Lessons

Lesson Info

Mixing in Logic Pro

It's a nigerian logic now I'm opening up a logic and I'm actually opening up the master the master session here to show you uh how have arranged all this because it takes some time and you really you want to arrange it so it makes sense to you some of the colors that that I'm using here actually based on the old scharping colors from the consul's you usually expect I mean what would you do with a sharpie on the cars on there's only taking a big strip of tape don't be black for drums blue for base screen for guitars red for vocals still doing that uh you have no imagination and but I've changed the reds to do different kinds of reds and different kinds of uh how did this in a bread for drums let us out about this changed everything well normally in your home session yeah, look at how we're um when I because what logic looks like for those principles people yeah, this is what logic looks like you can see that although my audio files are actually a short from the ceo every once in a while...

to fix things anyways um you see these uh uh you did tom tracks there we'll go into that in the mixing the world all right? We're going actually we can get into on this one you see all these these audio regions they came in like this and uh so we're another have to fix some things there there's still some edits but I clean them up because you know, the these audio files there's there's stuff on there that uh you know why do we want oh look att that if if that doesn't help us with with our eyes off what the song does visually right and so there's a command the gold strip silence that I use all the time um this is hard to be key commands here because when logic you can actually uh make up your own key set and uh you know, you'll just have to find out which one you're going to use but this is the window let's go the strict silence function and you just did it doesn't have to be precise you just want to make sure that you're not cutting off any anything in the beginning and at the end and this way it cleans it up. So now you know that these air only playing there especially when you're when you're zooming down and you don't see way forms anymore running you know you can tell that there's nothing playing there so if you're looking for what's going on in that section you know which tracked to look at right in that sense visual editing of visual representation of music is very nice you can also see that during the mix we we ended up cutting things and you don't have to change these colors that really? And you can see that we ended up not using, uh, some of the some of these these tracks, some of the extra mixes things extra sub mixes of from the orchestra. But because I guess they weren't playing anything. Or what have you you can see there's, you know, a range tracts and blocks of background vocals. These work together, um, these guitars work together, even though these colors were completely ridiculous. And I really I don't know. We don't care about that stuff. We're always being. I'm surprised that it does this. You guys have your color senate bill differently. Pick a nice salmon color for those just getting you. Never do we do what we are in seattle. It's. Totally appropriate. Yeah. Coffee. Brown issue. Salmon pink. Yeah. There's. A flannel color, right. And so that's. Ah, that's. How I get started with the mix. Next, perhaps so that's, that's, that's. The beginning of the prep there's. Other things that come into it. And maybe it's. Ah, maybe there's a good time to first questions real quick before dive into by the way drum clean up I'd like to add that we will be playing this song for your thoughts this song you haven't heard is just a tease for the next it is it's but I mean this is where it all comes together we've this is a song you've only heard the very beginning of we were editing the drums for this when we were showing howto to record in edit drums alright played the top of this piece but this is the final piece where you know you get to see what the raw drums turn into and everything else and but we're going to make sure you guys hear all this stuff but it is this is the kind of stuff that you have to do it when you're mixing you have to do the kind of stuff is not a sexy is the other stuff you have to label export cleanup consolidate and color code color code everything from brown tio something else but yeah now's a good time for questions sweet um how do you decide which track you print effects on and which ones you keep dr um my general guidelines are uh any any plug in sound that I know I want to keep because I know I don't have it in the other software or because it might be approaching specific or whatever or uh those are the ones I would recommend printing and this is a general statement not just what what I do for myself, but if I were to send this out to another mixer or when a request from a the band to send me to mix um if you have plug ins like you if you recorded your guitars with the plug in as your sound, send me that plug in and if you want to and you think that I can improve on the guitar sound like with a different simulator whatever send me to die as well because I'll have the option because he may not be happy with the plug in that you had but it's a good starting point for me to even hear that because I know what you're going after we just sent me the d I sound like will this could be anything you know it's good to have a starting point along with the with a rough mix or something that you have but like if there's like a certain thing that you've stumbled upon and it is like a really cool vocal effect for a verse or something like has got some weird flan geez thing whatever help about it, its print that and if you're not sure give me another track with the same performance but without the effect so I do that sometimes even giving you some of the stuff where I start to like the way like some some delay throws whatever all sometimes make those instead of like even using delay jersey on and just give you an idea for that and you keep the original the on touched one and then you also have the version the printed version so you have both sometimes sometimes that's helpful usually just general compression in the queue or general river were delay stuff I I usually don't send that over I usually don't expected to be on the tracks unless you've committed to it like if if that's the guitar sound you had and your pedal had a delay on it and a course and that's your guitar sound that's the stamford bridge or whatever then that's the south of the bridge that's what we have you know yeah so it's sze track specific situation specific um but you know generally like if you feel like you've committed to something and that's what you want send that you know coming since cool lester from john when brendan sends the trip sends the sessions are his tracks ready to be mixed or do you have to go through this playlists and select the best takes too so there are no playlists coming from brendan yeah there there they are I do it linear linearly so I'm basically what I gave him a while sometimes it's where that I give options you think I'm making decisions as I'm going teo I don't want to have a bunch of stuff were like because nine times out of ten he's got so much stuff he has to do that I don't want to give him I want to confuse all right I'd rather have him any time I've noticed any time there are two versions like a neighbor's and be version of anything and in tv when we have like a final mix in a master of our video and our audio if we have a second one b one at one of those is gonna be the not write one and that's the one most of the time people are going to choose and that's just if they're to everyone's going to choose the wrong one sure give people one and make it make it simple and I've committed and I've made peace with whatever it is that I've given you or or there's some parts ramli your god we've got to make this sound better somehow how do we how do we dio and there's always like situations like that there's a we've run out of time that's the best I can do it on but we don't know if I would make that work here and we know we have tricks to like yeah gloss over sections or have the attention being somewhere else you know you can you can get away with a lot of stuff doesn't mean you should send me crappy tracks exactly now I think I have it's my responsibility to show something that I can I put my name on you know and, uh most the time, you know, you know, we know, um we know that sometimes that's pretty damn good and sometimes they're like that's the best I could get it and I think I don't know, maybe I picked a tempo that I cannot play sextuplets over or something like that little little little italy didn't like that's a fact that that's it it's going to play to your strengths, you know? Yeah, and and the other thing for people to realize is that what would we do is start a requiem? When when I first got the phone call can can you start working on this? I was on vacation and we knew when this show is going to air, you know, like it was like, all right, I'm hurrying home so we can do this first vocal over now and then and then like re literally like it was it was a very a few days from finishing it too. Being on air is really, really business, so there's no room for air I know, but the good news is that all working I had ah, a shorthand and working together we kind of knew exactly nothing was a surprise everything this is business as usual, it's just we had to do it quicker yeah, I had to do everything quicker because I had to get on tv for some tea master for tv we had to do all kinds of stuff yeah laden rendering it with the rest of it where to do it, you know, days before the air date. So so? So the short answer is no any other questions way, just show us how you set up your mix buses we had a question about mixed buses for ikea and compression, or we are going to go into that with the next segment, ok, the next event is actually going to we're actually going to hear this song in the segment regulators to begin to how you cute some stuff when why I've made some decisions on how like what I mix bust together and what I have across the story above it's gonna be very hands on, you'll hear the difference between what a guitar sounds like when I give it to you and what you're more your cue or what you're scooping out is and all that stuff too and that's an interesting thing that I don't know there's plenty stuff's a mystery to me of how how and where you start, so I'm just as interested as I think the people at home are too see from zero what's the first thing you do and then and then and and where do you get to be creative and where do you get to have fun and it's in this? This is the place where you get to really pull out your yeah, this is this is where it all comes together to where we're really have tio like get get my act together and fix everything that has gone sideways on us possibly yeah hopefully it wasn't anything but there usually is localized areas where, you know, you have to, like, put stuff together it's like a big puzzle piece there many times where you record something and it sounds good just like it is there sometimes we're I had something different in my head and I wanted something to be rounder bigger, you know, more bombastic or whatever it is and we mess around and lean shoot ideas back and forth. I know that through galactic on that was a big, big mixing overhaul of stuff in a lot of vocal stuff went into it and a lot of, uh, kind of, uh, guitar plug ins and q's a lot of such as to make that album sound warmer than a death clock out. Yeah, a little bit more punchy in the guitar frequencies, all that good stuff, yes or no? Is there any other pressure that we can't answer in this totally do you print any tuning or automation before mixing like from pro tools before you taken into logic on a any vocal tuning possibly our instrument teo you needed to yeah yeah I think that when you whenever I hear things that need fixing unturned earning a printed I don't generally print automation except for brendan's famous guitar fade ins or vote back on the right those I don't I don't recreate I just take him the way he had him right and you'll see in the arranging of this that and even in the last song that we heard when we heard the song the galactic on song you heard a lot of we can get into that makes this session to but you'll see that there's ah but a deliberate kind of introducing of instruments of cross sitting in all rick has found a way to take us big stack of tracks that may be in the same frequency range and also give them their own spot given their own time to come in in their own frequency range and let them all build on one another and this on has got all that stuff that's why we chose this one because he's got a huge amount of everything has got everything it's got a lot of stuff and it's it's meant to sound as big as it possibly can so there's that awesome enough okay all right in that case I can uh go into how I set off these drums um if you listen to tom's they uh there's a lot of bleed and tom's that is not necessarily conducive to, uh death metal black metal anything metal um meaning that he is the founder just picking up because of my father's pickup snares high hats everything let's have a quick listen in here and see what we pick up on this on this time track here so I'm hearing snares I'm hearing crashes and there's a whole lot of drum kit going on obviously uh during ah tom intrasection we hear a lot of tom that's what you want to hear and then after that we don't hear much of it anymore until the tom's hit again. So in the back and back in the old days we used to use gates or like automation to clean up these tom track and you just actually fade down yeah, yeah I'm going back up with the mute button and stuff like that and it was very tedious on on a big console um and you know, I'm not really bagging on this this bleed into tom likes because sometimes that's actually handy because if somebody didn't record a ride microphone uh you can actually use a tom mike that's sitting right next to them a ride microphone as the right mike if you you know treated properly so that stuff can come in very handy, which is why I keep a muted version off those tracks around as opposed to on ly cleaning them up I'm sure you have I how would clean them up uh right here uh assume into one of these guys it's some it's also tedious process and basically just use this track right here uh you know so I would just, uh tab actually I have it set up that my you know, my key commands air set up differently for pro tools than it is here some of them are the same somewhere different there is a key patch that you can have that mimics the pro tools keith strokes right? They're not all properly and the operations difference it's actually more confusing to me that's a center own logic just crammed more key commands into my head, right? But sometimes I get confused because I think once offer and it's you know, happened sometime. Well, let me ask you this is there a reason that you do this this stage as opposed to earlier? Um yes, because uh, you know, I could do it earlier but very often don't have the time to do tom cleanup before it comes to mixing sometimes I do have the time sometimes that don't whenever I do the tom clean ups I do keep a unedited tom track around just in case I feel like I've gone too aggressive with cutting stuff out or I to hear there's like you know that's actually really cool thing that happens with the snare, that bridge section or whatever maybe I get one more life out of the times and so moving but but these have already been in these times have been greeted and these are all these tracks were gritted already says it's just left up yeah put these were consolidated so it's looks like one performance got you you know me and so I cut uh just imagine is this was the first tom and the tracks are cut that right there and I go back to the next section right here and I cut that they're gonna go to the next one got that they're get rid of this get myself my cross fading my faith tool out do something like that. Listen to it and there you go, there's your cleanup, tom no craziness in there. Sometimes you are you're a little bit of fatal if you hear a little bit if it's too much, you go in and move the fate uh short in a region a little bit. But you know, so you sounds like sometimes you will go that close because all we want is an attack because I did hear the high hat in there a little bit not in this version, but the one before this, yeah on dh sometimes even closer you know they just depends a little bit on how fast the song is what comes afterwards sometimes the ring out is really long if it goes into a bridge and doesn't stop but you know until the like maybe to wring out or something like that sure yeah and so I just kept it again like judge with your ears and not with uh what you're looking at um but the ultimately and looks like this down here the brown doesn't faded all of those times you see yet when you see how they correspond to this track response to this one here in this track corresponds to what you're seeing down here on obviously this one can we hear those isolated when you're yes we can do that um oh this is set up differently all right and that little bit of snare after you need to have enough of the bhumi this if the tom to make it sound like a tom right and you know cut it out soon enough that the snare doesn't change too much from snare hit to snare hit around the toms and you just have to kind of you know after after put in the hours you kind of have a good sense of what you could get away with it I can write and sometimes you have to go in and tweak it um but like some of that that high hat in that that that snares that kind of it's just disappears because the other stuff the other snare mike it's so loud right you know but that's one thing we do to prepare for uh still gonna light it what is that way but it was um that's one thing we do to prepare and the next thing we do is we prepare for kicking snare samples and that's ah that's always very exciting pro tools has a if you guys remember we looked at this and the kick sample that we do have it was this just now says kick left this point that's the black tide one um and uh that's a that's a fine kick sample but most likely want to change it or work on it uh if I don't want to change it I can use it but if I do want to change it it's a lot easier for me to do it via midi so the what I do and I do this with the snares well I select the track and there's a function drum replacement drum doubling and it analyzes this thing gives me the option to pick my sampler instrument and you know very often just pick the first one that comes to mind are the first one that I see um you can see here it shows you the uh the threshold and I can I can change that teo picking them like adjust the the sensitivity to this um tell it that this is yes, indeed a kick and it's an automatic. So it picked the c one because that's a general many note for the kick one and, uh, he could do it like this. This average attack time is a nice nice feature. It it helps things out and then he hit ok, after you know, you look through it and make sure your threshold of sit right on dh there's your kick sample and see uh, what it gave me it must be this one. All right. Um so this key example is the original one and two pan to the left, and this one is the one panned to the right let's see what happens here, one of them's a lot louder than the other on that's. This is not a fantastic kicks out for our purposes. It it's actually go in and, uh, select the same kick sample for the sample instrument that I had on the original tracks. I couldn't really tell uh, if they're playing together or not, the other thing I want to do is select all these many notes interesting. Okay, and give them all the same velocity for now because this is death metal I'm going there are going to end up it's basically my compressor right there right? And they all were the same velocity to begin with anyways, because they're coming off a sample. Uh, if this was a live kick track with a kick of it snare and tom's bleeding into it, you'd have to go in and clean up some this triggers, probably. And I could go into that a little bit with the with the snare. Uh, but here we are with the kick in with the original kick sample track and the replacement key example. Trite. Looks like you're playing in tandem. And now, it's, very easy for me to kit and change kick sounds, um, by simply using a different sample. Of course, they got into a break section right there. So whatever floats are you got certain stuff you like? Yeah, certain stuff I like. These were just ah, like a couple of samples to give you an example of what you can do. So basically, I'm prepping this. This is this is nothing to do with mixing really just yet this is something to do with preparing for to make so I don't have to do this really mundane, stupid sitting here and looking at this like, pixel correction for all your photographer people there, and oh, our color correction you know, you just do it just sitting there like my nothing like what did you play and especially in snare tracks like is that on the need to look at the way friends that the snares I got that this is just a rumble from a tom hit and you know I mean it just go in and you have you know, but these really cool uh you know, many tracks that you can just easily change the sample that's pretty amazing that that thing is that trustworthy that it will find and it's it's really good it's really good it's my preferred way of doing south when you think maybe they're jumping ahead, but do you blend the original kick with the new cake or do you just depends on the style of music for for death metal? Um what this track could you do with this? This track? No with this track when we'll get instead of mixing two but I'm the ah like with a lot with like a big, more open rock band. Yeah, more likely to use a live kick drum sure on dh and just use the samples and support and the faster and the harder and heavier the music gets the less likely and to use the original kick okay, but the kick is the only er drum that I would completely replace yeah, unless the toms that have been recorded you leave by somebody else. Like my own times I can trust pretty well, but tom's can can get very, very difficult sometimes. Uh, those I could see myself replacing entirely on the snow. The snare I unless it's really horrible recording. Veal's landis. Now, I will always use support sample, sort of for the snare with the life snare being really the dominant portia we used the kit. You replace the kicks and then double is in there with a near the supporter. That's how? That's standard practice for you pretty much. How long have you been doing that? Oh, we're going to age myself here. Uh, forever, really? Pretty much since the stars. And she isn't something ninety six or so right. Okay, people back in the old days, we used, like, one shot sampler units to to trigger kicking snare it's, lord samples. Okay, yeah. So this is this just makes it a lot easier, a lot more reliable because we actually have to sit there. And instead of, like, doing this, we would actually punch in kicking snare tracks often, and, you know, they did nothing that we do with this is anything that we didn't do before. This just makes it a lot easier. You know, yeah. Like you and I can compress play and there's one hundred twenty eight tracks playing as opposed to twenty four tracks playing in another twenty four tracks trying to catch up with another twenty four directions to catch up. You know, to win is like it's a lot of a lot easier. A lot quicker. So it's open the snare track. Well, quick, because that actually I don't need to do that just selected and do the same thing. At least I thought in vegas drum replacement and this one we, uh, probably going to see a lot of crazy bleed. Um uh, you can see we zoom in a little bit here. Some of them were in the kick setting here. The nice and friendly thing about this is we're going to the snare setting and again, automatically it'll tell it the right note for the snare. But as you can see, because this was not a said, this was a life dragged, you see a lot more dynamics in there, and as we as we move our slider down and catches more and more of them, and if you go down too far, it catches stuff that's obviously an artist, mary it so you kind of want to get on our there's, just other germs being those pancakes high hats like snared ghost notes, some of them, yeah, that you may or may not want that it'll be up to you to decide the trick is to kind of go in there, and I've learned that it's easier for me to listen to it and delete extra hits than it is for me to go in and place extra hits arrested. So you're backing? Yes? Oh, yeah, he was still missing that guy here and a long and sometimes it just doesn't want to catch it, and then you have to end it. There it goes, and then you have to go in and do it manually. And, you know, we'll see that this maybe phillip, maybe like an extra hit. A couple in there that will have to go a race sometimes, depending on the recording technique, you're going to race a lot of stuff, but it's filled preferable to going in and zooming in and placing him so, um, average seek time. Here we go on dh there's my my new track. So now we have this one and this guy listen to what we have left and right. There's you saw some automation on this that you're not supposed to see yet know anyone velocities are all over the place in this one again. Uh we select a mall on we raise him up a bunch um yeah, yeah, that was coming um if you hit the option key it changes some of those limitations I don't for the snare wouldn't immediately go and make him all the same level because you do have snare fills there but I try to even him out a little bit by even about the bottom and evening out the top a little bit and then kicking him up there because now it's very likely that some of the lower hits are the miss trigger ones um so this one that was a scenario it's uh and I guess we are playing snares all the way through here so bump him up a bit more here there's a lot of a lot of miss triggers in there so we go in bit by bit and just, uh select the ones that we don't want and work our way through the whole track so we see that visually onda again the snare that's that was picked logic picked it for me right now we're going to go into picking snare samples later. Um we moved down the track uh, you know, these are all good snare heads right there until you get to hear you know, we need the's too so we get rid of those and I will do that listening we had an extra one in there get rid of that one and then uh these ones are it's pretty good you know, like there's some extra ones in their hand their blood by and large you know it's it's not bad. Um folks like to get into that whole phase aligning of snare sounds and stuff but and sometimes that is necessary I don't know that is what is facing linings you know, the, um the the actual initial hit of the snare that it starts at exactly the same time ryan a supposed to being off by just a little bit okay? And there I think there's legal room in there I don't think it has to be perfect each time because again, if it is perfect each time it gets into the perfection world that is unnatural. All right, so if it's if it's fluctuates just a little bit not to the point where you can hear that it's two sounds trying to do the same thing and it's wrong and it bothers you but but to the point where it's just fluctuating ever so slightly so it's not identical hits every time like e think that I think it's okay um and and I usually don't use sounds to replace uh like a very similar sound they use other sounds that complemented so the fading issue isn't really that much of a problem is facing happens when you have three identical sound being offset in time ever so slightly okay so if you use a different sound that is complementing it you don't have the same frequencies fighting right that such phasing issue so so mainly in this whole sequence right here what what we're doing right now is on most records would say at least most metal records currently the kicks in the snare need a little extra support even after a great performance by a great drummer and you need to and what you're trying to do is dynamically get the snare in a similar place volume wise and then add an extra frequency to make it a little have a little more girth yeah yeah and then nowadays you know a lot of drums are either sound replace completely or even just flattop program and so you as a live drummer are competing against that on other people's albums if you listen to the drum production nowadays to like an old ozzie record or whatever it's a very different thing sure and so you you know you want to be competitive but also unique and we want to retain some of the dynamics excess of a real drummer performance um that's pretty interesting um it's a lot of extra gloss and a little extra kind of the movie magic that you're adding to drive the most people don't really realize is there yeah but I mean when you hear this guy play live it sounds like this stuff to exactly but you know, he's going through a lot of energy because you can watch him you can't watch him and he's beating the crap out there he's hitting hard yeah, it was part of his sounds but yeah and so now this is pretty do that sometimes but tom's I I didn't actually do it on this record with the times because we just did not have time for it it was like you got to get this thing out do you khun like worry about the thompson more or you can actually have that coming on time um and so that's the decision we made for the that I had to make for this record um but this is basically my mixed prep having all the tracks laid out in a way that makes sense to me doesn't mean that's completely finished that way I still might parse out some extra vocals and we'll get into that like look at how the vocals look on screen like there's a leading sometimes they're six back exaggerated and the like how they're grouped together and that might still change because as we're mixing are like you know what let's have a different sound for the verses versus the course or different sound for the second verse from the first, first or whatever to keep things a little more interesting and so I'll parse out extra extra bits but this kicking snare stuff as you can see how you know I'm sure some people's eyes glossed over a little bit but it's it's an important part of my mixing process and a lot of people's making process on this is the like the way I do it I'm not sure that this function actually exists to this point in pro tools exactly I'm not sure may or may not I'm not sure but this I've been doing this for a long, long time and I like the way that I couldn't drawing the dynamics even after the fact because if you're just using a sample replacement I mean you can do it you don't like change the level of things but this is kind of more natural feeling to me and uh so I want to get all this stuff out of the way and this actually works for me uh in that it I can do this at night when I'm tired I can do this at night when I'm tired and I can then go start with a fresh mix well with fresh ears in the mix the next day which is the next segment it's some of this stuff is tedious folks but it's some of it's ah it's about to get creative again on that's what that's the arc of creative and you have a lot of really exciting stuff and it's the same thing with I know it's the same thing and writing scripts it's really fun and come up with the idea. It's, not fun, organized the idea. It's, not fun to make sure everything's tracking it's not fun to go and spell check everything but that's part of what you have to do, you have to be a combination of the creative person and the person that can also do the meticulous work that makes it all come together. And, uh, again, that's. Why I look and I work very well, because in some instances I will do that in some places they're not fun work, but there is fun it's going to come and that's where the mix incomes and the project comes to life again, you know. And in the tv show it's, very similar has a similar trajectory, the fun of the coming up with stuff, the writing, the tedium of the writing, the checking, the making sure stuff is tracking the recording of the voice. Is this fun were autistic again? I have actors with me. And then the boarding which is out this is a very good and then the tedium of animation the things getting wrong, everything being better in the last second all of a sudden a new life comes into the thing and all of a sudden everything started jailing and it starts feeling like a piece of art piece of entertainment, a piece of music, whatever it's so we're very close to the very fun part, but that stuff is interesting and you know what I have you know, I'm not in the room when you do a lot of that stuff and I'm really glad I'm not because it's just so boring it is it is just so boring it is but but it is stuff that needs to be done and that is modern that's an industry standard for dramas these days it's really funny I remember learning that stuff the first time it was kind of blown away that use the cake drums now you used the kick terms you use the performance but you have to use that those as demarcation points of where the drums happened and then you have to especially in the style of music if you want to be competitive and unless things change people go raw I know some bands used the acoustic kid I know that even a cannibal corpse will do acoustic you know what they have there either would be there's, other plastic peters on the drums that really have an attack, and they spent a long time queuing that and in the way that we work, we know that we're going to place them, so we don't have that much. We just need to hear them and and even even when we started using them the sampler in just to hear it, it started selling what the final product would sound, and it was easier for me to play to you because those those kicks those punches kicks that became popular after what metallica's and justice for all album started brightening up the kicks like crazy and scooping the guitars. Lavery those were probably just live kick. Still, there probably were live. Yeah, but I think that's where it all started, maybe a coming they still send a little will feel little booming and little woolly sounding underneath when you listen. Old double kicks on earlier medal records or even old metallica records on the pantera records and pantera against you.