As we mentioned in the previous video, there is no one perfect way to approach a mix, we all have our different ways of doing it. I usually start off my mix by being as organized as possible. I really like to set up, first of all, all of my sub mixes, any of my sends, my reverbs, everything ready to go immediately, so that it's actually easier for me to approach sonically how the whole thing sounds. Steven, how do you approach a mix from there? >> There's so much I can get done before I actually start listening. In terms of just my template and I have a template that I like to use or I have three different reverbs, I have a slap echo, I have everything all set up with the sends already right there. Then I decide what all am I going to send to individual faders, so I'll usually put all of the guitars onto one stereo fader. Same thing with the background vocals, keyboards, drums, all those kinds of things. Set all that stuff up beforehand and then I'll usually take a little break. I'll get it all prepped and then I'll come in and with the other part of my brain, the creative part of my brain, actually start mixing the thing. >> I do the same thing. For me, I always feel like I want to be thinking of what the last four faders I'm going to be wanting to work with. I'm thinking of that end goal, and for me, I want my last moment of mixing to be just eyes closed and just moving four faders on a control surface. It might be midi-faders, it might not be, it might be something like this. For me, I save a ton of mixes, so I am setting up that naming scheme, getting myself use to it. It is so much prep and then I start approaching the actual mix. >> I think what one of the really important things about when choosing to name your tracks correctly and name your sends and everything is to approach it as if you're not the one mixing it. If someone's going to walk into that mix and look at your session, they should know where everything is easily and not have to mess around with it at all. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> I try to think, again, back to that what's the audience focus going to be. And it's not always the same throughout a song, and so I'll put in titles just for the audience, you're listening to this. What's most important, I kind of put it in there. I've also, sometimes, I run out of marker space. So I'll just make a mini track and put in regions with names and name the regions for just what I want to make sure I focus on or make sure I want the audience to be focused on for every one of those moments. And then, I pull the faders all the way down. This is something that I see that happens to me sometimes. I've been creating a song and I've come up with this mix that I've been developing over the last four weeks and if I just take them all down and bring things up in some kind of order, amazing the differences that happen. Even that just fundamental turning it down and deciding what's the first thing you put up? And just that first choice changes everything. Chrissy, what's that first thing? First off, do you actually bring all the faders down? >> I do exactly the same thing because, first of all, it's really easy, especially when you're doing a rough mix to start pulling phasers up a lot. Then you end up getting situations when it's peaking and you can't control the volume and the last thing you want to do in a mix is not being able to control your overall volume. You want to be at a good level especially when you send it to the mastering stage, which is what we're going to talk about. I always start with one instruments and since I do a lot of more electronic stuff, especially now, I tend to start with the kick drum. What I'll do is just solo the kick drum by itself or turn everything down, whatever way you want to do it. Make sure it's at a low level and then gradually add the rest of the parts of the beat to that kick drum, balancing against each other and slowly start bringing in each part of the arrangement one at a time. What that does is it almost forces you to take a new look at your production. A lot of times when I've done this, I found that there were parts of my production I didn't want in there anymore. Because I bring it up and I think that actually didn't work as well as I thought it would have worked. For me, it's so important to just start fresh in one element at a time. >> I think you bring something really interesting right in there in that you chose this process because of the type of music that you're making. And that's something that we haven't talked about yet in this class, but we all have many processes that we use. >> Definitely. >> And you said right then, I'm doing this type of music, this is the process I'll take because you know from experience what that leads to. >> Absolutely. >> I'm wondering what's your process with this for what kind of music? >> I work with a lot of singer songwriters and rock bands and things like that. I start with the vocal. Because if you start with the vocal and you make that sound like a record by itself, like this is an a capella record, you get the effects just right, you get the compression just right, you just clip gain to where it's hitting the compressor just right. All that stuff to where the vocal is just right there, then you start putting things in around it and never mute it. >> [SOUND] >> You're making everything conform to that, but in some ways, it's very freeing because you can let things get larger and envelope the vocal once you've established where that's going to be. >> Mm-hm. >> And then, I will go through a lot of stages of mixing, I do try muting a lot of things. I try to see what's the least amount that I can get away with. And that sometimes is just eureka moments of, my gosh, it sounds amazing, just for this first verse just to be vocal, and bass, and drums, and then bring in the harmonic instruments later, or vice versa. And then I start taking some breaks and coming back and doing different checks. How's the low ends hitting? Is it kicking me in the chest the way I want to? How's the kick in the bass really coupling together? How is that going? And then, how is the top entry? Is it nice and bright? Am I getting the aural excitement that I want to have out of the thing? Then trying it on different systems, listening as I'm mixing. Listening to it out in the car, listening to it on the laptop, listening to it on all different kind of systems. >> Yeah, so you're bouncing out renders, >> Absolutely. >> And then bring it to your phone or something and bringing it to all these different locations, checking it out. >> And doing save as, after save as, after save as. Sometimes I just put the time, save as Monday PM 5:45. >> Yeah, the time. >> Because you always want to be able to get back. When I'm doing a mix, I may save anywhere from five to 30 different versions. >> Interesting, you were saying you got all the vocal and all the effects totally done on it right away and that's actually really different than I approach it. I try to focus on volume and panning, I try to get as close as I can get to the final with just those. Even then, I get the question of when do I start adding automation, and for me, there's kind of a pain when you start putting in automation. >> It starts to limit you in some ways. >> It starts to limit you and it's uncomfortable. But I get the volume automation there pretty soon, I have to say. because I feel like so much happens just in that automation of just volume that I would often try to solve with plug-ins. But I can just take care of it with just those things and as much as I can do with volume, I try. What is your thing on effects? Do you put them in early or late? >> I usually start with EQ and Compression on top of my basic volume and pan mix. Volume and pan is like 85% of the way there for me. And then I will go into my EQ and compression and one of the last things I do is reverb, mostly because I find that reverb tends to make your mix lose clarity if it's the wrong type of reverb. It's kind of easier to get a really good understanding of how your mix sounds without it, and then compare that to when you add a reverb to make sure that you're adding the right one. That's not crowding up some of your frequencies, making it sound muddy, if it's too big for the contacts, etc. >> Again, I start with the vocal, so I do add the effects to the vocal. I decide how I want to present the vocal. Almost always, there's a little bit of slap in there. There maybe more or less, depending on the style just to thicken things and then decide on the reverb. And that way, too, it informs really what I want to do with other things. Now that can change, obviously, once you start bringing in other things. Obviously, you may change the type of reverb that you're going to have on the vocal. But I find that if the vocal is telling a story, if the vocal is the focal point, that going ahead and deciding how you're going to present that and especially if you're going to do it with some bold effects on the vocal, that you have to leave some space for that. For me, if I wind up doing the instruments first, I may not do the same kind of bold things that I would have done with vocal effects because there's just not the room for it anymore. >> Yeah. >> Once again, this all really has to do with the genre as well depending on the style of music you're making. Again, all of these choices are going to be dependent on that. >> I find these moments in some songs where the effects themselves relate back to the meaning of the song. >> Absolutely. >> Even through this process, which can feel little technical at times, it can feel really exacting and it can feel like maybe you're not using that creative brain so much. But there are these moments were certain effects can have emotional contacts or certain effects can actually speak right to the meaning. I think even reminding yourself about the story throughout this entire process, I find really, really helpful. >> And sometimes the lack of effects, too. The effect of having a total bone dry vocal, to where it's just right there, right in front of your face, it's not back in the mix at all. I mean, that can be a super effective thing to do as well. Sometimes, the lack of the expected effects can have that same creative thing. >> The one last thing I'd like to mention, from my perspective, that I'm thinking about all the time, >> For me, the mix is about this contrast. I'm always thinking about contrast because I find that with music, the end listener has this control over volume, has this control over the space they're in. There's so many variables that we don't have and so we can't really make something loud. We can't really make something quiet because they have that control so it feels like there's almost no absolutes in mixing, which is frustrating in some ways. Everything's about contrast, so I'm always thinking I want this thing to be loud, I'm immediately thinking we're going to have something quiet. Do you think that same way? Is that just me, or? >> Totally, 100%. Because there's so much that's out of our control with that. I think in a way though, a good mix is going to sound good in a lot of different places, really. If we can achieve that with having those big drastic contrasts as well, I think that's the ultimate good mix. >> I love it when the different sections really have a lot of contrast. >> Yeah. >> When you get to the chorus, you really feel like you arrives at the chorus. Something really happens in the arrangement and then the mix that really pays off. I think that's a really good thing. You talk about loudness in the size of things. Back when I was mixing a lot, I had clients come to me and say, I really want the vocals to be really big, and I want the guitars to be really big, and I want the drums to be really big, and I want the bass to be huge. And it's like, you can't do that. You've gotta have some contrast. >> Right. >> The more things that you put in, it's like if you think about a film, the biggest thing you can do is a close-up. If we have a close-up on one person, that fills the entire screen. We have a two shot, we have to pull back and everybody's a little smaller. Three, four, five, the more people you put in, the smaller everything is going to get, so you do have to decide, who's going to be closest to the camera? Who's going to be back a little bit? Not everybody has to be in focus all the time. >> Great. >> Cool.
