Transcript for:
Comprehensive Mixing Course Overview

this 12-hour mixing course is going to cover everything you need to know to reach a professional level in your mixes we're going to cover fundamentals like volume balancing session setup EQ compression Reverb And Delay then some more Advanced Techniques and mixing tips for saturation parallel processing workflow and more and it's easily the most comprehensive video you're going to find about mixing on YouTube so let's Dive Right In if you're new here then welcome to marching.com our mission is to re-engineer audio education from the ground up and create a more impactful way to learn mastering mixing and production now we created a free mixing workflow cheat sheet that goes with this course and it's going to take you step by step through the entire mixing process which will simplify everything and make sure you don't miss any crucial steps so I highly recommend you go and grab that free cheat sheet and reference it when you're doing your next mix and we've also included some additional cheat sheets and frequency charts to help you get to prixes faster so just click the link in the description to get access of those free resources and then you can follow along with the course properly all right I'm going to hand you off to danne Holmes now he's a professional engineer but he's also a great teacher and that's really hard to find so I think you're going to like him take it away Dane so to start us off let's simply Define what mixing is I think it helps to first see where it fits in the context of the entire music production cycle in this cycle there are five distinct stages for creating a finished ready for released record first we have the songwriting and Arrangement or the composition then there's recording our various instruments like guitar vocals drums Etc whether audio or midi then production which has taken on new meetings over the years then we have mixing and then finally mastering so mixing simply put is the second to last stage of the entire music production cycle it is the process of combining and blending individual track elements such as vocals instruments drums and any other various sound recordings and this is to create a cohesive and balanced piece of recorded music it involves adjusting the levels panning Equalization Dynamics and spatial processing and other effects to enhance the overall Sonic Dynamic and spatial qualities of the music before its final stage of mastering so all of those different elements I've just mentioned in that definition are the things we're going to cover in great detail in this course with mixing we get access to all of the individual tracks especially if we're the ones that produced and recorded the music this ultimately gives us plenty of control over achieving a desired sound once you've reached the place where you feel like the mix is completely finished and you've done all that you can do to make it sound Radio Ready you then combine all of those individual track elements together into one single stereo file and just as we indicated in the five stages of producing a finished record you would then send this stereo file off to mastering which is the last and final stage before it's released don't worry there's an entire mastering course that we've created that you can watch totally free when you're done with this course with mixing the process involves all kinds of tools effects and techniques that you'll use to get your music sounding amazing and in the beginning of your journey starting a mix can feel a bit like standing at the bottom of Mount Everest but don't worry I'm here to simplify the process in this course and help you focus all of your energy and attention where it will best serve you and your music and get you the best results achieving a really great mix comes down to how well you manage three major components of the music the Sonic Spectrum Dynamic spectrum and spatial aspects of the mix the Sonic Spectrum otherwise known as the frequency spectrum spans the breadth of human hearing from 20 HZ on the low end and all the way up to 20 khz on the highend 20 HZ and 20 khz are simply examples of fre frequencies and they're manipulated and controlled through the process of EQ EQ is what allows us to shape the tone of our instruments if you want your vocal to sound brighter or more dull that's what EQ is for when you think of frequencies think of vibrations sound vibrates at different speeds depending on the frequency or pitch to use a more musical term the higher the frequency the faster the vibration the lower the frequency the slower the vibration don't worry we'll dive a lot deeper into this subject in section two the dynamic Spectrum has to do with the difference between the loudest and the quietest parts of the music this is all about volume and volume related Tools in this spectrum we control things like punch and reduce or sometimes expand dynamic range and the tools we use to manipulate this are the volume fader compression clipping and limiting side note you'll find out very soon in this section just how powerful and important the volume fader is for laying the foundation of a great mix there will be a whole entire lesson coming up dedicated to this subject at a high level the spatial dimensions of the mix are what give your music a sense of space and or realism this can greatly enhance the listener's feeling of immersion in the music our ears and brains are tuned to the way sound reacts in different spaces like bedrooms bathrooms or large concert Halls we have an emotional connection to these spaces even if on a subconscious level our spatial tools and processors like Reverb And Delay help our mixes to come alive with this sense of space and give them a three-dimensional quality we'll cover this in much greater detail in section 4 so why is mixing so important in the entire process of creating a record there's a particular Spectrum when it comes to the kind of listening we do as musicians or Engineers on one end of the spectrum we listen objectively and on the other we listen subjectively we would consider the objective to be more left brain and the subjective to be right brained the objective side of listening is where frequencies and volume come into play there's not really anything inherently subjective or creative about them they're just numbers however they're tools we can use to enhance the subjective and creative aspects of the mix if you put objective and subjective on a spectrum you could say that production occupies the more right or subjective creative side of our brain and as you can see on the complete opposite or objective side would be mastering and mixing Falls somewhere in between the two and that's because of these three production mixing and mastering we would say that mixing requires activates and strengthens both the objective left and subjective right sides of our brain especially when it comes to learning how to do it and this is simply due to the fact that as a mix engineer you'll have control over the Sonic Dynamic and the spatial aspects of the music all of which tap into both sides of our brain the more you strengthen your technical skills and objective ear with things like frequencies volume and learning your tools really well the more you'll be able to tap into this subjective and creative side of your decision-making when mixing in turn this allows you to mix with the emotional intent of the music music in mind and that's very very important and Paramount to any amount of technical knowledge you'll gain throughout your journey remember that in this industry the technical is there to serve the creative not the other way around if there's no emotion I would strongly argue that not very many will care to listen the goal of mixing is simple it's to blend the individual tracks containing the various instruments and sounds in a way that creates a polished unified and pleasing auditory experience for the intended listener how we accomplish this goal is by learning to do the following first we need to understand how to achieve the right volume balance in the mix again you'll soon learn to realize how important and foundational volume is for achieving a great sound next we need to learn how to manipulate frequencies in the mix frequencies determine the Sonic footprint of your mix how much low-end High or mids end up in the track frequencies also help us to achieve Clarity separation and intelligibility in the mix also we need to learn how to manipulate Dynamics in the mix this helps us establish punch impact and determine how loud and soft things get and then we need to learn how to manipulate the spatial aspects of the mix this helps us to further create depth and separation in our mix create realism or surrealism immerse ing our listeners in that experience so why is mixing so important well it's what allows us to do everything we just talked about next I think it's important to talk about what mixing does not do this will help us to further clarify the purpose of mixing in the context of the entire music production cycle first mixing does not fix timing and tuning issues that's editing next mixing can't fix a poor performance this ties into the timing and tuning issues mentioned above again editing help there to an extent the better and Tighter the performance of the musicians being recorded the less that has to be done in editing also mixing does not fix a poor recording things like bleed pops clicks digital clipping Etc mixing isn't producing arranging or making decisions about sound selection and finally mixing does not master the song I'd strongly encourage you to not master in the mix session especially while you're mixing mixing absolutely helps you to get the best master possible in a song and you should keep mastering in mind while mixing but again mixing is not mastering they're separate now that we've got an entrylevel understanding of what mixing is and isn't let's talk about what editing is and does just for a moment editing basically comes down to three distinct processes there's tuning which is aimed at fixing pitch issues for vocals or other instruments there's timing aimed at tightening the timing of recorded performances for instrumentals like drums bass guitar keys Etc we have cleanup which is aimed at cleaning up or reducing problems found in recordings this can be reducing pops clicks hums mic bleed removing unnecessary audio in between performances creating Fades cross Fades Etc tools like isotope RX have come an incredibly long way in helping to remove or reduce unwanted noise from recordings one thing that is unfortunately truly destructive in audio is digital clipping digital clipping occurs when a digital recording system receives more signal than what it is able to handle this results in an unpleasant momentary distorted clipping sound that sadly can't be removed from a recording however as a quick side note there are many analog systems that when clipped produce a more usable and pleasing sound known as soft clipping this can result in more subtle to dramatic amounts of distortion that can be used used for creative and mixing purposes but I digress we'll get into more of that later now there are tons of editing tutorials and demos on YouTube already and we have a great one on our Channel by Rob so I won't do that here besides and again editing is not mixing this next lesson is all about session setup and references let's dive in session setup can be broken down into five different operations or steps first we build a new session this is where we match sample rate set project Tempo increase the buffer size and import the multitracks and references step two organize the tracks this is where we sort rename color code and group step three is where we identify phase and polarity issues this is where you need to check all multi miked sources like drums amps Etc and align phase as needed and also invert polarity as need needed step four is Noise Gate unwanted bleed this is where you can reduce or eliminate any unwanted bleed if possible through gating and this would be mostly for things like drums and vocals step five is to gain stage everything this is where you'll set a healthy input gain on all channels with an average of -10 to -20 dbfs per track with the occasional Peak no higher than -6 dbfs before we dive into a demonstration for session setup I want to take a moment and talk about references references will often be provided to you if you're mixing for a client and it's something that we stress heavily here at mastering tocom if you're mixing your own projects then you should have had some references in mind even earlier in the production phase references can be any professionally recorded mixed and mastered tracks that you can use as a guide for each of those stages of the production process in the case of production you can reference for any aspect of the production process for example you might like like the way that the drums were recorded and produced on one record but then reference the vocals on another and you can honestly have as many references as will help you achieve the sound that you're going for in mixing however you'll want to stick with using references based on the aspects of the mix that you have control over for example if a client gives you a mix with all 808 drums and they say I like the way the drums sound on Sweet Leaf a Black Sabbath song from 1971 then you may want to find reference for drums which features an 808 kit instead if you didn't already know an 808 kit comes from the classic Roland tr88 drum machine from the early 80s which features all electronic drums Black Sabbath sweet leaf on the other hand features a very dry 7s acoustic drum kit making that a pretty poor reference remember the aspects of the mix that you have control over it's basically all the things that we're going to cover here in this course frequencies or EQ Dynamics mix which includes compression clipping and limiting spatial processing and other stereo effects these are the aspects of the mix that you can reference and it's totally acceptable to use multiple references if necessary to communicate to other Engineers the type of sound you're wanting to achieve within a mix however if you're providing references to an engineer or yourself if you're mixing it you'll want to do your very best to at the very least roughly stick within the same style or genre of music that that you're working with these days with so much Crossover with Styles and genre it would totally be normal to reference the hip-hop drums from a drake record while looking to the country vocals and maybe even guitars of a Chris Stapleton record so long as the elements of your music roughly match the production elements of the various records you're referencing you'll be fine to use them we have a great video already out that dives deep into finding and using references but a quick tip for Spotify users would be to use the fans also like section under the artists that you're working with if you think you're breaking brand new ground with a style of music that no one has heard of just think about all the music you're influenced by and put together one to three tracks that can be used for referencing the different elements of your production and mix all right let's jump into the dah and show you how we set up a session hello and welcome to this video demonstration on session setup we'll go ahead and just jump right in on the right hand side here we have a nice step-by-step guide we can follow along with so we'll go ahead and start with uh the first step which is to build a new session I've already started that process just by opening up a brand new blank slate here and first thing we need to do is match the sample rate and the way that we do that is by simply looking at the files that we're going to import and find the sample right there and us you can see uh the sample rate is listed on a Mac in this little window here if you don't have that window uh maybe use this uh viewer there's these different view options right and uh I find it helpful to have this so that I can see where everything is coming from and nested under so there's your sample rate 441 you can also rightclick and get info and it's going to be right in let's see here sample rate 441 right there also gives you the uh bit bit rate as well or the bit depth so the next thing we need to do is just actually make sure that the session is in that same sample rate so I'll go to record record settings and to audio and right now it's uh set to 48 so good thing I checked we're pretty much ready to go and the next we want to do is set project Tempo so uh need to find out what the tempo is and I actually don't have the tempo here but I can actually kind of cheat and find it in the logic session here I'm going to blow this up and I can see it's 145 right here it's probably hard to see that um a little cheat code if you're using logic you can just uh highlight and hit the space bar on the project and it'll open up um just an image of of the session but it's good to actually include the beats per minute the BPM in the title of the project so that your mix engineer uh has that info so we'll go ahead and change this to 145 and we're good to go there increase buffer size is what we want to do next in mixing we can use high buffer sizes because we're not recording so we don't need to worry about latency buffer size is the time that it takes for the computer to kind of process the audio so you'll get a delay with higher buffer settings a lower buffer size means that it's having to work harder uh to give you less latency in the recording process so lower buffer size is for recording and higher buffer size is for mixing I'll go ahead and go to settings audio and here I'm already set to 512 I just pretty much keep it there for mixing next we have import multis and references so we're finally ready to do that and get going so I'll go to the mix stems here this song is called Bounce I just think it's funny because bounce is what we say for export in audio so going to use new tracks so create new tracks and it'll do some thinking it'll just take a moment for all these to populate the audio okay so awesome and now we are ready to move on to organizing the tracks so we can sort rename color code and group sorting is just getting all similar instruments next to each other and in the order that you prefer so I like to have vocals at the top and then I do drums after that and then I do bass and typically we'll do you know synths and pads and everything else after that so let's go ahead and these are all named already which is nice so here's the drum bus looks like I bounced that out nice and crunchy uh so we'll go ahead and put that well let's go ahead and find all the vocals first and put those at the top so we have let's see Vox shouts put that at the top and we have our background vocals tell you what what I'm going to do is I'm going to color code these at the same time and that'll help me to sort it because then I can find just which ones have the same colors so background vocals get a kind of a darker yellow and ochre yellow yellow color vo shouts we'll do that ochre yellow going to get rid of this actually I'll call this my reference while I'm at it and put this at the very bottom cool now we have Bas bus so that's going to be a dark purple then background vocal let's go ahead and just highlight all of the vocals drums drums [Music] drums funky guitar keys those are lead so I'm not going to want to foxbridge uh chorus hums uh let's see distant not hipad Hollow G Riser stereo synth okay so I think these are the only left over things to color I'm going to move those to the top then I have my let's see here background vocals chorus hums Voom bridge and put that down there put the bvs next to each other okay and then I'll do my lead vocals so looks like LV lead course synth okay I think that's the vocal as well cool lots of process ing on these already they're sounding pretty good so let's go ahead and do yellow for lead vocal uh verse one verse two verse two dub and the chorus we'll put all these at the top so far so good base base thought I saw I thought I saw some other base maybe it was like like synth base let's see looks like we're good there guitar base fuzz okay cool color that purple put that next to these guys breath perk that can be kind of like effects I'll put that under and I like to do effects like a kind of pinkish color drum drums drums conveniently all next to each other because I titled them the same funky guitar guitar bridge lead course AR bouncy Vox looks like there's another Vox that we'll want to check out here so that's like a synth basically I'm going to treat that as a syn clap Bridge clap Hollow perk kick sweep sweep tuned perk okay so these are all drums let's go ahead and move those next to the drums like to have my kick at the very top I like to have my symbols what is this floor crash and symbols go towards the bottom of the drums perk perk claps drums snare what is this little F okay so that's like a I'm going to put like anything that's like drum bus parallel drums type stuff I'm going to put that towards the top and then kick below that Tom's going to go below the snare let's see symbols crash perk clap clap snare snare okay snare is going to go up here and put this up below the kick uh perk put all the perk together clap clap uh crash I think we're good floor tom rackt so we can have those next to each other [Music] overheads okay cool I think we're good drums I think are all the way that I want them to be floor tom okay overhead claps you know what overhead yeah no I'll keep it there filter drums same thing I'm going to have this at the top here and I like to sometimes order things if things are similar I'll order them in terms of when they come in as you can see here um let's see what else I think I'm good um let's see I thought I had more than just oh yeah clap Bridge there we go moving on funky guitar guitar bridge guitar Riser these can be red I like to do guitar is red and then I like to do oh there's a kick and see that color that blue get that up by the drums get chorus and that's like the verse kick cool lots of sample based instruments and sounds all right so Keys cool lead cor syn boots what is this interesting so this is totally blank and if I crank it up I don't see any audio so I'm going to mute that for now I'm going to mute it and since it's percussive I'm going to bring it over by the drums and then I'll look onto that I'll look into that offline and see if there's not anything missing be right our keys uh lead synth ARP sweep is going to be in effect so oops let's go ahead and do option command or option sorry uh option C and then I can turn this like that pink bouncy Vox I'm going to put that with my syns um disant note that's like a pad e syy type thing I'm going to put that here maybe that's actually kind of playing along with the sweep maybe I yeah I'll consider that like a sweep it only happens once once so I'm going to go ahead and color it the same color as our effects there okay Riser same thing it's going to be pink pad sweep here's another sweep sweep again almost ready to move on high pad can go up here with the rest of our syns these are all our keys we'll just call these keys and group those together that way so I'm going to go ahead and do like this color here typically I like to separate pads though from syn so maybe I'll do that so lead cor synth okay Keys okay I'm going to go like this Bry Vox do synth Cool Pad all right so pad's going to be kind of a softer color let's do something like that since will be green I like effects to be by my drums so I'm going to do that boom underneath I like my drums let's go ahead and put this let's see breath perk you know what I am going to I think make that a drum thing so I'm going to turn it that color that'll be kind of with our perk all right now we just need to finish kind of sorting um I'm I'm good on the names so I don't need to do that they're all named appropriately um they're all colorcoded we just need to kind of finish shorting and grouping so let's go ahead and put all our drums underneath the vocals base okay everything else is the way that I want so we're good to go except I need to move this pad nope I don't need to move that pad that's great let's go ahead and uh yeah just kind of group these all together I'm going to leave I'm tempted to leave this separate this drum bus separate and maybe even mute it depending on what's going on this might be like a parallel thing so I'm going to I'm going to keep that separate so let's go ahead and um not group those together and cool so yeah we can group all these together and the way that I do that in logic is do shift command D and that gives me a summing stack so I'll call this drums and then we'll go to our vocals all our lead Vox shift command D and we'll call this lead box okay collapse that collapse the drums I'm going to do PLL for parallel because that's probably what's going on there it's been a long time since I worked on this so I don't I don't know all right so Vox hum Bridge along with all these others are going to be background vocals I'm tempted however to actually fit in the Vox hum bridge in with the pads depending on how this sounds [Music] cool all right so I'm going to put these down at the bottom and I'm going to call them yeah I'm going to basically have these be pads but I'm going to keep them that color you know what backtracking I'm going to go ahead and just leave it as it is we'll go ahead and and group these oh you know what kind of going back and forth so I will group these in with the pads so let's do that this color and [Music] then drums are good okay let's go ahead and [Music] do these guys all together this will be BV for backing vocals background vocals um base bus okay so it looks like I bust out a couple things let's see how these things sound [Music] together that sounds like the same thing so this is another uh case where I might not use this um I'm going to mute it for now just like the drums parallel I'll call this uh base bus parallel and then and I'll go ahead and just group these together cool and let's [Music] do there we go call it base all right so these are going to be effects this is going to be guitars this is going to be synths you can call them Keys orn or whatever you want and these are going to be my pads now I can solo what's cool about this is I can just solo all the vocals I can solo all the background vocals all the drums etc etc and that just gives me a nice clean session to look at you know to collapse all these things and to you know work at a higher level when I need to maybe process all of the background vocals together process all the drums together Etc Etc so moving on to step three would be to identify phase and polarity issues this is where we want to check all of our multi-mic uh sources like drums amps Etc anything that has multiple mics on the same kind of source Sound Source you want to just make sure that there's no phase issues and then what we do is we just flip the polarity um or the phase you can kind of use these interchangeably these words phase and polarity they are different uh think of phase as like kind of left to right TimeWise in the waveform like where it is on the waveform that's more like phase polarity is just whether it's positive or negative so if I zoom in on um any one of our wave forms here you can see that it goes you know up and down up and down that's a waveform and there's a positive side and there's a negative side when it dips below the zero line here we want to just make sure that things are lined up properly so that there's no cancellation of sounds right there could be moments where lowend especially in the low end with things like like a kick drum or a snare a lot of times you want to check like your direct close mices on your snare to your overhead mics because the overheads are a distance away you know so many feet away from the actual snare and that delay causes a delay and a shift in that wave form compared to the actual close mic waveform so it's gonna cause like a phase shift there so that um it might not sound as Punchy and you might get some cancellation of the low-end frequencies there we've got some live drums here that we want to check uh really I just want to check those against uh anything like overheads um or just any samples that might be layered on top of these live drums so let's go ahead and just check for those really what I want to check first is the snare here so this is a live snare [Music] sound sounds like there's a lot of processing on there already and then we have this uh snare sample so yeah what I want to do is kind of zoom in here I mean you can really hear it if you know what to listen for you'll hear kind of an empty sounding or a thin sounding snare and the way I would know very quickly if it was out of phase right is that I would come in here and take a gain plugin and it might not be a gain plugin and yours might be called something else but pretty much every doll is going to have a utility plugin that allows you to phase flip uh or just like phase invert so I would just click on both of these to invert the left and the right and if it improves the low-end punch I know that it was out of phase so it goes in and out it's interesting um like that whole section right there is better see how thin that sounds versus this but then all of a sudden this hit right [Music] here is in Phase so really what we'd want to do is go in and erect this one by one and I'm going to do it instead of like lining them up manually you can do that so essentially I would just come in [Music] here right so this one is this first hit is is lined up just fine if I zoom in here you'll see what I mean right so these right here are lining up with you know the positive side is lining up with the positive side negative with the negative Etc right for the most part I could probably improve this a little bit and so I'm going to actually take some time to do that because you'd be surprised like just that alone getting things to line up in terms of phase will give you so much more impact in and punch out of your drums than any other plug-in do not skip this step because this will maximize the punch of all of your drums right especially when it comes to the low end this is pretty much exclusive to lowend but there are things like comb filtering or weird phy things that can happen in multi mic sources like acoustic guitars where there's a mic on the neck and a mic on the sound hole want to check for those things but in this case it's really just kind of the lowend punch of Different Drums like kick and snare maybe Toms um that I'm interested in uh checking so I might just like kind of fast forward through this for you guys and then just show you the result all right so what I actually need to do this is actually a really good demonstration because these will go out of phase from each other right I have the the snare live with the overhead [Music] so these have to stay locked into each other so if I move this around I need to move this around and I don't want to do that so what I'm going to do is actually move the sample and shift the sample around so that it matches up with the snare samples yeah I'm G that's what I'm going to do with the gain plugin on there's a Improvement in that punch there listen to this just between the overheads and the the close mics so here's without and then here's with phase [Music] invert [Music] it's only like a DB louder and but we're getting a lot more perceived punch than [Music] that okay cool so I'm going to get [Music] moving [Music] for and then I'll go ahead and hit [Music] apply yeah that was a good [Music] move so I'm just doing with and without so listen again so here's uh without here's with just more full bodied so I've gone through and as you can see I have done individual instances where we've applied selection based processing to the snare samples right again I didn't want to do it to the live snare because then I'd have to chop both the uh overhead and the live snare tracks together and it would just be easier because these move around right humanization is in the you know the human imperfection of the live drum so I'm just basically moving around these or uh in my case I'm just using the phase invert on individual instances so I've done that and we can kind of move on let's go ahead and do our last stage or last step of gain staging everything and the easiest way to do that is to Simply use the normalize the gain normalization setting or function under functions but we have to select all the tracks first so what you'll see happen is some of these will stay relative the same because they're already within that -10 to -20 but then others will either uh increase or decrease depending on how loud they are so if I did this by hand I would have to go to each one of these and turn the gain up and down as you can see the clip gain right there is what is moving but what I'm going to do is speed this up quite a bit by going to functions after selecting all of them and going to normalize region gain I already have it set to -10 you might have to change that uh from another default amount and then I set it to individual tracks and then I set it to Peak and just hit apply let me go ahead and do that again -10 hit tab hit apply and this will take a moment you'll see these change there that one changed some of them stayed again relatively the same but now we have a nice uni uniform volume averaging between 10-20 Peaks no higher than -6 so if you have Rogue Peaks and some of the more Dynamic instruments like your vocals that's fine if you have a couple of those but the kind of cruising altitude should be between -10 -20 and that will help us to feed our processing a really nice healthy volume some processors like analog emulation plugins work best receiving you know kind of an optimal level between -10 and -20 so this will be just a a great way to give us a lot of headro as well as feed our some of our plugins a healthy volume so now we get to move on to the next section of volume balance really pretty straightforward stuff here the only thing that takes a lot of time I would say is when you have phase issues that you're trying to deal with where you're wanting to invert phase and polarity and that is arguably going to take the most amount of time but it is so worth it because then when you get into mixing you're not running into those little tedious tasks that I was doing earlier of splicing all these regions up you know so that way you can maintain focus on what's really important which is mixing next let's talk about one of the if not the most important aspects of your mix volume balance volume balance might be the most straightforward and simple aspect of the mixing process and yet so many people Overlook and underestimate the impact it has on a successful Final Mix it really does constitute the mixing part of mixing in fact at mastering domcom we argue that volume balance alone accounts for 80% of a great mix volume balance refers to adjusting the volume faders of the individual tracks in order to achieve a balanced and cohesive static mix prior to any processing with with the exception of any effects that help with mic bleed or phase inversion we do this early on as sort of the first step of the actual mixing part of mixing because it helps to establish the overall frequency balance of your mix up front in fact it carries by far the most weight when it comes to establishing the right distribution of frequencies in your mix I'll explain if we were to take the various instruments from a great mix and place them all along the frequency Spectrum you'll notice that a it fills up the entire frequency spectrum and B each instrument sort of slots naturally into a different part of the spectrum there's going to be overlap of course but in terms of fundamental frequencies each of these occupies its own space along the Spectrum as a refresher the fundamental frequency refers to the frequency of any sound where the energy or volume of that frequency is greater greatest so the reason that this ties into volume balance is because we can sort of treat our volume faders much like you would the gain parameter on an EQ if you want more low-end in your mix turn up the bass or kick drum want more mids turn up the guitars or syns that hold a lot of mid-range frequencies want less high-end in the mix turn your high hats symbols and shakers down you'd be surprised with how many mixes I critique where the feedback is as simple as turning something up or down not to sound harsh but if you really can't nail the most basic tool of all volume then you really have no business asking about someone's vocal chain or mastering chain Etc I don't mean to say that you can't work on improving your volume balance and vocal processing technique at the same time but rather I'm trying to help you understand the importance and the weight of establishing a solid static mix static mix is one with only volume balance it's the very first attempt at striking the right balance of your instruments and sounds in the mix so upon first listen after you get all of your tracks imported you'll be tempted to start hearing areas of improvement or opportunities to fix and enhance different instruments with EQ compression effects Etc but it's really so so critical to use your fresh ears to establish the right volume balance first the volume balance can and will change to some degree over time as you progress along in the mix but you have to resist the urge to add plugins or effects to any of your tracks during this first stage of establishing a great initial volume balance if you've watched any of my other videos on YouTube you may have come across me saying this I would bet that a real Pro mixer could get a better sounding mix with just volume faders than an amateur that has all of the tools in the world at his or her disposal all right hopefully you get the point here and hopefully this is somewhat of a relief to you because the volume fader is really the easiest tool that there is to learn the only real challenge with the volume fader or any tool for that matter lies in knowing or hearing when you've set things just right in the mix now I'm about to demonstrate volume balance but before I do that I want to quickly explain the approach we're going to take for these demonstrations moving forward for each new process of mixing we demonstrate I'm going to show you how to apply on three levels level one will be with a two track and a vocal level two will be with a stem mix this is where we'll have groups of instruments assign to different faders and then level three will be with all of the individual tracks and faders available to us so now for the demo of volume balance welcome to to this video demonstration on volume balance at the first level using a two track and our vocal our vocal consists of a background Vocal Track and a lead Vox track I've Blended both and volume balanced both the chorus and the verse lead into the same track those were on separate tracks so I blended those together and then all the background vocals I blended together and volume balanced and bounced out into this stem and then the instrumental here we have our two track uh this is already volume balanced in and of itself that's what you're going to get when you you know download a beat or instrumental uh to sing or rap over a lot of times you'll get this situation in scenario and uh the hipop realm where you have a a beat that was purchased or licensed and then you rap or sing over that so you're going to have a fully kind of mastered a lot of cases like a ma mix and mastered two track this is just produced and mixed using volume only but it's it's a pretty decent balance overall and we be good to to demonstrate volume balance at this level so what I want to do is just start with the faders down and then I'm going to go ahead and normalize region gain and I think it should already be normalized uh with the lead Vox and the background vocals but um this will most likely change the instrumental so let's go ahead and highlight these and then we'll go up to to functions normalize region gain and make sure it's set to -10 apply and there you could see the instrumental was brought down a bit so we'll start with the instrumental bring that up and then we'll bring in the vocal and I like to start with the [Music] chorus [Music] cool and let's bring in the [Music] lead I'm going to bring up the overall track volume on the stereo out just so we can better hear [Music] it checking back things shaking my [Music] way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the CLS pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S it check it out check it out I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around [Music] I'm you see me in Make It Look So Easy we sexing on a Saturday [Music] night I think this is in both the instrumental and the background vocal the dope Che it out check it out [Music] and that's it for this it really doesn't take that long to just used the faders for only three tracks but you can see that volume is really important just at this level because the right balance of the instrumental to the vocal is everything before you start applying any processing so we're going to get more and more complex as we go to level two and then finally level three and we'll see you in those demonstrations in this lesson we're going to demonstrate volume balance on the second level using stems only now I want to kind of preface what I've done to prep this uh in the right way so that I can give this an honest go without cheating because I've had to volume balance everything within each of these stems these are all the groups of instruments all the synths in one fader now pads in one fader etc etc and so I had to go in and and volume balance those of course in order to demonstrate this but what I've done in addition to that is I've normalized the gain of all of these right so that means it has reset the volume and I've brought them all down to zero so I'm going to have to essentially start from scratch but on the stem level so let's go ahead and get started the first thing that I like to do as you can see here as well we have the colorcoded markers showing us our you know different sections of the song this is huge you want to make sure that you have this set up so that you can bounce around from section to section really really easily and quickly so don't skip this step that's something you can do at any time during session setup or just before you start throwing up the faders just make sure you have your your markers for the song structure established first thing I I like to do is start with the drums and then I actually pair that with the vocals so drums and vocals I sort of treat that as one volume balance step and then I bring in the base and then I'll bring in everything else let's go ahead and do that so the volume of this is actually quite low I'm going to go ahead and bring this up to nominal let's see here not that much so we have one Rogue Spike around eight that's [Music] fine I'm actually going to bring in the bass guitar things I Shak in my [Music] way got to get back in it cuz ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S it check it out check it [Music] out yeah things are shaking my [Music] way got to get back in [Music] jacking back things I shaking my [Music] way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to ready to check it out check it [Music] out I'm the never I'm going around I'm to I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm shake it everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On Top coming down lady to bounce out I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around com down and I W [Music] St that's got a cool rhythmic element to it I'm on to by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On [Music] Top second verse hit that yeah you got to admit that [Music] down [Music] it everybody I can make on the ground I'm On [Music] Top sh everybody I can make I'm On Top lady Ain to quit heyy andbody [Music] qu feel to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feel feel cuz I'm up check it out I'm better the never I'm coming around it everybody I [Music] it hit that hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell [Music] out when I'm buting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night and I'm sing lul lemon hit that [Music] sh second hit that yeah you got it feel we're not here toell [Music] out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight I actually want this to be louder this section here so I'm I'm going to bring it up with just a simple clip gain automation here go ahead and extend this out actually right around there yeah so we'll go like that and then bring this up just a bit chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy we're sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight better the rest of I'm coming around I'm On Top a com down and I w't stop till I'm with it it show everybody I can make it ground I'm on top down when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night don't want to fight the I'm coming around down and I it show everybody I can make it on the I'm better let res I'm coming around I'm to that's great that's all I really want to do let's just double check and make sure everything's up yep I'm going to check this last background vocal right here that's just the dope uh kind of like a Homer Simpson thing there all right that's all for this lesson this is really short because again we're working with stems we only have in total about eight or nine tracks 1 2 3 4 five 6 seven eight so what we'd want to do though is just kind of check against the reference I'm going to go ahead and show you kind of checking the reference in the level three video demonstration which we'll have a lot more detail in volume balance so just want to give you kind of that next level uh uh sort of highlevel look into volume balance um and just show you how important it is to really get that right because that's going to make all the difference you could tell how things kind of just slowly came together as we're adjusting adjusting listening adjusting listening again adjusting again you really have to just use your fresh ears for this stage to get a really great balance and that's it for this lesson we will see you on the next one which will be level three where we'll have access to all the individual faders and show you how to volume balance using all of that control this is kind of exciting because this is the first time that we're going to start to feel like we're actually mixing and I want to show you a couple things that I've done offline here one of them is I've brought all the faders down to zero except for the buses we want to start with no volume at all because we're going to bring in one track at a time starting with the most important elements First Once you bring in the very most important leading roll elements then you can kind of decide after that what you want to bring in that's entirely up to you but you really just need to ask yourself what is the leading role and in this case it's going to be our vocal and our drums and so I'm going to get those two things sitting well together and once I can do that I can go and blend in the rest of the instruments so again what I've done offline here is I've brought all of these faders all the way down and then I've left all of the actual buses these tracks are all left at zero or nominal okay so each one of these track or the bus tracks are left at nominal you can see that so we're not going to change these at least not yet we may do that later on down the road but for now we're just going to start with all of the faders down and I've also kind of colorcoded our track headers here I didn't have that done so that shows up in the mixer window as the same color as our actual track regions so you can see they're all matching oh yeah one more thing that I've done is I've actually taken that snare live track or I think it was the snare sample track right here this was chopped up so that we could apply our kind of phase flip instances and I went ahead and cleaned that up and just kind of bounced it in place rendered that that in place to one clean AIO file let's get started I'm going to go ahead and start with the drums first and then I'll mix that with the vocals as soon as I feel like I have a really good drum Groove going I'll bring the vocals in to match reason I start with the drums is because I like to start with the loudest element first which is typically the kick that's going to be lowend information that in modern pop genres is going to occupy the most sort of you know volume real State and we'll go ahead and and do that so first things first is kick go ahead and bring that up and I like to start in a section where kind of all the instruments are firing at once some people like to just start bringing up the faders based on what comes in first but I typically like to to start with a core section where all of the instruments are are going at once so let's go ahead and find and make sure we got the right chorus with everything let's go ahead and start in the end here yep looks like I've got a different kick though for the chorus so I'll go ahead and start with the course [Music] kick okay so I just bring it up to to zero the fader that is and I can see that we're hitting we're hitting right around you know minus 10 I'm not going to fret over 0.1 DB but it's pretty much you know it's pretty much at -10 me make sure that my let's see stereo out fader is turned down I'm going to turn that back up so yeah what I'm going to do is just kind of bring in the samples first tell you what I'm going to group my I'm going to do one more step here and I'm going to create a bus within the drums so I can actually create a bus within a bus which is nice that's actually a recent update to logic so if you haven't updated logic recently you may not have that feature I'm going to call this my snare and then I that way I can kind of process these down the road Al together let's over here filter drums so I consider this like a snare top [Music] almost [Music] so that's a high hat I don't know why it's labeled symbols go ahead and change that really quick well I guess we have both I'll say hat and [Music] Sim this is like a downer [Music] I'm going to actually rearrange these super quick [Music] I'm going to put my two sample uh kicks next to each [Music] other this keeps uh messing me up I'm going to call this clap we'll say clap and Shake [Music] m [Music] [Music] [Music] door so I thought that this was a a clap but this is actually just my production partner uh Caleb saying clap your hands so I'm going to change this to a different color we'll have this be you know what actually because that's uh happens one time and it's pretty rhythmic I am going to leave it that way well your am [Music] your [Music] I'm going to start to bring in I think we've got all of our drums maybe a few here [Music] here [Music] well you're [Music] yeah [Music] [Music] I think what I want to do here is put a gain plug in and let this grow so I'm going to go ahead and automate this and and [Music] maybe just a little bit [Music] less gonna go ahead and bring the whole thing down just a hair [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm going to do the same thing to these tracks and just put a gain let's see well I already have a gain plugin there with the face flip so I can just use this so I'll go to my gain parameter and I just want to do like a 2db kind of a move here where we start a little bit lower like this maybe two or [Music] three [Music] [Music] yeah and I want to do this one as well while playing it and latches on I can click on any parameter in the plugin and it'll automatically create that link Lane automation Lane which is [Music] [Music] great [Music] cool I'll start bringing in the [Music] vocal [Music] back sh my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey [Music] heying back things I shake my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody to see me feeling CU I'm up in the CLS it up where I we're really lucky because these are all dynamically pretty consistent so that's uh there's not going to be too much in terms of compression or limiting or any Dynamic control we'll get to that later in another lesson but this allows us to volume balance everything really well since it's been controlled in the production [Music] session okay I am wanting that like breath thing that I'm hearing it's really cool kind of want that turned [Music] up sh my way got get on the fcing back there things are shaking my way got to get back in cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S it check it [Music] out I don't like how loud that is I'm actually just going to bring down the gain of it andbody to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds it [Music] [Music] out interesting those little clicks are cool this is just [Music] too loud and this is too loud so I'm going to bring these down with gain [Music] [Applause] [Music] out [Music] out out [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's super cool all right um I think uh yeah we need to get the chorus vocal up let's see what's going on [Music] here uh these [Music] are yeah let me bring these up together in fact let me put these [Music] together it out Che it out I'm better the never I'm going around I'm where I left it but this time I'm going to stra to check it out check it [Music] out I'm better than the rest of Never B I'm going around I'm on top I coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh Show everybody I can make it just Fe On The Ground I'm on top I coming Lady [Music] B [Music] nice watch [Music] out [Music] second yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell [Music] out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday interesting just a different tonal [Music] character this one's a lot brighter got to admit that you're down check it out where I get that [Music] yeah I don't know if I want to hear as much clap here anymore I think it works [Music] there but I don't know if it works here so I'm I'm sort of uh I'm thinking that maybe I'll I'll just take this whole thing down just a hair is [Music] all yeah it feels a little bit better that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living I like how this is grooving yeah you got ad [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy we sexing on Sat night pick you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing hit that yeah you got to it [Music] top a coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining sh it [Music] out I'm goinging around I'm up I coming down I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show me everybody I can make it these two things are sort of the same purpose I'm better the never I'm coming around I'm loed up I ain't coming down I won't stop till I'm winning sh show everybody I on the ground [Music] I'm the sh it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm show me everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On [Music] Top and everybody to see andbody [Music] andbody feel feel super [Music] cool uh these things are kind of mass in I'll have to deal with that in EQ but uh you can hear how those elements are masking the vocal and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up this time I'm going Tock it [Music] out better the never I'm coming around I'm never I'm goinging around I'm to coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh [Music] everybody show everybody I can on the ground I'm On Top [Music] lady show everybody I can on the ground I'm [Music] toing back there things I Shak in my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to swe it check it out [Music] might bring this in it up I this time I'm going it out I'm better than the rest of Never B I'm coming around I'm to coming down I W about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the [Music] CLS time I'm going check it out check it out Never B I'm goinging around I'm on top I ain't coming down I won't stop I'm [Music] wining [Music] feel going around [Music] everybody the ground I'm [Music] to [Music] ground I'm On Top by coming down l b o watch [Music] out L your l [Music] you're yeah [Music] you're that's kind of cool I'm just debating uh whether to automate the volume [Music] here yeah I think I want to just bring it up slightly so I'm going to put a gain plugin on it and just kind of give it some movement in terms of volume so we'll do that real quick right at the bridge here looks like I already have it here we go maybe we'll just start low and then go [Music] high l [Music] l your [Music] [Music] f [Music] production decision maybe I would do differently I mean I did work on this production so something that I'm thinking about now is is maybe extending this section here but I'm not going to do that because I'm acting as a mixed engineer not a producer but that's something you could go back and forth with the producer to make a suggestion and depending on your relationship with that uh artist or producer may be something that you can really quickly and easy easily do just copy and [Music] paste there is one more track here that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight that you're wearing feelings that I don't want to fight when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight wearing give me feeling that I don't want to fight feelings that I don't want to [Music] [Music] fight this is going to be something I split [Music] [Music] here I think what I'm going to do is do the same thing here and Auto this right here latch gain plugin and get this to grow a little bit more from a lower [Music] volume [Music] I'm coming around I'm to coming down and I won't stop till I'm ready interesting so I don't know why I would have kept these on the same side yeah I just want to swap the left and right see if I can do that this right [Music] here on the ground I'm [Music] top [Music] I make I I'm ready so everybody I can make on the ground missing one sweep [Music] here [Music] around I'm to let the res I'm coming around coming down everybody I can make on the ground I'm on [Music] top I think we're almost there let's go and listen through oh fast Jack bouncing back things I shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it he hey andbody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S it check it out check it out I'm better than the rest of never that's it I'm goinging around I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm tempted to bring in this parallel drums just in the chorus to give it just slight lift here let me try that I'm going to section this off here and here and we'll just make these Cuts even though we may or may not use it go ahead and do it here as well Mark you tool does this quicker we'll mute there we'll mute there and we'll mute here it up where I it this time I'm going Che it out only thing I don't like about it is it's bringing up the level of the highs so I may end up just eqing this and using just the the more mid-range energy of that so I'm going to make a note and say tame High now okay let's just keep listening making sure that we have everything in it looks like we do just at a glance we'll continue [Music] from I am tempted to bring the kick of our our verse down just a hair so I'm going to bring bring that down just like a DB and a half pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to straight to check it out check it [Music] out coming down I won't stop till I'm wining show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm on [Music] top hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm buting about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the [Music] clouds [Music] ah when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at with sexing on the side [Music] [Music] when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at with sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight I'm better than the rest of never I'm going around I'm feelings that I don't want to fight feelings that I don't to fight I don't want to fights that I don't want to fight feelings that I don't want to fight feelings that I don't want to fight that I don't want to [Music] fight those little breaths can make a big difference in the in the production value so what I'm thinking right now is I may want to make some really high level automation moves I'm not quite sure I'm just feeling like the energy from from the verse to the chorus needs to be slightly greater when we go to the chorus lemon that you're wearing give me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight going [Music] around show everybody I can [Music] [Applause] [Music] I think uh bringing some of that highend energy in from this pad is working going around St sh it everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm On Top lady the [Music] B yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out then I'm busting and you see me in I'm make it look so easy at with [Music] sex you up and I'm Shing my way that yeah you got it and you see me and I make it look so easy sexing on a Satur night you up [Music] and I may want to pan these out just slightly go to 15 or 20 easy [Music] sat [Music] let's make sure these AR the same track it out it out it out those might be the same I'm going to flip the phase on this really quick and see if indeed it is the same thing because if they're exactly the same it'll cancel out yeah same exact track all right so uh again this is kind of hearkening back to our quick little lesson explanation on phase inverting the phase when you have a positive and a negative polarity of the wave kind of meeting at the same exact time if it's the same exact signal then the positive and the negative cancels out and there's no sound no sound if I take off the face flip you get the sound but over here I have a [Music] feeling yeah so I'm GNA go ahead and just just get rid of one of [Music] them you know what for the sake of Simplicity it's adding the right amount of volume that I want I'm just going to keep it check it out it out it [Music] out and because I'm slightly OCD I'm going to go ahead and get rid of those splices [Music] there part of me wants them to be just slightly louder so might do that just bring these up gain wise like ADB is all yeah that's [Music] good second hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] hit that yeah you got part of me doesn't like the clap layer [Music] there I'm going to go ahead and just make a decision here here since uh I am actually the producer on this with my production partner Caleb I'm going to mute that and just make the call hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not [Music] here that yeah you got admit that you're [Music] down living in it cuz we're chill we're not here to sell out hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out I'm buting see easy yeah I really like that decision get the the claps in that's a subtle subtle layer I mean not super subtle but it's just the right amount of kind of variation bringing that into the second half of the second [Music] versey pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't fight tempted to bring up the volume of the vocal I'm going to leave it [Music] though I'm going around I'm On Top going down and I won't stop till I'm wi it sh it with everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On Top coming [Music] down I really want to EQ all this stuff but I can't because I'm just doing volume balance [Music] going everybody I can make it ground I'm On Top coming part of me wants to have a little bit more of the crash s symbols coming from I believe the [Music] overheads I stop till I'm sh it show everybody I can make it ground I'm On Top by L [Music] hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down versus feeling really good to [Music] me I'm going around I'm on Top com down and I w't stop till I'm sh it everybody I can make it I'm top [Music] [Music] coming check it out it [Music] out hit that yeah you got it admit that you're [Music] [Music] down [Music] probably automate some EQ kind of like filtering out the highend on this might put that down as a note automate EQ I'm just going to say low pass show you what I mean by [Music] that cool yeah I'll do that later but that's uh an effect that I I think would really enhance that [Music] [Music] section around let the res I'm coming around I'm Top by coming down I w't stop till I'm ready everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On Top by L [Music] brought the kick down in the course of half [Music] DB lots of listening uh again that's why this is so critical that we saved this for a very specific session that we have all of the kind of uh dotting our eyes and crossing our te's in the session setup and everything so you can just focus on these volume moves because this is so this is such a critical part of this whole process of mixing I'm feeling pretty good about this I'm going to call it good here uh you saw me do some you know basic automation moves with gain um just a little bit of panning actually that's one thing that I did not finish let me go go ahead and you see me and make it look so easy sex on a Satur night you [Music] [Music] up I think what I want to do here is use let's see sample delay sample delay will be delaying the left or the right depending on what you choose if I delay the left here and then I delay the right here it'll spread these out so we'll show you [Music] 25 and 25 [Music] [Music] [Music] we [Music] there's not much of a difference honestly [Music] so I'll stick with [Music] it let's see if we do it on just one of these what would happen it out it out it out check it out check it out check it [Music] out you know what but I am not going to use it I'm going to remove [Music] it I may do some processing later on to further kind of spread those out but for now I think we're good the last thing that I want to do is actually check against our reference track here now we are a little bit limited due to things like copyright strikes and our ability to use you know a lot of different reference tracks that I would probably rather use and so we're using a service that allows us to very affordably license legitimately the tracks that we use for our reference tracks in these lessons in these videos so I'm going to pay attention as much as I can to just kind of overall volume balance frequency spectrum rather than comparing this you know Apples to Apples production wise so but I've done my best to to pick a reference track uh that you know I would want to maybe aim for in terms of Sonic quality so let's go ahead and bring this down solo the [Music] reference feel supernal [Music] superal unable [Music] going [Music] around obviously a lot more high-end information that we can take care of with things like EQ and such uh I feel like the high-end on this track is almost a little overbearing what I'm going to do is bring up a P analyzer plugin so this gives me kind of a look objectively at what's going on in the frequency spectrum and then we can make that comparison so if I go to metering I've got this by waves really affordable plugin and really really useful one of the most underrated uh plugins by waves in my opinion beautiful and through my body it's enough to make it feel superal [Applause] [Music] okay look so easy at with sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight yeah overall I'm satisfied with that that I'm satisfied with the overall trend of the frequency spectrum again I don't know that I'm going to want it as bright but you know we can see here there's going to be opportunities to enhance with EQ these are all things that I'm going to be you know thinking about in the back of my head as we move on to our the next section which is EQ so we'll get to jump right into doing all kinds of moves that are going to help us you know get closer to the finish line and kind of go in the direction of the reference without trying to copy it exactly I'm going to take what I like from this reference and leave the rest all right that's it I'm going to go ahead and call it there this is again the most important foundational element of your mix is just volume just using the volume faders uh and uh some some panning here and there if you need to a lot of the width and panning was done in the production session so I don't need to really do as you can see I don't really have any panning going on but in some cases you might get all of the tracks in mono and it's up to you to really create that stereo field hello everyone and welcome to section two frequencies this section is all about understanding and harnessing the power of EQ in your mixes EQ in my opinion comes in close second to the volume fader when it comes to ease of use and the power of the tools we use in mixing so I have one goal in mind for this section and that's to deepen your understanding of and strengthen your skill with using EQ in your mixes I want you to remove the guesswork and Empower you to make intentional moves when pulling up any EQ and at this point in the course I want to introduce a unique perspective and analogy that may or may not be new to you but it's one that I think will help you understand how EQ fits into the overall picture of crafting a great mix that analogy is all about comparing our mix to a three-dimensional Cube the analogy of 3D mixing has actually been around for a while but it's not something I see being emphasized a ton so we'll get into that very soon but real quick I want to let you know about our totally free 9-hour course that is completely dedicated to the topic of EQ so I highly recommend you watch that in addition to this course you can find it both on our YouTube channel as well as our free courses section on the mastering dcom website all right let's jump in first what is EQ EQ is short for Equalization let me put it this way if the volume fader allows us to control how loud each instrument is in the mix then EQ allows us to control how loud each frequency is for any given sound in the mix EQ can be thought of as the sculptor's Chisel that shapes the Sonic landscape of your mix think of each track in the mix as is a block of Sonic marble EQ is how you chisel away the unnecessary enhance the beautiful and bring balance to the overall picture in order to better understand EQ we need to know what frequencies are frequencies refer to these specific pitches or tones within a sound spanning from low to high in our Sonic universe everything vibrates and these vibrations occur at various speeds known as frequencies which are measured in Herz these frequencies are the backbone of sound ranging from the lowest base at around 20 HZ to the highest Highs at 20 khz each instrument and sound in your mix occupies its unique spot in this vast Spectrum the more intimately you can get to know this frequency spectrum the more intentional you'll become in your use of EQ and it's not just for engineers who mix or Master but producers that know their frequencies well can produce and arrange music in a way that more naturally fills up this frequency spectrum and that's because each and every instrument sort of corresponds to a specific set or range of frequencies each frequency also corresponds to a particular pitch and again is measured in hertz as we've already mentioned frequencies are manipulated using EQ or Equalization to shape the tonal balance of the music so here's just a quick demo of using an EQ here I have two B basic EQ moves one for the lowend boosting 6 DB at around 83 Hertz and everything below that as well and another move at 5 KZ and above but this time I'm actually dipping that down so listen to how the tone of this drum track or this drum group changes dramatically when I shift these up and down so I'll take this off so you can hear what it sounds like [Music] before we lose the highend we feel more low end let's do the opposite and actually switch these so this is 6 DB down and this is seven or six Deb up [Music] so EQ has the ability to dramatically alter the overall tone of any sound let's see what it sounds like to boost 250 [Music] HZ [Music] interesting so now I'm hearing more of the percussive elements that live in this frequency range right let's see what it sounds like to boost here at [Music] 750 so now we're hearing you know some of the other percussive instruments like some Bongos that live higher up in this frequency range again these are simply points at which we can alter the volume of different frequency and frequency ranges so why is EQ so important in mixing it's simple EQ is about control control over these frequencies control over Sonic texture or character and therefore control over the emotional impact of your music it's the main tool used to enhance Clarity depth and overall sound quality this involves boosting cutting or altering specific frequency ranges to achieve the desired Sonic characteristics and a mix frequencies are fundamental to how we perceive sound affecting everything from the deep Rumble of a baseline to the crispness of a high hat now I want to introduce the concept and perspective I mentioned earlier that will change the way you think think about mixing imagine your mix as a three-dimensional Cube this Cube has height width and depth each Dimension corresponds to a key aspect of your mix the height Dimension is where EQ comes into play frequencies can be thought of as the vertical aspect of your mix by adjusting different frequencies you're essentially moving elements of your mix up or down within this Sonic Cube higher frequencies give the perception of height and airiness while lower frequencies provide a sense of grounding and depth or weight just think about the hard-hitting kick and bass of an electronic dance track imagine where you feel that in your body I personally think of a nice Punchy Kick Drum as something that hits me in the chest conversely when I hear a high string section on a track that's something that I feel higher up in my head the width dimension is controlled through panning and stereo Imaging tools it's about how you place elements in the left to right field a well- panned mix can give a sense of breadth and space allowing each element to be distinctly heard without clutter this is one of those aspects of the mix that really allows us to immerse The Listener in the listening experience we'll cover this in great detail in section four of this course and then there's depth depth is about how far or close elements feel in your mix it's largely controlled by Dynamics processing like compression limiting and volume as well as Reverb And Delay effects depth creates the front to back placement in your mix adding a sense of space and location however depth can also be controlled with EQ we'll get into the depth Dimension later on in section three understanding and manipulating these three dimensions is key to achieving a well balanced Dynamic immersive and engaging mix remember each tool you use in mixing whether it's Volume EQ panning or compression affects how your mix occupies this cubic space but before we go deeper into the practicalities of EQ in the next lessons it's vital to remember this EQ is not a magic wand it works best when the source material is good a common mistake is to try to fix fundamental issues with EQ where they should be addressed up front in the recording and production if there's a problem at the recording or production stage try to address it there first whenever possible EQ should enhance not repair as the saying goes get it right at the source this will make the process and results of eqing your tracks much more enjoyable in summary this introductory lesson is just the tip of the iceberg we're going to explore the intricacies of using EQ in depth through demonstration from identifying and fixing problem frequencies to enhancing the Sonic relationships between different elements in your mix but always keep the cube analogy in mind as it will guide your decisions and help you visualize the impact of your adjustments in a three-dimensional space coming up in the next lesson we'll be delving into using EQ to solve specific problems in your mix improve Sonic relationships achieve balance and enhance remember every adjustment you make shapes the story your music tells let's make it a story worth listening to welcome to lesson two in this lesson we're going to get more specific and granular as we cover the following steps and concepts with using EQ first we identify and address problem frequencies with EQ these are the very first moves we make with EQ in our mix then after that we'll discuss the concept of using EQ to improve the Sonic relationships between instruments this is all about eqing in context then we'll discuss using EQ to bring balance on the global level of our entire mix by addressing tracks individually and then finally we'll cover using EQ to enhance each instrument this is the last step in the process of EQ now I want to simplify how we approach EQ in these steps as much as possible with this statement all we're doing when using EQ in mixing is boosting more of the frequencies that we want to hear and turning down the frequencies we want less of that's it now obviously the challenge comes in knowing what frequencies we want more or less of and how much so let's get started with discussing how we address problems with EQ first what do we mean when we say problem problems when we talk about problems in a mix we're primarily referring to issues with specific frequencies these problems can range from harsh resonances where certain frequencies are overly prominent and distracting to a lack of presence in a specific frequency range leaving the mix feeling unbalanced or incomplete now everyone in their mixing Journey eventually faces disappointment when their mix sounds boomy harsh muddy empty thin or weak these adjectives highlight problems in the mix which typically correlate with specific frequencies or frequency ranges identifying and describing the problem is the first step the key to resolving these issues however lies in accurately diagnosing and addressing the specific frequencies involved so let's give specific examples for different problems commonly encountered in a mix a common problem especially in home studio recordings is an excess of low frequencies this can make the mix sound boomy and unclear for instance a bass guitar overlapping too much with the kick drum can create a muddy low end that lacks definition this is because both these instruments share much of the same frequencies most of the time lowend is the most difficult part of the spectrum to get right for home Studios and this is because home Studios often times don't reveal ACC accurate low-end information in the room they're working in or even in headphones this is a much deeper topic to go into but it's one we care about deeply at mastering domcom in our Flagship full stack mentorship program the reverse engineer we take our students through an entire twoe process to ensure they have the most accurate listening environments possible this in and of itself yields incredible results okay regarding loow mightiness in a mix specific problem atam frequency areas include 20 to 60 hertz this is the subbase region where too much energy can cause a mix to feel overwhelming or excessively boomy it's important for the weight of kick drums and baselines but needs to be managed very carefully you can also use this frequency to blow out your car speakers if you'd like 60 to 250 htz this is the general Basse range including the fundamental frequencies of the bass guitar the kick drum and lower register of other instruments excess energy in this range can make a mix sound muddy and unclear as these frequencies can easily overpower other elements in the mix too little of these frequencies however can make a mix sound empty and weak the mid-range is often overcrowded leading to a mix that feels congested this can happen when multiple instruments like guitars keyboards and vocals compete for the same frequency space let's get specific about what these frequencies are 250 to 500 HZ this range often contributes to a sense of mtin or thickness in the mix it's where you might find the lower harmonics of instruments like a guitar piano or lower register of the human voice overemphasis in this area can make the mix sound congested or overly dense 500 to 1 khz this frequency range can add a boxy or fonky or nasal quality to the mix if it's too prominent let me repeat that sentence in a way that actually emphasizes this frequency range this frequency range can add a boxy honky or nasal quality to the mix if it's too prominent it's a critical area for the clarity of many instruments and vocals but too much energy here can make the mix sound nasal or stifling this is common in poorly recorded vocals or close miked drums this is also often a range where we might hear a bad room tone that is overpowering and clouds the vocal or any other instrument being recorded 1 to 3K this is a crucial range for intelligibility and presence especially for vocals however too much energy in this range can cause the mix to sound harsh and can lead to listener fatigue getting this frequency range right is super critical because it's what our ears are the most sensitive to this is actually related to a scientific fact that comes from a study that produced what is known as the Fletcher mson curve understanding this concept is actually super crucial to helping us achieve a balanced mix the Fletcher mson curve illustrates how human ears perceive loudness at different frequencies it shows that our ears are most sensitive to frequencies in the mid-range around 2 to 4K and less sensitive to very low and very high frequencies this means that at lower volume levels base and treble frequencies seem quieter compared to mid-range frequencies at the same volume as the volume increases our perception of Bas and treble frequencies becomes more pronounced this phenomenon is crucial in mixing and mastering because it affects how we perceive the balance of a mix at different volume levels harsh highs excessive high frequencies can make a mix sound harsh and fatiguing this is often noticed in symbols or vocal sibilance where the s and t sounds become too pronounced depending on the singer or vocalist you can also get the ch ch pive to cause some excessive high frequencies so for the issue of harsh highs in a mix sibilance issues usually that come from s and t sounds typically will fall in the 5 to 8K range but sometimes extend down to around 3K symbols and high pitched percussion often have significant energy around the 6 to 10K range excessive energy in this range can make the high end of a mix sound harsh and can cause listener fatigue adjusting these specific high frequency areas using EQ can help soften the harshness while maintaining Clarity and brightness in the mix this will help your high-end sound much more Smooth by identifying and addressing these specific frequency problems you using EQ you can dramatically improve the clarity balance and overall quality of your mix now that we've identified some of the problem areas for different frequency ranges I want to demonstrate what these sound like and show you how we' correct these problems I want to show you uh just a a move that I'm making uh to kind of help clear up some mud in the like 200 to 300 you know 200 to 350 Hertz range go ahead and take a listen to to this quick little 5-second radio spot of music so it's big it's bombastic it's going on on radio I've got these horns here layered [Music] up on top I have kind of a more thinned out layer of the same thing okay and then uh that's kind of taken care of frequencies above 300 and then about 300 htz and Below I've got this and there's still a lot of frequencies up top um as well and so what I might do is actually attenuate some of those frequencies because I'm actually I've already got some of that detail in in this layer and so I'm going to help kind of fit these two things together even further and the the primary move that I'm making that has really kind of helped clearing up a feeling of mud or congestion is in these two moves here I've got uh one at 246 and then one at 4 404 so I was a little bit off you know between about 200 to 400 kind of just scooping this out with a couple with two different frequencies and and using that to create kind of this unique uh shaped curve as I just want to kind of focus in on this area here I could have used one but the shape of one is different and I just wanted more of kind of a flat you know taking down frequencies kind of broading broadening the amount that I'm lowering here if that makes sense and then I'm doing it again so that's about 2 and a half DB there and then I'm doing it again on another EQ and um basically doing roughly the same move right I wasn't trying to match them exactly and just trying to use my ears but let's go ahead and listen to kind of before and after I'm going to go ahead and remove both of these moves and listen to kind of how we lose Clarity in those horns here's with here's without [Applause] with right that's kind of that you know mid-range or low mid-range that we were talking about earlier you know where things can quickly get muddy if we don't you know pay attention to that if I take this off and solo this what's happening is there's almost an octave above the really low growley bum bum right there's almost an octave or two above that that's creating that mud that we don't necessarily need as much of so I'll go ahead and put this on and off so here's with and without so we're cutting out you know quite a bit and I like to do when I when I do kind of bigger Cuts like that that are more focused sometimes I like to spread it out over two eqs kind of doing the same move um and then let's go ahead and see if we can't kind of make the highend fit together a little bit more with regards to to highend making that sort of uh blend together so that we're not overstepping high frequencies you know the high frequencies are stepping on each other and we can kind of get this to fit more so what I'm going to do is just kind of attenuate this just a little bit and maybe a couple DB there make this kind of a really gradual natural sloping down I'm going to bring it down to there and see how that sounds okay great and now let's play that together let's see if uh we like that move in the context of everything so you know it's a little bit darker which is causing it to not be as forward so I might not like that let's see if we can move this up a little bit I like it without actually and so we're going to go ahead and keep that in but that's an example of how you might consider fitting two pieces together this sound here has plenty of high-end detail that we could you know maybe even consider bringing out just a touch with some EQ just a shelf and then maybe we bring it down on this one just a little bit kind of fit these two [Music] together if I go and take that off there I actually like adding this to it another kind of problem kind of frequency area that I was noticing is in how this the high end of the snare was actually competing with all the other high-end elements especially when you combine the top end of this kind of ticking sound here um you know the high end of both of these synth horns it just felt like it was too abrasive and so what I did is I simply rolled off the highend let's go ahead and listen to uh without these two kind of high-end moves there listen to The Snare and then here's with that move on so it moves the snare a little bit further back but to my ears it actually helps to kind of tighten things up I might bring this up just a little bit and that feels good to me that feels natural that way those really high frequencies above you know 8K aren't stepping on everything else we have plenty of that high-end information from you know this ticking sound as well as the highend of these synth horns and especially when we start to get you know closer to kind of the end here as we're ramping up with this sound this Riser there's some high end there that you can hear and uh I'll even show you in the analyzer here all that information that's all going to add up so those are things that you need to be aware of when you're using EQ you can use that to kind of solve those potential problems where things will build up I want to show you another example of a sharper resonance that exists in this kind of mid-range area here with a guitar an electric guitar I'll go ahead and play this guitar really [Music] quick really sometimes you get some chimy frequencies some really narrow resonant frequencies that can be piercing you know once everything goes through Dynamics processing compression everything gets brought up and level and some of these mid-range kind of harsh frequencies will get exacerbated so what I've done is just dipped that out let me go ahead and actually draw your attention by raising it about [Music] there [Music] you get the point so by bringing that down just gets rid of it cleans it up and when we go up higher the frequencies are often more narrow when it comes to problems lower frequencies are you know tend to be more Broad in terms of how we um cut them and that's because the numbers get tighter right or they get uh they exponentially sort of increase in speed the frequencies are closer together the the wavelengths are closer together so we can get more narrow frequencies up in the kind of upper [Music] registers okay here's without here's [Music] what here's one more area in sort of The Honky frequency range that can often be a problem with things like vocals and pianos where you just have a really resonant in instrument that builds up in this sort of 500 to 700 range so go ahead and listen to this piano in Solo here and I'll go ahead and turn this off really [Music] quick EQ on we have an S SSL native Channel strip boosting some of the mid-range frequencies let me get rid of that actually and get rid of all these other moves as well uh we'll leave the low cut on for now but I'm going to go ahead and uh turn this up so you can hear this kind of honkin I'm referring [Music] to so cutting that about four or five Deb really cleans it up without and then by attenuating these lower frequencies a little bit we're getting just a little bit more clarity in room for uh our other lowend instruments like our kick and our bass and then add the SSL on top little bit of brightness there presence I should say so let's go ahead and listen and toggle these moves on and off uh in the context of the mix so here's [Music] without and with without and with more clarity more kind of definition between the instruments that's what can happen when you clear out some of those congested frequencies next let's talk about the Nuance of using EQ to improve the Sonic relationships that occur between different instruments or elements in your mix doing this well can significantly help improve the overall definition and Clarity of the instruments of your mix this is just one way in which we reduce or mitigate the problem known as free frequency masking thereby creating more separation between instruments in the mix there's a few main Concepts or techniques to consider when it comes to Sonic relationships the first and most common is known as frequency carving this is a technique where specific frequencies are attenuated or sometimes boosted to create pockets for each instrument or voice thus enhancing Clarity and separation here are just some examples of where this will come in handy Bas and kick drum Clarity if a bass guitar and kick drum are muddying each other out carving out some mid base frequencies around 100 to 150 htz from the bass guitar can allow the punch of the kick drum to come through more distinctly if the punch of your kick is lower than this range simply carve out some of that frequency from the bass guitar vocal and guitar separation when an acoustic guitar and a vocal track compete in the mid-range selectively reducing frequencies around 2 to 5K in the guitar can give more space for the vocal to shine enhancing its Clarity and presence in the mix synth and snare definition in a mix with synths and a snare drum if the snare is getting lost carving out a narrow frequency range around 1 to 2K from the syn can help the snare cut through more effectively with all of these examples the key to knowing where to carve frequencies from one instrument lies in knowing where the other instrument Shines on the frequency spectrum there's never going to be a one- siiz fits-all answer the more you mix and train your ear the more familiar you'll become with the frequency ranges mentioned above in each case the key is to identify overlapping frequency ranges and make subtle adjustments to create distinct spaces for each element ensuring Clarity and a balanced mix boosting with context the next concept or technique has to do with boosting specific frequencies on various instruments while understanding how that might affect the clarity of another for example you might have a keyboard part that you want to have cut through the mix while also allowing some guitars to do the same in addition to carving out frequencies to make the two blend together you might consider boosting mid-range frequencies on both instruments but in two different areas one could be in the 1: 3K and the other could be the 3 to 6K range another example is the common issue I hear in amateur mixes where the vocals are boosted high above 8K in an attempt to bring out the vocals intelligibility Clarity and airiness oftentimes this is done without considering the clashing going on between those upper frequencies of the vocal and the high-end percussive elements of the drums like high hats symbols shakers tambourines this results in excessive highend that is Harsh and fatiguing to the ears one more example is with regards to snares and highend percussive instruments shakers tambourines hats and similar high-end instruments occupy frequencies above 8K but sometimes extend down even further it's important to realize that your snare doesn't always need those frequencies and there are cases where it makes sense to cut or filter out the highend to improve the relationship between the snare and high-end percussive elements frequency slot this leads me to the last point I want to make with regards to Sonic relationships which has to do with an interesting phenomenon that we experience as listeners in the beginning we often don't realize that in order to actually hear or perceive a sound clearly in a mix we don't actually need all of its frequencies to be present for example a bass guitar that inherently has frequencies below 100 Hertz may not actually need those frequencies in order for us to perceive that instrument clearly in the mix same goes for a piano or acoustic guitar or really any other instrument this is especially true in the context of a busy section of a song where several instruments are playing at the same time for example you could have an intro or verse section where only a piano and a vocal are playing the piano can come in more full-bodied in that verse because there's no other instruments really competing for space but then when you get to the chorus section we all of a sudden have bass guitars synths drums Etc and now the piano can be more of a skeleton of itself where we might filter out a ton of lowend as other instruments now fill up that part of the frequency spectrum and guess what we don't perceive the piano as being any less full-bodied because those frequencies we carved out of the piano are present in other instruments this technique is known as frequency slotting essentially you're choosing which instruments get to occupy spefic specific parts of the frequency spectrum without at least some degree of frequency slotting you end up with a lot of overlapping frequencies which can result in distracting resonances cause masking and overall lose the clarity we all seek after in a mix however this doesn't mean that we're trying to get rid of overlapping frequencies altogether that's pretty impossible to do and would probably result in an unnatural sound this is something to Simply keep in mind and be aware of and mitigate as you mix with EQ balance next let's talk about the concept of achieving an overall balance in our mix all of the things that we've talked about up to this point can potentially lead us to getting lost in the weeds if we don't look up to see where we're going this is why it's crucial to keep the overall balance of the mix and mind because that is what will help guide our decisions as we bridge the gap between where the mix currently is and where you're headed and remember where we're headed is best determined by you guessed it the reference there are two concepts to keep in mind when it comes to achieving balance the first has to do with the frequency profiles for different styles and genres of music it's important that you take the time to become familiar with the overall Trends in the way that frequencies distribute themselves along the Spectrum for each genre you can analyze these Trends by using a reliable frequency analyzer that has a slower RMS response time I highly recommend one by waves called the PA analyzer there's also another free frequency analyzer called the Vox Ango span which I'll flash up on the screen now to help start you out here are four very broad genres of music along with descriptive frequency trends for each hip hop and WP tends to emphasize strong base frequencies around the 60 to 100 Hertz range for a deep powerful lowend and clear present vocals often emphasized in the upper mid-range around 2 to 4K for intelligibility rock rock features a broad frequency distribution with the focus on mid-range frequencies around 500 HZ to 2K this genre also highlights electric guitars in the before mentioned frequency range but also a Punchy low end for Bas and kick drums and clear highs for symbols classical has a wide and dynamic frequency range lower frequencies below 250 for warmth from cellos and double bases a rich mid-range from 250 to 2K for the body of violins and brass and highs above 2K for clarity and brightness of flutes and Piccolo electronic dance music EDM for short is characterized by a pronounced lowend below 100 Hertz for the kick and Bas sense scooped mids to leave room for vocals and sents and sparkly highs above 7K for high hats and effects having listed these genres broadly let's take a look at a more unique subgenre of hip-hop one that has risen in popularity is the style of Loi hipop Loi hipop leans heavily on a subdued sort of warm frequency spectrum often emphasizing lower mid-range frequencies around the 200 to 500 Hertz range and this is for a cozy kind of intimate feel the base is present but not overpowering maintaining a soft touch around the 100 to 200 Herz range contrary to all the other genres mentioned above the high frequencies are usually rolled off sometimes as much as 10K to give that characteristic old vinyl warmth and reduce bright brightness creating a relaxed mellow atmosphere this careful distribution creates the genre's signature sound soothing nostalgic and perfect for concentration or relaxation now it's really important to keep in mind that with any frequency ranges mentioned so far in this section there will be situations that will venture slightly outside of those ranges achieving a balanced mix is going to be unique to the style and instrumentation of the mix that you're working on this is why it's critical that you rely on your ears and the context of the instruments of your mix to strike the right frequency balance the way in which we achieve this balance is by addressing problems with EQ while keeping Sonic relationships in mind we can do this on two levels one is the individual track level and the second is the bus level keep in mind that buses are the technical term for how we group more than one instrument together let's say we have five to six tracks total of a combination of pianos syns and other Keys we can rout the audio of each of these tracks to a single group key Channel known as a bus you may already know this but just in case mind you there are free recording programs like garage band that don't allow you to create buses or groups ideally we've done enough of the problem solving on the individual track level that by the time we arrive at the group level there isn't much work to be done however there's one specific example of how a problem is best solved at the group level and that's with regards to improving the kick and bass relationship often times in more modern styles of pop music you'll have multiple layers of bass instruments playing the same notes in order to create a unique and full bass tone rather than apply a 60 HZ cut to all of the bass tracks to make room for the kick drum you can simply do that on the Bas group slbs level this is just more efficient and frees up computer processing power typically a lot of moves made on the group level are done for reasons of efficiency sometimes I catch myself making micro adjustments to each track when I find that it yields the same result if not better to make the adjustments on the group level for example if I hear or see my mix is lacking mid-range compared to my reference I might go to my keys synth or guitar bus and make some broad boost to fill that in also at this point in the course I want to give you a guiding principle that should help you in deciding how broad or narrow you make EQ Cuts or boosts generally speaking but not always boosts are more broad than cuts are boosting with a broad lower que is often preferred because it results in a more natural and musical enhancement broad boosts gently elevate a wider range of frequencies avoiding the artificial or overly processed sound that can come from narrow Surgical boosts this technique helps in achieving a more cohesive and pleasant sound as it mirrors the natural variations in frequency response found in acoustic environments and instruments leading to a smoother and more integrated mix a quick demo to show you the difference between broad versus narrow when we say Broad in terms of EQ moves we're talking about a Q factor of I would say less than three anything over like two or three is going to be more sharp and is going to isolate that specific frequency even further so the reason that we would have access to this control is sometimes we want to cut very specific frequencies out that are problematic to our mix or to our instruments so if there's a resonate frequency you know we might be able to Target that very specifically and isolate that using a narrow Q narrow Q has a higher value broader Q's have a shorter or smaller value so as we go wider it starts to blend in with the frequencies around it because as you can see we're not just boosting this one frequency we're now as we broaden it bringing up frequencies around it and so it creates a more natural effect so if you want more natural sort of uh musical EQ moves those are going to typically be broader in nature so let's go ahead and take a listen to narrow versus broad so here's [Music] narrow and here's broad listen to how less defined the frequency [Music] is [Music] and generally speaking we use more narrow Q values right higher Q values to remove any nasty frequencies or resonant issues that we may find if you have like a specific feedback frequency like in a live show for instance those are very narrow notches and cuts so typically speaking but not always when we make Cuts we do moves that are more on I would say the uh narrow side but they can be broad as well there's no rules here just understand the effect that that will have if you choose to do a wider cut I do wider Cuts all the time you just need to listen for what that is doing to the sound the final step in the process of EQ can can be the most rewarding if everything else has been executed well and that is making enhancements on both the individual instrument and group levels at this point you've gone through the mix and solved any frequency problems on different tracks to the point where there aren't any distracting resonances or issues left this is where everything starts to come together the tracks are sitting well together and the mix sounds pretty great the idea is that enhancements are the more subtle and final moves we make to bring out character Vibe or simply improve the presence of particular instruments in the mix this is where we Bridge the last 5 to 10% gap between the finish line and where things currently sit as you train your ears through a lot of practice and dedicated ear training you'll come to rely on and trust your ears more to determine how much and where enhancements are needed as always using references is one of the very best ways to know what the goal and destination is sonically generally speaking I think of enhancements as any opportunities we have to further emphasize and bring out the best parts of particular tracks to make them cut through the mix and shine a couple examples as you're listening to your mix and you're done making problem solving moves you can hear that the vocal could probably cut through the mix a touch more by bringing out the high end so you grab an EQ and add a 3 dbel shelving boost above 8K you then realize that's just a bit much and it's bringing out too much vocal sibilance so you back it off to 1.5 DB and it's perfect another example might be with a low-end enhancement you listen to your mix and everything is sitting nicely in the low end but you listen to your reference and hear that the kick drum is a bit more pronounced in the reference so you grab a bell-shaped EQ to boost the fundamental of the kick drum around 50 htz two DB of that and it now rivals the reference not all of your EQ enhancement moves will be in this type of flow as you mix you're making enhancements little by little sometimes going back to those moves and making adjustments to help fit everything together in context remember context is everything making one move on a track can potentially wreak havoc on another part of the mix everything is symbiotic it's all connected and that's it for this lesson now it's time to dive into demos at the three levels and really show all of this in practice let's get started with level one welcome to this EQ demonstration on level one which will be with just a two track and a vocal and we're going to go ahead and walk through sort of how I set up using references both manually and with this really cool plug-in here reference 2 and then we'll jump into to solving problems and addressing enhancements and again we're going to keep the Sonic relationships in mind as well as the overall frequency balance of the entire track in mind as we make those adjustments we only want to make adjustments based on problems we hear okay that's I know that sounds really kind of simple and kind of a duh comment but You' be surprised at how many people will just start moving things around without really doing so intentionally we always want to make inal moves wherever possible in the beginning it's going to be a little harder a little bit more difficult uh for you to hear what the problems are and identify what those are and that's where ear training comes in that's where just doing this a lot of times really is going to help you so this is not an overnight sort of success this is not an overnight thing that you you grasp it and and you go and you replicate this exactly and do that successfully this takes lots of practice let's go ahead and and kind of walk you through the process of using references I have my reference track that I've just imported manually here onto a track and you have to do a couple things one is you need to level match and two you need to kind of move this track around in a way that lines it up with a similar section to your track so I've got the chorus section laid out here the second chorus and I've lined that up with the chorus in this track here what I've done also is I've muted this track so in logic what you can do is mute it and then I can just toggle this on and off and it'll seamlessly kind of switch between my mix and the reference so that I can just go back and forth with the click of a button so I've already level matched it and one last thing that we do with references is it's helpful to have a frequency analyzer so that we can kind of see and make comparisons as to you know what we're hearing you know the in terms of the difference between our mix and the reference but then we also match that with what we're kind of seeing and we always have to keep the instrumentation and the genre in mind our mix in mind just really need to make sure that you're not trying to match these exactly between the reference and and your mix because it's never going to be an exact kind of one toone comparison there's going to be differences instrumentation you know the way things were mixed levelwise so we have to keep those things in mind and not try to match every single little detail here we're just not going to be able to do that but we can use this as sort of a general hey let's get in the ballpark right and uh by the end of this you know we'll have hopefully done that the cool thing about this plugin that I have here though is that this does everything I've just talked about in one plugin it volume matches it perfect for you it allows you to you know choose a section that you want to Loop through and it gives you kind of a delta or the difference between your mix and the reference here in this frequency analyzer section so let me go ahead and just show you demonstration of the manual and then I will show you when I say manual I mean manually using a reference and then we'll show you a quick little demo on reference 2 so here is manually using a reference [Music] track so right off I'm hearing like a lot more high-end in there there's a lot more hype up in in the very top end above 8K and you'll see that [Music] here [Music] unal a lot of it's coming from like the high end of the vocal the symbols and you can see kind of a natural unable unable [Music] it's a very uh gradually sloping curve um but a very even distribution of the frequencies here and so if I look at [Music] ours I'm going around I'm to going down and I stop so everybody I can [Music] so it looks very similar but we're missing kind of this uh tippy top end here then we also have kind of a little bit more just information around this 1K 800 to 1K area um and here so let's see how the reference 2 plugin sort of handles that comparison all right let's make sure that we've looped the right section [Music] here by the way I've just simply dragged and dropped the audio file into the window anywhere in the window and it'll automatically load it up for you you have to manually go in and decide which which area which part of the song am I going to Loop so I'm going go and get that right up there but the volume matching is done for me and then watch and pay attention here and let's see if those differences we've kind of uh identified kind of show [Music] upal really cool so just with volume balance alone we've really come close because this is a 5 DB plus and minus uh increment here so we're we're seeing that we're no more than two DB uh above in this kind of like 2K range and then it's pretty much within a decibel in the low end right uh the biggest difference is this high end here and you can really hear that it's kind of got that blanket over the speakers Vibe so what I could do here if I was like a mastering engineer I could simply throw an EQ on the uh on the top end here let's go ahead and just bring that [Music] up I'm going around I'm on Top com down I stop till I'm sh it show everybody I can make it [Music] yeah and then if we were to like dip 200 2K [Music] down going [Music] around I think what's Happening Here is it's not picking up on the difference because oh you know what my EQ is after my EQ is after the reference plugin so it's not picking up on that change so let's go ahead and do this we'll start [Music] here so you can hear just like with this one move without any EQ moves anywhere else we've really done quite a bit there uh to bring it closer to the reference you could see the line was closer to the center here showing us that they're really were super close um but again we had a little bit more kind of in this 2K and that's going to come from a few things that's coming from our vocal that particular frequency range between 1K and like 3K or between 1 and five that whole area is where our ears are really sensitive we need need to like dynamically kind of control the frequencies that sort of poke out in that range there's a lot of overlap going on between syns and drums and you know the snare hitting and uh just there going to be a lot of buildup between vocals instrumentals in this area and that's going to poke out there as well what we can do is kind of mitigate that in the EQ moves that we do kind of this problem solving phase in the lead vocal and in the instrument CH uh I want to be very careful though because again we're keeping in mind that this is instrumentation unique to this song we're we're we're not going to try to match to the reference perfectly we really need to make sure that we're keeping the instrumentation and the intention of the song in mind here it may be that this is just a more 2K heavy song and that's fine and it's going to maybe that that just works well for the uh for everything that's going on in the instrumental and the vocal here all right let's go ahead and listen all the way through make some notes and we'll get to work let me turn off the reference plugin [Music] here I'm going to go ahead and bring the stereo out up a little bit [Music] more things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't a about to quit it hey hey andbody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to stra to check it out check it out I'm better the never I'm coming around I'm locked up I coming down I w't stop I'm winning sh it everybody I can make it on the ground [Music] I'm hit that sh yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at with sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing give me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight I'm com around I'm on top I a't coming down and I W stop till I'm sh it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm on to [Music] coming [Music] [Music] I'm better to let res I'm coming around I Top by coming down and I w't stop till I'm ready everybody I can make on the ground I'm [Music] top so I've got some notes Here uh vocal siblin 1 to 2K buildup in the vocal uh bring down the this uh one shot vocal sample here it's actually my voice me saying dope right before the chor here I think I've got it just in this section and then right before yeah it's just these two places so in fact I can just take this down here bring this down quite a bit actually oh I was bringing down the wrong oh no that was the right one bring it down to there maybe even a little bit more feeling that I don't want to fight that's better also want to clear out some of the mud from the instrumental and bring out the top end of the instrumental um I also want to bring out top end of the vocal and as we listen to these individually without layering we might hear some additional things so let's go ahead and just address these things first wait a minute vocal sibilance the only way that I can deal with this is if I had uh separate tracks because our problem is only in the verse really so listen to the siblin I'm going to go ahead and pull up an analyzer here and you'll see some information around 10K Spike up in some of the siblin Fast Track Fast Track fast fast right there and what you can do is kind of sweep around for that information just by bringing up an EQ narrowing the band you don't want to go too crazy with this a rule of thumb that I like to kind of tell people is no more than 12 DB don't boost any more than 12 as you're sweeping because everything's going to sound bad everything's going to sound terrible so no more than 12 as you're sweeping through our ears are more sensitive to this like 2 to 4K range so we're going to pick up on that a lot easier without having to so much but I digress so here's the problem problems around 10K listen for it f check F check check yeah if you can't hear that check check your hearing check because that's that'll make mind bleed if I listen too much so I'm GNA go ahead and dip that down right but then the problem is is that now our vocal in the chorus sounds like a lisp so we can perhaps automate that and maybe we'll do that that'll be the way that we get around that issue so just pulling up a stocky q and we'll go ahead and automate the gain parameter okay let's bring this back um what I'm doing is hitting option if I have a parameter that's like way turned up and I want to turn it back to zero I just hold option and click right there and it brings it back to nominal or zero all right to create an automation Lane you can come in here and select uh let's see EQ and we can select from these but there that's a long list and the easier way to do it for me is just to turn this to latch mode and then while I am playing any parameter that I move move will show up as an automation Lane here so it records that automation okay so I'm going to go ahead and undo that move and we'll create a null Point here and here and bring down uh let's see here nope we want to bring this yeah we'll bring this up to say zero yeah that's fine and then we'll bring it back down here let's see yeah 4 DB should be fine let's test that out or we'll test out five see if we can get away with any less on the fast check bouncing on the fast check bouncing on the fast check bounc so we'll go ahead and just live with that and then it'll go back up in the course you'll see this null Point go up so let's go ahead and do the same thing uh let's see it's already back up to zero there so we're good okay all right so we've dealt with the vocal siblin and we have some one to 2K buildup in the vocal I think that was I think I was hearing that in the chorus so we'll just go ahead and deal with that first make sure to turn latch off to read so that you know start creating automation Lanes when you're making [Music] moves I'm coming around I'm top coming down I'm better than the rest of never pass I'm coming around I'm better than the rest of never yeah so it's right around kind of this 8900 area here when he goes up really high I'm going to go ahead and actually roll off the lowend because we don't need all this information down there this is information that is not going to be audible but it'll actually build up over time and we'll lose head room information below like 100 Herz so I'm going to go ahead and roll that off just to be safe okay you can hear that let me sweep around it you'll hear it go away yep right around there so I can turn that down a little bit goes a long way here so we're going to make just slight adjustments I want to go overboard cuz you do want some of this information there's overtones and kind of harmonics here that if we get rid of completely it'll make it sound really unnatural I'm the never I'm the most hearing something way up top here not way up top but in the mid-range narrow this in so I can find it I'm coming around I'm to coming down and I won I'm wi shake it showing everybody I can make it yeah it's right around this 3K range I'm going to go ahead and dip that down couple [Music] DB and then I'll just use uh just this generic kind of uh shelf to bring up the high end what I'm doing here is I'm changing the Q so if I bring this up more and I change the Q factor it changes the slope of how this energy dissipates sorry about that so I'm going to go ahead and kind of gentler change you know in this curve here gives us a more natural gives us kind of a more natural [Music] sound and that way it's kind of grabbing this information you know above 4K [Music] gradually so let's go ahead and listen before and after so far I'm coming around cool I'm happy with that let's listen and Conta [Music] t com around coming down I maybe there's some let's see here when he sings up here he goes I'm On Top I'm coming down yeah looks like there's some stuff around here yeah really kind of spikes up there so I'm GNA go ahead and draing that down a little bit as [Music] well um maybe a little wider would be [Music] better that's [Music] fine coming down just cleaning it up so let's go and listen to that it [Music] out I'm coming around I'm lock up coming down and I W stop till I'm [Music] wining I'm going to kind of compensate we've cut some things so I'm going to compensate for the volume just bring it up like a half DB never I'm going around I'm to coming down and [Music] I [Music] great so remember we got this dip here taking care of that 10K problem in the in the uh siblin and just the verse but it's you know we're kind of going to have to live with that there's too much sibilance to my ear I would want to DS this but we'll show you dsing in a later section where we go over Advanced tools and that will take care of that really well on the fcing back things I Shake In my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey he got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the cloud and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the CLS I'm going to do another EQ here and cut just Just a Touch maybe of this kind of boxy range now this is something I want to want something I want to keep in mind here is that this is a kind of stylistically a boxier sound we've kind of narrowed the frequency spectrum on purpose here uh that's what the artist kind of chose in their production so if I sweep around here you'll notice that as I go from like four to five to 600 kind of around this area we're going to get some of that boxy nasy quality about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the [Music] clouds yeah this kind of particular overtone here and everybody about to see me feeling stey cuz I'm up in the cloud so let's go ahead and and now listen to that kind of the combination of these two eqs before and after here's before and everybody to see me feeling CU I'm up in the CLS and after and everybody to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the CLS the difference is subtle but it's there listen and everybody to see me feeling CU I'm up in the clouds and everybody about to see me feeling stey cuz I'm the seems to breathe better to my ears so let's go ahead and listen to that in context sh my way on The Fast Track bouncing back things I sh my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey on theast bouncing back things I Shing my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it he and about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S to check it out it [Music] out I also just want to do I think some volume automation here [Music] let's see here let's go up a DB while the instrumental comes in or when the instrumental comes in or you know what I think I just want to bring it up overall uh in this section so if you're wondering what I'm doing is I'm I'm using the Marquee tool um as my command click tool that's the tool right here Marquee and so when I hit command it gives me this little plus sign and if I hold that and click and drag it'll allow me to create a section of audio that if I click now anywhere in this area it'll create automatically Four Points Al together one two three four points to be able to do these really hard sort of edit points there these really sharp edit points let's go ahead and undo that and then we're GNA don't need those points there we can bring this up about a DB I think on theing back things are sh my way and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds take it up where I it but this time I'm going to stra check it out check it out yeah and then let's just I mean we might as well bring it up overall so yeah you know what I wonder if I don't even need this automation at all I can just literally go like this and bring it up to [Music] there you can see the volume's already louder here I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm to coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining sh it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm On [Music] Top yeah I'm good with that all right let's go ahead and move on to our background vocal there's nothing really to do here I think uh we're fine where they are okay that's already processed yeah it's already processed lots of processing there that I don't want to fight you see me and I make it look so easy with sex I don't hear anything wrong with that let's go ahead and move on to the instrumental so our vocal has already received kind of problem and enhancement treatment uh We've brought out the top end um let's go ahead and uh move on to our notes with our instrumental the problem that I hear is kind of just an overall [Music] muddiness and it sounds like we actually don't need this because we accidentally bounced out the um those background vocals in the instrumental there so I'm going to go ahead and remove that let's make sure yeah you know what we have our background vocal but it's already in [Music] there ah okay yeah so we don't need it in here at all let's go ahead and just mute this Al together [Music] what I would do is if I had access to this individual uh guitar bass guitar element I'd want to make this instrument Speak just a little bit [Music] more maybe between like 4 and [Music] 600 but I don't know if that's going to mess things up in the other parts of the instrumental so let's go to the [Music] chorus so maybe we'll automate that I don't want that in the uh I don't want that in the chorus that [Music] frequency let's hear in context with the vocal let's see I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around [Music] I'm maybe just a DB of that I'm going to go ahead and automate this move here where we uh have it up more aggressively in the verse section then in the chor okay so now I can bring this up I'm going to create some points here on the automation and then another Point here boom make sure that lines up there yep lines up there yep and then yeah we should be good let's see here cool and what we're doing is bringing it up a couple DB in the verse we don't we don't want to overdo it because we have this section [Music] here I'm going turn this back to [Music] read [Music] sh my but now it's kind of messing with the volume maybe I'm going to backtrack on that move altogether so let's go ahead and just leave it the way it was yeah because again this is a perfect opportunity to talk about how making one move kind of messes with the other parts of the of the song Back things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the [Music] CLS I think what I might do is just kind of take the overall instrumental and clean it up in this kind of mud range here around 300 let's go ahead and listen [Music] here kind of shoot overall just kind of a broad and then then we'll just go ahead and enhance it let's see if there's any places in the midrange we can clean [Music] up yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I don't want to encroach on our snare hit right here right around [Music] 180 [Music] [Applause] in fact I kind of like that yeah we'll keep it let's go ahead and do it before and after keep that around there here's [Music] [Applause] without Okay let's listen to everything together [Music] now I'm to by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm on top I coming lady to bounce I'm better than the rest Never B I'm going around I'm locked up Ain coming down and I W [Music] St all right I think I'm about done there uh not much we can do other than that really let's go ahead and do before and after on our [Music] reference I'm coming around I'm to't coming down and I w't stop till [Music] I'm BG thing I'm noticing here is this dip this hole around 500 we may have gone overboard with uh some cutting I'm not cutting anywhere there and I'm not really doing an aggressive cut I wonder if perhaps that move would have made sense the one that I backtracked on let's go ahead and add another EQ we don't have any more instant is left I just need to come in here sure this just happens to be right there I'll just use this EQ Pro [Music] Q3 around coming down I stop [Music] I'm so instead of sweeping for uh trying to listen and hear something that's a problem I'm sweeping to hear where it sounds best so that I can just bring that up I'm better than never I'm coming around I'm to I com down I W stop till I'm wining sh it everybody I can to see on the ground I'm On Top by coming down [Music] to I'm the yeah I I think that's great I think uh I think I think it needed that let's let's go ahead and listen uh to the reference compared to ours [Music] now [Music] unable un I won't stop till I'm wining everybody I the ground I'm [Music] to yeah just for fun it's crank this up and see how it sounds if we tried to match it exactly never a b I'm goinging around I lo to coming down and I W stop I'm wi sh it show everybody I can make it on the I'm on [Music] to what's interesting is that I'm that's a huge move there and it doesn't sound bad and in fact that maybe tells me something about either the volume balance or you know I'm not sure there so I would want to figure out a way to go in and maybe kind of correct for that in the individual instruments and see where I can kind of bring out some of this energy here in the you know in the instrumental the rest of Never B I'm goinging around I'm on to com I'm going to go ahead and do a little less here so it's interesting it's almost like the hole was an opposite kind of a problem usually we're trying to dip stuff but this is a problem in just the fact that there's this kind of like Hollow sound when we take this off so I'm going to go ahead and not do so [Music] much you can see that in the P analyzer here too if we take this [Music] off it's kind of a dip there whereas with the reference [Music] track yeah there's a lot more information there enough to make me feel I feel superal cool so you'll train your ears and kind of hear what that Hollow sound kind of feels like it'll be a feeling it's kind of hard to yeah your ear will just kind of get clued into when things sound hollow now I for some reason today wasn't hearing that and that can happen some days you're hearing it some days you're not um but uh yeah I think this sounds better with this kind of filled in let's go ahead and listen to our mix [Music] again H I want a little bit less let's just bring it down to three and be good there it just starts to sound congested and stuffy and that's just our mix right that's just our instrumentals everybody I can make it on the ground I'm on top of [Music] everybody on the ground I'm on [Music] to sh my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't a better to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to swe it check it out check it out yeah things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling easy cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to sh it out I just want a little bit more little just a teir more of that body I'll do it before and after and you'll probably not hear it but it's I feel like it's giving it just a little bit it's filling it out a little bit more in the way that I want so I'll go ahead and toggle this on and off here's [Music] without cuz I ain't to quit it hey hey and it to see me feeling CU I'm up in the CLS roll that back a few times if you want uh don't feel frustrated if you can't hear it now that type of a a one decel difference um may not be super audible to you in the beginning all right let's go ahead and uh do a before and after every EQ move that we've done and see if we've made progress that's what you want to do is just check in with yourself and see hey are we going backwards or forwards what's going going on here and make sure that we're actually making the Right Moves we go ahead and do uh before and we'll Loop this core section [Music] here I'm coming around I'm up coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning yeah and there's things I like about it and there's things I don't I don't like the kind of digital high-end sound of the top end symbols uh let's see if we can correct for that and instead bring the highend out with a more analog style EQ use the SSL native Channel strip waves has this uh really cheap and it works great this is just happens to be the ssl's um Native Channel strip I'm going to go ahead and do about the same move bring it about to 5K bring it up a couple [Music] DB so let's see if we can hear a difference there sometimes we can trick ourselves into thinking it's better just because it's an analog EQ you never want to do that um but let's go ahead and match these settings so here's three DB sometimes these moves will be more dramat it'll sound more dramatic for some reason on one EQ over another even though you're boosting it the same amount here's the channel strip highend on the channel strip that is let's make sure we're at the same frequency five and we're about [Music] five okay [Music] com [Music] around I'm better than the never I'm coming around I'm Lo to I coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it show everybody I can make it on the ground [Music] I'm everybody I can make see on the ground I'm On Top by [Music] down I think at this at this level uh only boosting three DB it's not as noticeable as if you were to kind of boost it quite a bit doubling him up [Music] there ground I'm [Music] to I'm coming [Music] around [Music] the I'm going to settle for uh the SSL native Channel strip but you could honestly in this case at at that level of of uh frequency difference it's really not going to make too too much of a difference um in fact you know what I'll just stick to my word I'll just leave it here I'm going to bring this down just a hair [Music] though you know what I do like it better I'm gonna I'm going to go ahead and stick to the analog all right uh let's compare let's one more time go before and after plugins on and off here's off check it out I'm better the never I'm coming around I'm locked up coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody I can make it let's go ahead and uh because this is adding quite a bit of difference there I'm going to do a before and after without the SSL Channel strip and see how that sounds so here's before I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm on to I coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it showing everybody I can make it on the ground I'm on [Music] top I think that's an improvement and now I'm hearing that I don't want as much of this I'm going to bring that down as well Che it [Music] out the let's listen to the reference before and after not before for and after but just go back and forth [Music] [Music] Abal we've closed the Gap we've brought this down here we brought this closer and high end this is not as big of a dip [Music] okay so what I need to do is Loop this in the right let's go ahead and loop this over here it was picking up on frequencies before the core H so it wasn't comparing the right [Music] place unable supernal I'm untouchable unstable [Music] I better the [Music] rest I'm going around I'm top coming down and I stop [Applause] I'm hearing another frequency that I don't like I'm going to go ahead and find it it's actually only comes in when this guy comes [Music] [Applause] [Music] in is though was bothering me but again this is going to affect other parts of the instrumental so you're seeing here just as we're going through in making these moves you're really seeing in real time how this idea of like Sonic relationships comes into play when we're making a a move in one area to affect one instrument that might have a problem it's going to affect another instrument or another set of instruments if we're in this case like we're in this case actually eqing the entire instrumental [Applause] yeah that instrument is bothering me and I'd want to treat that individually it's like this it's in the right ear [Music] [Applause] listen it especially comes out when I take this off listen [Applause] that cleans it up for sure I can make it ground I'm [Music] to okay that's it I'll go ahead and end it there we're going to have a lot of other opportunities in levels two and three where we're going to EQ and address problems and enhancements using EQ on the stem level and then in level three it'll be the individual track level so we'll see you in those demos welcome to section two live EQ demonstration for level two which will be only stems as you can see here we have all of our groups our stems same thing this would basically be the same layout if we were to collapse all of our grouped tracks like our buses so we have these all just printed out and stemmed out so as you can see all of our vocals have been volume balanced and put into one single stem so our background vocals as well all of our drums Bas Etc and we're going to go ahead and follow along with this uh step-by-step process when I say step by step there's only really two steps right there's addressing problems first and then enhancements and while we do that we want to make some considerations and keep the Sonic relationships and the overall balance in mind so let's go ahead and get started by listening to the entire track and just make some observations I'll go ahead and jot down some problems that I hear overall and then we'll address those things one by one I have uh some helpful tools here I have the PA analyzer which gives us some uh anal analytics as to the frequency spectrum the frequency response of this song I have my reference down here uh so you can use these two in tandem here I have the reference 2 plugin which gives me the ability to listen to my reference compared to our mix here so we just toggle back and forth between the two this is really convenient because it allows me to cycle through a very specific section of the song I can it also level matches this for me really really well so we'll go ahead and and listen to the original and then switch between the original and the reference let's go to the chorus section [Music] here and already I can kind of hear these highight level differences and it's also displaying the differences in this section here um on the left here we have kind of a scale that we can choose between so this allows us to get a little bit more granular um as we go to you know 5 DBS um plus and minus you know zero DB and so I like to keep it on there that allows me to see uh a little bit more in fine detail the differences between my mix and the reference so let me play it again and notice you'll see some dips and some uh you know some some boosts those are the differences so if there's something that occurs above this line that shows me that I have too much of that and if there's something below like a dip that tells me that I don't have enough of that frequency compared to the reference but we want to keep the instrumentation in mind with ours we have different instruments so it's going to produce different curve we can use that as a sort of general direction that we can head into if we [Music] want to by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning [Music] sh so this is telling me for the most part I'm pretty dead on with the low end uh bit of a dip at 500 compared to the reference and then I've got a lot more energy in these kind of uh mids here between 1 and 5K so I'm going to translate that to the instrumentation as much as much as I can um and and just make sure okay is that because of the instrumentation or there real problems that are in that area that we want to address so I just need to keep those things in mind uh but let's go ahead and I mean one more thing to note is the significant difference in the high end obviously this is a master track when we go to master we'll add some highend um but we want to get as close as we can so we don't have to do as much work in the master the less you do have to do in the master the better that's our goal and let's go ahead and just kind of listen through and make some notes on our notes section here under the problems I'm going to go ahead and turn reference two off [Music] on The Fast Track bouncing back things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey he and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to straight to check it out check it out I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm loed to I coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On Top B out [Music] hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm sing Lululemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I I want to fight better the rest I'm coming around I'm on top I a coming down and I w't stop till I'm it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On [Music] Top well your [Music] yeah [Music] I'm coming around I'm top coming down and I won't stop till I'm ready everybody I can make to see on the ground I'm On Top [Music] I want to listen to the chorus one more [Music] time I'm coming around I'm On Top Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm one of the most powerful tools is the solo and mute buttons so I'm gonna mute the base and just see kind of how that cleans things [Music] up yeah the bass is taking up a ton of Sonic energy so that's something that I'm going to address with EQ first just a standard EQ later in the advance section I'll probably do some sort of advanced like ducking that I'll show you how to do uh which will create create more space for the vocal just this is such a hog this instrument it's really cool and it's definitely like the main I would say instrument in terms of the overall Like Instrumental so if we were to mute the [Music] vocal it's really cool but when we put lead [Music] in there's a little bit of competition there so I just want to do some some cleanup uh but let's go ahead and get into this one thing I'm also noticing is the level of the second verse versus the uh first verse let me just check that really quick there's also tonally different feel that yeah got it this is like a little bit more full a little bit more mud and this one's like more telephone booth in that direction thinner so also a lot of vocal sibilance so I can jot that down I can't really do much about it um sibilance that's going to have to be dealt with with some uh dsing which I'll show you how to do in the advance section but I'll put it down here anyways cuz we can show you what frequencies they are and start to wrap your head around okay where is the objective frequency you know that we would need to address um in solving vocal siblin so um I'm just going to put dser later we'll just go ahead and address this right now since we're on that topic let's go ahead and listen to this bring up an EQ checking things are Shing my way sh notice the little like bump here this area right here when he says bounce the word Bounce has the sibilance in the C fast Che or fast track TR so sorry not bounce it's on the fast track when he says fast fast check yeah so I'll go ahead and accentuate that a little bit here check check if I narrow this check check check check check BC check BC yeah it's about there so I'm gonna bring that down we're going to lose some high end on that if I had access to the lead verse versus the lead chorus I would EQ these totally different um but we'll go ahead and do this for now there's some boxiness here I'm going to get rid of especially when he says the word back back in it cuz I got to get back in it cuz I got to get back in it cuz I ain't deal with that right there got to get back in got to get back in it I ain't to quit got get back and these are Overton so you don't want to gut them completely but they're certainly it'll certainly sound cleaner gota get in it't quit that's not really a problem I would say get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey he got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey it's a little bit of uh get in it ain't quit gotta get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey gotta get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey gotta get back in it cuz I gotta get back in it cuz I ain't to quit it the okay so let's listen to that in context nowacking back things I shaking my way got to get back in it cuz [Music] I and then without not much needs to be done here these aren't huge moves uh this is the biggest move just cuz we're taking care of that siblin Jack bouncing back things I shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I let's see if we can enhance this a little bit but problem is is we're going to have to bouncing back things I shake my way on The Fast Track bouncing back things I shake my way on The Fast Track bouncing back there things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to sh to check it out on the fast track bouncing back there things I shake my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey [Music] and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds problem is when we get to this uh when we get to this course section it's going to be uh it's it's not going to work for this probably but that's what we have to deal with we're working with stems here um never I'm coming around I'm On Top a coming down and [Music] I I'm going to need another EQ to deal with this so there's this like frequency up around here there when he goes up the octave that first note he sings I'm the I'm coming around I'm toing down [Music] and again so a couple things here there's some 3K is f I'm better the rest never I'm coming yeah right [Music] there this area here could be attenuated a bit around F I'm better than the rest never pass I'm coming around fake I'm better than the rest never pass I'm coming around okay going dip this down [Music] here around I'm F I'm the never I'm coming around I'm top F I'm better than the rest of never it's a lot of [Music] listening and then I'm going to enhance it with uh EQ uh that does a lot of work without even touching the knobs this kind of enhances the high end so let's go ahead and listen to this let's make sure that everything works sh my yeah I think we're good [Music] there yeah this these moves are all helping especially the chorus let's go all everything off the never I'm coming around yeah I'm the I'm going to use some gain automation to bring up the uh vocal now in the chorus section so I'm going to go to utility gain just because it's kind of with all those cuts and things that we've made feels like it's a little too sunken back so I'm going to go ahead and turn this into latch mode and that way any parameter I touch it actually gives me the uh automation Lane for that P particular parameter so let's go ahead and make a I'm using the Marquee tool here by the way and this allows me to make a selection and bring it up or down so I'm going to go ahead and bring it up just a hair here let's try [Music] that turn it down just a hair [Music] that works for me okay let's move on to okay so I said 1 to 2K buildup in chorus I just want to make sure I address that properly I think that's what this was here I'm coming around I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it showing everybody I can make it there's some like right here let's see what I have available no eqs available no see one two oh I do have this one get out get out yeah get out F I'm better than the rest never pass I'm get out just make sure that we're going in the right direction you always want to make sure that like the moves that you're making are adding up to be worse so let's just go before and after that can happen happens to the best of us get out out [Music] get out F I'm better the rest never I'm coming around yeah I think it's more like here get [Music] out that's much better get out so yeah let's go before and then after so before everything good out [Music] out cool I think we're good let's go ahead and move on second I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm on [Music] toing sh my [Music] waying it's cleaner all right let's go to cleaning up the kick or tightening the kick I should say uh actually I can't do that never mind um I suppose I could just by bringing in like a a low cut need to be really careful here with how I do this low cuts on low frequencies uh can really cause phase issues like phase shifting uh which can negatively impact the low end of your kick and and whatnot so you have to be really careful there sometimes it makes sense to use a linear phase EQ but that can also cause what's called pre- ringing just look those things up um yeah that's a whole other topic that we won't get into now but just be aware when you make low cuts that it's actually improving things you'll see a bump in volume when I make this cut versus without so here's without let's go to the verse or the uh sorry the uh chorus so we're peeking at about1 point4 and then when I bring this in it's jumping up in volume a bit um usually I don't worry too much I just need to listen and see if it's doing what I want and what I want is a tightening of that kind of bottom end it feels tighter to me so I'm not worried about losing that DB there um yeah not a big deal I'm going to be doing some clipping some Dynamic processing later on that's going to help kind of mitigate um you know some of the the Headroom issues from there so all right um overall I just want to bring out the top end in these drums I'm GNA do that I just do that with the stocky Q here I don't hear any problems really so uh maybe could clean up a little 300 in the drums bring that down just a hair I want to be careful not to get the fundamental of the snare yeah much better second I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm On Top iin coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh show everybody I can make see on the ground I'm On Top Lady [Music] B I'm about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the [Music] clouds part of me wonders if we need that much bottom end and our kick so I'm going to go ahead and lower this like a DB lowend is a big kind of hog of Sonic real estate State when we're feeding our compression that takes up a lot of of the kind of the energy that the compressor sees in the it up I it but this time I'm going to S to check it out check it out the rest Never B I'm coming around I'm On Top by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody cool uh okay clean up bass guitar that's what I want to do [Music] next I'm coming around I'm to and with this I'm going to be a little bit more regressive on the low cut here um but gentle on the [Music] [Applause] slope this is kind of where the bass this bass instrument kind of speaks uh it's interesting I know that there's several layers going on inside this base and so I probably want to go into those individually um and kind of treat them any unique way um because I part of me wants to cut [Music] this but that's what's going to allow it to cut through right so you have to be this is again this is the Sonic relationship context that we need to keep in mind uh when I cut this in Solo it sounds [Music] cleaner but that that in that uh frequency needs to be there in order for this to cut through I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm locked up by Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh we might actually be able to get away with something like [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] let's see how that sounds I'm better the rest never F I'm goinging around I'm locked up I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining shake it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm top [Music] coming now I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming [Music] around com down I think I'm okay with that um let's go ahead and just uh do it before and after so here is before lots of listening you guys this is the name of the game I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm locked up by coming down and I won't stop till I'm [Music] winning noticing that the uh this little cut around like 188 is kind of where the fundamental of the snare is yeah so so that's actually working out nice uh to give me a little bit more punch from the From The Snare that's cutting through a little bit [Music] better it's subtle but this stuff adds up I'm better than the rest Never B I'm coming around I'm stop byin coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning [Music] sh yeah I'm tempted tempted to bring this back in just a little bit [Music] more I like that go ahead and keep that didn't need to do a ton but uh we'll keep it there uh highend and vocals I've addressed that bring out the top end on the drums bring out upper mids and Guitar let's go ahead and see what that's about go to our [Music] guitar what I like to do is kind of cut uh all the way until I feel like H it's too thin and then I back off until it's just right so and we might be able to get away with uh not having all this information there because we have plenty of other frequencies happening or plenty of other instruments that are playing those frequencies everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm on [Music] let's make sure I'm not messing with anything else though yeah we don't want to mess with that we can automate this though let's go ahead and do that a little bit of automation won't hurt us so what I'll do is automate this to be uh basically like this they're in this [Music] section I'm better I'm coming around I'm I won't stop I'm ready everybody [Applause] I I'm going to put this in mono really quick because I am hearing it's kind of difficult to hone in on [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the clean that up quite a [Applause] [Music] bit see on the ground I'm On [Music] Top [Applause] [Music] H you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight [Music] better [Music] hearing [Music] that let's go ahead and attenuate this here that should sit [Music] better I'm going around I'm On Top going down and I w't stop so now it's not cutting through as much so I'm going to raise the volume and see if that [Music] helps I'm going around I'm On Top going down and I'm stop telling sh it so everybody I can make it it I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming [Music] around [Laughter] [Music] n [Music] seey cuz I'm up in the CL pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to check it out check it out I'm better than the B I'm coming around I'm locked upin coming down and I W stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On Top Lady [Music] B second then you see me make it easy on Satur night yeah I would want to treat this completely differently uh carve out some of the mud here volume adjust those are things that I would have to do with the individual uh tracks that I don't have access to easy you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night right so maybe maybe just automate this so I'm going to go ahead and turn this on bring it to there easy Saturday night and I'll go ahead and bring this um hit that there we go right here I got those two nodes GRE to about there and then I want to bring this down couple DB hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down quite a bit [Music] actually yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out much better Saturday night H you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight I'm going around I'm on top I a't coming down and I won't stop till I'm with shake it everybody I can make it on the ground [Music] I'm with highend a lot of times I like to use uh analog eqs they can sound a little better up on the top end so I'm going to go ahead and use this uh SSL native Channel strip uh waves has the same channel strip uh more affordable and I think it's pretty much just as good hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out hit that yeah you got it it better the rest never said I'm going around I'm On Top Ain com down and I won't stop till I'm wa Okay let's listen to our [Music] reference natural I Untouchable [Music] unable I'm going around I'm On Top going down and I stop telling sh showing everybody I can make it she out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the [Music] he [Music] n [Music] just bringing out some air in those [Music] sents part of me wants to cut that frequency out Al together [Music] yeah so a lot of our kind of 2 to 3K that we're seeing in the difference there is coming from our vocal and that's fine that the the vocal sounds the way it is because of the type of vocal it is uh the style genre and all [Music] that if we wanted to got this we could uh don't know that it would necessarily sound all that great take another EQ and take out you know this 2 to 3K range pretty aggressively it just would sound [Music] weird coming [Music] around I'm better than the rest never I'm the rest never pass I'm coming around I'm top I a't coming down and I won't I'm wi shake it everybody I can make it yeah um it it it wouldn't sound it wouldn't sound good I'm better the rest I'm going around I'm On [Music] Top helps it to cut through a little bit more so I'm okay with that I'm okay with those differences let's go ahead and do a before and after with all our EQ moves make sure that we're making progress here and not going backwards uh notice how I haven't done anything with the background vocals they don't really need [Music] anything oh you know what I did want to bring out the highend and this guy here I'm going to do that with just a standard ptech EQ and just bring out like [Music] [Music] 8K here's off and on that dope cuts through a lot [Music] better [Music] around part of me wants to bring out more highend but I would have to have separate control from those symbols cuz I don't want them to get too [Music] crazy okay let's do it before and after I'm feeling pretty good about it let's go like this take all of our plugins [Music] off I'm never I'm goinging around I'm to I coming down and I stop I'm ready everybody I can on [Music] the I'm better let the rest I'm coming around I won't Top by coming down and I won't stop till I'm [Music] [Applause] [Music] ready I'm certainly happy with that we've gone through that whole process of solving problems uh we're keeping Sonic relationships in mind we're keeping the overall balance and the goal in mind where we're headed sonically we've cleaned things up quite a bit made this thing I think breathe a lot more um so this is actually a really great exercise to try to do this on a higher level with just stems and uh there's this thing called top down mixing we don't necessarily teach that but as sort of a reverse engineering concept it can be helpful as a learning tool to figure out okay where can I go into the individual elements to basically make these moves we got to we had to get creative as you could tell with some of our eqs to make things work from you know verse to verse here um you know the chorus vocal you know compared to the verse vocal a little bit different we got kind of Lucky and and things seem to work across the board but I probably want to treat those things separately and differently but there you have it there's EQ at the second level stems only and we will go ahead and see you in the next one we're going to walk through the entire process of EQ from start to finish here in this demo and we're going to do that on level three meaning we'll have all of our tracks available to us so I'll be applying EQ on the individual track level as well as the bus or group level and the first thing that I like to do is just listen through the entire song and make some highlevel observations about the differences I hear between the reference track and our mix which again only has volume balance moves up to this point I'll go ahead and state what those observations are and then from there I might listen again and actually make very specific notes in terms of the problems that we need to address and one thing that I want to emphasize is that your decisions as to which EQ moves you make needs to be entirely based on what you're hearing not on what someone else is showing you in a tutorial and that might sound like an obvious but it's actually a really important reminder especially for those starting out because so often people will make moves based on what they've seen other people do instead of listening critically to what is actually needed in their music and their tracks based on the production based on the instrumentation style unique to the mix Etc but uh one quick addendum to that statement though is that I I completely understand for those that are just starting out that you're not going to hear all the same details that another engine year with 10 plus years experience is hearing so if you need a starting Place feel free to copy what somebody else does on a certain instrument and make the goal though to really understand why they're making those decisions on those instruments again be patient this comes with a lot of practice all right let's H play on the bouncing back sh in my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S it check it out check it [Music] out I'm better than the rest of Never B I'm coming around I'm on top I coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm On [Music] Top second verse hit that yeah you got to admit that you [Music] down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight I'm better the rest I'm going around I'm on top I a't coming down and I won't stop till I'm with it sh show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On Top [Music] coming [Music] go I'm better let the rest I'm coming around I'm top coming down and I w't stop till I'm ready so everybody I can on the ground I'm On Top [Music] l i uh I kept the the loop going the cycle region going so it just flipped back to the beginning but we pretty much heard the song so that's good uh already made some notes Here uh now what I want to do is actually go through again and I have a really cool plugin here uh called reference to and what I've done this is by a company called mastering the mix this is not by any means like a paid endorsement by them we are in Partnership with them but this is just a really great uh plugin we don't partner with anyone that we don't really you know believe in um in terms of their their plugins so this is a really amazing tool to look at the difference between what our kind of frequency spectrum is you have this frequency spectrum uh uh analyzer down here at the bottom from 20 to 20K and what this will do is give you let me go ahead and change this actually to five there we go so this is going to give us the difference between our mix and the reference track that I've already imported all you have to do is drag and drop a reference track uh anywhere into the plugin and it will load it as a reference and then you can flip back and forth between your song and the reference and what's cool about this plugin is you can cycle you can cycle a specific region of the song as you're listening to yours so you don't have to do any kind of like lining up this is the manual way to do it obviously I've already imported the reference here but I've also imported it here so I've muted it and I'm going to actually use the reference plugin and what's happening is it's actually level matching for me so I don't have to level match it's doing that really really well so that I can kind of you know compare fairly to what's going on so we'll go ahead and and listen and we're going to make some opt obervations sort of as to the differences between our our mix and the reference and then I'm going to translate that into what that means or or try to translate that and and speak to that because there's going to be reasons that we wouldn't want to match this perfectly and there might be reasons why we might want to get closer to the reference so um I've gone ahead and changed the scale here it was at 10 so this is a now a five DB scale uh so that we can see kind of more fine details in the [Applause] differences unable [Music] unable superal I Untouchable unable superal superal [Music] un [Music] un so what's happening here is when this dips down that tells us we are missing that frequency when it's above the line that tells us there is too much of that frequency in our mix let's go ahead and listen [Music] again [Music] superal Untouchable unable so which tells us if we wanted to match the reference we need less of this and we need a little bit more of this and our lowend is within like a decible of the reference which is really really great so that means the volume balance was done really really well um and I know that sounds like really cocky but uh this is a great way to start out by thinking okay can we adjust things volume wise you know I've taken a break from I've taken a break from volume balance I've stepped away from from it now I'm listening with EQ in mind and can actually volume balance and make some fine tune adjustments to the volume balance with kind of the overall frequency spectrum in mind um or we can decide are those things actual EQ moves that we need to make in the mix so this is just I can't you know put enough of an endorsement on a plugin like this it's not even really that expensive uh but if you wanted to do this manually the way you would do that I'll go ahead and and turn reference off the way you would do that is you'd simply uh solo the reference track right and then you turn that actually leave mute on in logic and then when you hit solo and then turn it solo off it'll mute it again and you can quickly go back and forth between uh our our mix and the reference so let's go ahead and I've already kind of level matched this so let's take a listen and do it this way and I'm going to pull up the P analyzer and we'll just listen you know this is a $30 plugin really really affordable um but we're going to listen and look at again the Spectrum it' be interesting to see if that translates to what we were seeing in in the reference to plugin again in the chorus we're it says that we're missing kind of this area here and that there's too much around here so let's go ahead and see if that's true actually let's go ahead and go here superal natural Untouchable unstable I'm natural supernal I Untouchable I superal superal [Music] natural I'm to coming down and I stop till I'm ready so everybody I can on the ground so yeah we can kind of see that dip here and then we can kind of see that there's this energy buildup um a lot of it's coming from the vocal here and there is kind of a I think what's happening is there's a perception that we have a lot more energy here because we have a slight dip here right and so I think that they're picking up on that because we don't have this high-end information that the the reference has um it's translating to kind of a buildup in in this area right that and and in the reference to plugin as we can see it is Translating that [Music] way unable [Music] unable about two K let's go back again look at our P analyzer [Applause] [Music] superal yeah so we have this Spike here that's probably contributing you know to that information around 2K I know that's about 1.5 or so 1.3 um I'm better let the res I'm coming around but if I were to be you know trying to match this just overall I might do a move that's something like this I'm better the res I'm coming around I'm to coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining [Music] everybody and you know what that actually does clean it up kind of giving us some clarity and Air in the track taming this sort of harshness here bringing up some of the kind of vocal information in this area here and that gives us and then you know bringing this down just a hair One [Music] DB I'm goinging around I'm on top I coming down and I'm don't [Music] stop and so there you have it that's uh kind of the start of you know the the the mental notes uh you know our notes that we've jot down here we're going to try to translate everything that we're hearing and kind of assessing with all of these tools into mix moves and mixed decisions so this is a really a really good kind of practice especially in the beginning as you're learning to hear these things you can lean on and rely a little bit more heavily on these types of tools to really get you there and I can't stress enough the power the power of using these tools in connection with your ears don't lean on just the the an analytics of it the analyzers don't don't rely completely on what you're seeing you have to translate that to what you're hearing because your mix is going to be different it's not always you know you're not trying to to match this perfectly at all times especially if the instrumentation a bit different you have to keep those things in mind and truthfully we don't necessarily have to match what we're seeing in the reference we don't necessarily have to make those moves um but that's that's up to us and it's up to kind of the direction that the client is is wanting to go that's enough about that I'll go ahead and turn these things off turn reference off um I've got enough to kind of work with here and let's just jump right in and start addressing kind of these problems and and figure out a way okay how can we maybe kind of tame things in the uh the midst there that like you know 1.5 to 3K area um how can we you know maybe just bring the base in a little bit more alignment there verse kick clean up too loud let's just start there let's just work our way down um I'm going to go to the begin any of the song [Music] here one thing that we can't do is we can't really tame the siblin in the verse I've just made a note of that um we can use some EQ if we want um but I would rather use some more advanced tools that will actually cover in the advance section in section four we're going to go over things like Dynamic EQ uh dsers that kind of stuff so we'll go ahead and leave that problem it's only in the verse I don't hear that there's too much sibilance build up in the chorus so we'll kind of you know just keep this as a note for later in fact we'll move this towards the [Music] bottom so right now what we're hearing is just this uh sort of lowii drum beat here and that's [Music] fine think we could bring that down just to hair so I have a gain plugin on here and I can do that with uh the volume fader so let's make sure that there's no okay let's let's check the bridge really [Music] quick yeah I think we could bring it down just a DB so we'll do [Music] that what I'm going to do is just kind of tighten things up here the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to it [Music] out so what I'm doing in my headphones depending on the headphones that you have you may or may not hear that there's a a just a bit more information down here um below 40 Herz than we really need I I'm really wanting just this like 40 um maybe a little bit of 30 in fact I'll just bring this down a little bit more see feeling I'm up in the CL you will see a little bit of a b a volume jump um because of the phase shift that's happening cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S it check but about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left I'm going to go ahead and actually use um I am going to use a linear phas EQ for this just because let's see that should avoid us having that kind of volume jump anytime you do really hard Cuts in the low end on like a bass instrument like this um you often times will get a phase shift and what will happen is it will create sometimes these bumps in volume you want actually see those here [Music] but so now I can bring bring this [Music] down pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to stra to check it out check it [Music] out we'll go ahead and get rid of this one here cool cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to straight to check it out check it out it I'm better than the rest of Never B I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I I think what I'm going to do is address the uh sort of buildup in the vocal around this 1 to 2K area so if I play this I'm coming around I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh again showing everybody I can make it so what we'll do is just a little dip there's some buildup here and there's some buildup here you can see that in the analyzer I'll go ahead and boost these frequencies and then you'll you'll really hear this and we'll do one kind of around like8 or 900 I think it was F it's actually closer to 900 yeah it'll make it a little bit more narrow same with this one fact we'll go one by one so let's listen to this one first F right it's almost like a whistle can you see that Spike go up yeah so I want to tame that just a bit I don't want to do too much but just a little bit will kind of add up little moves like this will just clean things up over time the pass I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till little bit of buildup here so I'm going to cut this out don't want to do too much F I'm the rest never I'm coming around I'm top coming down and I won't stop I'm I'm better than the rest never pass I'm coming around I'm top I ain't coming down and [Music] [Applause] ion again everybody I ground I'm to down little rule of thumb as you're kind of sweeping for certain frequencies it's a good practice to not do this uh too high because everything sounds bad when you're boosting it really high so what I'm doing is I'm keeping this within I would say no more than you know plus 10 or 12 while you're sweeping and that way as you're sweeping you're not hearing all these problems because you're just cranking it way way too high um this will change how much you need to sweep will change depending on where you're at in the frequency spectrum you can get away with boosting sometimes a little bit higher in the low end um because lower frequencies need more volume for us to hear them we're a lot more sensitive in the in our ears to these frequencies here so you don't need to be going up and above you know I mean really I can I can hear problems right around like 6 DB as I'm boosting and so and then you get really really high you can kind of crank things above 10K you know in order to hear resonances because again our ears lose sort of sort of the ability to hear up really really really high and really really low watch what happens when when we sweep between like here here and here you'll hear where the buildup IS you'll hear kind of a spike an unpleasant kind of like sharp tone it's right there so I'm going to go ahead and and dip this out and now what I want to do is just kind of enhance this honestly I just I'm I'm ready to kind of bring up some high-end information and um and what I'm going to do is use a ptech here um this is a a great analog EQ it's got some tubes in it so there's a little bit of coloration when I turn it on it's going to give it a different sound um that'll be a little bit more subtle to a beginner's ear um but this is uh coloring the sound which just means it's changing it and you're going to hear that a little bit and in in terms of excitement without even turning the knobs I'm better than the rest of never passent I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming [Music] down you know and let me just say something we're not having to do a lot of work here because there's been a lot of production on this vocal already we have a lot of like effects that are already baked in here that we don't need to add to the vocal because the producers did that right and so uh we don't need to worry uh about a ton there's just some minor things that we can address here but let's go ahead and listen to uh before and after I'm going to go ahead and turn these off and then turn them back on and then we especially need to make sure we're listening in uh context of the other instruments so that we can make adjustments there as well f it I'm better than the rest never passent I'm coming around F around F I'm the rest never I'm coming around so what's cool is that we've already got enhancement without turning a knob and that's just sounds a lot cleaner to my ear let's go ahead and uh play this in context and we're not what's great about this is because we're removing frequencies right um and we're getting a little bit of excitement in highend from this uh box here from this plugin here it's kind of doing everything I want without having to to boost a ton and we're not gaining we're not having to to worry about like losing head room we've kept the volume right around the same and this sounds more exciting kind of more upfront [Music] around in fact I bet that when we turn the stuff on in the context of the mix we're going to have to consider turning it [Music] down coming around I'm on top I a't coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm top coming boun sh everybody I can make it on the ground shake it everybody I can make it really great that cuts through the mix just the way I want it to don't need to to do anything more than that all right so in other cases you might need to boost a lot more and in fact in a lot of cases where the vocal hasn't been mixed very well uh in the production session where they haven't really touched that it's just a raw vocal with no processing this vocal already has a bunch of processing on it and in in those cases where I have a raw vocal I'm going to have to boost a lot I'm going to have to do a lot more in terms of cutting a lot of times there's lowend information here um we're going to have a a a course all about vocal processing all about you know vocal mixing so we're going to keep this one high level um but you'll get to see another free course that another one of our teachers here is going to create and so that'll go a lot deeper into kind of eqing vocals adding effects and things like that so let's go ahead and move on I am am pretty happy with that let's see if there's anything we can address Q wise in the verse [Music] vocal got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling stey cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going check it yeah a little bit of buildup here in this like 400 to 500 area the sh my the sh my and you can see those little spikes I don't necessarily want to get rid of those those are kind of harmonics and overtones that uh contribute to the sound of the vocal it's important to have those there but they can they can be tamed just a little bit so we'll go ahead and um bring this down I think it was around like four something that we were hearing things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds so kind of changes I'm going to do a more narrow cut here so we'll bring that down a little bit and I'm going to do another narrow cut right around here by the way this is just the stock logic plugin guys so anyone who's got logic can use this tool and it's great I'll bring this down about the same on The Fast Track bouncing back are sh my way widen this a little bit got get back in itz I ain't to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling is it cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to shred it check it out on the fast track bouncing back there things are shaking my way the tring sh my listen to how this kind of uh unlocks some energy kind of in the mid-range here let's go ahead and do it before after here's before Shing sh my way a little bit more clarity there so that's I think going to help and I'm going to go ahead and just roll off the lowend just to make sure there's no Rumble down there that's coming through that all that low Rumble can be uh stuff that is picked up from you know air conditioning units or any number of things that can be in a record that we don't necessarily hear unnecessary energy that we don't need that'll build up and add up over different recordings so we can get away with cutting that out pretty aggressively and I'm going to do a little bit more of an aggressive cut here just because this is a very stylized vocal and I'm going to lean into that a little bit so usually I won't go above like 100 Hertz on a vocal uh sometimes I won't go above like 80 htz even just depends on the vocal so fast check I'm gonna lean into that kind of feeling of like this is a bit of a telephone booth not quite telephone booth style but it's it's leaning in that direction of it's kind of focused in this you know uh kind of low mid-range area fast trck let's go ahead and [Music] see and do just a little bit less here a little bit less [Music] here it's just giving us a sense of air without having to add it and then I'm going to do the same thing that we did with the other one and just give it this Pull Tech and without adding any knobs or anything turning any knobs we get a little bit more clarity I'm going to bring the volume down just to [Music] hair qu it's starting to sound a little thin to me [Music] now so maybe I don't want that ptech there taking my way there's not much going on we'll see when things kind of pick up here if we want that in there I'm up in the about to see me feeling CU I'm up in the CLS to see feel in the CLS about to see me feel I'm up in the I think we'll do without the ptech about to see me feeling I'm up in the CLS it up and then now I'm going to bring the volume back [Music] up on the fast track bouncing back things I shake my way on The Fast Track bouncing back things I shakeing my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't a when he says the word back I'm hearing something I'm going to go ahead and solo this yeah this thing is kind of popping up right here I'm going to go ahead and attenuate that as well listen to the word back it's right around here gotta get back in yeah gotta get back in in fact I'm gonna ease up on these moves just a hair and maybe what I was actually hearing is is this frequency here that we can attenuate we go ahead and bring that down just a ha gotta get back in it cuz I ain't to quit it he hey got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it he he Fast Track bouncing back there things are shaking my way fast track bouncing back things yeah so we're cleaning this vocal up we're doing cleanup work right now it's it feels it just feels cleaner like this is a little bit more muddy when we have this off and again we'll address some of the sibilance that's happening up around 10K later on things I Shake In my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it he and everybody about to see me feeling ezy cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to SRA to check it out check it [Music] out I'm better the Never B I'm goinging around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I don't stop till I'm winning sh it show everybody I see on the ground I'm On Top Lady B yeah and I really am liking these moves that we made uh here I think this is helping quite a bit actually to uh let this vocal sit better in with the chorus um I'm going to go back though I'm second guessing the volume of the vocal here [Music] I think what's bothering me though I I don't think it's an issue of volume balance I think I'm just bothered by all this siblin up top here um so if I took another EQ I don't have any more uh actually let's see yeah I guess I have this one I can use I'm going to put this over here around 10K and I'm gonna dip it [Music] down let's go ahead and do before and after but about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but it's tempting for me actually to make kind of a bold move here uh I think what I might do is accomplish some dsing there but there's something happening it's kind of contributing to a lofi nature of this vocal to it's contributing to that stylization and so that's not something I might normally do it all depends though right this is a a unique situation uh and again this hearkens back to my comment at the beginning of the video where we don't make one size fits-all moves ever okay it's always case to case every microphone's different every song is different every style is going to you know every song is going to have a different kind of stylization uh male female vocals all have different you know ways of responding in the microphone frequency response wise Etc but I think for now what I'm going to do just to have this sit better I'm GNA go ahead and make this more of an aggressive uh move there actually let me undo that and then I'm going to take this low pass filter and I'm actually going to be pretty aggressive [Music] there and what will happen too is this will help contribute to a bigger feeling of openness in the chorus when we transition because all of a sudden we're going to open up these high-end frequencies to the symbols to the the vocal and everything else so let's go ahead and and uh kind of listen to that transition pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to stra to check it out check it [Music] out pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going stra to check it out check it [Music] out pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to stra to check it out and I might want to add some uh vocal processing later or some like either delay or Reverb that's very very subtle but that would be much later so let's go ahead and move on to our next kind of note here which is buildup in 1 to 2K in the chorus or no that's Vox buildup so we actually have taken care of that let's go ahead and get rid of that note uh snare needs excitement kit clean up too loud we've gotten rid of we can cross that off snare needs excitement let's listen to that [Music] and it sounds like these uh snares have been dealt with in terms of frequencies for the most part but I [Music] might yeah I think what I'll do I'm going to use uh like an analog style EQ my channel strip [Music] here let's see how this [Music] feels always check in the context though Never B I'm goinging around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I W stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm [Music] to [Music] I might want to address some things about the base uh just cut out some unnecessary kind of low mids [Music] and also cut out some of this low end [Music] here [Music] take it show everybody I can make it on ground I'm [Music] on show everybody I can make it she see on ground I'm on stop by coming down l [Music] b take it show everybody I can make it on the ground [Music] I'm show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm on to coming down [Music] L I'm just bringing this down just a hair just to make sure I'm not going too high and interfering with any other like symbols and things up in the highend I me those aren't going to be in this area anyways I just you know I'm just kind of nudging it down so everybody I can make it see on ground I'm on top I coming L B I feel [Music] [Applause] Supernatural feel [Music] superal I need to figure out where a frequency is coming from that I'm [Music] [Applause] [Music] hearing I think I'm gonna cut out uh a bit around here here in [Music] this [Music] again I'm better than the rest of paent I'm going around I'm on top I ain't going down and I W stop till [Music] I'm [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm to coming down L [Music] B I'm better the rest of never I'm going around I'm on top I a going down and [Music] I I feel superal oh body I can make it she on the [Music] ground [Music] everybody I can make ground I'm On Top coming down lady [Music] BCE watch out on a [Music] Saturday [Music] n [Music] Saturday night pick you up and I'm staring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight interesting so I have a separate verse here SE on a Saturday night sex on a Saturday nightx on Saturday on [Music] Sat hit that yeah you got to admit sh my way get back in it iin quit get back in it't qu get back in it i't quit it hit that yeah you got to admit that down okay so definitely going to need to address this let's go ahead and just jump into it I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lululemon that you're wearing give me I'm hearing some percussion information that's like uh getting kind of uh in the way let [Music] me [Music] bu and you see me and I make it look so easy at with sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight busting and you see me and I'll make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night let's go into this vocal and clean it up busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night same thing vocal siblin up here uh kind of want to tame that in the same way that we did the other one I might remove this once we get uh things tamed with dsing later on buting and you see me and make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Satur night let's come in here busting and you see me and make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah with SE on a Saturday night fact I might use a shelf here and just bring it down busting and you see me and make it busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lululemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night buting and you see me in make it look so easy with sex buting and you see me in make it look so [Music] easyy little bit here make it look easy on Satur buting you see me and make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Satur night pick you maybe a little bit kind of like we did bu easy Satur night yeah take a little bit of that out busting and you see me and make it look so easy we're sexing on a Satur busting and you see me and make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday [Music] night this hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah uh let's go before and [Music] after so here's before EQ hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out I'm busting and easy sat pick you up when I'm busting and you see me and it look so easy we're on a Satur night and we don't need this much we already have that information I'm going to clear this up buting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night all this stuff just adds up an unnecessary [Music] amount [Music] e easy when he says yeah that kind of pops up see me and make it look so easy yeah yeah right there and make it look so easy yeah bu and you see me bu and you see me and make it look so easy [Music] bu so we're losing two DB here we might want to make that back I'm always kind of checking here and I might bring that back up bu and you see it easy but these two together uh listen to this if we take these off you see me and make it look so easy yeah sexing on bu and you see me and make it look so easy yeah sex so I'm going to go ahead and listen in context because that's [Music] everything yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell [Music] out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we sexing on a Saturday nighton kind of want to deal with these [Music] now almost want just more of these so easy with sex when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at was sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm staring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight I'm Bing the rest of I'm going around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I w't stop till I'm [Music] winning while we're here I'm going to go ahead and just like lift this a little bit in the high end and I'm going to do that with a ptech so it's adding some volume but also add a little bit of high end as well yeah let's see don't [Music] fight don't to fight and then uh I'm going to go ahead I think this will be more impactful fight [Music] there's a a couple drum hits here that I think we could get rid of and have this be just a little bit more effective yeah I don't think we need all of these let's go ahead and show you what these are doing that was just a big hit that was getting in the way masking that sound there so that's a production thing now okay so cat's out of the bag actually produce this with the band and my production partner Caleb and so these are decisions that I can make as a as kind of a a part of that team that production team but as a mix engineer you'd have to really check and see if they notice this if the client wants that uh to be taken out or not and then I just need to go ahead and make sure that these are faded out so there's no clicking right so without that fade there's a little clip there and so we clean that upem I don't fight uh now it's a little bit too bright because uh it's not being masked anymore so I'm going to go ahead and take this down quite a bit don't fight yeah I think that's fine but let's go a and listen before and after here's with that drum [Music] hit [Music] and that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight I'm going around I'm on top I ain't going down and I w't stop wondering if we can smooth out these symbols I'm just hearing more details now that we're kind of in the weeds so again these were my first initial highle thoughts and now we're kind of getting deeper into the weeds with uh each individual instrument so let's go ahead and address these drums in the high the overheads I think it is they're sounding pretty good I don't think we need all this Lo information that's for sure so we can get rid of that I want to be very careful though because this is contributing to some of the snare sound as [Music] well better than the rest of Never B I'm going around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop I'm wining [Music] everybody don't want to [Music] fight I'm better than the rest I'm going around I'm on top I a't com [Music] yeah I just think there's stuff way up here in the symbols think we could tame that a little [Music] bit I'm better than the rest of I'm coming around I'm on top I a't coming down and I w't stop till I'm wining it show everybody I can make it on ground I'm on [Music] top that might be kind of hard for you to hear but it kind of Smooths that out a little bit um just in the very very top [Music] end listen to the it goes from left right and then left so I'll do before and after here's [Music] before and then [Music] after and May maybe that was just a bit too much so I'll do it just a little bit less these are things I'm thinking ahead of time with like regards to mastering so I'm going to want to bring out the high end without these symbols blowing out our ears we'll keep it out [Music] too feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight better the rest of I'm going around com down I [Music] w't okay so this is the only thing happening I'm going to address it here let's [Music] see okay so that's like a pad element let's actually hit these things one at a [Music] time [Music] oh [Music] make it look so easy with sex when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight yeah chilling we're not here to sell out I'm buting you out interesting I'm wondering if this is getting lost here to out I'm buting you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm buting and you see me and I make it look so easy at with sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we sexing on a Satur night I don't want to [Music] fight [Applause] [Music] [Applause] better yeah cutting this out very well might do what I want which is to give this a little bit more attention right so I'm just unmasking kind of other areas that I want to hear more of it's basically what I'm [Music] doing see if that has the effect we [Music] want I'm going around I'm On Top a com down and I W stop maybe want just a hair too far on [Music] that the rest of I'm going around I'm On Top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining say so everybody I can make it ground I'm On Top coming L [Music] B I'm going around I'm on top I ain't going down and I w't stop tilling wining sh it show everybody I can make let's see where we're at with all of our EQ moves I'm going to go ahead and remove every single move that we've made so far and just see how we're doing okay [Music] before after [Music] before after I'm better than the rest of I'm going around I'm on top and now the kick feels like it's maybe overbearing to me but you can hear just how that kind of cleans things up right all those little subtle moves are going to add up over time that's the that's the idea uh so I'm going to go to my kick I think [Music] cuz easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight I love how Punchy it is though so I'm tempted to just keep it let's go ahead I'm actually GNA bring in and see how this track makes things go in the I've gone ahead and separated this parallel drum track out [Music] so so it's just got a lot of like bombast a lot of uh lot of energy let's see how that sounds the chorus only there's no EQ or anything it's just the way it is I think it's fine check it out I'm better the never I'm coming around I'm on top I coming down I won't stop till I'm winning [Music] I'm going to check it out Che it out better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh so body I can make it on the ground I'm On Top [Music] lady just checking the level of the [Music] vocal I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm on top I a coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning I'm going to move on I don't know if I like that or not I'm just going to move on without it um just kind of keep addressing different things um but let's yeah let's see [Music] guitar I'm going to listen to the bridge [Music] here you know what yeah I'm going to address what I was originally going to address which is seeing if the kick drum is too loud in the chorus let's go ahead and bring that down just a DB or so the dop can come down just a hair now that we've kind of hyped up the high end of it I'm coming around I'm to by coming down and I w't stop till I'm fight you know what uh we're gonna give this whole entire kind of drum section uh some compression I think later on and so I'm not going to worry about the volume of it now I think it's fine the way it is I might just for my sake bring it down a half DB or [Music] so is that making a huge difference no but you know I'm thinking dynamically low end's going to hit ression a lot harder than highend so I just I'm just making little incremental uh adjustments here to make sure that everything is is going to be hitting Dynamics processing really well later on um and honestly with like EQ it's getting really close I just want to listen kind of through with the moves I've made and see where we're [Music] at way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling stezy cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to straight to check it out check it out I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm on top I coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning kind of want to see how much closer we are now to our reference let's bring this over [Music] here yeah without mastering and anything else I think this is a good spot to be I feel Supernatural oh what a shake I'm to [Music] down everybody I make it on the ground I'm top coming down and I won't stop I'm WI think I might want to tame something [Music] else kind of just scooping these out a little [Music] bit and maybe we give them a little bit more hype in the high end um and kind of just make these [Music] scooped this contributes to so much energy in this track that I want to make sure I get this [Music] right [Music] so much cleaner sounding [Music] overall you know rather than take this frequency out here think I might actually address it in the track that is it's actually coming from which is [Music] here [Music] the never I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh show everybody on the ground I'm On Top yeah trying to Fe feel out the the balance here with this let's go ahead and move that back down I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm on top I coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On [Music] Top This is such an important [Music] instrument [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] whoops let's take this off [Music] there I think what I want to try to do is use uh an EQ for mid-range that I like which is the meq [Music] [Applause] [Music] five [Music] [Applause] [Music] the never I'm coming around I'm on Top com I'm better than the rest of Never B I'm coming around I'm stop I coming down I won't stop till I'm winning [Music] sh on The Fast Track bouncing back things I Shing my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and to see me feeling CU I'm up in the pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to straight to check it out check it [Music] out I feel superal what a shame oning I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm to coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh everybody I can make on the ground I'm On Top coming hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down I am tempted uh to put a gain plug in here and I kind of want to uh bring up the volume of the let's see the the verse versus the chorus sections so I'm going to do that let's see you know what before I do that let me bring up the volume just without that first just to see I'm going to bring it up a DB and a half and see where that puts us see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to to check it out check it out about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds yeah see I like everything so we're eqing a lot here but it's affecting this here and I don't want it to so you know uh it's it's bringing the volume down but about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the CLS pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to stra to check it out check it out about to see me feeling stey cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S chicken about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the [Music] clouds that's too loud bring it back down to three and a half check dancing back things I shaking my way got to take it out I'm better the never I'm coming [Music] [Applause] [Music] around Che it out [Music] yeah it just needs more of this particular uh [Music] yeah things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it he hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds now I'm [Music] better I think I'm going to make uh just one last adjustment I'm just going to try bringing this up and [Music] down this track is the meat of and I'm going to do that with uh I'm going to do that with the gain plugin that I have here so I'm I'm going to put uh a node here let's go like this and then I can drag this up and down I'm going to bring it uh let's bring it down a DB and a half and then I'm going to need to bring that over to here like that there we [Music] go yeah you know I just feel like it we probably don't maybe we just don't need that much overall Never B I'm goinging around I'm on top I a coming down I won't stop till I'm winning I'm better than the rest of it's tempting to to go less with this [Music] even so maybe I'll bring this down a DB here and have it up a DB more in the cor or have it down a DB more in the chorus just because we're filling in a lot of information with the other base [Music] layers pick it up where I time yeah I like [Music] that I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm on top I Ain coming [Music] down [Music] better the WR Never B I'm com got to get this right so I I I've taken enough time on that I think um as we progress along in the process of doing all our other stages like compression Dynamics processing what whatever else I'm going to be adding I'm going to be doing more micro adjustments as I go so I'll leave it at that let's just listen all the way through and and see if there's any other opportunities to to make enhancements we haven't really addressed the guitars yet so that's something I think I'm might want to do they sound good though already these have been produced well and part of uh eqing and making the right EQ moves is knowing when to not make any at all [Music] so uh let's maybe bring these in the center really [Music] quick uh take that [Music] off [Music] [Music] I'm coming around I'm top coming down and I W stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make on the ground I'm on to [Music] by I may want to automate some kind of upper top end information here some upper mids above like 5 6K here so I'm putting it in mono I'm just clicking the mono button here so that I can have it in the center and hear what's going on but [Music] better so looks like it's been intentionally rolled off here so I'm going to keep that in [Music] mind [Music] everything's been controlled pretty [Music] well on the ground [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah just bringing it up a little bit more in the mix with those upper [Music] [Music] mids not sure what happened [Music] here I think that was on accident that I had changed the shape of this [Music] here [Music] let I'm coming around I'm top coming down and I won't stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make can see on the ground my mom stop by coming to b f [Music] out [Music] show everybody I can make [Music] it want to see what this sounds like in [Music] context I see on the ground I'm on [Music] top so everybody I can see on the ground I'm On Top [Music] going everybody I can [Music] the [Music] okay tip that [Music] down I'm better than the rest of I'm coming around I'm On Top coming [Music] down ah so it goes up I need to be careful there because the lower register is getting lost with these EQ moves here so interesting I might need to break that out into another I think I'm going to do that here I'm gonna break out let's [Music] see let's hear this [Music] [Applause] [Music] I think that's good and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring I'm better the rest I'm going around I'm On Top coming down and I W stop [Music] till show everybody I can make it ground I'm top coming down yeah I think that's good I think I might want to hair less when it goes up the octave so I going to do one more kind of gain automation move here [Applause] [Music] okay let's bring this out or bring this down just a hair just a DB [Music] maybe the of I'm going around I'm on to like and I w't stop till I'm ready [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] i w stop till I'm ready micro adjustments that's what we're doing [Music] here I'm feeling really good about that I'm feeling really good about everything let's listen to the last chorus one more time around I'm to coming down and I stop till I'm ready so everybody I can on the [Music] ground the only thing that we're missing is just a lot of high-end a lot of high-end information but I think I'm okay with that because you know we'll bring some of that out of mastering um this is just this the type of I don't I don't feel like it needs a lot of that tippy top end like we have in our reference here so that's something I'm keeping in mind just contextually instrumentation wise and everything let's go ahead and listen to this though natural unable on superal superal coming around I'm top coming down and I stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make see on the ground [Music] [Music] I'm coming around I'm to coming down and I stop till I'm ready show everybody I can make Fe On The Ground I'm yeah what I'm thinking here is that I kind of want to leave room for adding highend in the in in the master so you know I'm for me personally I'm pretty close there let's go ahead and see if we can close the gap just a little bit more though okay so I'm going to go ahead and um look at areas of enhancement for top end and I think what I'm going to do is do this on the bus [Music] [Applause] [Music] level okay I'm going to bring the the volume down to compensate just a hair because this is bringing it up about a DB or [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] I'm better let rest I'm coming around I'm to I coming down and I won't stop I'm winning sh everybody I can make it on the ground I'm better than the rest of never passent I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming [Music] down it's a little little crispy I'm better let the rest I'm coming around I'm On Top by coming down and I w't stop till I'm [Music] ready let's give it just a tiny lift on the top end overall on the best level just like a DB from perhaps like from here on [Music] it's bringing uh that move in the high end of the vocal is bringing out that P that P which is kind of nice just giving it a little bit more intelligibility the res B I'm coming around I'm on to by coming down and I stop till I'm ready so everybody I can [Music] make there might be some uh frequencies here in this guitar I want to address really quick these are kind of the last minute moves here as we're as we're nearing the end of eqing this is arguably going to take the longest time is uh just doing these EQ moves clean up and everything I'm going to bring it in the [Music] center [Music] [Music] n [Music] okay and then a little bit of a highend move here to make this thing cut through [Music] a [Music] everybody I can make see on the ground I'm on to [Music] by bring it up in volume a little [Music] bit oh yeah it needs to be on the left I forgot let's go ahead and uh take that that off of [Music] mono so it's it doesn't need to be that loud [Music] anymore so everybody I can on the ground I'm Top [Music] by so everybody I can make see on the ground this one needs to go out wide [Music] again everybody I can on the ground [Music] I'm I'm curious is as to whether or not we actually need [Music] this so everybody I can make to see on the ground I'm On [Music] Top yeah I think it does everybody all right I think we're good I'm gonna listen one last time [Music] through got to get back in it cuz I ain't to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling ezy cuz I'm up in the clouds take it up where I left it but this time I'm going to straight to check it out check it [Music] out I'm better than the rest Never B I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh so everybody it's too loud right there that's why we're listening through it's too loud this instrument right here not that one it's in our synths actually which is right here where is that yeah right here okay interesting yeah so uh notice how I forgot to bring it down let's go ahead and do that there's not as much going on in this section here so let's bring it down probably can bring it down a couple [Music] DB that's [Music] better everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm On Top down BCE of this hit that yeah you got to admit that you're [Music] down yeah we living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday tonight hook you up and I'm staring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight better the I'm going around I'm topin com down and I W stop till I'm with show everybody I can make it since see ground I'm On Top by coming down [Music] L we haven't done anything to the toms cuz they don't really need any [Music] treatment [Music] better let res I'm coming around I'm on top I coming down and I W stop till I'm ready so body I can see on the ground I'm On Top L [Music] down cool you know uh when this was bounced out should have been bounced out with that tail going longer believe it was this one right here this pad let's find it yeah but we don't we we don't have that tail so that would need to be redone if we were to actually release this but uh let's go ahead and do before and after uh no EQ plus EQ we'll just remove all the plugins in fact uh go like this listen to the chorus better res I'm coming around I'm [Music] to and with [Music] coming around I'm to by coming down and I W stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make it Fe On The Ground I'm On [Music] Top out [Music] cool uh one more time before and [Music] after going around I'm to coming and I w't stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make just see on the ground [Music] I'm Let's uh check out reference 2 and listen this way rest B I'm coming around I'm on to by coming down and I [Music] [Applause] let's [Music] see superal feel Untouchable [Music] unable untouchable [Music] unable [Music] [Music] superal untable [Music] unable so about 2db more in kind of this mid-range that we have in [Music] ours let's see what that's like if we were to kind of attenuate if it makes an improvement around I'm on top I coming down and I W stop till I'm ready [Music] it wants us to kind of do a boost at around 500 or so better the I'm coming around I'm top coming down and I W stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make see on the ground I'm On Top yeah so we're just kind of looking ahead in the future like to like a m on a mastering perspective but let's go ahead and just like keep what we have uh so far um I don't think there's really anything else that I want to do I think um in the context of our mix our instrumentation I think what we've got works so I'm going to um I'm going to toggle this on and off though really [Music] quick coming around I'm to coming down the only thing that I like is maybe attenuating this kind of area here I'm to coming down and I w't stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make see on the ground I'm m stop by com L better let res yeah I think I like what we have so that's it uh we've gone through the process of addressing problems and enhancements and we're keeping again the Sonic relationships and the overall balance in mind the entire time that's really the critical part is keeping the high level perspective of okay what's our balance from low to high and making sure that we look uh we're kind of like reverse engineering things that's uh like our our Flagship program the reverse engineer you know when you look at things from a mastering mastering perspective that actually changes the way you think about how to you know make adjustments to back in the mix you know back into the production you can kind of work your way backwards it's a really effective way uh to make sure that you're you're keeping that high Lev goal uh in mind right that you're trying to attain so that's it and we'll see you in the next one one in the last section we broke down the way in which frequencies and EQ impact the height of our mix helping us to shape the vertical aspect of our sound now as we Embark in section three we turn our Focus towards the front to back Dimension the depth of our mix which is governed by volume and Dynamics so now we're venturing into how we can push sounds closer or further away in our mix creating a sense of depth that makes our music feel alive and three-dimensional this is where Dynamics and volume come into play later on in section 4 we'll also discuss how spatial processing like Reverb And Delay effect depth as well but for now in this section we'll be focusing our attention on Dynamics what are dynamics Dynamics in the context of our Cube refer to the variations and loudness and intensity of our music simply put Dynamics is the difference between the loudest and quietest parts of our music through tools like compression limiting and clipping we can manipulate the dynamic range of our various sounds bringing them closer to the listener or pushing them back creating a mix that breathes and moves with life why does this matter because in music feeling is depth when we control Dynamics effectively we're not just adjusting volume we're enhancing emotion tension and release we're telling a story guiding our listeners through the landscape of our sound in this section we'll explore what controlling Dynamics really means we'll dive into the what why and how of the tools used for controlling and manipulating Dynamics like compression clipping and limiting but it's not just about these tools it's about the intent behind their use we'll discuss how to enhance the character glue and punch of our mix using Dynamic tools to deepen the emotional impact of our music so let's gear up to explore the depth of our Cube learning how to master the tools that control Dynamics to create mixes that not only sound professional but feel profoundly moving welcome to the world of dynamic control let's dive in Imagine for a moment that you're in the car with your buddy and you're showing off your favorite music you've turned the volume up to a decent level ensuring that your favorite section of the song doesn't get drowned out by the ambience around you your car hauling down the road the AC blowing Etc things are rocking but then just as your favorite section comes around in the chorus you stop at a railroad crossing and wait for a train whose Horn whals high above the guitar solo you so desperately wanted your friend to hear so you turn the volume up even more to hear the solo and when the Train's horn stops the volume is all of a sudden way too loud so you turn the volume back down to where it was this in a way is an example of dynamic control with your hand on the volume dial you're controlling how loud and quiet the music needs to be at all times in order to ensure everything is heard at any given moment another example of this is when I'd listen to a particular choir album in high school on my bedroom CD player I'm referring to Eric Whitaker's complete Acappella Works probably the only choir music I cared to listen to this record along with many other more traditional styles of music is very Dynamic the soft Parts get very quiet and the loud Parts get right up to the digital ceiling I'd have to sit right next to the player with my hand on the volume knob at all times constantly adjusting it to ensure I could hear all the details of the quiet Parts while also preventing the loudest sections from blowing out my speakers now this is no slight or disrespect to the audio engineers and producers on that album it's meant to be that Dynamic I simply loved dialing up the quiet parts so that it felt more immersive like I was part of the choir but I digress the point is I'm essentially controlling the volume manually in a way that reduces that dynamic range so that I could hear every everything more evenly the way that I preferred and this simple Act of writing the volume dial on my CD player is the same practice that mix Engineers have done for years with writing the volume fader the only difference is that they have control over the individual volume faders for each track to control the Dynamics of each instrument in the context of a mix we need to have a way to control how loud and quiet each instrument gets the this way we can hear everything we want to hear Above the Rest of the other instruments at any given time in the music it would be nice and easy if all we had to do is simply throw up the volume faders where we want them and be done but it's just not that simple the reason is is because some tracks especially vocals or other acoustic instruments are very Dynamic by Nature with vocals there are times when the singer might get really loud in a chorus but then pull back and get soft and intimate in a verse that kind of dynamic on the overall macro level is actually normal and encouraged but the problems arise on the micro level when we have inconsistent volume levels within a verse or chorus itself now let's take a look again at our Cube and focus on how this all ties in with the depth Dimension the concept is simple the louder an instrument or element is in the mix the more forward or upfront it feels in this Dimension conversely the quieter it is the further away or back it feels well what if an element consistently goes back and forth between loud and quiet essentially it's moving forward and back in the depth field all the time making it difficult to give it its own space in this dimension of the mix sometimes we hear it sometimes we don't sometimes it feels like it's right in front of our face and other times it gets shoved way back behind everything else controlling Dynamics is all about reducing this dynamic range so that we hear our instruments consistently throughout the track all we're doing is shortening the difference between loud and quiet parts of the music we're not trying to completely get rid of this dynamic range but reducing it makes it easier to intentionally place the different elements of our mix in varying spaces along this depth Dimension if everything in the mix is loud and up front all the time the mix can sound flat fatiguing and lifeless so staggering the different instruments along this Dimension is just one way that we create a feeling of space separation breath and life in our mix before we move on to explaining how we control Dynamics I want to take a moment to explain the difference between what I would call intentional versus unintentional Dynamics first let's start with intentional Dynamics intentional Dynamics have to do with the natural EB and flow of loud and quiet parts of a music performance or recording I've already given one example of this with regards to singers who deliver their vocals at different levels of intensity throughout a song the verse might be quiet because a more intimate emotion is desired then the chorus gets loud in order to express another kind of emotion same with a Pianist violinist or any other solo instrument there is a ton of intentional Dynamic that breathes life movement and emotion into the performance as Engineers we want to preserve what I'd like to call Dynamic intent and there is no one siiz fits-all for this because dynamic range varies so widely between all the Styles and geners of music that exist modern styles of pop music for example are not very Dynamic that's pretty consistent across the vast majority of modern pop genres the only real dynamics in modern pop occurs between the different sections of the song however within each section themselves especially in a big chorus or drop section we often get very dense and Loud instrumentation with reduced dynamic range once the chorus is over the song drops back down in volume or intensity in the verse and then ramps back up in the following chorus on the other hand a classical Coral recording and production will be very Dynamic the point is is that these varying degrees of dynamic range are Musical and intentional and we want to preserve and mix to that intention as much as possible unintentional Dynamics on the other hand are pretty much what it sounds like they're not intentional and to put it simply these unintentional Dynamics mostly come from the mistakes and or imperfections of human performances singers might move around in front of the mic causing the volume to dip and Rise dramatically an amateur guitarist will often strum or fingerpick the guitar inconsistently causing some notes to be heard way too loud or way too soft poor drumming performances might have kick and snare hits that are all over the place in volume even with professional session musicians there will always be unintentional Dynamics cause spikes and peaks in the audio even a professional singer with great mic technique for example can overload a microphone with signal because of plosives like P's or T's especially if recorded without a pop filter or windscreen the result of these imperfections show up in recordings in the form of transient spikes or Peaks transients refer to the frontend initial burst of volume or energy in a waveform like you see here these transients are typically loudest with percussive instruments like kick and snare high hats symbols or any recorded instrument that has some degree of initial attack also vocal consonants the attack of guitar picks on on strings piano hammers hitting their strings or any other plucked instrument will have this front end transient in the waveform you get the point as Engineers we have the ability to control and reduce the Dynamics that occur between the loudest spikes of audio known as Peaks and the quieter segments of that audio by getting these Peaks and transients under control and reducing dynamic range we once again will have more control over where we place that sound in the depth Dimension typically speaking the more dynamically reduced a sound is the lower we can put it in the mix while still being able to hear or discern that instrument again one of the most important points I can make right now is that there are varying degrees of dynamic intent for different styles and genres of music because of this there is no one siiz fits-all approach to controlling Dynamics you have to to serve the music you are mixing if you understand the why behind the concepts and tools I'm about to show you you'll be able to achieve virtually any sound you're aiming for keep in mind that this is not an overnight learning curve professionals will readily admit that this aspect of mixing was often the very last for them to grasp and feel like they had control over the most important thing is that you spend adequate and consistent time experimenting with and learning the tools we're about to go over in addition it's vital that you spend time critically analyzing Dynamics and this depth Dimension within your favorite music this way you can start to hear how these tools are translating in the real world of released music so how do we actually control Dynamics in our mix there's volume which includes the volume fader gain or trim there's compression clipping and limiting compression clipping and limiting are the three Dynamics processors that automatically allow us to control volume and help reduce dynamic range when I say volume as a tool on the other hand I'm referring to things like the volume fader or a gain or trim plug-in with these tools we control Dynamics manually volume as we already know is the simp list out of all of these tools to use but we need to break down just a few ways that we can utilize volume related tools to control Dynamics one way is through clip gain automation clip gain Automation in my opinion is one of the best ways to initially control Dynamics on instruments that have a wide and sometimes unintentional dynamic range this allows us to more naturally reduced dynamic range before applying the other Dynamics processors like impression clipping and limiting I mostly use this process with vocals but you can use it on anything you want with clip gain automation we separate different sections of the actual audio waveform in order to raise or lower the volume of each of those different sections I'll do a more in-depth demo of this later on in this section but listen to how much better we can hear this vocal cut through the mix after applying clip gain automation let a car ride with you something I give it all up just to do well I never Dre that a car ride with you something I give it all up just we can also accomplish the same thing by putting a gain or trim plugin as the very first processor in the signal chain in order to use this approach we would need to create an automation Lane to draw in these volume changes over time I'm seeing now it's all over this town the highs and lows the point in doing this type of dynamic control manually is to help feed a more even volume level into our Dynamics tools our Dynamic processors will all react differently depending on the volume level feeding them especially with compressors feeding that tool a very Dynamic signal can result in more unnatural and undesirable pumping sounds here's an extreme example of what this sounds like couple years in hell all by myself heart are moving on had to face all my biggest fears I was here alone now maybe unnatural is a sound that you're after and that's great as long as you're always trying to be intentional with the tools to get there happy accidents are always encouraged though I'll elaborate on this when I demonstrate the difference between compression clipping and limiting one more thing I want to point out that is super important is that the volume fader only controls volume after all the processing is done so we can't use it as a method to control Dynamics going into compression this has to do with the way signal flows and is routed through each channel in logic and in mosta the first stage of volume control once audio is actually in your Daw is in the waveform itself this is known as clip gain just as I mentioned with clip gain automation earlier so any processing that you choose to apply on your channel happens after clip gain but before the volume fader this should be the case for most Daws but you'll want to double check the signal routing for your specific Daw automating the volume fader is simply called volume automation once you've added EQ and controll Dynamics and achieve the sound you're after with all your plugins you can then take that processed and Polished audio and further automate the volume of that sound by using the volume Vader I'll show you that in action very soon all right in the demonstration we're about to get into I'm going to break down the difference between controlling Dynamics with compression versus clipping versus limiting and explain when and why to use one over the other make sure to come back to the section as much as you need to remind yourself of the why Behind these tools and when to use them for most people it's not going to sink in all at once let's dive in let's talk about and demonstrate the differences between compression limiting and clipping all three of these processes accomplish the same goal and that is they reduce dynamic range but they do it in slightly different ways as a refresher dynamic range has to do with the difference between the loudest and quietest parts of an audio signal again we want to reduce dynamic range of our various instruments so that we can better place things at consistent volumes in the mix and hear them more consistently and the best way that I know how to explain the difference between these is to actually show you what happens to a waveform when we apply these different processes I'm going to explain what the parameters of a compressor do as well as you know in limiting and clipping and I'll do that in more detail in a moment but before I do that I want to speak to the parameter that all three of these processors have in common and that is that they all have a threshold a threshold refers to a specific volume that we set which if exceeded then red reduces that volume that's all that these processors are doing so whenever the volume of your audio exceeds that threshold then the Dynamics processor whether it's a compressor a Clipper or a limiter will turn that volume down it's that simple that's all compression clipping and limiting is doing we're going to get into how much it turns it down by in a moment but let's go ahead and just show you what happens between three different types of processors so here I have a drum Groove let's go ahead and play [Music] this simple kick snare high hat lots of transient information here so that it gives us a nice visual of what happens when we apply these three different processors what I want to sort of mention is that compression and limiting both turn down or reduce the dynamic range by simply turning down the volume they turn it down they actually take the volume and turn it down it can do that at a certain speed right depending on what we're doing with with the tool um but with clipping clipping is set apart because rather than just turning down the volume what it's doing is it's actually chopping off the top of the transient or waveform and I'll show you that by zooming in let's go ahead and show you the the difference here I have after compression the volume is reduced as we can clearly see here um the volume is reduced in all three of these right the different shades of red are the after processing so with compression it's just turning it down and we can see that here so here's the original before compression and this is after compression you can see that the waveform has just gone from this to this it's just turned it down same with limiting here's after limiting before limiting it's gone from this down to this right so the shape of the waveform looks the same but just smaller now if we go to clipping watch what happens when we zoom in here something interesting we have a different kind of shape this is much more of a squared off waveform basically what's happened is we've turned down the threshold to this level right which in the case of this processor this is the Clipper I'm using you can see the red portion of this waveform is the portion that has been clipped or chopped off it's literally just chopping that off it's not turning it down it's just saying okay once the volume goes over this threshold in the case of a Clipper it's called a ceiling right so we have this ceiling which I've set to about negative well actually I changed it I actually turned it to about negative 8 8 or 9 and we can see that in red it's chopping off the waveform and you can see that here so this is just a fullon like hard cut off whereas again with the compression and limiting it's not a hard cut off it's reduced it by just simply turning down the volume very quickly it's doing that super super fast there's different variations of that fast right there's slower and there's faster that's a spectrum and I'll get into that in just a sec but that's just to show you visually what's happening with compression what's interesting is that we have different types of compressors and Clippers are pretty much all the same there's different types of clippers but they're relatively all the same and that they just kind of quickly they they chop off the transient that's going to give it a certain sound and so the type of of sort of process going on under the hood actually contributes to the sound of that Dynamic reduction that gain reduction so let's go ahead and just listen to how these [Music] differ let's turn this up a little [Music] bit okay I actually need to turn off this compressor and then let's go ahead and kind of uh match the perceived [Music] volume listen to how tonally different this is compared to this listen [Music] again [Music] we're sort of hearing more of the quiet details because those come closer to the louder parts so now the louder parts are quieter and they're closer to the volume of the quieter parts right so in between these kicks and snares we have a high hat which used to sound like this but now the high hat sounds closer in volume to our kick in our [Music] snare the perceived volume of this track is louder right let's go ahead and listen to the difference between you know before limiting and after limiting we'll turn this one down again [Music] so we're going to match the [Music] output similar let's listen to the difference between compression after compression and after [Music] limiting [Music] more kind of grit it's like dirtier sounding it's more there's just more tone kind of happening between the compression and the limiting Okay let's listen to the clipping [Music] lots of grit and kind of punch or I should just say there's just a lot of tone but it's only the tone is actually only happening on the drum hits the big drum hits [Music] themselves and it sounds louder it's clipping at the same or it's uh it's actually reaching the same volume here as the limiting and as the compression but it sounds [Music] louder it's kind of a fatness going on here in the compression [Music] it's almost like the most transparent is this limiter right and the Clipper is getting us a louder volume but we're also getting a dirtier kind of frontend transient with the kick in the snare now that's because we're clipping a lot more than I would normally clip when it comes to you know transient heavy information but I digress the point is that they're all different and what you need to do is you need to experiment now that you know what's happening with with all three of these like what the result is now you need to experiment with them and play around with them so that you become intimately familiar with how they sound because there is a sound and that is going to be what dictates when and how we use these tools what's nice about limiting and clipping is they often can be the most transparent on transient heavy information like drums and percussion when used sparingly you know when you take an unprocessed a completely Raw unprocessed drum signal or percussion signal it's going to look a lot spikier than even this original this is not an unprocessed drum Loop this has some Dynamic control already quite a bit and that's actually why when we apply this clipping we're applying about N9 Deb of clipping we're chopping off we've chopped off about 9 DB of clipping and so it's going to give us that dirtier gritty [Music] sound but we can actually get some more loudness without losing that sort of frontend punch it still feels Punchy we're not losing that we're getting a lot of loudness so ah okay maybe clipping is something that is used to get more loudness out of our tracks and that's totally true all right and so when we're clipping something I typically like to clip things that have a lot of transient kind of spiky detail right and you're going to get that with a a raw unprocessed uh drum track if you get drums from an actual like miked up drum kit those things are going to come with a lot more dynamic range than this drum Loop here what you would see is a continuation of this transient it would actually continue to go up um and I would bet that would it would go up quite a bit so this has been limited maybe there's a combination of clipping and limiting and compression but that's all done very purposefully all right let's go ahead and move now into kind of explaining the parameters of a compressor and then we'll talk about a little bit about the different compressor types as well in order to do that we're going to go ahead and walk through the parameters using the stock logic compressor here and you're going to find a lot more controls on this digital compressor than you will on many Hardware compressors like famous Hardware compressors that are heard on countless hit records and having a lot more control can be great and sometimes it's it's not necessary sometimes there's other compress that literally have two controls and that's all you need so I'll give you an example of that one of the most famous Hardware compressors for things like vocals and bass guitar is the la2a by universal audio so if I pull this up really basic compressor this is actually not the unit this is a different version of the la2a let's go to the silver uh where is it here there we go so here there's really two parameters there's uh gain which is kind of the same as this makeup gain knob here and then there's Peak reduction so this is essentially like a threshold and this is a gain that's this is a gain and threshold that's all there is and that's all you need on something like this this compressor is amazing and I'll kind of explain what that does or what's going on under the hood in just a in a moment again we're going to find way more control on like a stock digital compressor like this and so that that's why I want to use this to explain what all the parameters are the threshold as we explained is the point at which the compression starts to kick in and start reducing the audio and volume so if we have if we increase this to zero DB we're not actually going to get any compression because this audio is actually only peing at -1 [Music] DB so you can see it's barely moving at all it's not really compressing so it's not until I go over that threshold that we start to see a little bit more compression okay so that's simple enough um this graph here by the way shows us the gain reduction how much gain we're reducing right and as I increase this threshold we get more [Music] compression right because now that I've uh sort of uh decreased the value at which this is going over now it's going over a lot right this is peing like I said this was peeking at negative one before the compression so it's feeding -1 into a threshold of -21 so that's going over by 20 DB so we're going to get a lot more gain reduction all right so how much are we going to turn the audio signal down by that's decided by the and controlled by the ratio that we set here so this is a 2:1 ratio but I can change this all the way up to 30:1 or as little as 1: one which would be no compression so I can decrease this threshold as much as I want and I'm not going to get any gain reduction right so 2:1 ratio says I'm going to turn the audio down by half right if I go two DB over the threshold I'm going to only let one decible pass through so if I increase this that's going to mean more [Music] compression versus 2: one less compression so just remember that more compression with a higher ratio less compression and if I go all the way up to 30 that says that for every 30 DB we go over the threshold we're only going to get one that goes over the [Music] threshold so we'd have to go way way over right in order to only let one pass through now this is actually a good time to explain what a limiter is because the limiter has a lot less controls you'll see here that we only have a threshold and what's called an output ceiling right so or out output ceiling out same thing so this is basically telling me where I want audio to stop passing through so audio will never pass through this ceiling that I set here right so at1 right the audio is peing at negative one here before any limiting that's happening and as I bring down the threshold you'll start to hear the volume increase but it won't go over negative 1 let's bring this back up um [Music] yeah so we're getting a lot of gain reduction this is showing us the gain reduction here that's the same as what this is showing us here in this meter with this [Music] needle can you hear the energy being brought up right because we're we're increasing all the volume information that's low that's being brought up but it's not going over that threshold it's or sorry it's not going over that ceiling it's not going over that at all so I can keep pulling this down and the audio will continue to push into that ceiling but not go over [Music] it you can start to see that even the small amount of audio here if I to bounce this in place you'll see just how the information in in between is being brought up in volume right now different limiters are going to react different let's see what happens when we use a different kind of a limiter here let's go for uh the L2 Pro L2 I'm going to bring um this down same thing1 [Music] so this one actually has the potential to go louder this is like a free this loudmax is a free plug-in the L2 is paid doesn't mean that it's better necessarily but I can get more volume out of this if I wanted to to crank it for whatever [Music] reason versus [Music] this so it's bringing up a lot of energy right so now if I were to bounce this in place it's going to look a lot beefier the audio the smaller waveforms here will now look bigger look at this high hat is now now this right here so let's go ahead and get rid of these just delete these here there we go what's happening well a limiter basically has a ratio of infinity to one which says it will take Infinity amount of audio going over the threshold in order to let one pass through well we all know that Infinity is impossible to reach which simply says that no audio is going to go over that ceiling or uh output ceiling that we set so let's continue on our again that's our ratio that tells us how much we want to turn the the volume down by when it goes over the threshold our makeup gain is okay after we lose some gain because of the compression we want to make that back up so it's literally just another stage of volume or gain okay so if you lose 2 DB of compression you can make that back up right here right uh the knee this is okay let's show a graphical image here of compression to explain KNE this shows us input and this shows us output right so the vertical axis is output the horizontal axis is input and now let's go ahead and turn this knob and notice here at this kind of corner section how this changes right soft kind of and then a hard transition so this is the transition from no compression to compression a this is called a hard knee because it's a hard harder looking knee and then this is called a soft knee which just means a more gentle transition that might yield in a more transparent kind of compression where you're not noticing that as much a harder knee is going to be what you would get in something like a limiter we want that to happen very quickly right we want things to compress or reduce the gain extremely fast right so that's going to contribute to sort of the variability you know of that of that transition from no compression to compression all right let's move on to attack and release this tells us how fast do we want things to react our attack knob is how quickly we want the compressor to react and start compressing and reducing the volume our release is how quickly we want it to let go so depending on how you set these things you're going to get a different tone a fast attack and a fast release is going to be more limiting style compression uh slow attack with a fast release means that we're going to let some of the front end energy through the compressor before it clamps down but then when it lets go it's going to very quickly let go with a fast release which means that energy is going to come up and we're going to get this pumping really energetic tonal effect let's go ahead and demonstrate that best way to do that though is with uh this studio VCA or this studio fet let's go ahead and get get a lot of compression going so we'll bring the threshold down quite a bit and we'll start compressing we'll make up the gain so let's just start here we're going to go ahead and do uh a fast attack first that's actually going to give us the greatest amount of sort of tonal quality um and then we'll slow the attack down the best way to experiment with compressors is to start with extreme settings so go all the way fast and then all the way fast fast on the release as well right and then do opposites do fast attack fastest attack and then slowest release right so do those extremes and then while keeping one the same move the other one all the way back and forth and start to listen make sure that you're compressing a lot to really hear what's going on and that will start to help you build what's called a sense memory for the tones that come from different parameter settings so right now we're really cranking on the compressor let's turn this down a little bit so do about you know 12ish or so of gain reduction now what we can do is bring the makeup G up for what we've lost look we still have head room it's only hitting at negative four so now we're back up to where we were before which was about1 let's go ahead and hear before and after [Music] compression so now we've really brought up because we've brought down the loud Parts by 10 to 12 DB those are lower but now that we've made up the volume all the stuff underneath that that was low in volume is now 12 or sorry 11 DB louder like our high hats and all the little You Know audio details that maybe we weren't hearing before and that translates to a really aggressive energetic tonal [Music] quality let's go ahead and uh decrease the attack right to a slower attack so that we let more of the front end transient through and what will happen is we'll get more perceived punch we'll also now go over you know volume wise because we're letting some of that volume through so we're going to end up clipping digitally but that's okay yeah let's go ahead and turn this down so let's turn this down about [Music] there so it only took about s milliseconds right or change to S milliseconds to really start to hear the attack come [Music] through let's see if we can see that in action so let's go ahead and do a fast attack and watch what happens to the transient information on the kick in the snare there you have it much like we have here in this after impression example we've really changed the shape of this kick and snare right um now if we were to increase the attack to a slow attack let's say even 20 milliseconds let's see how that changes things bounce that in place now we get an exaggeration of the frontend attack of that sound let's bring this down a little bit so it's not going [Music] over all right so here is before and [Music] after more emphasis on the attack so now we can say okay if we want more punch on something then we should probably let some of that attack be a little slower so we can let some of that transient information through there's no right or wrong when it comes to compression settings there's only what do I want and how do I get there and becoming really familiar with the differences in tone and what happens how the audio reacts to these different settings is going to help you to get really good at compressing in a way that you want and getting the sound that you're trying to achieve so you can really use this and start thinking of compression not just as gain reduction but now you're looking at this as a totally different tool it's it's a a a tone quality it's a character right it it's altering the character and the transient information the kind of attack envelope the entire envelope of the sound right the attack sustained Decay and release those are kind of uh you know sound design terms attack ad adsr attack Decay sustain release so again this is giving us a lot of tone uh this compressor this specific Studio effect compressor is giving us a lot of tone but attack and release how fast we want things to react and start compressing and then how slow or fast we want to let go of the compression and then the parameters on the right here there's some additional parameters that you don't typically get in compressors like Hardware compressors this is our output gain so after we've done all of our compression we can either turn up or down the volume of that compressed sound so that just gives us an additional stage of of gain this mix knob here gives us the control over uh completely 100% compressed sound versus 100% uncompressed or dry sound right so if I go back to [Music] here so that's all compressed sound that's slammed to smithin and then I can say cool I want some of that tone but I don't want all of it I want some of the original dry signal we can blend [Music] that and now we have something that's aggressive while also retaining some of the you know original dry character of the [Music] sound [Music] cool all right so those are the basic parameters we have Distortion which allows us to clip which is cool so so I can actually clip the signal here let's go ahead and turn this on actually we don't need to turn this on this is just the onoff switch for the limiter so I can go to clip that's uh and then there's a soft clip and there's a hard clip and then you know I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between this and these soft and the hard soft clip is a rounder kind of cutting off on the edges um when we showed you how things were clipped here in the audio wave form let's go ahead and zoom in again we have this uh totally chopped off signal sort of the the way in which this is you know chopped off with soft clipping it's a little bit more round on the edges and with hard clipping it's it's a lot more hard on the edges I think like we have here okay all right let's go back to here and see how that can change the sound further so let's go back to 100% here let's do a slow attack so that we can get the kick coming through nice okay and because it's on clip we're not going to go over zero but with it off you're going to see it go over zero now it's at 4.2 so clip is great because that gives us the ability to to not go over that digital SE ceiling let's switch with between soft and hard and see if that changes things [Music] tonally let's turn it down a little [Music] bit [Music] okay interesting I love having these tonal [Music] options so this is a little bit more transparent and these two just have a slightly different [Music] character for some reason the soft is sounding more aggressive than the hard right now uh but those are just again different tonal options and this is really cool because now I can actually compress and get tone and quality and then clip all in the same setting here uh with different Clippers you can have control over the output right um like the ceiling that it's clipping into and so I've got that here on this guy I actually can control the ceiling to where it starts to clip um but here it's just set to clip at zero DB and and then this is our limiter that we can turn on as well and we can let's go ahead and turn this [Music] off so really kind of crazy we have a limiter Clipper and a compressor Allin one which is really really cool but the point is I'm never going to tell you how to set these parameters I can give you like a starting point right uh more aggression Drive things harder into the compressor by turning down the threshold and you know giving kind of extreme settings with like a I mean this like a slow or fast attack fast attack is going to give you again immediate clamping down with a fast release bringing that energy back up really quickly this is going to give you a much more aggressive sound than a slow release a slow release will be slower to release the compressor so it's always going to be compressing what this is used for is more of like a glue type compression so we're going to talk in just a moment about that you know what glue compression is essentially allows us to bring cohesion to our mix that allows us to have that effect let's now go through different compressor types so again like I said these are all modeling different famous Hardware compressors this is a studio VCA uh which is modeling the famous Focus right red compressor okay uh this is the studio fet and this is modeling the 1176 style compressor that you'll see in a lot of Studios right by Universal audio classic VCA this is modeling a dbx 160 it's either 160 or 165 you'll have to just double check that for me but basically uh this is a really famous compressor used on all kinds of instruments drums bass uh guitar vocals uh this is a vintage VCA this is modeling a the famous bus compressor the SSL gbus compressor known really well for exactly what it's what I said bus compression so the SSL 4000 uh mixing console has a bus compressor on the bus Channel which is basically all the channels feeding to that Master bus channel so you can compress the entire mix all the channels feeding into that bus and so it's this is really famous you know used to bring again that glue that cohesion glue type compression getting those instruments to really sit together so things sound like a record a finished record that's what you get with this type of bus compressor uh vintage fet this is another 1176 style compressor uh this is the kind of silver face un universal audio compressor this is the blackface universal audio compressor so both these fet compressors studio fet and vintage fet are both 1176 compressors by universal audio and they're used on anything that you want an aggressive kind of tonal character on okay this vintage opto compressor is one of the greatest compressors for things like bass and vocals really famous compressor if I pull up what it looks like you know the hardware version looks like this and the hardware version actually has way less parameters it's literally just gain and Peak reduction right so let's go ahead and see what that sounds [Music] like okay so I can hear that it's got a slower attack [Music] trying to gain match it to negative [Music] one I think that'll [Music] suffice not the greatest uh for me on drums that's not to say that you can't get it to work you know maybe a little bit of compression on like a drum bus might might be kind of cool let bring this [Music] down but again typically this is used for things like vocals this is legendary on vocals I I almost use this every time on vocals because it just works uh and this is uh what's called an opto compressor because it uses an optical photo like light sensor that when the amplitude that's fed into it increases the light increases and then there's a photosensitive cell that then will cause the compressor to reduce the audio and so what results from this for whatever reason I don't claim to know every single detail in terms of the circuitry and all that all I know is that you can really feed a vocal a lot of signal into this and it doesn't sound like you're hearing the compression it it just works really amazing whereas there are other compressors that are more noticeable and that you can hear the compressor working on the vocal and I don't necessarily want to hear that I I want that to be more transparent but that's not to say that other compressors can't be used for for vocals as well again it's just what do you want and as long as you know what sounds these produce then you get to be the one to decide how to use them really quickly VCA stands for voltage controlled amplifier okay uh fet stands for Field Effect transistor and those are just the different circuit types just know that you can do a little bit more research on that if you want outside of this uh but just know that those those are different circuitry types which are going to lend to a different kind of tonal characteristic VCA style compressors tend to be a little bit more clean and transparent than fet compressors so a lot of times if you want like grit and dirt in your drums a fet compressor like in 1176 is is really really great but you can actually get a VCA style compressor uh to be dirty as well you just have to kind of manipulate the controls to do that right um it's just VCA style compressors typically have kind of more parameter control you know on the hardware units uh in order to give you more versatility more tonal options right if you want clean you can do that you can get that sound if you want more heavy kind of tonal compression you can do that as well now that we have a basic understanding of the three tools used to control Dynamics I want to take the time to discuss the transformative power of compression and mixing compression is not just a tool for controlling Dynamics it's an essential ingredient for sculpting the character enhancing the cohesion or glue and amplifying the punch of your tracks we'll explore how to wield compression to match and Elevate the dynamic intent of your music using practical demonstrations and insights character in music production and mixing refers to the distinct Sonic qualities that give a track its unique personality compression can significantly influence this character by smoothing out Dynamics and adding warmth or aggressiveness depending on how it's applied try using a vintage style compressor on a bass trck to explore this concept vintage compressors can often impart a tonal coloration that can warm up a track giving it a more analog feel first insert a vintage style compressor on a Bas track for this example use an la2a emulation or any other opto vintage compressor the great thing about this compressor is that it can compress really heavily without you hearing any unpleasant pumping compression also an la2a happens to be really easy to use because it only has two parameters gain and Peak reduction observe how the compressor adds warmth and presence to the base enhancing its character within the mix the base will feel more alive while being more stable and consistent contributing to the foundational role it should play in your track for another example insert a fet compressor such as an 1176 emulation on a drum bus set both the attack and release to all the way fast or close to it set a high ratio starting at at least around 8 to1 and pull down the threshold until you get at least 10 DB of gain reduction then make up the gain lost with either a makeup gain or an output knob depending on what's there on your compressor and observe just how much energy and character and Vibe is brought up into the sound AB that with the original sound and you'll hear it the concept of glue in mixing refers to the process of making disparate elements of a mix feel like they belong together creating a cohesive hole a VCA style bus compressor is typically used for this purpose gently compressing the mix bus or subgroup buses to experiment with this type of compression route your drum tracks to a bus and insert a bus compressor an SSL style compressor is renowned for its gluing capability apply a light compression ratio such as 2:1 or 3:1 or something around that to gently massage the Dynamics of the entire drum bus set the attack to a medium fast setting to let some transients through preserving the natural punch of the drums the releas should be set to Auto or a setting that feels musically responsive to the material notice how the drum tracks now feel unified as if they're playing together in the same acoustic space this subtle compression makes the mix sound more polished and professional this type of compression has been on countless hit records punch in a track refers to the impact and Clarity of transient elements like kick drums and snares that give the music its rhythmic Drive strategic use of this compression can enhance these elements making them more pronounced in the mix also this is what really can bring elements of your mix close and right up front to the listener or in other words upfront in this depth Dimension first apply a compressor to your snare track use a compressor with a fast attack and release capability for this example any 1176 fet compressor or Focus right red compressor could work well set a higher compression ratio around 6:1 or 8:1 or even higher to really clamp down on the snare transients adjust the attack to be fast enough to catch the transient but not so fast that it squashes it completely this balance is key to retaining the s's natural character while enhancing its punch the release setting should be quick to restore the signals level before the next hit maintaining the energy and drive of the Rhythm the result is a snare that cuts through the mix with Clarity and force driving the Rhythm forward with punch in summary compression is a versatile tool capable of not just controlling Dynamics but also shaping the Sonic character cohesion and rhythmic impact of your music understanding how to apply compression effectively allows you to enhance the dynamic intent of your tracks ensuring they convey the emotion and energy you envision Now we move on to the next three lessons which will be live demonstrations of applying Dynamics processing to the track we've been working on and we'll do that on the three levels as done before welcome to level one live dynamic demo again this is where we have only a two trck instrumental right here in blue and our vocal in yellow so we're going to apply Dynamics processing at a really high level and then work our way through to levels two and three which will give us greater control over individual stems and then the individual tracks before we jump in I want to just point out that in this particular production a lot of dynamic control control has already been done in the production session so things have already been controlled dynamically to some degree in another cases you might have a much wider dynamic range to deal with with things like the instrumental particularly one that has a lot of transi heavy instrumentation like drums and percussion and then especially with vocals you know when vocals are given to raw and un you know completely unprocessed those can be much more Dynamic than the ones that you see right here you know have a lot more spiky kind of transient information and really seasoned vocalists that I've worked with that have you know done this for a while that have been recorded through you know some outboard compression on the way in those are going to have you know more Dynamic control and other you know amateur vocalists recorded raw with no compression but I've even had vocalists you know that have been recording themselves for a while that still come in extremely Dynamic so it really just depends on the situ ation and who it is that is is singing in front of the mic and it's just going to be different all over the place and your job is to control and rein in those Dynamics just as we have listed here in step one and that has to do with taming Rogue transient Peaks and spikes we're trying to get things kind of feeding into our enhancement type compression or you know enhancing to the dynamic intent whether that's with compression or limiting however you want to deal with that is totally up to you I'll show you what I do and what I want to do is really try to draw your attention away from the tools and more so Focus your attention on the concept so that you can go and do whatever it is that you want to do to achieve the sound that you're going for there are of course you know certain methods that you know certain vocal producers and mix Engineers kind of stick to with certain genres so they'll be like common vocal chains for rap or for you know hip hop and rap for I don't know country or or pop Etc but you really just need to learn the tools well enough to feel confident in kind of your own decisions and coming up with your own vocal chains right ones that are going to accomplish you know your unique goals and and targets so let's go ahead and just jump right in I have here our our vocal and I can see the first thing I want to do is kind of point out okay where are the biggest area where Dynamics could be controlled and what I'm going to do is play it see where it's peing at on my meter here and then I'm going to use some initial tools to you know get just a couple of debb of D Dynamic control of gain reduction before going into you know enhancing and I like to use a combination of either super fast attack compression and or limiting in this case I think what I'm going to do because we're really well controlled I'm going to do just like a DB or two at the most of some Dynamic control in our course and then the rest what we're going to need to do is either automate our setting so that we're inputting into compression here in the verse different than we are in the chorus because if we were to just slap on our limiting or compression on the chorus here it'll trigger and go over the threshold we set in the chorus but not react or not allow the compressor to react in the verse so we need to probably what we need to do and I'm just kind of thinking out loud in real time here is just separate the chorus from the verse so let's go ahead and actually do that really quickly here so I'm going [Music] to okay so we got we want to pick up on that breath there we'll go ahead and let's see okay let's go ahead and nudge that right up to where they start singing again right there that's good we'll come over here do the same thing looks like there's no breath in this one so we can get away with that okay and you know we have a lot of processing already baked into this recording so we do need to be careful and make sure that we're not overdoing things because we're going to kind of mess with the balance of how you know like the delay or any other kind of processing that we're hearing was initially intended to to be balanced in that vocal so I'm most likely probably going to stick with just limiting but we'll see always need to just try things out and see it works best okay cut it off there and this one Tails out so we can cool all right so I'm going to go ahead and duplicate this track and pull down our chorus vocals do you want to move track automation data sure let's see and make sure that these are exact cool you always want to make sure that when you move things around that you're moving them you know and not messing with kind of where they are in alignment with the you know original on the original track great so what I'm going to do here is focus on the vocal first and I'm going to do what I said I'm going to go ahead and just use some limiting uh normally I would use some clip gain automation you know if if this was really Dynamic I would clip gain automate uh different sections so I would come in here and section this off from this and this and make these things more consistent with just you know clip gain so I would turn things up and down depending on you know how dynamic this was but because this is already controlled really well I don't really need to do that and usually when I do clip gain automation it looks you know pretty much like this after I've done that so now I just get to focus on uh using either fast attack compression or limiting so when I say fast attack compression U what I would do is actually limiting limiting style compression so if I were to use a compressor might come up to the stock standard logic compressor and I would use something that gives me a super fast attack so that I can set it to act like a limiter and the tool that I like to use for that that just works really well is the studio fet right and I'm not looking to get tone out of this at all you know we talked a lot about kind of tone and how this affects the tone and can give you a lot of grit and aggression with drums and other things and if I wanted to I could use this to get some additional kind of tone but I I'm not looking for that because all the tone has been baked into the processing that was done in the production session so here what I'm going to do is just I'm looking for again one to two DB of some additional Dynamic control just to kind of even out and bring down the higher Peaks closer to kind of these average lower Peaks here all right so let's do that what I do is I set this to act like a limiter and we if you remember in our discussion about compression versus clipping versus limiting all a limiter is is a compressor that has a really fast attack and a really fast release sometimes they give you control over release and then the other thing is it's an Infinity to one ratio so I can't quite get to Infinity here but I can I can really crank it up so that it acts like a limiter and what I really could do with this particular limiter and if your limiter or sorry with this particular compressor is actually turn the limiter on right and then pull down the threshold but let's go ahead and do without that for now just to show you kind of how we would use this without that feature let's go ahead and focus in on okay so we do have this section here that we're going to want to deal with a little bit differently pick you up all right let's go and turn this down the stereo out we go fast attack super fast release so now it's grabbing you could see that just by changing the attack from here it was there's only a couple you know there was only a couple decb but as I you know as I sort of increase the uh or I should say decrease the attack time make it shorter it's grabbing the front end transient so it's actually chopping off more of those transients so now I have to adjust the threshold and bring that down so that I'm only getting one to two DB of of peak reduction okay so before it was clipping uh or it was peeking at actually let's go ahead and adjust this I'm going to turn off auto gain Auto gain is turned on so it's actually making up the gain automatically I want to turn that off okay so that's peing at44 and with compression -7.7 so that's a whole like three something DB of compression that's a little bit more aggressive than I want but I'm just going to listen and see okay is that too much you know because we just use our ears and it looks like it's probably grabbing this one the most so let's play here so those are only hitting about two DB of of gain roduction I'm going to bring this down just like a half DB night pick you uping lul night pick you up anding lemon that wearing gives me feelings night pick you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that wearing cool I'm just listening for the tone pick you up and I'm sing Lululemon night picked you up I feel like it's kind of warming it up a little bit yeah I feel like the top end is actually a little bit more tame which is fine it's a very subtle thing and you might not hear that go back and listen to that again like when I did the before and after but it is giving it a little bit more warmth meaning it's just it's it's slightly taking some edge off of the the high end and I'm okay with that and you know I'm willing to be wrong and feel you know maybe there's a placebo effect going on that does happen even to the best of us but now what I want to do is show you how to set things up with a limiter so we get the same result basically let's shoot for about the same kind of reduction about 2 2.5 DB so I'm going to turn this compressor off and I'll go for my L1 limiter this is just a very standard simple limiter by waves uh pretty affordable actually and I'm going to go ahead and and find out okay where where are we hitting here without compression so again Nega 14.4 so I'm going to go ahead and bring this down until I get about two DB here and see that we're peeking you know around the same that we were with the compressor fight so we're already so that last word is a a rogue transient there that it's grabbing 3.1 and because that's the only one upem I'm gonna be okay with that okay um I'm going to let that hit you know three three decb there sing lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight pick you up and I'm sing lemon okay let's go back to the compressor so this is giving me more control it's interesting Pi you up and I'm staring lul lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want fight okay so same thing there so maybe I just need to match that a little bit more maybe to there turn off the compressor great okay and then the compressor pick you up and I'm sing Lululemon that you're wearing gives me pick you up and I'm lemon me pick you up anding lemon pick for some reason I feel like the compressor is giving me some tone and so I'm not going to use it I'm just going to use the limiter I usually don't use a compressor for this type of thing but you can uh do that if you have just a standard stock compressor you can set it up to be really high ratio super fast attack uh super fast release set it up like a limiter and you can get that that Dynamic control no problem all right so uh let's go ahead and follow this up with now that we've controlled Dynamics made this more even let's go ahead and follow that up with kind of more I guess enhancement style compression or dynamic control so what I'm going to do with uh to do that is use this la2a we've shown you this already in the compression versus clipping versus limiting really simple compressor it's got two controls this is like a threshold or Peak reduction as it says uh so this allows us to increase compression and then this allows us to make up the gain or decrease whatever we we need all right all right so let's go ahead and get just a couple more decb and kind of squeeze the remainder of this Pi you up anding lemones me fight and you can actually really crank this watch what happens when I crank this it's it's really nice and transparent but let's try to listen for the tone bring this down I'm going try to gain match lemoning here's without I'm staring lemon that wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight here's what pick you it's got a thicker kind of a Vibe I don't want that much so I'm going to go ahead and bring this down let's go with like pick you up and I'm sing lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight great let's go ahead and bring this down to match pick you up and I'm saring Lululemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't pick you up and I'm sing Lululemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight cool so now we're peeking at around where we were originally but this is going to sound louder right so let's go ahead and take off the the processing up anding lemon iight okay it was peeking at-3 right which is louder but with this dynamic control the limiter and this it's going to sound louder it'll be less in volume on the output youing fight so I'm G to match the perceived volume um or actually let's go ahead and just blend this in with the instrumental here when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring lemon that you're wearing when I'm buting and you see me and I make it look so e okay so we want to turn this down in this particular section here now we're not going to be getting any gain reduction in this section here I don't know that I'm necessarily worried about that because it's very consistent this is more spiky information so let's go ahead and just listen to this hey that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy cool yeah I'm literally not I'm not concerned with this if I wanted to I could spread that or split this out into the different uh you know different sections of this verse have one track back you know compressing a different way and this one a different way uh but we're going to show you that in level three uh probably level two as well but this is just to kind of give you the idea of what's going onse hit that yeah you gotta ad okay let's go ahead and listen to the verse and make adjustments to volume now that we've kind of done things here I'm going to use this gain plugin I think to adjust the volume let's see so again we're adjusting volume after all of our processing so we're bringing that processed sound to a a certain level and we're going to use this to create an automation Lane so that we have control over our verse and our sort of this verse here the second [Music] verse okay let's bring it down [Music] we do have this automation Lane let's bring this I'm going to go ahead and do control command delete deletes that Automation and then I can reset it to [Music] there on the fast track bouncing back things are shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it [Music] he here's [Music] without [Music] and so let bringing things more [Music] forward back things I Shake In my [Music] way hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight okay cool let's move on to I'm happy with that let's go ahead and move on to our chorus vocal here and do the same thing this is again uh really controlled dynamically already I would say that this was arguably the most kind of spiky right with Rogue spikes but let's see what happens when we do the same thing I'm going to put a limiter and look for a couple decb of gain reduction fake I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm On [Music] [Music] Top cool so I did have one kind of Rogue Spike that went up to you know almost almost three DB just under three DB of gain reduction I think it was right here yeah this word right here where he goes I'm on top so that high one is going to get a little bit more than the others and that's fine here's a before we're not hearing that it's such a fast you know it's such a fast kind of transient there that we're not going to hear that working that hard so after that I'm going to do the same thing I'm going to put a the 11 or sorry the LA 2A opto compressor on and get a couple more decb of gain reduction so let's go ahead and take that down F I'm the rest never coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm [Music] winning great now we can blend this into taste I'm better the never I'm coming around I'm top coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning make it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm on top of pick it up where I it but this time I'm going stra check it out Che it [Music] out that feels yeah that feels a lot better so yeah let's just make sure that things are hitting the right way by listening to a little bit more of let's go from the second verse and the second chorus and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight better the rest never I'm going around I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining sh show everybody I can make it ground I'm on Top com let's see where we were [Music] before okay and after I'm better than the rest of notice how it's bringing up the vocal it's bringing it forward without really increasing volume on our output [Music] here so we're peing at 14.7 without [Music] compression repeat get 1.7 so we're going we're getting louder and saving a little bit of head room there I'm better than the rest never I'm going around I'm on top I a coming [Music] down superal feel superal natural unable I'm Top com down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not I'm going to bring this down just a hair actually let's go ahead and [Music] do to about [Music] there got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S to check it out check it out better actually going back and forth I think the vocal can be just a a little bit louder here I think that's fine where we had [Music] it I'm happy with that let's go ahead and move on to our instrumental so our instrumental has some Rogue uh spikes uh we have one here we have one our biggest one is right here let's kind of see where that Peaks out at so -7.3 but the cruising altitude is around [Music] 98 so I want to try to get everything with these drums going on I kind of want to get everything to be where is here and this section which is about 9 so [Music] here we're g to what I'm going to do here is actually put on some clipping and I like to use clipping on drum buses because the drums are what are creating all of these spikes and so that's not going to affect really any of the other instruments in a negative way so I can do just a couple decb of clipping using my standard clip here thenen audio free clip is a free Clipper you can use as [Music] well what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn my output ceiling down until I can see that I'm getting just a couple decb here so we'll turn as our ceiling [Music] on [Music] n maybe half a DB [Music] less let's keep going less than that I don't want to do too much let's get it to be around 9 or so [Music] a little bit [Music] less okay so [Music] before and it's no less Punchy but we've saved a couple Debs of Headroom there so that's great now this is going to be more even right here we'll have a little bit more and that's [Music] okay all right before this is going to peek out around seven on the meter here and then [Music] after so now that everything's more even I can kind of give this a little bit of Like Glue compression so I'm going to do that with the let's see the VCA compressor and that is my where's my bus compressor there we go this is the L bus compressor what I'm going to do is actually use this side chain uh high pass filter what this does is it filters out the low end from hitting the compressor so I don't have all this lowend energy triggering the compressor I want to leave that lowend punch intact so I'm going to go ahead and turn this up to about a 100 or so and maybe even a little bit more let's go to like 120 [Music] and I'm only looking for just like one to two DB of of uh squeeze [Music] there notice how it just kind of tightens the instrumental with the you know with the drums it makes it feel like they're all together as one so that's before this is [Music] after makeup gain so I'll bring it up a [Music] DB so before by the way I'm using just a standard kind of attack here I want to keep it slowish you can go really slow right on something like a hip-hop track or anything where like the the bottom end the low end transients are really important you don't want those to to trigger their compressor you can do a super slow attack Auto relase is really great it's program dependent meaning it's just kind of intelligently releasing the audio based on the program material feeding into it let's go ahead and listen before and after um our Dynamics processing so here's [Music] before [Music] after in fact I'm going to bring this up just a hair more the DB more [Music] here [Music] after just feels kind of like polished and and Tighter together everything working together really well that's great um in the next sections in levels two and three when I have more control over the drums separately I'm going to probably be a little bit more aggressive and do some tonal things with the drums to get even more kind of aggression out of those drums but this is what we have to to do we I can't go crazy because that's going to affect the tone of everything else and I don't necessarily want to do that okay so again that's just to show you that when we only have access to you know the overall two track we're limited to what we can do one move is going to you know one move to enhance one element is going to potentially kind of Ruin another you know part of that two track all right let's go ahead and blend these two together now that we've processed this dynamically let's bring in our vocal and kind of readjust [Music] everything now I kind of want to bring this down let's go ahead and or let's bring up let's maybe bring up the instrumental instead just a hair with the output here yeah you got ad down yeah we living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm sing lul lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight it I'm better the rest never I'm going around I'm On Top coming down and I w't stop till with everybody I can make it ground I'm On Top [Music] coming cool let's see how things sound before and after uh you know our our processing with Dynamics processing so I'm going to go ahead and remove all of [Music] them hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it CU not here okay and then here's with we'll just listen to the verse first yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm buting [Music] and so we're peeking at our our output is peing at7 right now but it sounds louder right so let's go ahead and turn this off yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah with sexing on a Saturday night H you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight okay it's peing at negative 8.4 without that Dynamics processing so let's go ahead and try to match this you know get kind of gain match everything um yeah so we really just need to bring it down like half a DB to do that let's go ahead and put a gain plugin on right here H that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm sing lul lemon that okay and then after or sorry beforeit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're we're not here to sell out when I'm buting and you see me and I make it look so easy now we're peing about the [Music] same it is subtle but it makes a difference everything is more controlled and more cohesive to my ears go back and listen to that again okay so that's it for this demonstration uh this is a little bit quicker because you know we're only working with a couple of tracks but you'll see that as we move into controlling things individually we'll have more control over doing things like enhancement type compression or enhancement type kind of dynamic control where we're it's not just about controlling Dynamics it's about you know choosing kind of tonal characteristics from different uh Dynamics processors so we'll see you in the next one Welcome to our level two demonstration of dynamic control using stems only so now that we have the individual groups of instruments we can tackle any problem you know Rogue transients spikes Peaks and tame those without affecting any other group of instruments likewise we can enhance you know each of these individually uh to the intent that we want without affecting any other instruments so this should theoretically give us a better result let's go ahead and Jump Right In we're going to control Dynamics so that means again taming Rogue transient Peaks and spikes we're going to do that using either volume compression clipping or limiting depending on what we're doing so first thing that I want to do is go ahead and and treat the vocals dynamically we've uh we did that on the first first level one demonstration so we'll just go ahead and repeat that process um typically what I like to do is actually take care of the Rogue transients and spikes and Peaks before going into any EQ and then I'll kind of slot my enhancement style compression after these sort of EQ moves that are enhancing the track so let's go ahead and do that first with the dynamic control of these transients here as you can see again we've got these different sections of the song I'm going to go ahead and split those out like I did last time so let me go ahead and do that just real quick [Music] here right all right we'll go ahead and chop it there try to get right up to it hit that yeah okay we don't need whatever that is just get rid of that while we're at it okay nice and snug up to the transient there or to the front end of that waveform and since there's no information on the bridge uh we can just leave this the way it is there um okay so we got our verses and our chorus I'm going to go ahead and duplicate this and just make sure that whatever we've done here there's a nice seamless transition there we wouldn't want these overlapping in any way because that would tell us that we've messed with the alignment so we have to be careful there so what I'm going to do is just start with the verse here mainly what I need to do is kind of compensate for the fact that there's a layer of vocals in the second half of this second verse here so if you listen to this you listen to this so there's kind of a double effect there so I'm going to treat that uh slightly differently and then I'm going to bring this down in gain just a hair probably only like a DB at the most there we go let's go ahead and listen to that now here to sell out yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me cool now I can kind of apply everything that I want to on the same track and what I'm going to do is hit it with some limiting I already showed you how we can kind of do the same thing with compression but since we've already shown you how to do that I'm going to just jump right into our limiter so if we go to Dynamics and just a standard run-of-the-mill L1 limiter by waves you can use pretty much any limiter for this type of of thing so let's go ahead and just do a couple debal of gain reduction at this is really what I want over here Pi you up anding lemon pick you up and I'm staring Lululemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight okay I think I go a little bit more than that pick you up pick you up and I'm sing lul lemon that you're wearing fight okay great Pi you up I'm want to go a little bit more actually pick you up and I'm saring Lululemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight and so we've we've gained now some Headroom there and we're not hearing an audible difference I don't want fight me feelings that I don't want to fight me feelings that I don't want to fight well I can hear a difference you might not that's okay but what we're doing is just controlling you know it's actually the word fight that you can hear the difference there so I'll go ahead and do that one more time here's before listen to how the word fight becomes more even with the rest of these words don't fight okay so again this is without fight and fight it's subtle but it it all is going to help especially when we go into you know enhancement type compression uh we're going to I'm going to use an la2a to follow up with that so I'm going to put the la2a after our ptech I'm not sure what this is doing here I'm going to get rid of this EQ and then I'm going to put uh la2a silver so now we can kind of hit all of this with more even volume we can hit our compression or enhancement type compression with you know more e a more even volume so let's go ahead and do set this up bring this down things are shaking my way and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm staring lemon that I don't want to fight bu and you see me I'm going to go for about 3 DB at the most of gain reduction this calls it Peak reduction same thing let's go ahead and kind of gain match here make it look easy bu you see me and make it look so easy with sex bu and you see me and make it look so easy we sex on a Satur night maybe a little bit more bu you see make it easy on Satur night bu you see me it easy Satur see let's go ahead and bu and you see me and make it look so easy bu and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah with sexing on a Saturday night busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah with sexing cool so listen to this I'll go ahead and do a before and after again but also watch how our meters are you know we we've saved a deciel there of Headroom yeah let me go ahead it's kind of triggering things weird so I'm going to go ahead and so it's speaking about6 and now 17 and it's about the same volume in terms of uh intensity I'm buting and you see me and make it e just more control yeah you gotta admit that you're down okay I'm GNA go over here cheing sh okay let's go ahead and listen in context Bing back things are Shing my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it he and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm great let's go ahead and do the same thing with our course so I'm going to go ahead and just clip a little bit not clip but limit before we go into our EQ and so these are the transients here here these kind of like bigger spikes right there let's go ahead and turn it off and see where we're peeking at won't stop till I'm winning again I'm On Top so we're picking it as much as 11.5 11.5 and with this let's go and bring this down we'll give it a little bit more so now it's peing at -3 so we've gained two DB of Headroom there I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning again and I'm going to do the same thing I'm going to now feed that into again I don't know what this is doing here let's get rid of the CQ and put a compressor la2a here turn this down I'm coming around I'm top coming down and ion I'm shake it everybody I make it ground [Music] I'm cool I'm better I'm going around lemon that you're wearing give me [Music] feelings let's turn this do down just a little [Music] bit I liked where it was plus I accidentally turned down these backing vocals [Music] here let's see if I can hit the right volume [Music] here I guess I liked where it was okay better the I'm going around on to coming down and I stop till sh [Music] it yeah more control in fact I'm going to bring this up just like a half DB more I'm better the rest I'm coming around I'm On Top coming down and I W stop feeling that I don't want to [Music] fight I just go all the [Music] way I'm better the rest of I'm going around [Music] I like it I'm going to go ahead and move on I think that's good um I had the thought of using an 1176 but I think this is working usually or sometimes on something that's more aggressive where I want a lot of the detail of the attack of some of the words right some of the transients coming from the vocal I'll do a kind of a slower attack uh I guess like a medium slow attack with an 11 76 uh to give me some grit and character with a with a really fast release so that kind of gives it a feeling of aggression when we have a really fast release uh combined with a uh kind of a slower is attack right because the slow attack means the compressor is going to it's going to allow some of that front-end attack information from consonants from different you know transients from the vocal all right so the background vocal I don't need to do anything here Dynam like dynamically I I just I can let this be what it is it's not super Dynamic so there's no control necessary I take that back I do want to maybe make it just more solid and more even so that I can hear it because we with things that we tuck back in the mix you're going to want to compress more sometimes so that they stay nice and solid you can hear it at all times I'll go ahead and let me see what's going on here okay okay we're going to treat those differently actually um so I'm going to cheat a little bit here I'm going to put this on a different track and compress this um I'll just use same thing I'll just use a or you know what I'll use a limiter bring it way down and what I'm doing by uh pulling down on the link by pulling up and down here it adjusts these uh two together so I can bring the the otherwise if I don't it'll just get louder and I don't want that I want the volume to stay the same so this allows me to to link these in a way that gives me the same perceived volume right or the same kind of loudness [Music] output so he goes woo the there's my false setto the O the oo it's on that Wii U that we get the volume kind of spiking up so that's where I'm going to watch and get like three DB or so of uh gain reduction there and then we can bring the volume up right to [Music] compensate [Music] cool uh so now that we're peing -28 before we're picking at - 255 we can go ahead and bring up the volume a couple [Music] DB cool busting and you see me and I make it look so easy we sexing on a Saturday I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we sexing on a Saturday night hook you up and I'm [Music] sing cool I'm down with [Music] that so when he goes down we don't lose that compl completely pick you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing me feelings that I don't want to fight I'm better than the rest never I'm going around I'm On Top cool next thing I want to do is work on the drums so we're just going to kind of go down in the order of things here so the drums are already very controlled dynamically what I want to do is actually use some clipping here there's a Rog Spike here a Rog Spike here and one here what we're going to do is just pretty much chop those off with a Clipper all right so I'm going to do that using and you can put the Clipper before or after your EQ don't overthink that I'm going to put it before that's just typically what I like to do so let's go ahead and find our standard clip here so we'll find out where it's clipping so it's clipping at9 cruising altitude now that's those are natural kind of uh transitional hits so we don't want to be too aggressive with that I'm looking for just like uh a DB or two I'll probably just do like a couple DB of clipping oh yeah maybe even a DB just to kind of match everything else there because everything else is very consistent so let's go ahead and do that I'm going to go ahead and bring this the clip ceiling down here um to about there there so now this is acting kind of like a limiter let's go ahead and do before watch where the output goes to goes to 9.3 and now -1.2 so about a deciel there that we're saving um with head room fact I'm I'm tempted to actually bring this down just a little bit more now I'm barely just getting the tips of the rest of this okay especially there it gave us a lot uh let's go ahead and change it to let's see find instead use the ceiling so it's a little bit more let's see yeah it's pretty much doing the same thing in fact you know what I want to do is I want to now that I'm thinking about it I do want to put um here's here's what we'll do we'll put two sort of instances of dynamic control right one before and one after uh compression because or sorry one before and one after uh EQ because what's happening is our we're adding Dynamics right with these e Q moves right our EQ moves we're adding some some Dynamics just by adding some top end here and so what we need to do is actually put uh the clipping uh both let's go ahead and actually remove this and see what's going on yeah let me go I mean it really doesn't matter which one you use here either the clip or the ceiling as long as ceiling is on when you use that [Music] sounds exactly the same we're getting a lot of Headroom there okay so but when we turn this on it's adding right some of that so I'm going to go ahead and use a limiter after that you can use another Clipper even if you wanted to but just for fun I'm just going to use uh I'm just going to do like a DB and shave off cool so if I go before that was eight negative 8.3 is where it was peing but now after it's -1 so over two DB of head room that we're gaining and it doesn't sound it doesn't sound any less dynamic or less Punchy let's go ahead and do it before and after on the drums we've just done kind of problem solving we just really have been controlling Dynamics we're not doing any any enhancement I'm not looking for tone or any of that [Music] okay so we're really controlling things and we've gained overall after EQ we've gained about 3 Deb of Headroom which is great and you shouldn't hear that in the context of the music res I'm coming around I'm On Top iin coming down and I'm stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make on the ground I'm on [Music] top and everything already kind of feels glued together so as far as enhan type compression I don't know that I necessarily need anything there everything sounds kind of glued together I don't need to to do anything there so sometimes it's a a matter of knowing when and when not to to sort of enhance right because it doesn't to my ears it doesn't really need anything we could come in here and get super aggressive let's just see what let's just play around with that for a sec and see what we could do maybe with like a an SSL bus compressor or you know what let's go let's pull that up and kind of audition a couple things here we'll do 1176 maybe what we'll do here is introduce a little bit of the idea of parallel compression I'm going to go just use the standard stock 1176 that's a studio fet here this is a model of the 1176 compressor and uh I'm going to do a slower attack so about there we'll start there and a super fast release and then I'm going to um let's see let's just like really slam this we have a mix knob here so what I can do is turn this down and blend this in this is going to allow us to blend in the wet signal right wet meaning the affected signal which would be our compression right if this was a a Reverb plugin then we'd be mixing in the Reverb signal as we increase the percentage but what we're doing is we're mixing in the compressed signal with the dry signal as we increase this percentage so 100% wet means we're getting a completely compressed signal um this would be 50% which would be 50% dry versus 50% uh compressed signal right so original versus a compressed signal so I'm going to leave it at uh zero I'm going to start to really kind of aggressively compress get some you know gain reduction up upwards to about 10 turn up my ratio to about six actually maybe go even more aggressive and just go maybe 20 to one let's feed the input gain a little bit and then we want to go ahead and remove this Auto no we can leave yeah take off Auto release and take off auto gain so it's not making up the gain so here's all the way compressed so we're leaving that kind of front end transient in [Music] there if we go all the way fast listen to How it changes the tone of the front end transient especially that kick it really kind of distorts that [Music] kick and maybe that's what you want to blend [Music] in I do not so I'm going to go ahead and change this back to 20 or wherever I had [Music] it let's go ahead and do a little bit [Music] faster okay and then we'll blend that into taste Let's see we need to change the [Music] output [Music] okay so we're two DB under the original let's go ahead and bring it up back two DB here yeah not really doing it for [Music] me let's go halfway 50/50 or maybe a little bit less than that and then let's maybe put on this limiter here or let's go with the hard clip and then what we'll do is we'll really drive it hard into that so I'm going to bring this [Music] down and we'll put the makeup gain up so we're starting to get some more character [Music] now okay let's bring up the volume to match a lot more aggressive we've actually gained some Headroom here too that's interesting let's go ahead and do a little bit [Music] less let's see what that's done for us in the mix we're going to have to adjust the volume and bring it down now maybe like there [Music] let I'm around coming down and I won't stop till I'm it's a little too splashy for me so I'm going to go a reverse and and go back I don't necessarily know that we need any of that I'm better to let the res B sh I'm coming around I'm On Top iin coming down huh you know what maybe I do want just a [Music] hair let listening context I'm better let res I'm coming around I'm stop by coming down and I won't stop till I'm ready so everybody I can see on the ground I'm On [Music] Top around I'm On Top by coming down and I won't stop till yeah sure let's leave it let's see how it sounds though in the [Music] beginning on shaking my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the CL I don't like it in this section so this is a good opportunity to point out that you know we would want to treat our chorus differently from our verse I don't want all of that energy the way that it's coming out because there's not as much going on and so I want a more dead sound versus a livelier sound and this compression is making it more [Music] Lively all right so it's going to be bigger when we all of a sudden have this big compressed sound in the chorus that's how we create contrast and create that that sense of dynamic right so Dynamics is is just as much about changing kind of the energy in the tone than it is about actually controlling the volume right okay so let's listen to this transition with and without compression here so here's [Music] without and here's with actually I'll go ahead and turn it on right when we hit the [Music] chorus I'm better than the rest of never I'm goinging around I'm locked up I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm [Music] winning I don't like it I don't I actually I've changed my mind I've gone back and forth a few times but I don't like I don't I don't necessarily want more of of that energy I think it's fine where it is let's actually see if we can can't get just a little bit more snap out of the drums with let's say this SSL compressor so this is going to be like less kind of aggression in tone and just we're looking more for like a transient design type thing so I'm going to go uh kind of medium ratio here four to one um let's go with a let's see the attack can stay around 12:00 here uh Auto relase typically works really well and then the threshold will bring up I want to look for about you know four or five DB at the most of gain reduction maybe you stick with like two or three even I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm locked up by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm On [Music] Top I'm better the never I'm com [Music] around the I'm better than the rest never I'm com around I'm to see if we can get a little bit [Music] more bring this up so what I'm doing is I'm making up the gain lost and the compression [Music] around I'm locked up by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning [Music] sh let's do a slower attack and see what that does I'm better than the rest of never F I'm coming around I'm On Top by coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining sh so we're losing a little bit of head room so let's go ahead and bring this down maybe just a little bit a little bit more compression Never B I'm going around I'm on top I a't goinging [Music] okay here's [Music] before I'm better than the never I'm coming around com won sh let's gain match it a little bit more this is about a deciel louder now so bring this down [Music] I'm com around I'm On Top by coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining shake it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm on top one more the rest never F I'm goinging around I'm on top I ain't coming down and [Music] I yeah that's great I actually prefer to use this on the drum on the drum bus this is essentially you know the drum bus or drum stem uh so we're we've gained matched pretty well and let's go ahead and do a before and after in that that we've done that and you'll list just listen for kind of the snap of the drums hearing a little bit more of that transient kind of punch in the snare [Music] especially around I'm locked up by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning [Music] sh okay here's without [Music] I'm I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm Top by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm [Music] cool uh let's try something else just for fun while we're here I'm going to use the I have uh in my Dynamics the uh Precision maximizer so this is going to give me a little bit of a cheat code here with some saturation this shape knob gives me some saturation uh as well as uh some Dynamic control with the limiting here so I'm going to do is bring the output ceiling down to kind of where our Target is which is about 11 turn the limiter on here so there's a limiter section that I can use which is really cool I'm going to bring that down to about there there we go and then I'm going to drive the [Music] input the rest will never pass it I'm goinging around I'm On Top I'm gonna go ahead and turn the shape knob [Music] up around down I can't see any gain reduction Happening [Music] Here versus the SSL I'm better than the rest never I'm coming [Music] around I'm going to turn the mix down so I'm not getting it so it's not too aggressive on the uh shape here turn that off [Music] now I'm better than the rest of never I'm goinging around I'm up I coming down and I w't stop till I'm winning okay I got to give my ears a break because I've been listening this listening to this over and over again so you got to really be careful and make sure that you observe like is my hearing kind of you know a lot of the the splashing and the high end of these symbols is really starting to fatigue my ears so I'm actually going to take take like a 5 minute break and and come back five minutes later all right so just taking a quick little five minute break let's go ahead and listen to this again compare between uh the SSL uh compression the bus compressor and this Precision [Music] maximizer I'm going around I'm on top I coming down and I stop I'm [Music] okay okay and then here's the [Music] compressor I'm on top I coming down and I won't stop till I'm with shake it show everybody I can make it on the ground [Music] I'm okay again uad I'm gonna actually bring the volume down just a a touch uh with this let's go ahead and not feed it so much I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming I'm locked up i't coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm on [Music] top and the [Music] compressor I'm going around I'm locked up I coming down I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody I can make [Music] it I actually can't decide I like them both for different reasons I do like the way that the drums uh you know for for the reason that this is used a lot on on records I like the way that it feels like it's creating some [Music] cohesion I'm to by coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining [Music] sh we can obviously get things louder with this uh because we're limiting and we're giving it some saturation I don't know that I necessarily want it louder just for the sake of of louder I'm better than the rest never pass I'm coming around I'm on to I a coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm On Top make it show everybody I can make it on the ground [Music] I'm you know I'm going to stick with the uh I'm going to stick with the compressor here this is not always the decision that I would make but I just in this case I'm I'm I'm going to use this bus compressor about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S check it out check it [Music] out let's listen [Music] again pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to stra to check it up check it out [Music] the I can't decide you know what I actually think I I might like the Precision maximizer these are very small percentage kind of differences here you know in the end but uh you know that's something you might kind of go back and forth with your client [Music] on in clouds then you see me and I make it look so easy at we sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing give me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight going [Music] around I'm better the rest I'm goinging around I'm on Top com down and I'm W stop till sh oh now I like the SSL very very flip-floppy here but that's okay we'll go ahead and move on uh and just keep keep it where it's at with this let's go ahead and move on to our base with our base here uh again we would probably want to separate this out from verse to chorus and give us verse uh compression versus com uh versus chorus compression or dynamic control I should say but look at the uh look at the the waveform here very consistent across the board uh especially in the verse I am not going to touch because this has already been compressed probably with some limiting I I believe I can remember us kind of applying that in the production session this is already look at how even the Dynamics are here so what I'm going to do is actually put on uh some compression for the chorus and and make it work only in the course and I might just use a limiter I think that's what I'm going to do and just basically shave off these transients here so I'm going to go ahead and do that with the L1 and we'll just get it down [Music] [Applause] [Music] Yeah couple DB that's all I'm looking [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] for [Applause] [Music] not looking for tone I'm not looking to enhance anything here so I'm just looking for dynamic [Music] control notice how there's no change in the tone or anything and that's why I wanted to use a limiter if I wanted to enhance the tone with this at all then I would do that I would use I'd probably use like a la2a uh something like that that uh just controls Dynamics really well in a transparent way kind of thickens up baselines that's what uh op that opto compressor is known to do but I don't I don't want to do anything other than just kind of kind of chop off and control some of these transients [Music] here I'm going around I'm up coming down and I won't stop Yeah the more I listen to kind of the 11 or sorry the uh SSL bus compressor I'm liking it more in this in this case if these were hip-hop drums or EDM I might go you know for a little bit aggression louder type uh approach with this but in this case I'm just looking to sort of bring some snap some some cohesion it's a subtle thing let's move on that's pretty much all I want to do there uh not a lot if if this was completely raw and unprocessed you know I would come in and and do some additional layers of dynamic control uh and then maybe look to do some some enhancement type compression with the la2a um but uh we don't need to do much there our effects those don't really need any control dynamically they're already we want these to swell that's what this is there for they're only kind of popping in and out at certain critical moments and you know as long as these things don't Peak too high you know but they're not playing during any super dense sections so I'm not looking to control this end Peak here I'm just going to let it kind of grow naturally the way that it is let's look at our pads here and see what's going on there might use a limiter just to get a little bit of [Music] control sure why not let's go ahead and use a limiter there maybe get a DB or [Music] so [Music] yep so we got a little bit of you know all these Peaks are going to add up over time so we control these and we're going to get more headro so that's good I'm going to go ahead and leave it at that actually let me just do a little bit more I'll just make it an even and that's not changing the tone or anything we're just controlling Dynamics there this one little rogue right there here's it before after I'm not hearing that it's less dynamic or anything again I'm just it's more utility based Dynamic control let's go aad and move on to our since [Music] here going to kind of let these bounce around that the way the way that they are not looking to to shave off any transients there there's not too much in terms of of spiky information maybe right here in this section that's clipping it or hitting -6.8 [Music] there so let's maybe do the same thing where we're just kind of Shaving it off making it even so that when it hits this you know we're just doing really subtle amounts so that was three DB of gain [Music] reduction and it's not it's not any quieter or anything like that it's just again just giving it a little haircut there okay so the rest of it is going to [Music] be it's great that's all I want in fact we could do just a hair [Music] less and that's it so let's go ah and do there's not going to be a huge change here but let's just kind of see uh before and after all of our uh compression what things sound [Music] like I'm Top by coming down and I won't stop till I'm ready I'm better let res I'm coming around [Music] I'm so not a massive difference here in fact it's it's subtle it's going to be more subtle to more of an untrained ear but listen to this again and pay attention to the way that the vocal sits in with the instrumental and just how much more kind of cooh hesive and Polished it sounds when I say polished it just sounds closer to like a finished record like everything just kind of like tightens up and sits with each other more like a record would so listen to this again better let the rest I'm coming around I'm top coming down and I won't stop till I'm ready I'm better let the rest little B I'm coming around I'm On Top by coming down and I so there you have it we've enhanced this we've controlled Dynamics and again those vocals are sitting just like tighter in with everything we've actually gained overall like a deciel of Headroom uh in the process of controlling Dynamics so a decibel overall you know you know and and we would do some further Dynamics processing in mastering so we're controlling little by little here to make some gains to to give us more Headroom for things like loudness but we're also like the drums have a little bit more punch and just a little bit more glue and everything seems to be tighter more polished fitting together so that's it for this lesson uh go back and and rewatch that kind of before and after as much as you need and listen for those things that we've talked about and in the next lesson we'll uh dive into the individual tracks and control transients there and we'll see you on the next one Welcome to our level three demonstration of Dynamics where we'll have access to all the instruments and tracks in our mix giving us even greater control when it comes to taming Rogue Peaks transient Peaks spikes and enhancing to Dynamic intent what's cool about the way that we've set things up here is that we obviously have access to the individual tracks and instruments to control Dynamics and enhance but we also have an additional level of control on the bus or group level with all of these bus channels that we have set up and often I find myself adding an additional layer of dynamic control on the bus level to give me even more Headroom and more enhancement when and where necessary let's go ahead and Jump Right In by just playing the track um we're going to observe with our ears but we're also just going to sort of scroll through here and make note of any kind of spiky areas that we can address within each instrument and then we'll go and get to [Music] working back sh my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't to quit it he hey and about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to SRA to check it out check it [Music] out B I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On Top coming Lady B second hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at was sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that wear and me feelings that I don't want to fight I'm going around I'm On Top iin coming down and I w't stop till I'm W sh it show everybody I can make it I'm top coming [Music] l [Music] [Music] I'm better let resonate he say I'm goinging around I'm on top I coming down and I W stop till I'm ready everybody I can see on the ground I'm [Music] top very cool okay so everything's sounding pretty good pretty decent um a lot has been done we mentioned in the other levels levels one and and two a lot has been done to control Dynamics in the production session so especially with a lot of kind of hybrid electronic you know music there's a lot that's done in the production session to kind of like control transient information you can see that the tips and the tops of like if this was an acoustic kick let's go ahead and play this so that being an electronic kick it has a lot of kind of like compression already you can see the tops of these transients are nice and flattened out right um versus like if you look at other drum transients there's a lot more information at the front end of the transient right so drums are going to be where I often will use clipping and things like limiting to control really spiky information clipping can be a combination of uh I mean one or more of the following you can do tape saturation or not tape saturation but basically the clipping that happens from driving the input of a tape machine or tape emulation there's some natural clipping that happens all clipping is is whenever you drive uh the input of a system hotter than it can actually handle right if you input audio into any kind of system plug-in emulation you know more than what it's capable of reproducing it'll break up the audio and it'll it'll chop off the transients right so I'm going to demonstrate that here with uh the drums I've actually already placed uh the j37 tape machine and a Clipper right these are two forms of clipping that I'm essentially doing one is doing some tone right the j37 and the other is just doing some you know Rogue Peaks Rogue spikes that might uh occur so let's go ahead and focus in I'm going to take off the uh standard clip here let's go ahead and just solo the drums in the chorus section [Music] here okay I'm going to turn off this uh Channel strip here because that's going to show us how things are outputting before and after this j37 here so before [Music] so it's getting as much as we're going up as far as -4.4 and with this on let's see where we peek at after so we've gained about 3 DB of Headroom room just by adding this to the entire drum bus which is great and we're not noticing I don't notice uh any less impact in fact there's a little bit more bottom end thump that comes from driving uh drums particularly into you know a tape machine so I'm going to exaggerate this input here on the j37 this is the input stage right here and with this uh turned on all right that's off this is on this is actually bringing the output down simultaneously it's hard to say that word simultaneously as I drive the input it automatically compensates and level matches by bringing down the output so I'm going to go ahead and really crank this and then I'm going to let's see where I'm at here so it's at zero [Music] DB you can start to hear this uh interesting breaking up of the Kick Drum right cuz that's what's hitting the you know the needles slamming hardest you can see with the [Music] kick but now look how much we're actually clipping the signal we're clipping it even [Music] further even further now we're getting about let's see a total of 15 Deb of gain reduction and we may or may not want that sound right maybe that's something you could blend in and mix but this is just to show you an example of one type of clipping that can happen so standard clip on the other hand is just straightforward clipping but there's also this little soft clip saturator that can give me an additional sort of bit of saturation and grit and tone but without that turned on it's just clipping so watch what happens when I turn this down [Music] further a similar breaking up kind of happens because what we're doing is we're lowering the ceiling this clip ceiling which is the point at which we're going to start clipping the audio and so everything above -23 is being chopped off so let's bring this up to [Music] here so these sound different there's a different tone here going on let's compare now that we've kind of level matched them let's compare [Music] them compared to the [Music] tape they're just different tones we get a little bit more preservation of the bottom end thump here uh on this [Music] Clipper I hear just kind of more punch from the low end of the kick less squashing there so but that's going to be a specific sound that you may or may not want with this I'm doing a little bit of both so that I can get a little bit of tone from this as well as do an additional bit of clipping from this I'm going to bring this back up to where it was which was eight and then bring this back to zero so I'm getting about three DB here of clipping on you know this tape machine here and then an additional bit here so let's see what this amounts to so here's before I'll take off the SSL EQ because that's adding some [Music] transient barely getting the tip top top of these transient Peaks right [Music] there so without this Clipper I think it was it was hitting about -7 so we've gained another almost decibel there I could probably bring this down another just a hair so combined with our EQ you know getting some of that top end from the high mids about 5.73k and above I'm adding some kind of transient information back by adding to that top end so those snare hits and any other transient heavy information is getting a little bit more kind of that top end frequency volume added back into the transient so it's giving me it's kind of introducing a little bit more I guess of that Dynamic back if I wanted to I could put another Clipper after this or what I could do is just simply slide this on over here which is I think what I'll do now you're going to see this working a little a little bit harder but we're not overdoing things here we're only clipping you know maybe one to two decb so that's actually a smarter move is to move that um after the SSL EQ so there's just a a you know a quick little like live demonstration lesson on on how clipping is being used right um in two different ways here one with this j37 tape uh it's just to prove to you that Clippers are not the only way that you can clip you can clip by driving any input too hot when you do that too hot especially analog emulated gear right even an EQ that is driven too hot will distort and will break up and will cause clipping to occur may or may not be the the kind that you want as you could see the clipping produces different Clippers different ways of clipping uh will produce a different result depending on what's going on under the hood but uh that's that's a little demonstration for you all right so I am basically done with the drums I'm not going to do anything else to these drums I might consider adding the SSL like we did on the what did we do that on I think it was level two uh I think that gave it kind of a nice bit of extra punch or smack slightly and a little bit of cohesion a little bit of glue so I'm going to see if that works here bus compressor so what I'll do is turn down the threshold here I'm going to turn up this side chain highpass filter what this is doing is filtering out any lowend so the low end doesn't trigger the compressor what will happen is lowend because low end carries the most energy it will trigger and cause the compressor to work too hard and react too much to the low end rather than grabbing and compressing the other parts of the frequency spectrum so this gives me a more kind of natural even compression down won so watch if I can press a lot if I pull down the threshold more but this is with the side chain high pass filter off and if I turn this all the way up to let's say 300 or so it only goes up to 185 we get less compression because it's the kick is now not triggering the compressor because I've filtered out that low end if that makes sense so I'm going to bring it to a out [Music] here shake it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm On Top it's a little too much I'm going to do about there won't stop till I'm winning say it so everybody I make to see on the ground I'm on top I coming down l [Music] b the rest Never B I'm goinging around I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show when everybody [Music] I'm going to go just a little bit [Music] less I'm better the never I'm coming around I'm to coming down I'm the I'm com around I'm top coming [Music] we'll make up the game just about a deciel or so I'm going around I'm top I a coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning cool just more control tighter just feels like it's like there's that cohesion there there and I left the releasee on auto auto just seems to always work for me um but you can you know decrease the release time uh to have a faster when I say yeah decrease the time I'm going backwards in my head but if I lower the release time so it's a faster release that's going to provide more aggression because again the compressor is Letting Go which is letting energy up again right it's letting go of the audio which means the energy coming back up quicker and that provides kind of an energetic uh you know an energetic kind of pumping sound which could be desirable if you're doing more aggressive styles of compression on drums or parallel compression we'll get into that in another lesson and in the in another section um but for now the just so you know longer releases are going to be for gluing because we're compressing more longer and so it's it's it's grabbing everything and kind of squeezing it together it's holding on to the audio and squeezing that and not letting go it's letting go slower so it's going to have the the feeling of glue let's go ahead and just demonstrate that all this talking and no action so let's see how that works so here's a super fast let's make this a little bit more pronounced and aggressive so we can hear it hear the difference so here's uh we'll leave the attack the same we're going to uh experiment here with a a fast release and a slow release and see what that does and truly if we to see if we get a a gluing effect so here's fast really cool Sound by the way and then here's slow [Music] fast slow so I don't know how else to describe that other than that those two words cohesion and glue and you might think oh glue is such a over overused term or word it's like really the best word to use it it just kind of connects everything together uh again that cohesion just kind of like sticks everything together in a way so that it all sounds like it belongs together this is one way that we get tracks to come together in a cohesive way so it all sounds like it belongs together in the same mix in the same song okay so hopefully I haven't exhausted that but I just wanted to point that out so that as I'm saying these words you know what to listen for and you know what to expect when we change those parameters all right so I'm going to bring this back to where it was I'm going to go with an auto release and I'm going to go okay leave the attack the same and bring this back down cool I dig it we'll go ahead and move on so there's our drums there's nothing else inside the drums that needs Dynamic control if you look there's a lot of sample based I'm not I have no reason to compress this or to limit this right no reason at all because it's already controlled everything is the same exact volume If This Were A an acoustic kit different story right and perhaps we'll do a video that's totally separate from this course where we walk through drum mixing just literally going through and mixing drums acoustic drums that is um because that's a totally different ball game that would take and require a lot more time all right so because there's a lot of samples here and we do have acoustic drums but a lot of the acoustic drum kit information has been dynamically controlled so if we look here where is drums live right here drums snare okay you can see there's this uh sort of bleed uh from the kick drum and that's the [Music] snare okay here's another uh track that we have the overheads dynamically controlled there's a lot of dynamic consistency there already don't need to do any more than that so let's see if there's anything else all right these are just like onetime crash hits and you might think okay well we've got this like Spike here that's fine that's like really high-end information and I want that there okay again more samples right already consistent maybe we do just a touch of limiting here I might not end up with that but let's just do it anyway let's go with my li [Music] here so we're picking about -20 so we'll bring it down to -21 to get about a decibel got ad [Music] down got N I don't want that it's uh I want to have that percussiveness come through so again these are all pretty well well controlled dynamically I'm not too worried uh again I I think I remember actually adding some compression or or limiting um in the actual production session on this track so we don't need to do that here but if this was like all over the place and one was louder than the other but they both sound the same in terms of loudness I would want to get those more under control um particularly when we're dealing with more electronic you know type elements got ad that [Music] down kind of want to bring out this breath here I'm gonna go ahead and do [Music] that yeah that's cool I'm going to bring that up even more just to half Tob more for good measure got to admit that you're down really cool uh all right anything else let's check these out drums hat and symbols it's a big crash I don't need to control anything there cool looking good so I'm going to say that the drums are pretty much the way that I want them [Music] so let's go before and after all of this processing on the drums I'm going around I'm On Top a coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining after B I'm going around I'm on topin going down and I w't stop that's the only word I've got is just that cohesion that glue it's Everything feels tighter feels more together there's more a sense of consistency in the drums and just the drums kind of sit in with the music better that's the effect that we can uh kind to get out of out of dynamic control and we've already enhanced to Dynamic intent with this SSL bus compressor here um this was used to kind of get that effect that gluing that additional kind of tight cohesion that we're looking for um all right let's continue on usually I'll do the vocals first with it when it comes to Dynamic control but just decided to since I already had some of this uh processing on there on the drums I decided to to just kind of walk you through that so let's go into our vocal we've already kind of shown you what we would do here on levels one and two so we can do this quickly I'm going to do the same thing where I limit first and then I will do some sort of enhancement type compression uh sort of a thickening with the la2a emulation by universal audio so let's go ahead and do that and now that we've got these tracks separated I don't need to do that I don't need to separate these out they're already take that's already taken care of all right so let's start with the verse vocal looks like we have uh separate tracks for the first and second verse and who knows maybe I'll group these together I may or may not I don't think I need to but again everything's pretty well dynamically controlled here so I just want to do maybe a DB or two of limiting and then going into a compressor so we'll do that let's see what do I have let's see okay yeah I'm GNA go ahead and throw the limiter on now whether I put the limiter before or after this EQ I'm not super concerned about that uh whether you do it before or after uh you just need to do what feels feels right to you I know that sounds uh that sounds maybe kind of ambiguous or or confusing but really I'm not too concerned whether or not someone puts this before or after uh EQ especially when we're doing Cuts like this right I know a lot of people will say well you want to cut you know frequencies out before you hit the compressor that's totally fine but what I'm doing here is just a very small amount of utility based Dynamic control I'm just getting a couple Rogue transients so I could have this before or after I don't really [Music] care so it looks like uh we're going to be looking for this right [Music] here it's peeking at4 there let's see where it Peaks at here 15 there it out check it out okay so it goes all the way to -3 at the very end here so what I'll do is set this so that it Peaks no higher than negative let's say 15 pick it up where I it but this time I'm going Strack it out pick it up where I it but this uh no since this is since I've brought this down negative to you know down 3.3 DB on the volume fader that's not correct I need to actually back this off pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to check it out check it out cool so I did get 3 DB of gain reduction at the very end there that's totally fine for the most part I'm getting like one to two across the board to see me feeling I'm right and that's not something I'm going to hear again I'm not looking to hear anything out of this limiter this is just Peak reduction that's it these spiky Peaks that are not going to contribute to the sound they're just going to eat up our Headroom so I'm going to go ahead and follow this up with an la2a and what I'm looking for here is to get about three no more than four DB of gain reduction but this will do it nice and transparently we got a little bit more volume that we're going to need to compensate for by bringing the gain down after we control Dynamics sh my but you can start to hear it you should uh start to hear this depending on where you're at in the in your journey it's going to be harder to hear compression in the beginning of your journey that's okay you need to spend a lot of time with these tools and train your ears train your ears dedicated ear training things like sound gy quiz tones all those things we're not uh I mean I'm not getting paid to say that at all it's just it works so what's cool is now that we've controlled some Dynamics here we're having to to hit this not as hard so this can work in in even more transparent Natural Way fcing sh my okay let's bring this back down to where we were volume wise and match that fast track bouncing back there things are shaking my way fast track bouncing back there things are shaking my way when we volume match it's not going to be as noticeable of a difference but you can really crank up the volume on your headphones and go back to that before and after and you'll hear a difference gota get back in it I ain't to quit it here's before and after in this section here before got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey after got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey he little bit of highend that's uh added qu gotta get back in it I ain't to quit just a little bit of top end just bringing up more energy about to see me feeling stey cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going check it out it out great on the fcing back sh my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to stra check it out check it [Music] out cool curious to see where we're hitting before and after the limiting where I left it but this time I'm going to straight to check it out check it out so hitting attive [Music] 13.3 [Music] cool so what's happening is the LA 2A is kind of letting some transient information through and that's where we're getting these kind of uh additional decb back in but that's fine like I'm really just using my ears at this point and I don't necessarily care I me if we wanted to we could put another limiter after this and just get um you know take care of these sort of that increase in in decb here that we're getting let's go ahead and bring this back up here to there maybe maybe just get a deciel of gain reduction it up where I it this time I'm going to S to check it out check it [Music] out I time going it [Music] out sure and that's [Music] fine totally different tone and Vibe that's [Music] great yeah we living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out I'm bu see easy on Sat night pick you up and I'm staring lul I'm going to limit both of these separately and I'm going to go pretty aggressive on [Music] this Saturday night pick you up and I'm staring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight [Music] cool because this is a layer I'm not looking necessarily for attack information or anything any transient information so I'm fine to be a lot more aggressive on that let's go just a little bit less then I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm lemon meting you see me and I'll make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up when I'm buting and you see me and it look so easy we're sexing on a Satur night I'm tempted to actually EQ more of this out when only when this comes in when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on Saturday night yeah I think I'm going to do that I think I'm going to bring this I'm going to automate this really quick yeah bring it down like this when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah with sex on a Saturday when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah we sexing on a Saturday let's go back turn it back to read easy turn that off it's more stuffy not as stuffy [Music] we're getting enough of that frequency in this layer here all right let's go on to Dynamic control on this one when I'm same process I'm going to do eliminer first make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm lemon a Deb L of that buting see me and I'll make it look so easy yeah we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm staring Lululemon at your wear I don't fight great I don't need any more than that when I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy yeah with sexing cool chopping off those little peaky spiky areas that are coming up I'll show you a couple of them there there all right uh maybe this right here pick you up I think yep that's one of them and then let's follow it up with some la2a again not that one sure why I keep opening that silver okay without lemon fight -6.5 is about where we're hitting so I'm going to match that uping lemoning lemon that you're wearing pick you up and I'm pick you up and I'm saring lul pick you up and I'm saring lul lemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to F pick you up and I'm sing Lululemon that pick you up and I'm sing Lululemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to fight pick you up and I'm staring Lululemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want to F pick you up and I'm staring Lululemon that you're wearing gives me feelings that I don't want fight great you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to love it I think it sounds great let's go on to the chorus [Music] vocal same thing little limiter not GNA reinvent the whe here that area is going to hit harder so it's going to grab that that I think these are actually just duplicates maybe copy paste I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning let's bring it down even further great that's fine follow it up with the la2a okay don't need that much compression I'm coming around I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh again showing everybody I can make [Music] it great okay where are we clipping at before or where are we peeking at before this I'm on top I ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm wining [Music] it's about 98 let's see if it's higher here yeah about 98 and then [Music] after gaining about a DB or more I'm coming around I'm on top I ain't coming down and yeah more than a DB of Headroom while also like just feeling tighter more cohesive this is going to now sit in the track even a little bit [Music] better coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh it show everybody before I'm coming around I'm on top I a't coming down and I won't stop till I'm [Music] winning [Music] after here a little bit more energy in the vocal it's cutting through the mix a little bit more we're also saving a little bit of head room so wins all around I could even bring this down like a half decel [Music] maybe I'm better than the rest never I'm coming around I'm on top I Ain coming down love it let's move on uh let's see drums vocals done Bass the only thing I really want to do here is on the bus I don't really care to get there's nothing to get granular about here um it's really simple just to do a little bit of dynamic control on the overall on the overall bus here so I'm going to do same thing limiter compression it's kind of been my [Music] MO [Music] cool that's all I need maybe a little bit of la2a again [Music] bring that down just going to touch [Music] it don't need to touch it in the [Music] beginning [Music] little bit of control bringing up a little bit of presence in in that BAS here's before and we're getting some head room as well [Music] before certain in [Music] context B I'm going around I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody I can make on the ground I'm On [Music] Top cool moving on it's going to be the same these are basically copy pasted sections here let's see what we got with guitars here everything's pretty even I don't necessarily see anything spiky or crazy I think I like it the way that it is let's go ahead and just play them and hear it [Music] yeah I don't there's nothing I want to do here I might do just a little bit of control little bit on the overall bus maybe like a DB or so of got a dynamic control pain reduction uh notice how I'm playing it here because there's this is where the most energy is going to pile up [Music] [Applause] everybody [Music] ground move on to the S I think the scents are good maybe let's see yeah I think I'm good to really just do a couple instances of the limiter this is where I see the most spiky [Music] information [Music] [Music] [Music] and I'm going to listen to that in context and see if I'm losing any detail that I don't want to [Music] lose me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm [Music] sing when I'm buting and you see me and I make it look so easy sex nope I'm not in fact now that I've done that I'm going to bring it up two DB to compensate so I can hear more of it see what did I have it at yeah let's start with uh bring it up to five I'm buting you see me and I make it look so easy at sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing give me feelings that I don't want maybe just a little bit more then go of [Music] there on a Saturday night Pi you up and I'm sing lemon take it [Music] out I'm better than the rest Never B I'm coming around I'm On Top by coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh cool dig it all right let's see um let's go ahead and put one on the overall synth bus here where everything is playing together right here and in fact I kind of want to try a little bit of maybe saturation um I of want to try this out this magma BB tubes or the little tube here so it's louder right and we've gained some head room we're basically clipping right we're driving the input on this it's giving us a little bit of thickness going to bring the the output down a little bit maybe bring that [Music] down let's listen it show everybody I can make it see on the ground I'm [Music] to show everybody I can make it on the ground I'm On Top coming that's [Music] great [Music] so want to make sure we're not altering the sound of this section too much in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to S it check it out check it [Music] out I'm better than the rest never I'm going around I'm on top I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning shake it show everybody I can make it see on the [Music] ground I'm just volume leveling now so Dynamic control all right a little bit of little bit of character as well but a lot of that's Dynamic control I'm actually controlling Peaks and transients that are kind of piling up on top of each other with all of these syns again look at how much we've gained in terms of het room here's before let's go here peeking at -12.4 and now it's peing at -6.9 we're we're gaining almost five Deb of Headroom [Music] there hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we're living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to anything I want to do on the pads I don't think so maybe just the same thing just a touch of limiting in fact I'm going to do that on the entire kind of bus here just in where we've got things going on in the chorus all what I'm trying to say is that it it will only trigger really in the chorus where we have it might trigger here actually we got to kind of be careful and see what's hitting the most in terms of volume that's peing about1 19 this one's peing at about so yeah I'm going to go ahead and put it on just put it on the bus I me whether I put it on the bus or put it here it really doesn't matter I'm not looking to necessarily control D actually you know what I'm realizing that it's it's louder here isn't [Music] it yeah so I'm I'm thinking and I'm thinking the opposite I'm just going to go ahead and put it on this here in fact we might just do it on both of [Music] [Music] them there you have to click this for it to reset that's fine put one here the waves L1 limiter is the the winner for today [Music] great I'm better than the rest of never I'm coming around I'm out I Ain coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning sh show everybody I can make on the ground I'm on top right com Lady B second hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell outy now what I'm going to do is go to all of my buses that I haven't put anything on and I'm in terms of Dynamic control and just tap it with either limiting compression or clipping with vocals I like to do limiting so I'm going to put a limiter here and when I when I do kind of bus level limiting with things like vocals um you know I tend to go for more of like a mastering style limiter like an L L2 maybe the the the Fab filter uh let me go ahead and do that so I'm going to go with uh there we go pro L2 so I'm G to pull let's see where the output is hitting here yeah so what I'm going to do is have it trigger in the busiest section here see me and I make it look so easy at with sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm sing Lululemon that you're wearing give me feelings that I don't want to busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at so these Peaks right here that you can see in the visual I'm going to I'm going to tackle those so I'm going to have to drive the input quite a bit I'm going to bring the output down let's say bring the ceiling down to about2 just do like a DB and a half or so about there see it look so easy yeah was sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm sing lemon at and you can start to see it working right all those little dips are the peak reduction that we're getting so I'm going to do just a touch more easy buting and you see me and I make it look so easy seing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm saring Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to [Music] fight great uh and then we're going to be hitting our chorus got to make sure that we're not yeah you know what we might need to make adjustments here [Music] I'm going around I'm on topin coming down and I going stop wi sh it show everybody I can make it on the ground I actually like it I dig it we're getting just this is nice and even on the fast track bouncing back things I sh my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't [Music] to yeah that works across the board so background vocals don't need to do much just going to go ahead and put it on the [Music] bus [Music] [Music] easy interesting I'm not sure why that audio is not triggering I don't have any automation on there do I hm strange okay there's our dope Homer Simpson [Music] dope cool I think we're good there base got our Dynamic control drums done vocals done effects don't really care to do anything there not necessary in my opinion uh really because this is uh I want to keep that Dynamic that swell okay and there's nothing going on in the in the course that would you know contribute to like a loss of Headroom fight guitars done syns done pads done we took care of this one element here this limiter with that limiter both of these so we're good there all right let's go ahead and do a before and after listen to this whole thing on the fast track bouncing back things I shakeing my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to swe it check it out check it [Music] out I'm better the rest Never B I'm going around I'm On Top ain't coming down and I won't stop till I'm winning shake it so everybody I can make see on the ground I'm On Top coming down lady b second verse hit that yeah you got to admit that you're down yeah we living in it cuz we're chilling we're not here to sell out then I'm busting and you see me and I make it look so easy at we're sexing on a Saturday night pick you up and I'm sing Lulu Lemon that you're wearing giv me feelings that I don't want to fight better I'm going around I'm on top like com down and I W stop till I'm winning sh show everybody I can make it see ground I'm On Top coming down l [Music] b l [Music] cool let's go ahead and fast [Music] forward let I'm going around I'm to by coming down and I W stop till I'm ready so everybody I can make care see on the ground I'm all time [Music] great so I'm going to go ahead and bounce everything out into one track and what we're going to do is I'll basically take off all of the processing all of the Dynamics processing and then I'll bounce out that so we can kind of do a before and after throughout okay so I'm going to do that behind the scenes real quick all right what I've done here is I've bounced both versions out before all Dynamics processing that includes clipping compression limiting everything Dynamics related so I've taken that all off and bounced that out and then this after Dynamics is with all of the Dynamics processing that we've done and just right off the bat you can see how much more controlled the Peaks are if we look at these the Peaks are higher they're taller and here they're more controlled more consistent there's still dynamic in this right and so we're not completely squashing this but we are getting more Headroom as a result so you can see this like little Spike here that's gone a lot of these kind of spikier transients are just under control so that's one thing you're going to notice the other thing is is that things seem to pop more forward like certain elements like the vocals there's just an overall kind of energy forward energy that seems to be coming from like high-end a little bit of high-end presence somehow with all of the Dynamics processing that we've done all combined together we've just given it a little bit of a energy lift it's it's subtle but it's there so listen to the before and after to those things I'm better the rest of I'm going around I'm to coming down and I W stop till I'm ready so everybody I on the ground [Music] I'm especially I feel like the vocals feel like they're kind of popping forward a little bit more let's do that again here's before [Music] to coming down and I stop till I'm [Music] ready okay let's go ahead and do before and after in the beginning better rest I'm goinging around I'm on top I coming down and I W stop till I'm [Music] [Applause] ready it's not a huge difference but it's an improvement and it's an improvement in Headroom it's an improvement in certain elements coming forward in the right way um so you're going to notice a lot bigger difference you know on tracks that are completely raw right if the tracks were not produced out meaning they were just all recorded live and you'd notice a a much bigger difference in terms of the before and after but because we're using a lot of samples there's been a lot of dynamic control in the production session um that that difference is less noticeable but there's an improvement here for sure um we got about you know 2 and a 12 DB of head room I believe if we look at the loudest Peak at the end [Applause] here peing about -2.6 and then at the end negative 1 and [Music] here yeah so a little bit more than two [Music] [Applause] DB [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it's great that concludes this live Dynamics demo on the third level with all of our tracks and you can see that I've used a little bit of everything I've used a lot of limiting because I was looking to control just a lot of transient Peaks uh in a very subtle in very subtle amounts but across a lot of different tracks that's helping us to kind of control Dynamics and and get some Headroom there and where I felt like it needed you know enhancement you know to Dynamic intent we went ahead and used compression um pretty much the only place that I did that was on the drum everything else was well as well as the the lead vocal I used this la2a the LA 2A just helping to bring a little bit more kind of energy kind of forward forwardness bringing that vocal a little bit more forward while also just clamping down on any remaining sort of like Dynamics there that we didn't necessarily need you know based on this type of genre this is a genre that's meant to be just really forward aggressive in your face so we're we're using compression to do that so on other in other genres that are less in your face less aggressive what we would do you know compression to suit that right and and have less Dynamic control so as you can see doing this in stages is going to give you the best result so that's it for this demonstration we'll see you in the next section where we dive into some of the more advanced you know tools and techniques to kind of bring this track to the Finish Line welcome to the final section of this mixing course section four in the section we will cover the remaining topics that will help get your mixes to a finished and Polished State lesson one will be all about spatial processing in the mix this is where we use Reverb And Delay to further control the separ preparation and placement of our sounds within our Cube this helps to create an enhance depth width and emotion lesson two will cover any remaining and important tools and techniques we have not yet covered these include slightly more advanced topics like saturation parallel processing side chain compression Dynamic EQ and more lesson three will focus on workflow tips that will help optimize your Effectiveness and efficiency for mixing quickly things like knowing your dawell memorizing keyboard shortcuts creating and saving templates timing yourself and more will be covered here and finally Lesson Four where we'll talk about the very important topic of how to make progress moving forward there we'll discuss the topic of ear training mixing a ton versus watching tutorials and staying consistent so let's get started our ultimate goal in mixing is to create a Sonic world that is compelling and makes us feel something integrating spatial processing such as Reverb And Delay into our mixes deepens the listener's immersion and emotional connection by enhancing instrument localization our ears naturally seek ambient cues to discern the placement of sounds grounding us within the audio landscape to understand the critical role of spatial processing let's start by imagining a mix with absolutely no Reverb or delay this scenar scenario is akin to listening to music in an anaco chamber a room designed to completely absorb reflections of sound in such a space sound is unnaturally sterile and flat devoid of the Echo and life we're accustomed to in everyday environments this unnaturalness illustrates why Reverb And Delay are not merely effects but essential tools for creating a believable and engaging Sonic space an anaco chamber while fascinating first scientific studies highlights the starkness and discomfort of a world without natural reverberation in real life every space imparts its own Sonic signature from the subtle Echoes of a small room to the Grand reverberations of a cathedral these Reflections are crucial for our perception of space and depth they provide context and help us understand our environment without them sound feels isolated detached from the world that we know in the context of a mix Reaver delay serve to bridge this Gap they reintroduce the natural Reflections that are sometimes missing in recorded music or samples wrapping sounds in a space that gives them Dimension life and emotional context Reverb simulates the natural Echoes that envelop sounds in real environments from the intimate to the immense however they don't always have to sound natural they simply need to give us a sense of space and location whether that's huge or small or somewhere in between delay on the other hand creates Echoes that can add Rhythm depth and texture further enhancing the spatial illusion you heard that right illusion great mix Engineers I might say are great illusionists we are simulating an experience for the listener together Reverb And Delay allow us to craft mixes that resonate with listeners on a deeply intuitive level simulating the sense of space that's so vital to our perception of sound by carefully applying Reverb and delay we can manipulate the dimensions of our Sonic Cube placing each element in its own distinct spatial context this not only improves separation and Clarity but also imbus the mix with a sense of place and emotion it's the difference between a collection of sounds and a coherent musical experience that transports The Listener let's think now about how Reverb And Delay contribute or relate to the concept of the cube we've talked about in this course Reverb And Delay are not just tool for adding Ambience and Echo to our tracks they're essential for sculpting the spatial dimensions of our mix as a refresher we've so far covered how EQ affects the height of our mix in section two and in section one and three we've talked about aspects of volume and Dynamics which help Place elements front to back in our mix the effects of Reverb And Delay are unique in that they play an important role in placing sounds within both the depth and width to dimensions for depth Reverb And Delay can make sounds seem closer or further away sounds with longer Decay times or a higher ratio of wet affected or dry unaffected signal will appear to be further back in the mix this mimics how sounds behave in real world spaces distant sounds reach us with more reverberation and few direct sound waves conversely sounds with shorter Decay times or a lower wet to dry mix will seem closer as they emulate the clarity and immediacy of sounds nearby in terms of width stereo delays and the stereo Imaging of certain Reverb types can expand the perceived width of the mix by carefully panning the echos of the Reverb Tales we can create a sense of spaciousness that extends beyond the physical limits of the speakers or headphones enveloping The Listener in a more immersive Sonic field you can take with Reverb one step further by actually adding delay to that Reverb further enhancing its stereo width I'll show you this in a demonstration later on by mastering the use of Reverb and delay for depth and width we effectively position elements within our mix's cubic space crafting a more realistic and engaging listening experience so if both Reverb And Delay can have the same effect on our Cube which one should we use when deciding between the the two it's essential to consider the mix's overall Clarity in space delay by its nature can occupy less space in a mix compared to reverb this is because delay Echoes are discret repeats of the sound which can be timed and tailored to fit neatly between other elements enhancing contrast without the wash of sound Reverb often introduces this strategic use of delay helps maintain separation and definition among instruments offering a cleaner alternative that still provides depth and movement without cluttering the mix so in deciding on whether you use Reverb over delay it helps to think of the following Spectrum on one end of the spectrum we have genres that use lots of Reverb Andor delay to produce a more washed out and distant feeling genres for this include but are not limited to shoe gaze dream pop and ambient and on the other end of the spectrum would be less Reverb L delay to produce a more Vivid crisp and close sound contributing to more clarity and distinctness in the tracks elements genres for this might include acoustic folk singer songwriter dance pop other pop genres Jazz Etc let's examine for a moment how Reverb And Delay are used to achieve certain emotions and sounds in shoe gaze and dream pop these genres evoke deep immersive emotional Landscapes largely through their distinctive use of texture and atmosphere the emotions stirred by these genres are often described as ethereal introspective and nostalgic creating a sense of immersion in a dreamlike world the use of Reverb and delay is pivotal in shaping these emotional responses I personally love these genres for these reasons Reverb with its ability to create a sense of space and depth is used extensively in these styles to envelop The Listener in a wash of sound this effect blurs the lines between individual instruments melding guitars vocals and synthesizers into a cohesive atmospheric hole the expansive sometimes infinite feeling decay of Reverb in these genres contributes to a sensation of floating or being suspended in a vast open space it's this characteristic that underpins the dreamy quality of dream pop and the Gaze aspect of shoe gaze as listeners are encouraged to lose themselves in the sound delay on the other hand adds a layer of compl lexity and texture in shoe gaze and dream pop delay is often used to create echoing cascading sounds that repeat and overlap contributing to the genre's signature immersive and mesmerizing effect the repetition and manipulation of sound through delay not only enhance the music's hypnotic qualities but also contribute to a feeling of timelessness or Detachment from the immediate surroundings the emotional impact of these effects is profound by extending the natural decay of sounds and creating overlapping layers ears of Echoes these genres convey feelings of longing introspection and a deep often Bittersweet Nostalgia the dense layers of sound rich with Reverb And Delay can evoke a sense of isolation or Solitude yet also a profound connection to something larger and indefinable much like the nature of Dreams themselves in summary the emotions evoked by shoe gaze and dream pop are deeply tied to their use of Reverb And Delay these effects are not just technical choices but emotional tools that shape the listener's experience drawing them into a lush immersive world where feelings of longing introspection and Nostalgia Prevail again this is why I love these genres and why I'm biased to talking about them right now with all that said let's actually look at how we might set the basic parameters of a Reverb unit to accomplish this while doing so we're going to Define what these parameters in a Reverb do the first parameter to cover is pre- delay pre- delay actually delays the time that it takes for the Reverb effect to start it's that simple for the genres we've mentioned above like dream pop and shoe gaze and Atmospheric keep the pre- delay short or moderate a shorter pre- delay can merge the Reverb more seamlessly with the original signal contributing to the washed out effect by blurring the lines between the direct sound and the Reverb tail the second parameter is Decay time or Reverb time this controls the length of the Decay or tail of the Reverb increase the Decay time significantly longer Decay times create a sense of vastness and distance as the sound seems to linger and fade out slowly mimicking the Acoustics of a large open space the third parameter is wet and dry mix or seen as mix wet refers to the effected signal versus the dry or unaffected signal adjust the wet dry mix records a higher percentage of wet signal this means more Reverb in relation to the original Tri signal a higher wet level contributes to the sound feeling more distant and less defined essential for achieving that dreamy ethereal quality parameter number four is density and diffusion density affects how tightly packed the individual Reflections are together and then diffusion affects the way those Reflections are scattered set higher density and diffusion to smooth out the Reverb tail making it more continuous and less distinguishable as individual Echoes this adds to the washed out Feeling by creating a dense cohesive sound parameter five is size increase the size parameter to simulate a larger acoustic space this enhances the feeling of depth and distance as if the sound is emanating from far away within a massive reverberant environment parameter six is tone and EQ if it's available use the Reverb plugins EQ or tone controls to roll off some of the high frequencies this can mimic the natural absorption of sound over distance further enhancing the sense of space and making the Reverb feel more distant and washed out if you remember in our EQ lesson the more we roll off the high end or dampen the high end the more distant and Far Away something can sound parameter number seven is modulation this affects the speed and amount of pitch fluctuation happening in the Reverb tail adding a bit of modulation to the Reverb can introduce a slight chorus likee effect giving the Reverb tail a more lively and less static character which is often desirable in dreamy textures by deliberately adjusting these parameters you can sculpt a Reverb sound that envelops the mix in a lush expansive and distant atmosphere perfectly Suited for genres like dream pop shoe gaze or ambient that thrive on immersive emotive soundscapes so if Reverb can evoke different atmospheres and emotions then there must be different Reverb types that help us determine where our instruments live let's briefly discuss the five main types of Reverb that we can use to do this first we have room Reverb room Reverb replicates the acoustic characteristics of rooms of various sizes it's typic typically used to add a natural sense of space to recordings making them sound as if they were played in an actual room this type of Reverb can range from small and intimate spaces which add subtle depth and body to the sound to large rooms that provide more pronounced Reflections and a sense of air around the instruments and we have Hall Reverb Hall Reverb simulates the expansive sound of large concert Halls characterized by its long Decay times and Rich enveloping tail this Reverb is ideal for adding Grandeur and depth to orchestral Arrangements choirs or any instrument that benefits from The Majestic Ambience of a large performance space it's particularly valued for its ability to convey a sense of scale and sophistication then we have plate Reverb plate Reverb emulates the sound of a physical plate Reverb unit where Sound Vibrations are driven into a large thin sheet of metal creating reverberation known for its bright and slightly metallic quality plate Reverb adds a smooth shimmering texture to vocals drums and percussion it's favored for its ability to stand out in a mix without overwhelming the original sound offering a distinct vintage Vibe then we have spring reverb spring reverb is based on the sound produced by sending audio signals through coils attached to a set of Springs which then reverberate this Reverb type has a distinctive twangy and metallic sound often associated with surf rock guitar tones and retro pop vocals it's perfect for adding character and a unique Lively bounce to instruments making them pop in a mix with a nostalgic feel and lastly is chamber Reverb chamber Reverb recreates the sound of natural reverberations found in specifically designed acoustic Chambers these are large rooms with hard reflective surfaces that produce Rich warm and complex Reverb Tales chamber Reverb is renowned for its Lush organic sound ideal for adding depth and warmth to a wide range of instruments from vocals to Strings imbuing them with a classic Timeless quality each of these Reverb types offers unique textural qualities and spatial characteristics allowing producers and Engineers to choose the most appropriate Reverb to enhance the emotional impact and spatial illusion of a mix the best thing you can do to become familiar with these Reverb types is to consistently use and experience with them that goes for any effect or Plugin there are no hard rules for how you use these there's only what they do and what you want to accomplish a quick tip for adding separation in a mix is to use three different types of reverbs throughout the mix ranging from short medium to long Decay times doing this allows you to send varying amounts of signal to these different reverbs to further separate your sounds and provide more clarity and depth let's switch gears and go over the parameters commonly found in delays first is delay time this parameter sets the length of time between the original signal and the echo it can be set in milliseconds or synchronized to the tempo of the track allowing for the rhythmic repeats that align with the beat then we have feedback feedback controls the number of repeats or Echoes increasing the feedback will result in more Echoes while decreasing it will result in fewer High feedback settings can lead to a continuous loop of sound you can actually make a delay sound like a Reverb by shortening the delay time and increasing the feedback then we have wet dry mix just like Reverb this parameter adjusts the balance between the unaffected dry signal and the affected wet Echo signal a higher wet mix increases the presence of The Echoes while a higher dry mix maintains the prominence of the original signal next is tap tempo this allows the user to manually set the delay time by tapping a button or key in time with the music this is useful for quickly matching the delay effect to the song's Tempo next we have modulation some delay units include modulation options such as a chorus or vibr that can be applied to the delayed signal this is basically the same thing in a Reverb and adds movement and texture to The Echoes creating a more complex and interesting sound next is filter or e Q filters or EQ controls allow you to shape the tonal quality of the delayed signal you can use these to roll off high or low frequencies making The Echoes warmer or thinner which can help further control their placement in the mix next is Stereo spread and panning this parameter controls the stereo image of the delayed signals it can place echoes in the left right or center of the stereo field or dynamically move them between speakers for a more immersive effect and then we have ducking ducking reduces the volume of the delay effect when the original signal is present then it brings the effect back up in volume when the original signal is not playing this keeps the delay from overwhelming the mix while still providing a sense of space now let's move into the four different types of delays first we have analog and tape delay these are known for their warm decaying Echoes perfect for adding depth without muddiness then we have digital delay digital delays offer pristine repeats with precise control great for rhythmic patterns or spatial effects then we have pingpong delay ping-pong delay is a type of stereo delay effect where the Echoes bounce back and forth between the left and right channels of the stereo field this creates a dynamic engaging spatial effect as if the sound is literally ping ponging from one side to the other it's particularly effective for adding width and movement to a mix makinging making it a popular choice for leads syns and rhythmic elements and electronic and ambient music keep in mind that this usually shows up as a selectable mode within most stereo or digital delay plugins then we have slapback delay slapback delay is characterized by a single short Echo with a relatively quick delay time typically ranging from 50 to 100 milliseconds this effect mimics the sound of a sound wave bouncing off a nearby surface and returning quickly to The Listener slapback delay is awesome and it's often used on vocals and guitars to add a sense of depth and space without creating the sustained taale of longer delays or reverbs which can clutter a mix it's a signature sound in rockabilly country and classic rock giving a tight energetic feel to the tracks it can be used in pretty much any style to achieve depth though all right now that we've gone over the effects of Reverb And Delay let's see all this in action keep in mind that the mix we've been working on so far has some spatial processing baked into the tracks already and you might find that you receive tracks like this whether they be from the ambience of the room they were recorded in or effects the producer decided were essential to the sound of the tracks we'll discuss what we're hearing in our tracks and apply any additional spatial processing where necessary welcome to the live demonstration for spatial processing what I have here is uh some things that we're going to focus on one the purpose of Reverb And Delay as a refresher we're here to enhance depth with Reverb And Delay as well as width and then wherever possible if it's necessary we can actually apply Reverb and delay for Creative purposes that's usually done in the production session and you'll notice as we go through some of these tracks I'm going to show you how some creative choices have been made with Reverb with things like throws Reverb throws or delay throws creating unique spaces um and effects so I'm going to walk through kind of what's been done already in the production session where Reverb and and delay and spatial processing in general has been applied already to some of these tracks but I think there's going to be room to still further enhance this with some additional spal processing so what we do is use a three bucket approach this is going to really help I think streamline your process quite a bit when I say three buckets I'm talking about three buckets of like the types of instruments that we're working with so one bucket is our vocals and we have a short medium and long Reverb or delay so it can be either rever Reverb with a short tail right or Decay it can be delay with a short delay time and a short feedback right um or we can have medium and long and then we're going to do that for drums as well as instruments behind the scenes if I go to my mixer window I'm going to scroll all the way over you can actually see that I have set up buses or auxiliary channels for all nine of these reverbs now we're not going to necessarily use every single one of these uh we might but it's not always the case that I'm using all of them but what this does is this gives us control over the front to back place ment short Decay Times short delay times is going to push sounds up front in that depth field and then the longer we get uh the more of a sense of depth we get with pushing it further back and away so we're doing that front to back uh depth enhancement and placement with our instruments by doing that but then we're also just creating Separation by Simply Having different reverbs each Reverb is going to sound unique right so let me show you what I mean by that I'm going to show you and switch between short medium and long reverbs for my vocal and you'll see just by virtue of selecting and putting different reverbs on each of these as you can see I've got all three of these are different reverbs um this is like a like a room type setup for the short um my long is this concert hall type you know if you remember what con or what Hall reverbs are it emulates kind of a sophisticated space with a a a feeling of you know of of a large space large Concert Hall think you know concerts and or uh orchestral concerts and choir and things like that so that's going to have a long Decay and then we have this medium chamber right so if you need to go back and and view those lessons again where we talk about the different types of reverbs but just by having different Reverb types we're going to create separation some are darker than others some are more diffus than others Etc let's go ahead and uh check this out so I've got this lead vocal and I've already sent or created uh bus sends for each of those reverbs right the short medium and long bus 10 right B10 stands for bus 10 that means it's it's going to send signal to bus 10 right here so I have the input of this Reverb Channel set up as bus 10 so you have to create these bus inputs for each of these return channels or auxiliary channels right using interchangeable terms there auxiliary channel is the same as a bus um so we're we're sending this allows us to send varying levels of signal to any one of these reverbs and that way it saves up on CPU I don't necessarily have to apply you know an individual instance on every single instrument now I can send as many signals from different channels from different instruments as I want to the same reverbs and save on CPU it's just a more efficient way to do things let's go ahead and just listen to the differences between these three and then I actually have like a bonus kind of more creative spring reverb that I've set up uh some unique you know parameters on that I'll kind of demonstrate as well so here's uh our let's see this would be our EMT short Reverb let's go back to the beginning of the vocal here okay short tail got get back in it i't to quit okay now let's go to our medium chamber here okay go back and forth between those two so it's it's giving us a sense that it's in a different space right it's giving us kind of like localization and let's go to the next one this one is our long which is a Valla Concert Hall pretty similar to this one my so this is but they're different they're they're both darker in tone than our room Reverb says a longer tail the che so you hear that decay longer okay that was the concert hall the here's the chamber on the F Che it almost has the sense of like being in like a a concrete chamber right you know in La Capital Records has a very famous chamber Reverb it's an actual real space that they put I believe microphones or contact microphones in there that's picking up that space and you would have an amplifier basically you know routed from the microphone so vocal would be routed through an amplifier that's sitting in that chamber and then a microphone would be inside the chamber picking up the sound of that chamber space really cool you can use these to create that further separation right not just depth but just separation because of the tonal quality of these spaces now this one's really fun this is uh something that I've set up kind of unique I'm using the stock logic pedal board to get their spring reverb they have different styles um you can select between short medium and long super easy that way I love that you can go you know uh darker or brighter with the tone here and I've got the mix knob up all the way that's one thing I failed to mention is that you need to have your mix knob when you're using sends right all these are on auxiliary channels right so that I'm able to send signal to these auxiliary channels you need to make sure that these reverbs are set to 100% wet the mix knob now becomes this send knob if that makes sense now this is like a send knob I can go less Reverb so that's totally dry and then more Reverb so what I've done here is I've set up the pedal board so we have a spring reverb here let me go ahead and take off this Echo boy here this is a a delay that I've got it's a slapback delay and it's a ping pong so it's going left and right very very quickly so it's creating a sense of width I've cut out the lowend and the high end so that it's not we're not getting any sibilance coming through and so this is giving us uh an additional sort of spread so here's without that Echo boy the very vintage springy sounding that could be kind of cool so let's go ahead and listen to that I add in this Echo boy it gives us the width I love that so what I'm going to do is just start to experiment with these to see which one I like I pretty much know that I'm going to like the shorter ones which which is going to be this uh spring reverb as well as you know this shorter room so I'm going to dial it down and one thing that I want to point out one kind of tip is you get it set right in the context of the music so play it with the music Don't isolate it because it sounds totally different when you're actually playing it and listening as you're playing and once you get the volume of the Reverb just right to your ears actually dial it it back about you know 15% and what that's going to do is make sure that you're not creating too much wash in your mix and that's going to allow you to keep things nice and tight and and remove clutter I want just barely a a hint of this I want this to be more on the dry side of things so I'm going to bring this all the way down to like 25 sh my way it's almost too much I might want to leave this more [Music] dry that's kind of cool maybe a touch more let's go to the room Reverb and see how that sounds I think I'm going to like this better just in the context of this particular mix yeah I want this to be short nice and tight the spring RB is giving me too many repeats even though I've got uh things set up to be as short as possible um right it's set to short here and then it's set to um a really short you know zero feedback so no repeats just one repeat essentially of both the left and right it's just it's just too long of a tail for this particular but there's other instances where I love I love using this type of setup still too much I can hear the room what I want to do is I want to feel an expansiveness I don't want to necessarily hear the Reverb sh what I'm going to do is dial this back to the point where you're like wait I can't hear that but then I'm going to turn it off and you're going to notice how the vocal sits in with the mix [Music] better qu okay listen so we can barely hear the the Reverb right uh maybe you don't hear it at all when you're in the beginning stages of your journey with mixing uh it's going to be harder to hear reverbs it's going to be it's going to be more difficult to hear the differences in these very subtle changes maybe it's not for you though I'm bringing it down even further I think that's about right I'm going to go just a touch less sh my get qu okay let's go ahead and turn this on and off you'll hear how it changes the way it sits in the mix so let's go offing sh my way on the fcing back sh my way got to get back in it cuz I ain't about to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds okay I'm going to remove I think I added let's see let's go ahead and turn down our snare or turn these off not ready to to demonstrate our snare Reverb quite yet okay off on The Fast Track bouncing back there things I shaking my way got to get back in listen one more time here's off and then I'm going to switch halfway [Music] through again very subtle but that's what I'm going for I want to I want to play to that feeling of of having a dry vocal um but I also want things to kind of still have a sense of sort of uh separation I if you will so I'm going to go just a touch less here what I'm going to do is actually automate this so I'm going to bring it up when we get more instrumentation feel turn this to latch and logic and then when I whatever parameter I hit it'll actually create an automation Lane for me okay so I'm going to go ahead and turn this up just a couple DB just in this section here okay turn this down there let's go about there get to quit it hey hey and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the [Music] clouds how it sounds uh with and without in this section where there's more instrumentation happening so I'm going to turn it off and on let's go ahead and turn this back to read and in the off everybody about to see me feeling CU I'm up in the CLS on and everybody to see me [Music] feeling [Music] off [Music] on maybe just a hair more here and everybody about to see me feeling cuz I'm up in the clouds pick it up where I left it but this time I'm going to stra to check it out check it [Music] out killer let's keep going I'm going to keep it there I really like that uh what you can do is set up a template so that you have all of your reverbs and everything that you like and usually like to use already set up with all the sends selected already but you would just have them turned off so all you have to do is you know power it on and start dialing in the knobs that makes things a lot quicker for mixing for starting a mixed project all right let's go ahead and see where there's any other vocals we can treat here here's our chorus let's go ahead and show you actually that there's already spatial processing on here I don't think we're going to need to do anymore listen for the repeats there's a subtle amount of repeats there's delay repeats going on let's go right [Music] here and there's [Music] a that's going on the whole time that delay we're getting some width here what I've done is I've turned on a gain plugin and I've got mono turned on so it can give us a sense of of what it's like without that width okay I actually need to pause you right there because unfortunately YouTube has a 12-hour upload limit so what you need to do now is Hop on over to our website and keep watching there you don't need to enter your email address or anything like that you can simply click over and start watching then if you want to save your progress and stay in the loop about new free courses in the future you do have the option of creating a free user account we have a bunch of other indepth courses over there on EQ compression Reverb vocals along with replays from all of our virtual events which are full mixes and Masters where you can watch everything come together so if you want to keep watching this course you can just go to ming.com and click free courses or click the link in the bio and it will take you straight there okay see you there