Camilo Silva on the Print path is having a Bus compressor that's hearing the mix I wanna hear instead the one that fits out the 2-Mix holes that SSL has given me.

00:43:44 More or less depending on the program material.

00:43:26 And so, what I want is get the mids right, get the mix happening and then actually add some low-end after the console, once I pass the Main Outs I don't have to deal with any headroom issues but I do want a compressor that's responding to those moves in the low-end.

00:43:20 You have to kind of convince console sometimes to let it all out.

00:43:01 I wound up with the Camilo Silva on the Print path after the Main Outs of the console because where I want the low-end to speak it just simply, even though the SSL is modded like crazy, Dan Zellman did a really nice 2-Mix mod for us, there's low-end coming out the Main Outs.

00:42:53 But we're running through the Maag EQ 4 and the Curve Bender and the Camilo Silva.

00:42:49 The Bus compressor is in, by the way, on the console, and has been since I started.

00:42:27 But we're actually running on the Main Outs of the console, we're going to Curve Bender, we're going to a Camilo Silva 4000 compressor, this was made before there was like 8 billion clones, this is kind of like a more hi-fi, higher headroom version of a 4000 Bus compressor.

00:42:19 I'm gonna start listening through the entire Print Chain because it's where the 'Print Machine' is, my 2-Track capture device is.

00:41:13 I'm just listening to the Toms which sort of were tracked well and I forgot that I should even care about trying to EQ them.

00:40:30 Like, the snap of the Kick, the top of the Snare, the toms and everything is kind of the same through that Aphex that I'm using.

00:40:21 I just took a look at the level of the parallel drum bus was doing to the Kick/Snare relationship because it sort of flattens everything in a good way.

00:40:15 But how it's translating on small speakers, the Auratones and the Bose, I wasn't listening on the SM25s at all.

00:40:05 I'm looking at a few different relationships at the same time at this point and one of them was sort of the Kick/Snare/Vocal situation as always.

00:38:06 We get tricked by big speakers into thinking that it's fun to listen to and then it becomes one of those mixes that's like a sonic parlor trick that sort of wears off after hearing it twice.

00:37:58 So I can kind of just hear what's happening in the mid-range without all the excitement of the physicality of larger speakers.

00:37:43 It doesn't mean that there's a mix consideration as far as making things translate, as a producer I'm looking at putting the focus on mid-range energy that will translate to anything because the song and the elements in the mid-range are the things will help pulling me down the arrangement.

00:37:29 I figure out whether what's happening in the mid-range carries me through the story, so if I'm creating a narrative arc with the mix as a producer I need enough energy in the mid-range that it translates to a phone even.

00:37:24 When I say listening like a producer I mean that I find...

00:37:13 That kind of doesn't exist anymore, it's more about the little powered computer speakers these days as the sort of lowest common denominator listen and I just know these things, I have them for years.

00:37:01 I think more like a producer when I'm listening to the Auratones and then I'll go over to this little Bose which for million years for me it was like having the boombox.

00:36:52 I primarily monitor on ATCs, the SM25s with the sub but from time to time I flip to the Auratones.

00:34:46 The thing people responded the most to when they heard this was that transitional energy, it was like this off the cliff feeling that this Chorus has and the superhero delivery that the singer gives during the Chorus.

00:34:42 It was all over the place, this record was number one alternative record last summer.

00:34:37 We knew was the single, this song wound up being like number one rock song.

00:34:31 You wind up opening up how to make this song exciting, how to make it work.

00:34:28 It's like at that point it's salt and pepper but you kind of got it.

00:34:24 Because you kind of crack that you have the mix.

00:34:20 It's like I'm listening how one thing gets to the next thing.

00:34:12 Usually for me, in a song like this, I listen to transitional energy more than I just need to listen to the whole verse.

00:34:00 But it is meant to be interpreted as kind of an extension of the bass guitar rather than if there was some magic organ player that sleeps during the verse and wakes up and starts playing.

00:33:51 The biggest change just now is bringing the sub, which is just a sine wave kind of synth that really pressurizes the mix during the Choruses.

00:33:44 Vocals shaping is happening again, sort of adjusting the mid character when he goes to the different range in the chorus.

00:33:40 I wanted the guitars to just get a bit more aggressive in the low-mids.

00:33:30 After looking at all the things happening here I wanted the piano to come up a little bit in that sort of instrumental after the first chorus.

00:32:08 Before it sounded really mid-rangy and now it's just way darker, it kind of adds more to the chest tone of the voice rather than just kind of this mega-phony thing that was happening wherever he was sitting before.

00:31:48 That Effectron is like a quarter inch In, it's almost like a guitar effect but we're running it through a balanced device and bringing it back to the console.

00:31:43 And that also means that I'm bringing it back to the console balanced because it's running through some transformers.

00:31:38 I usually make it darker so I wanna take down the top end noise that the Effectron creates.

00:31:32 I'm filtering the Send on the Spring but I'm filtering the Return on the delay.

00:31:25 I use it after the Effectron that I'm using, just to sort of round it off again for the same reason that I'm filtering the Send.

00:31:14 I use this Allison Filter, it's a high and low-pass filter, basically intended for laboratory usage but use it, customized, our tech here put UTC ins and outs on it.

00:31:11 The other two are really just coming out and I'm EQing them at the console.

00:31:06 Guitar 01 has the EQ and compressor chain on it.

00:31:01 The one that I played has nothing to do with what the other guy played, it just sort of adds depth in the Choruses.

00:30:54 The Guitar 2 is really just a unison double of what the basic guitar did, to widen it out in the Chorus.

00:30:48 There's Guitar 1, there's Guitar 2 and then there's a guitar that I played after the fact.

00:28:42 Instead of filtering the guitarist's gestures thorough more cliche lands we decided to actually just kind of use some really broken and blown out amps.

00:28:38 It need to have a unique texture to it so we just let it fly.

00:28:23 The whole idea, honestly, was to sort of build in a land mine so it never gets to that point where it feels like a Kemper or anything that's sort of like a POD or modeling type of too smooth in the distortion zone.

00:28:15 And the intention was always gonna be to EQ the hell out of these guitars.

00:28:10 So those EQs make a massive difference in how these guitars sit.

00:27:05 They have that same kind of aggressive forward thing, it's not like a Pultec in a sense, it doesn't make things smoother, it just sort of pushes the chest forward of anything that you want mid-range growl from.

00:26:58 There's boost and cut selections on each one and I've just found that these kick ass for guitar, basically.

00:26:55 Or a Lang, it's like a three band Lang, if you know what that is.

00:26:46 These are solid-state discrete EQs that kind of sort of kind of work like 3 band Pultecs.

00:26:20 I'm gonna use a pair of EQs on the tape out which are also obscure and then a Chandler Zener Limiter on the Insert just to get some compression happening on these guitars, it's gonna smooth out some of the smackiness of the half drive stuff.

00:26:18 And there's some mid stuff I wanna get on.

00:26:10 SM7 I know was what it was, SM7 in front of like a Fender Deluxe turned all the way up type of sound.

00:26:02 Let's get the patch happening on the guitar here because what I just heard on the guitar is kind of like an annoying just...

00:25:53 Rather than finding the low-mid in this one the way I did in the 47 and the 44 thing I felt like I wanted to hear some clacky EQed mids.

00:25:35 It's an R88 which is a stereo ribbon, which was about 10 feet in front of the drums and then a pair of Bovas Spherical Omnis that were spaced 20 feet back from the drums, something far.

00:25:20 And then, when I go back and look sometimes I'm chocked at what I actually grabbed for because the idea that I'm actually boosting 1.5 on one of the room pairs and 2 on another of the room pairs.

00:25:12 When I'm reaching out on a sweepable EQ, which is what it is on the SSL, I have no idea of what number it is when I first reach for it.

00:25:00 But there's even guitar tracks and some other little sort of production things that came later but the three piece band kind of lives on this side of the console at the moment.

00:24:46 That's why I'm gonna keep moving back and forth and back and forth scanning against how the kick works with the vocal, how the snare relates to the vocal and then basically the entire mid character of the band, it's a three piece band.

00:24:36 I wanna pull the way the snare is engaging that nice room in Bogota back up into foreground and sort of wrapping around this more mid intense vocal delivery.

00:24:27 So as I go after the vocal character it's shifting sands, now I'm hearing the lack of mid definition in my Room mics.

00:23:00 Because that one is post EQ, post console EQ, the other one is Pre.

00:22:47 The compressor on the Insert is gonna be more of a concern once I start EQing at the console, I started it in sort of a generic beginning position but then I'm gonna see how it responds when I start digging in to the EQ at the console.

00:22:33 I wind up tweaking it now more at the console EQ and then I keep returning to the outboard and back to the console until I get both things kind of working together, meaning the EQ, the compression, and the EQ at the console.

00:22:27 Kind of creating a shape that I like because then I make the guitars bend to the shape of the vocal.

00:22:16 I was just hearing some annoying mids that I'll go after more at the console but what I was responding to was just giving it some air, pulling him forward of the guitars really.

00:22:09 It's like changing from this verse kind of like winier thing to this very strong and super heroic delivery in the chorus.

00:21:50 With the vocal, what I was hearing was kind of boxy, mid-rangy thing. I think we tracked this with a 47 but the guy is a really good singer and stays kind of on the mic but definitely his got a lot of character available to him in his voice.

00:21:46 So, I need to find things that really support that arc.

00:21:37 Just listening to the vocal sit as we transition from Verse into Chorus here because we really change his character and its's coming out of the same channel.

00:19:58 For everybody who cares it's 140 volt rails massive headroom, it's the type of thing that when you watch something like the Godfather or anything that was made pre L2, that's the thing where you're like: 'God, how did that person just scream when they got shot and it's not distorting?' It's a limiter like that.

00:19:55 And therefore not hitting the rest of the chain as hard.

00:19:48 This just kind of eases the thing into the tape return to the console, so I'm just not hitting the console as hard.

00:19:24 Feeding that is the EQ on the channel and this compressor, which is a Magnatec 31B, this one is pulling back about 4 dB de-essing a little bit, I don't know how much because there's one needle to meter both things.

00:19:20 I'm probably nowhere near that but I'm stopping it at 8 dB.

00:19:10 I wasn't hitting it too hard, the comp range is adjustable on this particular compressor so I can limit the response to 8 dB of gain reduction total.

00:19:02 And I'm using the compressor section on medium ratio fast attack and release.

00:18:58 Just a little bit at 220 Hz for some chest.

00:18:48 On the Insert on the vocal chain we've got the Maag K-Comp because I'm using this parallel EQ, I'm adding some air on the vocal, 15 kHz.

00:18:43 Let's get to the vocal chain patched up here.

00:18:22 I'm using the bottom from the DI on the bass because in general, specially when it is a bass player in a rock band that uses pedals and stuff I don't even take the pedals to the DI sometimes because I just have consistent low-end from the instrument itself and then it moves around quite a bit coming out of the speakers of the amp.

00:18:04 I may decide to go outboard with some of these elements but I usually, in my work-flow, I start at the console, I face this way, figure out what I'm working with and then I get an idea like: "Oh OK! This one needs this particular tool to really start to speak." That's when I start to go outboard or to a plug-in or whatever.

00:18:00 I'm using the Dynamics section on the SSL at this point.

00:17:47 Again it's just high-passing the amp side and then getting more low-end of the DI side, I'll probably ultimately low-pass the DI so I'm sort of using the bottom of the DI and more of the top of the amp.

00:17:38 This bass has a lot of growly kind of mids in it, I really wanted to bring those to the foreground so the bass kind of fills up int the speaker a bit more.

00:17:33 Basically everything that we will be doing to varying degrees.

00:17:26 The kick and snare sort of starting to come into focus with some parallel stuff, some EQ stuff happening, and some compression.

00:15:57 This was tracked to tape as well so I'm gonna be conscious of noise management on all of these tracks, especially tracks where I'm gaining up a lot with the parallel send and adding top end which we're not doing yet but ultimately we always do.

00:15:52 So not like crazy gated closed, just pulling some of the noise down.

00:15:43 Same deal, Expander-Gate, really fast, you can set the range on the SSL expander, so it's pulling back 14 dB.

00:15:37 The release is all the way fast, which on a SSL is 'f', for fast.

00:15:29 So that's why I'm already listening to the snare top with some compression on it, which is 5:1 ish.

00:15:21 Same thing with snare top and snare bottom where I mind different aspects of the sound of the instrument from the two different microphones.

00:15:10 It negates any of the phasing inconsistencies that I've found when people hand me things to mix or even for me if I didn't bother to go move it because I just know the relationship was gonna be fine.

00:15:00 And for me, once I figure out that if I high-pass the crap out of the inside kick essentially all I have is one microphone at 40 Hz.

00:14:45 I just want it to be limited because that's really the snap in this style and I even high-passed it at 70 ish on the inside there because I'm gonna get most of my low-end from the resonant side kick drum.

00:14:33 The expander gate is on now, I'm starting to pull up so much gain on this channel that you can start to hear the bottom snare through the kick, you hear the bleed.

00:14:23 I went right to the dynamics section, I don't even have to look because all the way up is limited and I brought the threshold until it's just kind of grabbing the top of it.

00:14:16 I wound up going to the dynamics section on the SSL instead of going in-the-box or to an outboard piece of gear.

00:14:01 At this point I'm starting to engage EQs and some dynamics knowing that I want the kit to sit in a place in this particular style of music, I want the kit to just hang in there, basically at the exact same level at the entire time.

00:13:54 I was the producer on this particular project as well so it enabled me to kind of steer it towards the direction early on in the process.

00:13:48 There's also plug-ins on some of these elements that were already there because I start to put them on while we're tracking.

00:13:43 It's an 8058 with a really nice big live room, really good stuff there.

00:13:32 We tracked this at a place called AudioVision in Bogota, Colombia, which is a really nice room, it's a John Storyk designed space, he did it right after Electric Lady down there in Colombia.

00:11:37 This will be explained further when we get deeper in my work-flow that I kind move into the box at a certain point after I created the shapes much like if you record a performance on the piano and then manipulate it in the box rather than starting off in the box to create a piano performance.

00:11:21 It's not things I couldn't achieve by clicking but just like I can program a ten note chord on a piano in midi or I can put ten fingers on the piano and just play it.

00:11:15 For me it's like a piano in a sense, that my work-flow includes being able to put my hands on it.

00:11:09 I wind up with a high-pass, dynamics and EQ along with the Sends.

00:11:00 So at this point I'm really just listening to, starting to listen to the vocal, but on my way by I might hi-pass the backing vocal tracks.

00:10:53 That will slowly become the kind of flag in the send that I start to place things around those two elements.

00:10:33 So in general at this point I'm gonna be going around, back and forth to all the channels, I kind of keep going back and forth as the priorities, how the snare verb works with the vocal, how the verb works on the vocal, because it's the same verb, how the vocal relates to the snare drum right away becomes a concern early on.

00:09:29 So the longer reverb coming off a mechanical reverb, like a spring, I just want it to be darker so I have the send cranked on the bottom snare right now and I'm gonna listen to that and adjust the low-pass so we don't wind up with a bunch of springy top end on the drums.

00:09:17 It's really just to darken it a bit, I like the sound of the spring but I don't need the springy top end of it because the things that I'm using on snare and the other brighter elements come from the Bricasti anyway.

00:09:10 I'm using high and low-pass filter in the 500 rack back here to filter the send to the Spring Verb.

00:08:22 It's really just to get the delay time.

00:08:17 It might be a little bit on the snare but in this case I'm not intending for it to be there.

00:08:09 It's not intended to be on the snare drum in the end, I'm just using the snare as a good way to time the delay that I will more likely use on the vocal.

00:08:03 I'm only putting that delay on the snare just so I can find the delay time.

00:06:44 And the Bricasti is on .8 second, more of a room sound for the Drums.

00:06:31 Aux 4 is gonna be a BX 10, which is an AKG spring reverb, sort of like the upper-mid sized one, the BX 20 is the biggest one they made.

00:06:17 The Effectron, which is a delay, is a little bit noisy at rest so I'm gonna gate it lightly. Just above system noise.

00:06:09 Every single channel on this SSL 8000 has Dynamics which means it also has an Expander-Gate.

00:05:59 Aux 2 is going to an Effectron right behind me here.

00:05:50 I'm labeling on the console right now which Aux Send is going to what piece of gear in the rack so I can keep it straight.

00:05:40 And so I'm gonna wind up moving towards having some effects that I know I'm gonna want.

00:05:34 I've listened to each track, I've listened to kind of what we're working with here, I have the benefit of having heard this song before.

00:05:28 At this point in the mix I'm gonna put up some effects because I know where this is going.

00:04:58 I didn't even look at the Bus compressor, it's pretty much all the way up.

00:04:30 In this case I'm using it to go to a parallel drum bus.

00:04:20 The Stereo Cue Send is normally used for either monitoring headphone mixes or to send to a Stereo Reverb.

00:04:10 On this console we have four mono Cue sends and we have...

00:04:05 Not only is that handy for recall, I like the way it sounds.

00:03:56 Basically, with the settings it's pretty easy to describe, it's every single thing all the way up, it's what I wind up with on my Drum Bus.

00:03:52 And it's got a 'drive' that's kind of like an Aphex Exciter situation.

00:03:43 What I love about it is that you can kind of make it drive dark or bright by using the low and high frequency controls.

00:03:26 The Aphex Studio Dominator is what I'm using on the Stereo Bus as my drum parallel, a weird, one space, multiband limiter that basically was intended for use at College Radio Stations in the 80s and early 90s.

00:02:55 That was the only one that felt really far off.

00:02:44 It's sort of like a summed mono room thing and it was just really woofy so I just wound up reaching for some low-mid frequency and pulling it out.

00:02:37 But in Pro Tools I'm pulling it down 8 dB, it turns out, I wouldn't have know that.

00:02:23 So the first thing that I'm reaching for here is what's labeled '47/44 Room' which I guess is just some 47 mono and 44 coming out the same output.

00:01:38 It's really that simple as far as starting to figure out what's important about the song.

00:01:32 We'll get it laid out on the console and we will start listening to individual elements out of Pro Tools.

00:01:27 Regardless of the delivery sample rate I always capture at 96 kHz.

00:01:16 I'm capturing at 96 kHz, also through a Burl but it's a Burl B2 in this case on the Print Rig and it's at 48 kHz on the multi-track.

00:01:11 In this case it's just replaced by two Pro Tools rigs running at different sample rates.

00:01:02 Just like a tape session, it's like we're starting on our multi-track tape machine and we're printing to our 2-track stereo capture tape machine.

00:00:50 We then run off the main outputs of the SSL, we run it out to a Print path set of things in the hardware domain and then back into a 2-track print device.

00:00:44 Or we can patch at the Insert and then select on the SSL whether it's Pre or Post EQ.

00:00:41 That will be sort of the 'pre' console patch.

00:00:33 Outboard gear is inserted exactly the same way, where we can break it at the tape machine output and then return into the line in.

00:00:27 And exactly like if we were doing this off of the tape, it comes to the tape returns of the SSL.

00:00:22 And I work hybrid so I'll be using plug-ins and outboard gear.

00:00:16 I'll be coming out of Pro Tools, one sound per channel, essentially, on the console.

00:00:00 I'm Joel Hamilton and we're here at Studio G, Brooklyn in Room A where I'm gonna mix 'My Name Is Human' by Highly Suspect.

00:00:00

I wanted to hear more motion in the chorus from a loop that's happening in the background, even though we don't really notice.

00:00:06

Again, it's flipping between listening like a producer and listening like a mix engineer where it's like getting the tilt right and then going: 'OK, at that tilt we now don't have enough energy happening in this clacky mids in the rhythm section.' Cause again, this is a three piece band.

00:00:23

I brought up some of the guitar stuff that I played on it and I brought up some of the loops and actually kind of equalized the loops to sneak them up into a range where there's now sort of a deficit in there based on the scooping and tweaking that I did on the EQs.

00:00:39

It's also the way that these things start to hit, the 2-Mix processing, like the way that the Camilo Silva is moving, it makes me hear different things sitting in front of the ATCs now.

00:00:48

Like when the kick starts to knock things out of the way and the loop comes back in the gaps a bit.

00:00:54

It's like I can get away with a bit more volume, it's not side-chaining but it's like the loudest gesture wins through the Bus compression.

00:01:02

Here's the loop.

00:01:47

I made that loop with Recycle a million year ago and I wound up with it as a Recycle file that I played in Reason.

00:01:56

As a sort of bit crunched drum thing, I think it was either me playing or someone around here just playing it and then it was sliced up and bit crunched with a pedal, one of those Alesis like bit cruncher things.

00:02:12

I can remember what that thing is called.

00:02:14

That's what gave motion to this Bridge initially and then I wound up really liking it in the Choruses as well, it kind of filled in some spaces that helped them move.

00:02:25

This Bridge has about eight gazillion tracks in it.

00:02:30

I will solo it in a second here.

00:03:00

Clearly it's supposed to just sort of be like noisy radio transmissions all laying over each other.

00:03:07

It's just filtered like crazy and adding some chaos to this weird mechanical Bridgy section.

00:03:13

We recorded basically everybody at the studio reading different things we grabbed off the internet randomly about conspiracy theories about the universe, things like that.

00:03:25

This is all stuff that's down to the right, it helps give some depth to this three piece image in this mix.

00:04:41

I'm just looking at the print level at this point because it's a little bit bananas, which is weird because at the 2-Mix it's not that crazy but I still backed it down a bit.

00:04:52

And it's because I'm hitting the front of the Burl on purpose a little bit harder like -8 would be unity basically at this point.

00:05:02

We're at -16 so it's kind of like driving in the transformers of the B2 a little bit.

00:05:08

These moves are much less renegade, this is like moving tweaky little things, again, listening loud, listening on different speakers.

00:05:17

I do most of the work on ATCs and then the finer work I jump around a bit more, or turn in down and turn it up.

00:05:24

And figure out what's annoying me when I have it cranked and kind of mellow that out a bit.

00:07:22

It's kind of like if I throw a global boost of a top-end shelf, it's kind of the same is if you were lighting the room and there was something kind of silver behind me.

00:07:32

That one spot, it gets real hot.

00:07:35

And the rest looks great.

00:07:36

So it's like, I'm throwing a kind of diffused light on everything when I put a top-end boost on it and it winds up revealing a few hot spots in the mix like maybe some S’s and cymbal thing here or there, the backing vocals just had a weird top end so I'm low-passing them now at the console at 12 kHz.

00:07:58

No big deal but just because there's something really zeenie happening way up top now that I'm boosting on the Air band and the top In-the-Box at 10 kHz, like a big wide bell, and that kind of started to make some S’s get a little hot.

00:08:13

Now I'm going back and re-evaluating the top-end that I had going back and forth between the box and the console to kind of open things up a bit more and that's the game for me at this point.

00:08:25

It's like, how much can I open this up and retain the character.

00:08:29

I haven't really gone outboard much on this mix and mostly it's because I tracked it with the intention built-in to the tracks already.

00:08:38

There's a lot of times where I need a ton of outboard gear to get things to go where they need to go but in general there's times where a very small number of things doing a lot, like an 1176 going crazy by itself is a completely different sound than 4 compressors, one after the next, each pulling back 2 dB, that's 8 dB right? In the end it's 2 dB each but a compressor pulling back 8 dB doesn't sound like four compressors pulling back 2 each.

00:09:08

It's a completely different thing.

00:09:10

That same thing happens because of the way amplifiers work, because of topologies and architectures within a piece of gear, it's completely different for me to just wind on 15 kHz at one EQ versus having three different EQs all kind of handling a different aspect of the top-end.

00:09:31

The Massive Passive mastering plug-in is bringing up kind of a 10 kHz bell.

00:09:37

The Maag is bringing up 15 and up, like a big wide shelf, the Air band thing.

00:09:44

I wound up chilling out on the Curve Bender, I'm not even boosting any top-end at this point, I'm just filtering and dropping a little bit of 150 but I like the transformers in that thing and keeping it in-line.

00:09:54

Each amplifier brings a slightly different color to the sound.

00:09:59

Just like you would choose between a Marshall and a Fender, with the same guitar you wind up with a completely different tone, specially when you turn it way up.

00:10:08

You wind up revealing the character of the amplifier at that point.

00:10:12

That's yet another example of a few things doing a little.

00:10:15

If I had 10 different amps, each one only on 2, it's not very different, you wouldn't really hear the difference between them but if I crank the Fender, crank the Marshall then crank the Supro, all three sound very very different.

00:10:29

That's the reason to have something do a lot on its own because it reveals its character directly or having a few things reveal their character in a more subtle musical way across the entire mix.

00:10:40

That's why I'll get more renegade at the channel then I will across the entire mix.

00:10:46

Especially when I'm trying to preserve transients and depth and color on the 2-Mix that I fought with at the channel itself.

00:10:56

I think a big thing at this point for me always in the mix is that I wanna feel like it's rocking and then build the low-end to the point where I'm not blowing things up.

00:11:07

It's like we get the mids right because it's where the perception of volume comes from.

00:11:12

The vocal and the snare relationship is where I'm gonna judge how loud it is in the room.

00:11:16

And then relative to that that's where it's important to see whether the kick is then destroying the speakers.

00:11:22

Obviously I can turn the low-end all the way up and the kick all the way up and then just listen really quiet, it doesn't destroy my ATCs.

00:11:29

And basically it's like, when I see them working too hard at the playback volume that I'm intending people to hear that, I know there's something wrong, it's like the tilt is wrong.

00:11:39

And parts of these are mastering of course but it all goes together.

00:11:44

It's like this is, I gotta hand the gesture to Joe Laporta at Sterling who ultimately really mastered the one that's on the album and have him speed it even farther in that direction where when we get it to the perceived volume we're looking for it's not making the motors work too hard because ultimately that's what these things are.

00:13:18

I'm gonna add a little bit in-the-box here, there's an automated delay on the main vocal.

00:13:26

So I'm just gonna bring this whole thing up.

00:13:29

Just a little bit.

00:14:29

All right, so same deal, going back to the 2-Mix EQ to add a little 6.5 because on the small speakers, right where I wanted something to kind of speak on the snare and the voice, I needed some life there.

00:14:45

Adding a little bit more of that delay is starting to give this Chorus a bit of that superhero vibe that I was looking for.

00:14:52

The hard part in my opinion is that you're playing with the perception of what's big and what's small.

00:14:58

There's a flag in the send as to what's loud, it's the vocal and the snare and the guitar is coming from nowhere and start challenging that guy, that's what gives us the illusion that it got really gigantic in the chorus along with the sub getting engaged, that just floods the room at that point.

00:15:51

There's something annoying happening in the guitars here that I'm now looking at, I just wanna take another look at what I'm doing here.

00:15:59

This is again on the Print path.

00:16:01

There's just some funny business going on in some mids there are disturbing me in the Chorus.

00:16:07

I might have to get it at the channel or it might be a global thing I can move.

00:16:35

And we're getting pretty close to printing this.

00:16:38

The 2-Track device that I'm printing to here is another Pro Tools rig.

00:16:42

The one that I described with the Burl B2 and the Lavry.

00:16:45

We're going through the UA Console with a couple of plug-ins on it, some final EQ tweaky things.

00:16:51

In the Pro Tools, Pro Tools is locked with time-code over Ethernet.

00:16:58

And so basically, whenever I hit go on the multi-track machine the print path rolls.

00:17:04

And so I'm screen sharing to be able to put it in record and then when I hit play over here it records in the same place every single time.

00:17:11

So when I'm printing stems or all the subsequent prints like an instrumental, an 'a Capella', any of those things, it's always in sync with the multi-track device.

00:17:21

If you have a laptop or two or you have multiple computers and you're doing a lot of stuff with like 'Native Instruments' or midi, or things like that time-code over Ethernet because you can connect two computers together and just make a couple of Auxes, even on the In-the-Box session, and have one computer that's just dealing with running the sampler, five soft synths, free other things and run it in to your main session that's running your multi-track program.

00:17:50

And you wind up with massive amounts of processing power on a computer that's only handling midi notes and soft synths.

00:17:57

I used to do it to just be able to run things amazingly from tape and having an USB midi type of device that is reading time-code SMPT and just locking a computer and using it like a sampler that's in sync with a multi-track tape machine because I had a 2-inch 16 track.

00:18:20

So it was like we steal one of the tracks just to be able to lock the computer to it rather than using like sequencer based, hardware sequencers because they were a pain in the ass.

00:18:30

We have the ability to lock computers that's why I got into locking these things together, when computers weren't as powerful and I had some soft synth going on and I just ran it on my laptop while the other computer, a Pro Tools Mix Plus rig, was handling the audio and I brought it back on the console anyway.

00:18:50

So even if you work In-the-Box this works but for me it's like I can bring back a couple sounds from soft synths like down in the right on the console and include those in the mix and they are just in sync over Ethernet, that means you don't even have to be sitting that close to each other if you've got a long enough Cat 6 cable.

00:19:06

You can use your laptop as a remote to record yourself in the other room that way.

00:20:12

Just a few final tweaks to the backing vocal top end.

00:20:16

Just final shaving of things here.

00:20:19

We're at the point where I'd start printing some stems here.

00:20:23

I use stems not only for recall but I sort of move the shapes I've created in the analog domain into the box at that point and sometimes tweak further.

00:20:33

Which is what we're gonna do with this mix.

00:20:35

When I first started doing this was because I was doing a record for a guy who is called 'Pretty Lights' and everything that he does is like, In-the-box created, like with summing boxes and stuff and there's just massive headroom.

00:20:50

Just crazy amounts of headroom still hits it hard enough to distort it, like just going crazy with the levels and kind of the way it punches then comes out of the speakers the same way back in the day is the way like a snare sounds comes out like an MPC 60 turned all the way up.

00:21:07

There's like a square wave thing and you running up against that ceiling all the time and making it sound right.

00:21:13

And I was like, 'Wow, so I have to mix this and compete with that type of gain staging rather than doing anything that has to do with like just the straight up musicality I have on a console.

00:21:25

This just has to the hit, like and ogre shaking you.

00:21:28

The way that I decided to do it was to print stems.

00:21:31

Taking it farther in-the-box because I can sort of reset my headroom at that point and take it even crazier like using what I made almost like samples and recreating the mix in-the-box the same way that 'Pretty Lights' did, you know, when he used all the information we recorded it out in the room and took it into the box and just made everything huge.

00:21:52

So, it's sort of like putting yet another magnifying glass on things that we've created in the analog domain where we're subject to physics.

00:22:02

Whereas we're sort of not, in-the-box.

00:22:04

The way that I do this is I put it in record stand-by on the print path and it's locked to the main rig, so when I hit play here, it's gonna start recording over there.

00:26:42

There's further processing that I wanna do but I wanna do it in the digital domain because there some kind of tweaky things about the drums sound and a few other things that I wanna get into.

00:26:52

I always print a mix 1 off the console directly, but I don't always deliver that mix as the one that I give to the label or to the client, sometimes I do more in-the-box before I deliver it and in this case I'd like to do more.

00:27:09

For me deliverables are a mix 1, an instrumental, a TV mix and an 'a Capella', that's usually whats defined as deliverables and then for myself I'll print stems.

00:27:22

In this case stems would be the stereo mix, it's sort of a fold-down, a submix of the drums, keeping them exactly as they were in the mix and just muting the rest of the stuff on the console.

00:27:36

So we hear exactly what they were doing in the mix but by themselves, it's kind of like soloing the entire drum-kit and all the parallel processing and verb that's on them.

00:27:47

It's like just leaving exactly what the drums were doing and printing that to the print path.

00:27:54

It's locked with time-code so then we mute all the drums and we'll print the bass in real-time, exactly the way it appeared in the mix.

00:28:02

We'll do with the vocal, with the guitars, the piano and all the elements get they're own stem.

00:28:10

The reason it's a stem and not just a multi-track is that includes all the processing that happens during the mix and it doesn't change to print the stems, it's exactly the shape of the piece I've created that fits in the mix the way I want it, that's then sent by itself to the print machine so that we wind up with those pieces that can be reassembled for recall to sound exactly like it did.

00:28:36

When we go back and forth between the analog mix that was printed just as a 2-track and then stacking up all the stems at zero in Pro Tools, it should sound just like the analog mix and we make sure it does before we pull it off of the console, ten guitars becomes a stereo pair on the console, on faders, those two faders, but with the further processing, the EQ I have patched in this case and the compressor coming out the center section through the Bus compressor.

00:29:06

Now the Bus compression changes a bit because when you mute the drums and you mute all the other elements the guitars aren't now dancing with those drums anymore, that's when I wind up using something like an SSL G compressor as a plug-in on my stem session if I need to do a recall.

00:29:26

And honestly, nine times out of ten the way I'm using the compressor I'm not moving it enough to really care that I've lost 2 dB of kick drum 3 dB of kick drum dance to the real thing because I'm doing it in two different places, I wind up doing the same thing where there's like one plug-in compressor and then the one that was already on the stems.

00:29:50

When I'm printing stems I get the same gain structure even if I don't get the same time constants, the same compression dance.

00:29:56

I must print the submix of the drum stem and then we'll continue on with the rest of the stems.

00:30:01

This is where Francisco would do this, each time.

00:30:04

So, I think that I'll explain he's doing while he sits on this chair for a minute and actually gets it rolling.

00:30:10

So basically, all of the channels get muted, that are tracks but none of the channels get muted that are effects returns.

00:30:21

So even the Effectron, the BS-10, the Bricasti, the parallel drum bus obviously stays up.

00:30:28

We'll solo in the box as well in case there's something like a parallel send to like a side-chained plug-in compressor or any effects bleed or anything like that.

00:31:03

All right, so that's the drums, let's print the bass stem, next.

00:31:07

So in this case there is no effect send from the bass and so Francisco just soloed the bass tracks instead of leaving everything else opened.

00:31:18

The drums have so much else going on on the console the we left it opened and just muted the other elements but in this case we can just use solo and print out to the Print path.

00:31:28

A lot of the motion that's included as far as the bus compression response to the bass and the kick and everything it's motion that I've included by having an in-the-box send from the inside kick mic to a compressor on the bass in-the-box.

00:31:44

So even without them having to engage each other in the analog domain they're side-chained a little bit so we do get the same basic effect even when we're printing the stem as the kick drum being there moving it through the Bus compressor.

00:31:57

Now, it's the same thing that I'm checking for when I'm listening to the Bose with their cheap little limiter thing.

00:32:03

It's like I see the 2-Mix compression get hit less when I'm using it in-the-box, side-chained from the kick drum because the compressor is not responding to the energy of the kick and the energy of the bass at the same time.

00:32:17

So that's why we're not seeing it swing wildly all over the place because I've accommodated for that in-the-box before it comes out to the channels individually.

00:32:26

While we're printing the bass stem you'll hear it getting ducked by the kick drum pattern even without hearing the drums.

00:33:56

So during the verse there's actually an in-the-box side-chain thing happening.

00:33:59

I actually automated up the snare on the same bus that's keying the compressor that's on the bass and turned down the kick drum and then they flip in the Chorus where the kick is then moving it all of the way but almost an imperceptible amount, I can see it happening on the meters but you don't really hear it.

00:34:19

But there's just less energy, it's like 3 dB or something in the choruses.

00:34:23

So when we're printing these stems it takes the length of the song times the number of elements that we wanna print.

00:34:29

About an extra hour at the end of the mix to get these stems printed but this is what saves us three hours of recall.

00:34:39

Since we continue to mix analog an hour seems like a bargain to me compared to have to bring back every single thing that we've used.

00:34:48

This is mix is fairly minimal again because it was tracked with a lot of intention.

00:34:52

But there is times where it's just everything is patched, there's a million things going on outboard, we're using every single channel on the console, it would take hours to do the recall even with Total Recall on the SSL it still takes a person turning the knobs until the zeros back out again.

00:35:07

It doesn't all just snap back, you physically turn it, it just reminds you where it was when you finished it.

00:35:14

Francisco printed all the stems and what we're gonna open now is actually the original stem session from the mix that I delivered to the label, the one that ultimately was on the radio and of all that, the actual stems from that.

00:35:28

Because we can talk about the further processing that I've got into in theses stems, this was all done in-the-box.

00:35:36

So what I wound up with here is more EQ on the 2-Mix using the Manley again, using the Oxford again, with a couple notches, this is like .6, you can see, 1 dB here and then .8 up at 55, like just...

00:35:56

Just little moves here, it's things that I felt I didn't hit the target in the multi-track.

00:36:02

But I do wind up with the old UA SSL Bus compressor.

00:36:08

At this point I'm using the new one.

00:36:10

And then a limiter.

00:36:12

This was basically to give the listener it's not delivered with any limiting on it.

00:36:17

In this case, let's listen to the drum stem by itself, it's an obvious place to start here and we'll see what I would up doing on the EQ.

00:36:42

All these moves are incredibly minimal and they were made in context, I'm only soloing and playing them to give an example of what I pulled down and it's because it was relative to something else in the stems that I pulled down that 200.

00:36:58

Probably for some of the throw of the bass in the low-end in the guitars.

00:37:03

There's something in the room that was just not moving correctly with that.

00:37:06

Now let's listen to something like the main vocal for a minute here in the Chorus, we'll see what processing we have going on.

00:37:26

So I have a de-esser, an Aux for the EQ again, which I clearly use all the time.

00:37:32

In this case, sometimes I'll find things like on the sub, sometimes I'll find things where it's really just for tape noise or system noise and I'm managing that.

00:37:42

I'm pulling down the top-end because there's nothing about the sub that I care about above 500 so I'm low-passing like crazy just to get the noise out of that track.

00:37:53

So that I can kind of recompress a little bit in certain cases and not just keep pulling up the noise floor, system noise, compressor noise, tape noise because again, this stuff was tracked to tape so a lot of the elements that were tracked to tape and gained up quite a bit, the noise floor is up.

00:38:10

So anywhere that I can kind of just low-pass or get of rid of that noise, I will.

00:38:15

It's just easier in the digital domain to really just hack that top-end off and keep something like low-end phase consistent.

00:38:23

In the bass we wound up again, I wound up with something that was just engaging the cones a bit too much and these moves, again, were made in context.

00:38:33

But it was in relation to the drums the way that the bass worked.

00:38:37

Check it out in solo here in the Chorus.

00:39:04

So again, it's about the sort of bloat at 100 that was getting in to and a little bit more down way low, at the fundamental.

00:39:12

The thing that's cool about this that I love is the way that when you're equalizing a sample of a drum break you wind up equalizing the verb, you wind up equalizing everything because you can't remove them as individual sounds.

00:39:27

So it's just kind of every move is a global move when you're equalizing a drum loop that you've sampled in stereo off a record and I love that what I'm equalizing here and in the drums and the vocals and all of that I'm actually making a global move across all of those elements so what we're hearing as the bass now is actually three bass tracks summed down to a stereo pair and then equalized together. So I'm pulling this 100 Hz out of the DI and the amp track now and there's something about it that starts to make it kind of work together better.

00:40:00

The summed element sounds different than the individual elements even playing together on a console.

00:40:07

So now I'm moving it around as one thing, as one big thing.

00:40:11

This is like the stuff that was annoying me in the guitars that was starting to go after in the 2-Mix here.

00:40:19

I went even farther with it in the stems and pulled down 4 kHz ish almost 2 dB, which is a lot in the stem world for me.

00:40:29

I high-passed just to get rid of the crap at the bottom.

00:40:56

And remember that these, in solo, are not something individually that are meant to work alone.

00:41:04

So now guitar 2, because this kind of one big sound when Guitar 1 and Guitar 2 kick in the Chorus, so here's what Guitar 2 is doing.

00:41:35

All of these are incredibly minimal, there's like 2, 2.5 dB moves at specific frequencies and it's the way that it was stepping on something else in the mix.

00:41:45

That move in the guitar probably revealed the chest in the snare in the Choruses.

00:41:50

It's like right where I like the snare to speak like in a sort of 250 to 300 range at the bottom of it where it feels really solid, that's exactly where I'm removing it out of this guitar stem.

00:42:03

And this guitar only happens in the Chorus and it's right where when it was masking something about the snare that I didn't like.

00:42:11

The extra guitars have no further processing but these is how they wound up.

00:42:35

That's just me playing extra guitars through Shimmer, it's the Valhalla plug-in.

00:42:40

Those were printed as one thing.

00:42:43

It gives some depth to the chorus.

00:42:45

The piano by itself wound up this.

00:43:04

So basically people don't realize they're like the Halloween soundtrack.

00:43:07

Because it's basically playing in the background of this, I didn't remember it being basically that.

00:43:13

There's like a vocal 2 moment.

00:43:16

This was a part of the recall, it's actually sort of changing how the radio edit worked in the bridge.

00:43:22

It was adding a main vocal, a kind of extra thing in the Bridge of the radio edit because the album version, the bridge is twice as long.

00:43:33

So this is an example of where in the stem session it's kind of yet another chance.

00:43:39

You know, I've done vocal overdubs into a stem session a bunch of times.

00:43:44

Now we're just gonna listen to the mix that I delivered with all the digital processing on all the stems happening.

00:43:50

And then I'll bypass all the digital processing that we've done in the stem session.

00:44:44

With the processing I feel like this track has a certain magic to it, it gives you this like velocity, like you lost the brakes going down the mountain in the Choruses.

00:44:55

And then without the processing, it gets a bit more flat-footed, it's the way that it moves down the street, it's the subtlety of the feeling that I get and what I picture in my mind when I hear it with the processing intact.

00:45:09

With the processing I see the singer like with his heels on the edge of the Empire State Building, like proclaiming this to the entire city in Manhattan.

00:45:18

And without I kind of just hear a band.

00:45:22

A lot of my favorite records were made with really minimal gear.

00:45:25

My favorite rock records, my favorite funk records, a lot of them were made with minimal track count, minimal effects but clever use of those effects and it's why even in something like this that ultimately went to the Grammys, again, it was number one Billboard, it got all the sort of numbers that labels get excited about.

00:45:50

And we used one mono Effectron delay that was about 100 bucks when I bought it, I think they are all the way to like 150 now on Ebay.

00:45:59

And a Spring Verb and a Bricasti.

00:46:03

One automated delay In-the-Box that was the only real sort of plug-in effect other than compression and EQ.

00:46:11

But working on a console, figuring out what each element needs to do to really speak.

00:46:18

To me those are the things that really moved me.

00:46:21

Using that long delay as a really obvious part of the arrangement in the Verse is kind of like...

00:46:27

To me that's Pink Floyd delay where it's really a part of the arrangement and that really speaks to me and that resonated with this band's fans.

00:46:37

It's where production, mix engineering and engineering all sort of blur together.

00:46:42

You can't figure out whether the song was just built to always have that delay there or whether the mix engineer put it afterwards as an idea of how to fill up a little bit of space an make the verse work.

00:46:52

As opposed to using the Bricasti to give a sense of a physical space around the drums.

00:46:59

There's always those two things in all my favorite records, there's an effect that gives an idea, a surreal space, some sort of heroic space where the...

00:47:09

these events took place.

00:47:11

Where the guy's echo bounces off the back wall at Pompeii.

00:47:15

So you wind up with these tracks, you have to have a vision for where they take place and that informs all the other moves.

00:47:21

Does this happen in a place where guitars are loud, does it happen where the walls are far from the snare or close to the snare? Giving a sense of place in a mix is as important as whether there's low-end in the kick drum in my opinion because that's where I visit when I was 12 or 14 and I get the chills listening to Led Zeppelin or listening to The Police or whoever it was, Run DMC.

00:47:48

I pictured a place that these events took place.

00:47:51

A pictured an actually Club or a venue where these sounds were happening.

00:47:57

And that's what made me connect myself to it rather than just whether there was 80 Hz in the kick drum or not.

00:48:04

That has no emotional appeal to me.

00:48:06

None of the technical aspects got inside my heart.

00:48:10

I would think about them but none of them got in my heart and took root.

00:48:13

So that's why when we are making moves like...

00:48:16

The final EQ moves in those stems that I'm talking about, imagining this guy as a superhero announcing this sentiment to all of Manhattan that's what moves me.

00:48:27

That's what all of this is in the pursuit of, is moving knobs and using everything in this room to finally forget that it's there and lean back an actually imagine where these sounds are taking place.

00:48:38

And hopefully it's a place that inspire someone and reaches and connects with them across space and time.

00:48:44

That's what makes a favorite band instead of good kick sound.

00:48:49

That's what makes a movement and creates gravity around the band instead of making a well-balanced mix.

00:48:56

So having a vision for connecting with other people leads me to make these decisions and makes them pretty easy.

00:49:02

It's pretty simple in the end when you're looking to communicate rather than just adjust things.

00:49:07

Every single move in a mix is in pursuit of the vision.

00:49:11

And when your vision is clear for who you're trying to communicate with it informs every other move on the console, every other move in processing.

00:49:19

Why to put reverb, why to put a delay, that's all answered by having a vision for where that mix needs to go.

00:49:27

It was with all that in mind that we put together this final mix of 'My Name is Human' by 'Highly Suspect'.