Lessons
10 Pre-Show
02:57 2FreePreview: Intro to Using Outboard Gear
31:03 3Patchbay & Drum Bus Processing
42:43 4Mixing Drums: Kick Drum
25:34 5Mixing Drums: Snare Drum
45:34 6Mixing Drums: High Hat
29:35 7Mixing Drums: Cymbals and Room Mic
49:02 8Mixing the Bass
11:23Lesson Info
Mixing the Bass
Let's do baseball quick so again, and everyone in this band is a super good musician. So with the base, I'm not actually trying to control volume so much just a little bit, but sky is an incredible bass player. We had a really nice base and we actually just went die, but the base is a really cool pre amp in it that that sounds awesome I'm going to show you in just a second, but skies really good so again, I'm not using compression in this sense to control gain so much I'm just shaping the sound I want the attack to hit a little more and I want to sustain to be even on every hit it's pretty even, but just the nature of base different notes are are different frequencies because no two frequencies so you get when you get way up on the neck you start to lose gain um and when you get lower into those lower notes, especially the way you kind of naturally wanted q a base, you're adding a lot of gain and depending on how you have any acute, certain frequencies might really pop out. So even tho...
ugh sky plays like perfectly evenly he's an incredible bass player skies the bass player of issues he uh you know the base still is moves a little bit, so I want to control that and I have to base tracks here and I'm going to run them tow one one compressor because they're very similar in their dynamics he could put one on each channel but for me I don't need to with base most the time so I'm creating mano oxen put called this fuss going solo it with other ones actually just make it sold all the time I'll make the bus input fifty are actually I have a base bus one I'll put on these shift option so I could change in both same time based bus one so now the base guys playing all over the nick like he's going low high he's a freaking such a good bass player actually get I get stoked when I listened to it because he's so good and there's a lot of great bass players out there there's a lot of mediocre bass players to which is okay you know as long as you're always striving to get better but it's just a pleasure working with sky and hearing someone who basically dry tracks are already perfect you know there's no amp there there's there's no nothing other than one of the tracks I have a sands and plugging going on just adding a little bit to the gain and then the other one is dry and that's something I do a lot do you deny your base? Yes this is a dea it depends on the player sky plays with his fingers, so I like to have a d I for two reasons one I don't record that many guys that play with their fingers, so I'm not as comfortable setting up a tone I really want and two when you have a really nice base with a pre amp a lot of times you don't need the benefit of an amp for recording um oh, I'm sorry when you're playing with fingers because it's a totally different style you know it's like finger picking you tarver versus playing with pickets just completely different its needs are different you don't need a lot of that full low and or that grind because you already have the grind from the kind of slap of the fingers especially the way the sky plays on again the base has a pre infinite already so it's doing a lot of e queuing inside the base we did a lot of geek you with those controls and so for me it's not really necessary if I was recording a guy with a pick with a jazz bass, I'd totally we playing it through an am pig or ah my sour sound one fifty something that's just like really rock and awesome but for finger players that feel like it works better to do t I and when you have a d I could always react if I really wanted but most of time, I don't all have just a little bit of sands ampere teo, I could take it off show you the difference grind and some distortion and the other thing I have going on in these, which just adds a little bit alone because I'm not using an amp is the u eighty ampex, which honestly doesn't really sound like a tape machine to me, but it sounds supercool. It's got a great effect, so I'll put that in I was in my mind of here or maybe I am I don't know, I don't really care all that tape plugging does is it just shifts the high end in the low end a little bit on die like the frequency shifts that it does, but so let's get to the compressor real quick because it sounds great, but it needs just a little bit of control and I have the perfect thing for it, so we're gonna make this io um the fifth on second going in and out of the fifth, um candle on my second prison again, I'm just gonna drag the time investor over from one of these modern tracks. One thing you can't do on pro tools or most dw as you try to drag a stereo plug into a mano track it's going to say, no, you can't do that because this is a mano track, so I went all the way over, make sure my gains the same. My delay compensations still a twenty one samples because that's what we calculated for this session, I got my hardware insert going and now I'm gonna patch in the compressor on the patch pay for this my favorite low end and, uh, kick drum, bass and guitar compressor, which I don't compress guitars that often and definitely not this style of guitar, which I'll get into after the break, but the western dynamo nineteen oh nine let me plug the central fest coming out of five into the second nineteen o nine out of the second western dynamo ninety nine back into the prison, shaking hands. This compressed was really cool again because I can the way that this cuts off a two hundred fifty hertz on the detector really makes it so that I can control the base by the attack on dh again that's kind of what I want with sky because he's got a lot of attack, but I want to make sure all the notes or even but I want to control on the attack so that the low and doesn't kill the attack, so again, I'm going to use this one the way I used the first one, and I'm gonna control the game by using time, a gesture before the track instead of moving this because this is always my base compressor, and I just don't there's no reason to move it, because I pretty much always used the same settings, which is really similar to the kick, actually and it's pretty slow attack so I can let the picking or the finger picking hit and a fast release so I can control that sustained. Um and again, I have this on the high pass detector only put time adjuster before I'll play it one more time, and I looked I could get over here to see how much compression I'm actually doing it's a little much, I'm back this up just slightly, but actually I don't mind think about bases, you just have to listen. It sounds cool, then it's cool the way I want to go back to having a little bit more because you can hear how using that high past detector with this compressor, you could doom or compression, because you're really just when you see that game reduction that's, how it's compressing that's, how it's seeing the high end, and I think that when I do more compression with it, I actually feel the low and more because hitting that at the point where the low and starts it sustained so you know you just heard outflow beyond lame and got when I took the high pass often and that's not a flaw in the compressor that's just base in general if you control it by the low end it just kind of gets ah it gets weird because you want to control the low end but because the loans a little out of control you don't want to control the compression from the loan at least I don't that's not that's not how I prefer based so I'll show you one more time with the high pass detector in isn't actually high passing the frequencies that your hearing at all it's not the actual inputs or output signal it's just that compassion detective quick come on a trip to make sure the gains matched trim is just another word for volume I'm kind of refers to the volume on a console before um signal chain that's where the term comes from believe could be totally wrong we need for the trim but here's without the compression without the western dynamo it makes sense that aggression that pluckiness and low and gets more constant and a lot bigger sounding so on dh that's what I keep based pretty simple that's most of time that's what I do on base if I haven't and I'll probably have these tracks plus the amtrak on guy would compress the amtrak differently because it's gonna have kind of a different it's going to accent different notes differently because you have the q on the amp has a separate queue.
Class Materials
bonus material with enrollment
Ratings and Reviews
user-0620d8
OK I bought this course to watch at my leisure. Lots of Respect for Kris - if you go to his personal website, his experience and track record (no pun!) is impressive. Clearly he knows his stuff and has developed a very efficient way of working. I am a singer songwriter in the UK with many years of experience playing live. I have my own project studio (Pro Tools 11, lots of vintage hardware, UAD, Avalon, Tube Tech etc) and all the software plug ins, virtual instruments. Also a comprehensive guitar collection, acoustics, electrics, keyboards, DW drums etc. My problem is this. here again is a well organised Creative Live presentation with a competent presenter, but the content is inappropriate for the majority of viewers. Like many people watching this stuff, I find the material used to demonstrate the techniques is awful. Grahame Cochrane is the same - over produced American soft rock which has absolutely no musical or creative merit. This 'music' isn't going to stand the test of time and will be gone within a year. I understand that the material isn't Kris's personal stuff, but he says he likes it and I'm sure he does. But what your listeners want to hear is how to produce recordings which have space and clarity. Listen to Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Mark Knopfler, Ry Cooder, Dylan, Van Morrison - these artist's recordings are the ones to emulate! So please, can we kick out the over compressed X Factor style stuff and get back to basics? Show us how to get quality sounds and how to create space in a mix. Its the natural sounding music which will be with us in 50 year's time - just like the Motown stuff is now. No doubt there is a whole generation out there who think this sort of material has credibility, but I have to tell you it has almost no musical or creative merit, and I for one don't need to know how its produced.
user-7d32b7
This was the single most helpful source of information for improving my mixing that I have ever come across. I loved it and i know everybody else here will too. Buy it so this man can come back again
a Creativelive Student
Awesome course, super relevant as Issues is my favourite band and as a producer/engineer I aspire to their tone, the drum mixing was especially great, just a shame that there was no mention of electric guitar mixing