Lessons

Lesson Info

Overview of Routing

Routing all right, the ah goal here is to ah reduce complexity uh, so you don't add complexity we don't need it meaning and make a base bus when you only have one bass track what's the point and I thought about this just a parallel to this from I'm just going to use this metaphor uh for whatever it's worth from someone I know that's a shooting instructor uh talking about chambering rounds eyes saying the whole point of his job and law enforcement is to reduce danger in this situation and you'll see why I'm bringing this up in a second so if he's at home there's no round chamber because having that in there increases danger well being out in public of you're in a bad neighborhood having the round chamber we will actually decrease the danger to you because you can react more quickly. The idea is not to have around chamber not the idea is to reduce danger and so with this the idea is to reduce complexity, not to add complexity so you're not just adding a bus for the sake of adding a bus i...

s you don't be a lemming about this stuff if you only have one track, why were you sent? Why send it to a base bus there's no point um and uh yeah, there is definitely no real right way to do it uh I mean, I would say that the right way to do it would be the way that's the most efficient but there's definitely a ton of wrong ways to do it and uh we had to go through a bunch of instruments and and I show you guys basically my go to, uh that works eighty five percent of the time I'm big on I'm big on the eighty five percent rule that's the idea I didn't make I have a blogger called that on gear gods, but I didn't make the concept up that's the whole concept of eighty five percent rule is that most things in life have a solution that will work eighty five percent of the time and, uh that fifteen percent that other first in person at the time, you know, you gotta figure something else out, but uh, most thing you know, you find the things that work most of the time like, for instance, and essam fifty seven on a guitar cat that's your eighty five percent solution for mike and guitar sure, you can use a four twenty one you can use reuters use whatever you can use whatever you want, but if you're recording metal eighty five percent of time it's going to be a vintage thirty within s and fifty seven on it it's just the way it is that's your eighty five percent solution um so I'm gonna show you guys my eighty five percent solution for that and then at least one more option and these air riel options used by uh do does that do good work so let's continue um so on drums my go to option is to have your main drum bus you know and then the kick and snare tom's and symbols feeding the main bus apparel compression bus and a river bus and let me show you as that and I would actually be curious to hear what some of your guys is uh go twos are so basically say we have these three kicks all right, see those three kicks right here see how that says kick crazy corresponds to this tracker here this is kick these three kick tracks are all going to this kick track right here so so paula no from this kick bus that they're all going to they're going out to a regular drum bus you see right here c drawn bus going to hear a drum bus they're also going to apparel compression bus you see, I made a send right there going to drum comp okay now of similar thing going with every single drum so it can see you know and the saint is the same thing for the other drums you see right here you know we've got these natural snares and we have also got a bunch of samples and uh you can see here the output on them iss snare crazy right and goes to this this bus right here well this is oxford here that the input is snare crazy I know and you see it outputs two drums which is that same drum bus that the kick went to and then I have a center it here going to the drum conch which is the parallel cop as well as the drum verb which is uh get rid of these stupid tracks that created yet for some reason and this one I don't know why I always put my my drummer below all the drums I was but effects effects buses in ox is you know below the audio not sure why do you do that it's above well bro should fight about it okay but ah but you see what's going on here so I also love the snares will be the same thing see they're going to this one snare bus right there which is going to the drum is going to drum comp and drum so that's the part I messed up earlier on purpose so you know that's that's b basically how I like to do it for for drums what tom's it's a little bit different because I do the um I do the the high low trick on tom's a lot um as you can see there's a lot of tom tracks because uh on let me just say that their reason one of the reasons why you do want to do this is because you do end up with a lot of drums in mixed metal so again like I said before the idea is to reduce complexity not increased complex so you have one bass track you're going to start doing all these crazy buses there's no reason to but check it out so this is a uh four drum for tom drum set so you've got tom top mike's tom bottom likes and on top of that we've got samples you know it's a lot of tom's so well we got here I see and the little you're hearing is from the natural from the natural tom's but so ok, so you see the these air all going out to tom's and we have two separate boxes here the input tones and uh you'll notice is one of them has lows cut out the other one has the highest cut out and that gives us independent control over the high end of low under the times because you know you want the high end of the times to have a nice sharp attack and you want to be able to control the thirty ring of it as well and this is a great way to do it you know we'll talk more about that kind of stuff tomorrow but you know since since we're on this may as well tell you um ok and as you can see again just like the other drums this is being outfitted right here two drums is going to the drum bus up top as well as a drum camp on a sand and drum verb as you can see a drum drum comp it's just the drum bus without the camp it's just by the way, for those of you wondering apparel compression on how loud it should be lots of times it's about that quiet compared to the regular tracks not always but lots of times it's a little bit of an extra little push put out so and now I'm gonna add the rest of these drugs back in so you get the idea now you know they're all going to say a place so stuff and, uh you know, same follows for symbols and rooms um yeah, all the different rooms we do we'll go to the room buster said go to the drum bus and so on so forth and it makes everything easier because that way if you want to turn down all the drums at once boom turned on the drum bus uh these are our rooms okay, take questions from anybody on that oh, that one online let's see, do you bus all your instruments before going to master out or do you send them straight to master uh city and do you bus all your instruments before going to master out or do you send them straight to master okubo bust them all tio individual well I mean it depends if I only have one bass track and I don't need to make uh and I don't need to make a bus for it then yeah that it will go straight there but if I have you know a situation like this with drums where there's one two three four five six seven eight nine ten snares yeah, of course so yeah, it just it just depends uh again the idea is to reduce complexity so not to add it in your adding buses we don't need him you just convoluted things data so uh you know and there are there are some other ways to do this which is uh you know no mean drum bus I've done that plenty of times and uh you do parallel compression on individual tracks uh for instance leg instead of having the peril compression be something the habits of the entire drum bus let's just say um and going what I'll do right here isn't going teo you think outside the box for a second I am going tio duplicate this track who will call this uh carol and uh let me see one thing and we'll just send both of these to the master I just find it it's kind of hard to see one of you guys sees it before me. Let me go. There we go. All right. Um, yes. Oh, another way to do it would be ok. So what if you don't want peril compression on the entire kit there sometimes it's too much. Sometimes it screws things up. You know, sometimes you just want peril compression of the drums. You don't want it on the symbol sentence, you know, there's any number of different ways. One way that I've seen this done a lot is to do your parallels on to individual tracks like so if I wanted to parallel this guy duplicated and then just compressed the hell out of it, like, like, do something stupid, you know, but that's not actually what I would do setting wise. But, you know, just to just illustrate that's a whole totally legit, other way to do things. Um, aaron, out of curiosity, what do you do? Generally was your go to a ce faras routing drums goes it's really? Similar to a lot of the stuff you're doing. There I was going to say sometimes I keep this near bottom separate from the snare bust like depends on the ban and stuff, but a lot of times we'll just ride this near bottom to bring it in in parts where you want a little bit of detail like if it's ghosting or something like that so I don't rely that heavily normally on this near bottom mike and like my, you know, the hard hits but it really just kind of varies on the style um I like the snare bottom a lot for fills and blasts and I feel like even if you're using samples to snare bottom is what is what makes it sound real yeah, that's for tomorrow but so what? So you do you a bus everything to individual drum buses and then to a no overall drum bus? Yep. And then yeah, it's really similar to this basically cool and yeah, and I'd like to hear from the internet to what? What, like there go to our if they're different if anyone's do anything right different or anybody else in this room of you guys think about this kind of stuff uh, like you, for instance, what do you do doing a full drum bus for peril come again typically doing a full kit bus for peril compression works pretty well on one of the question for you about mid side tracks if someone gives you a session to mix where you've got, you know ah mid side guitar mike or whatever do you prefer getting a stereotype track labeled made left side right or do you prefer to mano tracks or how would you give that to someone what's your normal approach I would give it well, I will if uh how would I give it to them if it was in the same d a w I would just go ahead and, uh do the do the whole panics game and everything just as it's supposed to be just just cause like josh said, you don't want any guessing involved, so I would do whatever possible tio take the guesswork out of this situation um and if it wasn't in the same d a w I would just leave some very detailed notes as if I was receiving it from somebody it would be nice if it already kannami the way that they wanted it and they just made a note don't mess with this panning this is mid side, so are you I like it as a story attract and I just inserted dakota because then I can just use one knob to just the pan with workers to take three fighters that works too I don't know why I like three failure mode option charles logic who says twenty, five hundred for compressing snares and an eleven, seventy six for parallel always I played that for every drum except kick you have gaza who says overall the way he just said ap I twenty five hundred for snares I applied to every drum I'm sorry I'm just being me e I was like, wait what? Yeah that's true let's say gaza says overall drum drum bus than a parallel of the shells compressed hard press was a tl pretty much the same system but since I used ssdi for all bounce all of my tones makes the actual audio and then bus from there ah let's see, floop tends to keep one main snare chappelle going straight to the main drum bus works good for me keeping a constant snare in the front of the mix so ok, different thoughts kind of a lot of that's pretty uh pretty similar um what it would be interesting for me would be ah, you know any of you guys out there who ah are doing, you know, taking advantage of the critique thing if you have a pro tools session uh feel free. You know, I will be happy and not just listen tio two the track but like to actually check out the pro tools session and see the routing and see if there's you know something just inherently wrong in the way it's set up that could drastically improve the mix so yeah I mean you know, if it's in cuba obviously I'm not we're going to be able to open it up but yeah for people taking up the critique of urine pro tools you can send me the session file and we can actually get into ah what's actually going on a cool cool you guys have any questions at all feel free tio task I have here for you um all right base now um one thing that's ah that I'd say that this is my go to option however I end up just going with one a lot of the time for some reason like I just feel sometimes is unless if the base is kind of attitude or there's like something funky in the performance than lots of times I'll go to where I'll have the die and then I'll high pass it and then program the sub so that the very low end is in perfect tune because you know that being out of tune and we'll just completely destroy your mix um and then uh and then you definitely have to have baseball us after that so she knows what that looks like and a question for the chat room how many of you guys combine uh natural natural electric bass with programmed base yeah I'm about to start talking about best so they can just stew on that for a little while. Um yeah, so yeah, ok, so same idea. Uh I've got your base the eye just the sands. So weird how based by itself khun sounds so horrible. It's one it's one of those instruments that sometimes there's some bases that just when they don't have anything on them. Well, it's like a d I have a guitar just sounds terrible and then you put it through and hampton magic um so this is how I have it divided off, so I got the, you know, the d I man, body of the track and, uh, one thing that we'll talk about in a bit is ah, printing tracks the's air already printed. Um and one way that we know that we have our tracks already printed is we've grayed out the plug ins, so, you know, sometimes when I get something prepped, uh, I already know what's what's imprinted and it's like, all right, so give me like, the d I threw this and this and that and just print it and then I'll take it from there, um, well, still will hide the original unaffected die somewhere um and then ah, gray these out so I could always just pull it back in and start from scratch um and you'll notice that a lot in these mixes that you see over the next few days you'll see these great out tracks and that means we already printed them because uh way do what we say so yeah hi lo put them all together highland and then those air just going a cz you can see again thes three years going to a base bus multi band that's controlling the sub's which is a good idea and that's it going to the master um that z the thing is that in my personal experience sometimes when I'm mixing like this I find that it's easy to start to lose control and have you ever noticed that base is the hardest thing to mix in metal? I think period getting that low end right in the low end right is the hardest thing but uh specifically when dealing with the bass guitar it just, uh that always takes the longest and so I try to opt for having the most control and having the least destructive elements in there because base can either make your mix or just completely just destroy it toast all the guitars saw the kicks while everything yeah and that's folks online or responding tio what you asked whether they've done it before in charles logic says I use the low end of the program base and just the crispin bright from the real base aziz says I find it the higher notes on program based just sound horrible and then other people agreed with that I think that it depends on what program you're using but yes of course nothing for this stuff of music with a few exceptions nothing beats a bass player that can play really hard in time and in tune with a pick like it doesn't he? You know there's a few exceptions there's uh alex webster from cannibal corpse or um dance later from battle cross like there's a few guys out there and pull it off with their fingers but nothing besides that nothing beats just the attack and just the tone of the power that you get out of actually playing that and there are no articulations I've heard on any of the softer instruments that come close for the high end they just don't and I've tried a bunch of them most of them are even out of tune and have you noticed that zong base or whatever how do people not hear that so out of tune we're about to say if on the dirty track on the base if you find yourself going on there with like a really fine u q and like finding little nasty resident things that just kind of stick out almost no matter what note is being played like that sometimes it's like the string jangling against the threats a certain way always will create a little like and like yes, once you hear it like you can't un hear it it's like they're in the mix no matter what's happening so yeah, I've always I have to go hunting for those little resident nasty things uh one and this sucks because this is really time consuming, but sometimes if I really like the tone of the high base like it's just adding that you know that snarled that just makes the guitar sound great that's another thing that we're going talk about is that guitar tone and medal isn't just guitar tone what everyone thinks his guitar tone is a combination of kick guitar and bass but like you know, sometimes you get that snarled just right in the base and it's just awesome and then the others that stupid ass frequency and uh sometimes uh I find that I need to automate the cute to go with the pitch that it sucks it takes a long time yeah, but sometimes that needs it needs to be moving around depending on what pitch is being played. It's true it's you need to take one frequency out to you can sometimes hear another one and then you think you hear another one but then before you know it you've kind of gutted the tone and you like man, why is this based on the crap now and the new bypass all you little notches and you're like okay, so after like, almost, like start over how much a being do you do you mean between, like, raw and finished? No between you're mixes and something else that like like a hydra will pony mix or like jay, I do a fair amount just to make sure I'm in the ballpark of where yeah, yeah, just to make sure I'm close to kind of what what my vision for it is, you know, I think just because of how tough base is, uh, I think it's important to do a lot of a being with base and specifically to records that have obviously great based on you're trying to get groupies but like, one thing that, uh one great reference track that everyone should use, uh, for base would be ah, a mix by grand master j rustin I don't know you guys familiar with him? Unbelievable great dude to, um a band called avatar and the mix is held the apocalypse, the base tone on it should be it should be what u a b to even if you don't want your mix to sound like that, but I would highly recommend that everybody looked into that and add that into their a being uh because it's very, very loud and it's very aggressive so again band is avatar song is held the apocalypse and use it to maybe your base and trust me you're based total of it better now reason I was mentioning a being specifically for that is because sometimes you know what? Those weird frequencies and it happens in everything that guitar to anything that's got noise uh that'll happen you notice that you can sometimes I'm not saying you do this but you might I think every everyone I know does is you kind of get this tunnel vision where it's like you hear every noise coming out of the distortion here though noise and freak out and try to kill it put on a put on a finished mixed by somebody great and then sometimes you hear that lots of those noises they're still there and it's fine, maybe you're overreacting I've found that a lot and then sometimes maybe uh you know the you know how sometimes the idea of the queue is too figure out what's masking something and remove that rather than boost the other way around sometimes works for that where you figure out how to mask it with something else but which is an interesting trick but I always like to use a being for those particular types of of mixed situations because I call those e q vortex situations because you can just you can start queuing noise forever and totally lose perspective and then put on a record that you think sounds great and they've got all those noises in there so his first programming base goes like what is it just this plane sine wave since that you like to use for it because it's a concept I've heard about before but I have yet to actually put it into practice and one of my mixes I just always you know, split idea into two tracks process of similar what you're doing there there's a there's a few three different programs that I think are pretty cool um actually uh sub destroyers pretty cool that's a jokester just plug in trillion is pretty cool and expand the sense that cause of pro tools or by using a mono basin right oh absolutely has to be more absolutely oh, I'll talk about some stereotypes that base but the low end of sub has has to be mona um and yes so yeah a sign wave generally and uh compress it really really well so that it doesn't get wild because you know you can get wild and just destructive and fluffy and uh you know, you program it to play exactly what what's being played and that's it uh but any three anyone of those three options are really good um don't go is on base because it's completely out a tune but it uh you know, doing that will save your ass sometimes him because bass guitar it's just so hard to get in tune and especially if you're getting a mix from somebody else where yeah, they just tracked really out of tune base sometimes even if you apply pitch correction since it was just like you said a vibrating weird and like we're residences and just stuff that just completely clouds low end and I think it's good we're spending a little bit more time talking about based on some his other things just because like you said earlier basis so hard to get it right maybe one thing that would be fun to talk about too is having in metal used to be a little more conservative with a really really deep low end on the bass guitar and the kid really because you don't have like all the spaciousness of a big you know it's not like a nickelback song where the kick only happens four times you know or three times or two times for measure or whatever there's there's a lot going on so you have to be more selective with where you're lohan's coming from and just how much you can get away with ross the mix just would get out of control want a really good way to control your base is through side chaining the low end um and uh I'm sure a lot of you guys know what side chaining is but uh you have to make a choice you uh and this choice it doesn't necessarily have to be through the whole song but yet toe make you know it could be section a section but you have to make a choice is tow what's going to inhabit the majority of the sub's is going to be the kicker the base guitar and once you decide on that choice then you figure out you know you do your cute tricks to kind of make things complimentary but and you have to spend a lot of time carving but then you can figure out what you know what's ah what side channing toe what? But a multi band compressor uh I don't remember this is side change you see there's a key yet you see we've got a base ducker on it right there and I'm gonna, um he has all familiar with how that works how sad changing works. Okay? Cool says you see on this base bus right here got multi band compressor that is handling the low lows and subs and we have we do have ah side chain on it called based tucker and let me just guess that base tucker is right here on the kick so we've decided that we want the uh the kick to win this battle on this mix for whatever reason so yeah and I mean it's as you can see it it is lowering it is going down quite a bit in the sixty so um see if I can get them both together have you guys all tried side chaining I'll bring the base up here so that we can take a look have you guys all ever tried this before I'm going to go into detail on it tomorrow like when we go through actual mixes but this is something that I put into templates and but then also yet to make that this like I said you got to make the decision as to who's going to get the low end and ok so now with the with the multi band muted it's hard to hear without the sub but a subwoofer how turn this off during the difference um yeah when I remove the multi band suddenly things become fluffy goto a slower part quick yeah that's and that's something that will put into our temples and to our template routings like a bass tucker that's normal one with the multi band taking care of the sub's uh site change of the kick now sometimes it'll be the opposite but in general that's what it is because this medal kick winds and uh if you're just and the thing is about of your side chain if you just ducking the very low end of the base you're still getting the pick attack so it's still you know you're still you're still hearing you're still feeling and something is still pushing the low end so it's cool