Lessons

Lesson Info

Mixing: EQ and Compressor

Good favors moving stuff forward, backward pans, moving our stuff off to the side, e q and in particular those filters and talk about the q just for a little bit more. Well, I've got it open here want to point out that besides those filters and turned stuff on and off with the just clicking on the shape of the component there dragging in out three boxes down here on the filters, what it's going to do is the one below it that says the dbs per active tells us how many decibels is going to cut for october frequencies so a very steep cut, meaning nothing gets through that filter or grant that way on again that's what we want to think about a filter, same ideas like I water filter it takes something out of it right in these cases frequencies so cutting stuff down on dh, moving them on the low side of the high side on the inside of those two and I'll turn those off our bypass them here you guys all know sees two shapes right there on the left side and the right side that's our shelving ik yo...

ur shelf accuse your serum called as I also like to think of them a lot as base in trouble controls because this is exactly what like a car stereo or a simple home stare with base in trouble we'll work with so let me find this parameter here you could just grab right on its the orange one will notice it on the bayside it just turns up bases and this is why they call it the shelf or shelving e q as it comes up everything from my center frequency I pick down low everything from that point on lower just gets brought up evenly in a nice flat area so it's basically like, turn up all the base, not a specific frequency or turn it down. This is great on both the low side and on the high side to do things in a more natural sort of musical way you don't notice that something's being brought out let me actually do this on one of our vocals because the human voice is something we all know so local war and I've loved you since I met you and it's always gonna be the awesome and are great thing on all these logic pro plug ins is if ever I've done a bunch of work here, I can hold down option and click on the different things that I've turned up and down and it's going to center them back again for me so all my boost that I ever had they're going to go away quickly set back to zero now with the shelving nick, you're gonna use the human voice here for us and I've loved you since I met you all those lows get brought up you don't know it's just one frequency coming out or drop brought down yes, I think this is like kind of gentle way to tame some frequencies not filtering I'm not cutting him off. Just turn them all down gradually at one point like a fader for just certain frequencies. In a way, I think of these on the high side and I feel like suddenly bring it up or mellowed out and this's a huge one for theo human voice this frequency rate here is big are this sorry this component of the q the shelves high shelf e q because something happens up here in these frequencies let me show you what I'm talking about no loved you since I met you, man it's always that stuff right there right doesn't sound all that impressive voice sounds impressive, you know doesn't sound like all that important number there's some gross lips massey stuff and some spit sounds and stuff like that it seems like that's not an important part of our recording that we did when in fact that's actually one of the most important parts of the recording that we did in the vocal, that little bit of stuff that when you isolate sound so bad and weird is actually where we're able to understand what each other are saying for example let me do that same thing hard to hear what the words are right I know someone you know well that but you get you know exactly what they're saying so by using this shelving q and adding just a little boost of it with you use words become a little bit more clear let me make this really obvious to us thiss vocals incredibly quiet for where it should be in a minute when I start that first wear we're saying right but even though it's still super quiet in the mix just by raising up only the high frequencies if you listen wait that sounds perfect the way that it is too quiet with the high frequencies but you can understand everything that they're saying so it's another one of those things don't solo don't listen it uh you know too much on its own it's about the whole mix so that's what these shelving accuse therefore sorry I was just saying nice it's nice that great I freaked out the first time I found out about hee kept because that's one of the most common things I hear they like the vocal doesn't pop through it's not loud enough and I can't understand the words and when you get to tell somebody wait introduced this thing called siblings the sc sound we're gonna have a processor to fix that as well yeah just curious what what what that range in the and the frequencies where that is sure. Absolutely so what he's asking is frequencies and this is something I should point out I'm gonna move just a little bit sorry to kruger. I'm gonna point a little bit I said before lows toe highs and what this is showing us is the human range of hearing basically in a deal, they not for me, unfortunately, but twenty hertz is the lowest thing that we could possibly hear all the way up to twenty thousand, uh hurts or twenty k and with the human voice, a lot of what we're going to see happening with the vocal here lo stuffs, but also will see some peking there smooth. Normally, I find that with most people is going to a little bit different, but you can start with this the center point someplace around to kay to figure out what's happening with back love it forward. Glad you asked that way, rob, about the about us. What frequency? Because first of all, I think I'm really impressed with people like what frequency and like, I want to actually know the number of the frequency because when I started, I had no idea we didn't have visual things like this, so, you know, you had to remember what you were looking at on a consul or something like that but a lot of times I'll tell people well here's a range I'll never give you a solid answer because first of all it's different every singer right? Every microphone we use is going to make it a little bit different but the biggest thing, especially in this intro class and for those you little looking to really just start mixing I want to tell you sure pick up on when people tell you like some frequencies and stuff but your ears are going to tell you everything you need to know we could be fooled sometimes even the ears khun trick us when we listen to that thing alone you know, the voice alone with the things up too bright it didn't sound good way used our ears to listen with everything else waken here generally ice have something was a little bit higher up there, you know? But you find that spot maybe start at that two k move it up but then adjust just slide around and listen to it, listen to it solo, then listen to it with all the music in there so that what's that generally speaking, I know the kick in the base when you're kind of focusing on, you know, on that it's it's around one hundred hertz level or our area is somewhere in that kind of vicinity is there is that I mean for a bass guitar, basic star or also for the kick drum kick from the biggest thing with me is like, you know again, I don't like to think too much about frequencies. Sometimes a kick drum will have down a little boost lower. The bigger thing for me is, where am I going to cut him, you know, is wearing a condom to work out. So, like most drums, I do some kind of a cut between two hundred and five hundred so that I can make room for a bass guitar to kind of fit through. I said, perfect red zone indicated to me a pace where I could let frequencies come through that's more what I'm worried about with, like, the kick in the bases. Where am I going to cut this so this could get through? Where is the base gonna shine so that the guitar could be right above it, it above it in frequencies and higher. So, yeah, I think that way with it absolutely alright was finished out the queue here. And, er what we have next we see these foreign expands and the parametric section of the q so rather than being the shelving kind are the filters first that cut everything down shelving, which gently raises everything from a starting point up or takes them down in a nice national shelf appearance, that thing this is sort of our surgical tool that we have here with all these all form the same except for where they're centered around this forest there starting frequency so I'll just go with this green one in the middle and can weaken grab right on to the ball there and we'll see what it does is pulls up or pulls down this whole grid in the background when I'm showing you guys the frequencies and go left to right it's also kind of like a meter so they can expanded form of our volume meters that were looking at before right except for it's showing us what were the volumes for the low frequencies like specifically these frequencies one of the volumes and that's what will notice it zero all the way up on the top like our meters are and it's minus sixty down here so negative sixty dbs and louder this is just like a fader these para metrics for a certain frequency and then a few of them around it. So when we listen wait just volume right for that sexy little section so that's, what these will do for us is a louse to pick us frequency I see that frequency moving in that green box down there e can turn up the volume there or turn it down okay and as I'm doing that also, I can change this thing down at the bottom that's known as the cue, which says, do I want to take just a couple of frequencies with me? So only the frequencies in that shaded area are going to be turned up or do I want to take a bunch of them and almost make it like that shelving nick, you're a little bit more natural, so I'll tell you when we're boosting and you get to these really narrow bands that's something that's really sort of not natural sounding you actually hear it oscillating like those filters did before because we're pulling out just frequencies of his voice to be boosting there, which is why when we have a narrow band with your own arrow que no me that's associated with cutting out things that we don't like common things that I'll use this little notch tights filtering thing or cutting things out, it would be like maybe we have a little sassy part in the voice we want to find just that frequency we should be able to see it on here each time it comes up and I could just pull this down and get rid of it guitar players like daniel would never use flatlines and your guitar, but if you ever use around what the normal round ones and you get that string wipe sound that way well, when you get it that's perfect, that shows up on a guitar track in the q right away, you can see it, and I'll bury it with one of these things right here and pull it right down. You'll never hear it again. Like, for example, you see that big spike around two hundred hertz? Do that, get rid of it. We should be able to sort of we'll see it all those frequencies move around it now. So there were not just, you know, high frequency of it. It stayed around it. So we were able to cut out just the frequencies and part of that voice. If we start to move the q a little bit more, make it wider. Well, those we just hear less of that part of the vocal. Sure enough, that's cool. So that is, uh, now a parametric bands, sir. Another question when you're when you're going into tio start mixing, do generally do you have a sequence of things that is this kind of your media makes all the drums first, and then start bringing other instruments in on top like that? Or is there a particular sequence that you find works? I know exactly what you're talking about, great question, that's, when I get asked a lot of my answer is actually I do have a pretty and you just get used to work and you have your own work for when you go with a lot. So normally mine and again, just mind, I know people tell you stories about some other people as well, but on the way that I've kind of always done it was we tracked drama's first normally and, you know, in the old studio times we'd start with the drum track we even did in our song, so a lot of times I will start with the kick in the snare and I'll start mixing those, then I'll actually bring the basin, then do the rest the drums around it, but I start normally, I'll go, and if it's on a consul or in logic pro ten here on there, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll save my new alternative, a project of this, I'll bury all the favors, I'll bring them all down to nothing. I'll get rid of any cues are also flatten them all and put the pans in the centre and just sort of shake it off and start again. I'll bring up first that kick drum because it's going to be and most songs the heartbeat of the song, so kick snare, maybe little bit of bass, I know a ton of other people and I totally see how why they do this it just doesn't work for me that what they do is they bury everything and they bring the vocal up the lead vocal now put it right in the middle and they're like this thing is going to be the story it's going to shine they'll do just about everything to it as far as they know where they want teo sit they want the a certain way they want the fader assize then keep it pan centre and they'll put him maybe some like delane reverb on it then they'll fill in the rest the song behind it I think that's genius and I heard their work when they do it and I think it works the vocal always shines it just doesn't work for me um you know it's that I know that the vocal is going to be the lead so I kind of worked up the whole band as though the band rehearsed before the singer got there on then I make it work together but it's just my way you guys can try anything you want but I do do kick snare and then bringing some rhythm then I'll maybe bringing the vocal on the guitars keyboards making sure biggest thing is to leave things separated and also making sure I never solo for too long you know I like to solo just to check to make sure that we liked the sound give the whole track of listen to make sure there's no problems I missed in the editing make sure that with new fax and stuff it's not sounding a little bit bad it's easy for like maybe a clipping sound or you know, distortion or something to be getting through so I like to listen to it once soloed get to know the track but then normally my soul's temporary little okay, how does it sound? Okay, back in the mix get them all going that way absolutely another thing that's going to be important for us and I'm going to get into probably after a break is dynamics control and that's normally with the thing I think of after failures, pans and filters are e cuse only thing I'll get into is sort of dynamics control how can we adjust the volume? Some people like to have some tracks that are very dynamic and song by song that's going to change other ones there's certain things that I'm going to want to keep a solid bawling through the whole thing and maybe there was some performance issues or or maybe just the way that a person played there instrument they wanted to be more dynamic than I'm really going to allow them to have like in the mix is I listen to a lot of stuff we hear on the radio that you guys have purchased you listen to there's not a lot of dynamics on every instrument maybe the song has dynamics but you know most the music that I owned when I listened to kicks and snares they're all the same volume unless it's a very specific thing where it's supposed to be going up and down but through a verse you know it's boom pop boom top it's not boom pa boom pa boom pa no it's consistent so we're going to get into using some dynamics compressors which would normally be my next step namely a compressor on gonna pop one open it was going to take a look at it right now and I'll be able to show you quickly because this is gonna get a lot of questions on is my drum track and this compressor isn't really doing anything right now but is a justice and called the threshold we're going to start to see some stuff happened alright so a compressor you guys think about compression on something or if you were to compress something you think about squeezing it right pushing something in restricting something and that's exactly the compressor does not just to our instrument but I want to think again about what we talked about before dynamic range right remember when I held up the meter and I said down here is quiet appears there twenty four bit it's loud everything in between is the range of dynamics that we have and we can hear that's what a compressor compresses is the difference in any given track between the quietest thing that can happen on the loudest thing that can happen and the way that it does it is by use of this thing called the threshold so if we get to think about my meter quiet loud and I brought down this, you know, sort of level of a threshold I could say, you know what? This is how much I wanted to go from the quietest thing to the loudest thing and now it's got less space to be quiet or loud and that's what we're basically doing when I bring down this thing called a threshold that you'll see in all the compressors in the one here and it's why when I bring it down way notice it's actually getting quieter? Some people think of compresses as making it louder but this we definitely here got quieter when we see a meter moving, so going to change a couple settings here so it'll be a little bit more dramatic even wait go. So what we saw is when I limited the dynamic range here we heard it now it doesn't do like quiet and then loud again it just does quiet everything's pretty much the same volume okay? So eggs that's because from this, uh, threshold basically said, don't go over this certain volume on a meter and what we see on the meter in here and always with the compressors is gain reduction so as our normal drum track wanted to get louder and louder in the meter it's like this component rate here with that line going backwards is pulling the fader down say no you can't that's actually what we're looking at right here is a volume fate or being slid over almost wish it just went down instead of from the right to the left they also give us a cool place in the mixer at the top where now we don't have to open the plug and we can see how much gain reduction is actually happening with that purple line moving there okay, so why would we want to just make stuff quiet because it's going to give us some options as far as making it louder again so on the compressor here logic pro ten I can bring it down till I start to seek some compression and it's telling me don't get louder than negative twenty one point five decibels or if you do get louder what I'm going to do is turn you down or what it's gonna do is turn it down with this thing called a ratio here so every time I go six decibels over this twenty one point five it's still gonna let one get by so that's why it's not a limiter but it's a compressor it's still going to give us a little sense of dynamics but it's pretty restricted when we get it quieter I can then use this one again control to bring it back up so it's louder but it's not his dynamic now instead of just being quiet it's all loud so let me bring this back there it's pretty loud right? Listen away we can hear the shakers kind of allowed this thing's kicking snare allowed but when I bring down the threshold I bring this up. Now that hi hat that wasn't loud is it allows everything out. You can almost hear it pulling down the other star now this is very distorted it's really pumping it's, compressing it's not what we're going for but it's a cool sound something weaken told me do with is also an instrument that has a lot going on with it. If I was to go back and look at something like the vocal, we'll find out and bring up its compressor this's the way how whenever you guys listen to songs that you've purchased or you listen to radio, you know every word is exactly the same volume whether they were just whispering or else they're screaming in the next part it's always a nice continuous volume we can use automation for it, but the same thing been going here compressed that by setting hey don't get loud in this without being turned out a little bit so that we can turn not just the loud stuff up but the quiet stuff the birds sing in the way like how we can hear now is breath and we can hear everything else about the vice we don't know what their please I've heard it on the long so again thresholds brings down you start to see some compressions we can always use the gain afterwards our makeup gain to make up for what was being turned down here so I see it's turning down sometimes peeking his height is six dvds that means I can safely get back here sixty bees get it turned it down at some point six decibels means I can turn it up six decibels in the make up games but it wasn't always originally is going up that loud so what we should have in the end hey no love this is actually a much louder truck this way that never peaks louder than the original london it's on ly getting is loud as the original ended at the very loudest pointed ever had but the difference is we keep the top million the same, but we've pushed up the lower volumes and compressed it all into the more audible couple up arranges which means now all these words from here where maybe somewhere louder than others it's gonna be this well, they're all every single one is the same volume when with the lead vocal the compressor and having the right that's the big thing that's going to make your songs sound like his weight on the radio make it sound like all the other ones is making sure that all those words are all the same volume it's a nice full local that sits up and the higher volumes but still without peeking and that the right frequencies air coming through um one last point on this and then we'll probably be ready to take some questions but, um I want to show you guys hear my vocal track on this track when I hit play hey, and I've loved you since I met you and it's always gonna be this way there's no says a couple of little bees and stuff there's kind of popping in there a bit called a plo sieve little bit low frequency hey, and I've loved you since I met you and it's all bad, but if you ever need to get rid of that stuff has to get a low frequency I can see down here when so when I bring so gather by the birds singing the willows sways another thing the human voice doesn't have a lot going on down those lows you cut it out these food id on the long enough not a big difference what we're hearing, but we've made a bunch of room for other instruments to get through on when I put it back in the mix no, you can hear all the words exploded up so that other instruments underneath that stuff moved off to the side's got fayed er's controlling what's up front once behind pans, moving them off two lefts and rights, leaving some in the middle filters to push some stuff up on e cuse push some stuff up, move some stuff down now compression to get things to state where they are instead of moving back and forth type of thing good deal questions can you show them how teo, I know that when we're working well, we'll take and grab the acu and the compressor and drag it across the different vocal oh, you mean copping? So if I have all these vocals and we've set up now right where we want to get them to go again, absolutely you wanted just to make it easy for right? So what I've done here, I can move from one to the other just by command clicking and grabbing and sliding those things over but also option look in that green arrow against the same way we copied stuff I said I'd be a queue for one vocal we did all the vocals on the same like with same vocalist why not write and he worked for him we could do it for all of them same we can go back and customized later if the background vocals we want to float a little bit above we'll just cut a little bit more of the low frequencies out thank you so much mike yeah it's a big time saver not having to go of course you know we could have gone in and I do recommend if you're going to go to a different song we got this can't slip which switch him across to go up to the top where it says manual nearly and these air settings save as it's going to be your voice thatyou didn't you love the way your voice sounds save it with your name but they also have some starting points over here for us but if we save it pre set then we can bring it up in all the other sessions but yeah option drag we'll copy any plug into another one thanks monkey yeah just one more quick question in relation to that I know obviously different likes have it make the world of difference as faras the compression and all that in the tone um so it now if if you're just using just you know, just a run of the mill s r if year where is a one hundred dollar mike yeah right yeah so there they are there then you know, functions within that today and go in and create, like, for example, like, like the tone like, like, the zombies like that they have on the vocal, sir, for sure not really warm kind of texture, absolutely those are things that can be kind of altered, right? Right? Not only did we ah, great question, because not only did we see them yesterday when we were starting to track the vocals with the patches in the library, they actually had one called warm vocal on gwen, I think called to mike or something like that where they absolutely nailed getting some of those things, but but logic pro, so cool with not just the settings to give us some of those things, but I haven't showed you guys that in the compressor want to keep it kind of light, but I won't point out later, but I'll show you now circuit tight up here is probably the most powerful thing happening in this compressor where if we look here, it says scotland called platinum, which came from their stories, but studio studio fat, vintage vc, a vintage fat invented job go opto these air actually, different types of will real world compressor, so if you've heard of like d b x, a company that's well known for their v c a compressors fete, which I know bottoms of eerie eleven, seventy six compressor, vintage, optimal. And I think, old optical compresses. I think the telectronics stuff in l, a three and now a two in one like those. So, yeah, they definitely make drastic changes in the way sort of tone, mimicking some of those older vintage sounds that you get record through here, laptop microphone and then running through everything else and try to make it sound, you know, like some other beast altogether. Cool. Yeah, absolutely. We got tons of stuff in here for that great question.