Lessons

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Demo: Mixing a Rock Track Part 3

I needed a minute away from this because as we talk about we was perspective I wantto not hear this for a second usually I would check my twitter feed and you know let somebody who said something nice about chris christie or something anyway so let's hear this again so yeah my biggest concern now is I'm still not getting the excitement I want from drums so how do we get excitement harmonics a lot of the time so I'm gonna start dealing with like how would I like to distort some of this stuff to get some more harmonics out of it so so what just happened here is I liked the air distortion on all the kick drums and I often do but then just now when I heard any of this distortion on the snare drum I went I do and it doesn't sound good so that I'm going to go to my next friend that I really like which is the fab filter and I'm gonna turn it down to zero before I even get started and see what it sounds like a plan and as usual when I don't like the air distortion on something I usually like t...

his fab filter on something so turns out that sounds great to me that's so that's working a lot better for me on the drums so you probably knows thing I'm not processing that tom's yet so I like to kind of get a as I talked about is, I like to kind of stay macro about the big things and not get confused with your kidney the times they're such a small part of this song and they're not played that often, you know there is on ly you know, uh, that two pits and then another two four time gets played once, so I'm going to focus on those on a loop later in the song after I have everything a little bit more rocking since there's such a bit part of the song, but for a song that you know is a lot more tom heavy, I'd be really getting into them now too, so I'm not hearing how much I really want to distort the's overheads, but I do hear that they don't sound as classy and why stay classy? I just kind of mean like hi fi and audio file and pretty and areas I'd like, so I know one of the plug ins that can help me with that in my repertoire is our friend the phoenix yet again. So I'm gonna play with this on solo so you're destined sounds really awesome to me and then the next one pick is this brightness that sapphire something about rights and I'm not diluted, I'm not dallas in the mix because I think it will be a little more accurate so too much gets me a little bit which speier that I'm like I don't want to do that since the opposite I want so some little moderation so the one thing I'm notices that first mohr drum vibe I'm definitely looking to get something out of them or out of the room that I'm getting and this is a pretty well recorded room track was I really like the way this is recorded I'm going to boost it up in the mix and I'm gonna try to do so more processing so one of the my favorite room compressors that yet again I don't always used for my stuff but I really like it a lot for other ways people recorded room is thie l a to a which is just the most standard kind of make it loud compressor it's similar very somewhere the vocal compressor I used for a lot of things I just love the way this does to room in the sense of a room that will react well do it I think that that's another thing is learning some of the compressors and not going into that thing of like oh dada dada uses this on the room learn what these compressors do on different things and you'll know when you hear a certain one when it works for you like for me I know this is probably why I'm going to go for an odds are this will probably work out yeah so that's starting to give a lot better of a vibe to the room so I'm gonna bring this back down in the mix cool so now I'm just not hearing harmonically what I want so I'm gonna run over and I'm going to get a saturn and a distortion and play around with those let's see if they can give me some more fun stuff so turn both of these all the way down and see what one use me a good body cool so a little bit of a combination of using a little of each actually I was feeling really good to me um so now I'm also feeling like I'm gonna put this tape on it for one last finishing touch really like in this era destin in here today and I don't know if that's just that this room makes me like cause I don't usually use this at home but it's sounding awesome today could be these tracks I'm going to do one really cool and fun trick that I do on snares a lot that I learned so let's listen to snare so we think of like a really awesome snare and the strike it will excite that high end and really like bring out the pop in that snare so one of the ways I've learned to do this and I didn't learn it from anybody else aside from my own needing to make it happen one time is using upward expansion on the snare and here in technically you know, I don't even need all these bands I could just go back toe this, so I'm going to just use one band on the snare on the started or somewhere around six k to start and I have to remember which one of these I used to do this, but I think it's this one, but I'm going to make a band on this multi band that on lee when the snare gets hit, will it raise the high end? So that way, if I did this with the q, I'd be bringing out too much of the high hat and getting a really rasping that nasty, ratty high hat sound, but this will do it just as the snare reacts and I tend to find this sounds really good in here, so let me try to dial this in and I started a two to one ratio, so you guys, this is that with him without the bypass, it really brings out a lot of the top end, and this is like one of my favorite tricks I've ever learned and all these years is just this is that way tio get a stare, and while I think this there is pretty damn well recorded it's just not doing what I want for this storm quite yet, so this is one of them so I might have to balance the stare a little bit different now against the trigger with that but it really gives some life to that drum sound the last thing to do before this break up is there's just something these symbols that's really low in murky that and not crystal I want to get rid of cool so I guess before we take this break I know when we get back I want to hear get these this kick a little bit more punchy and get this still a little bit more articulate but I'm feeling pretty good about these little tricks were doing to make some progress do you have any questions before we go to break? Do you always pan that extreme electric guitars, hats, etcetera or does the composition you're working on determine that always almost almost always yeah, I think that there's you only have so much space in the mix and I tend to find leaving it wide I tended to revive the records of course, but let me say this too is of a guitar plays alone and there's a part of the some of the tar pits plays alone absolutely not thea other thing I'll say is I often and I haven't gotten there yet but it's in the plan for when we get back is that I'll put a reverb on that all puts a little something the other speakers so it doesn't sound so alone but yeah, I'll move the panning when it stops. But once the full bands kicked in, I do pan wide almost every time because it's, what? Sounds good to me and it's. What most of the mixes? I hear that I like sound like I think that that is a choice. And there's a couple people I know who don't do that, but most the records. I like the guitars or really what crosby had simply oh, I was just gonna comment on just when you're opening up the mix. Ah, that the low pass and high pass ah, made a world of difference. Uh, I, you know, at the beginning of the mix, I was thinking that we were just going to go in completely different route in order to make room for the vocal, but, you know, just ah, adding the low pass and hype house on that has, you know, it's already created this little nook for it, and we haven't even really touched the vocal. Yeah, yeah, and I think some of this I know where a vocal goes a little, but I know this sounds so I'm able to not have the vocal inasmuch a lot of time, I will have the vote corn, but I'm very bad at not focusing on lyrics and vocal performances when I was with song well so I'm just keeping this off because we also don't have as much time as I'd liketo do this and I want to focus but I think sometimes it's great to keep the vocal and so you do have that in mind I will actually diallo vocal sound a lot of the time but I'm pretty confident with the way I hear this vocal that it's going to work out great yeah, I think it's really it's really interesting for ah other people who are you know, trying to figure out their process to see to see you go from that direction because usually it's it's additive rather than subtract ihe ve you know where people are always like well, you know, I added the vocal now going to make room for it rather iand proactively make make some space for it so there's definitely an almost every mixture gonna have to make some room for that vocal or you're just gonna make it two out cool another question from mac kino who said why are you using pre fader monitoring? Is it measured pre or post plug ins? Uh you mean metering not muttering is he saying he said monitoring earth's here she's had monitored turning maybe they meant me tearing uh I don't know that I'm doing pre fader monitoring pre fader meeting because I imagine that's what was left on and I didn't know to look any better. Honestly, I usually just look at thes these meters and I trust what I see, maybe that this is not lice own system and I'm not saying I didn't even think to look at me. Look in these options, but, uh, professor meters they are right. I'd be interested to see what the meters look like without that. Yeah, I guess I normally do use prefigure meeting and I don't know why I I think I do that so that I could see the comparison of the compression output game. I could see when I bypassed that if it's any different, ok, I didn't know I did that, but I guess I do that you can learn something that pretty oh, wanting counters view if you make the slightest there's someone on the internet it's true, I did there watching, and I should also profess that with that I know some of these are e q moves. You're probably sitting there going, what the hell is he doing? This room sounds very different than your room. This is not an acoustically treated room, it's, a much bigger room. This room is three times the size of the room. I mix in every day, it's, probably not the most accurate, but this is to give you ideas for how you use this yourself, not to say we'll get how perfect I make a mix. This is just my methods and my methodology, so you can see if you can learn anything. Yeah, we're showing you the process. You don't have to necessarily like the outcome. It may not be perfect, yes, but we're showing you the process. So you don't like those accused. Make another one.