5 Quick Master Bus Mixing Tricks - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

[Music] hello everybody I hope you're doing marvelously well and of course please subscribe and hit the notification bell and yes you guessed it you will be notified hence notification all right so we are doing five you guessed it five mastering bus tips I went online and saw quite a few things and there was some good information but I realized there wasn't really something where I compacted a lot of information in one video which is what we like to do we like to give you a lot of stuff so I get asked about this all the time so this gets stuck in here is a song that I actually recently put out as a course it's a it's a song by a band called Robert John on the rack and it's a classic rock tune it was recorded live in sunset sound the full thing live so I mixed it completely 100% entirely in the box now these are the important things to know when you are working with your master buss which you can see is highlighted here when you work with the master buss if you change the volume going into your master buss it's post fade so it will hit your compressor differently the bad thing is if you want to turn up the last chorus for instance so let's go in and have a listen see here we're getting about between one and two DB's worth of gain reduction okay I'll leave that out the first thing in my chain that's compressing here is actually a I came out a media t-rex and seven listen to all this 3d be at times game reduction so if I want that last section to be quote unquote louder let's just say I turn it up I don't know 1 and a 1/2 DB I want a big leap see what happens to our instead of like one-and-a-half to occasional 3db now I've got like nearly 3 DB coming up to 40 bees worth of compression and that can be useful but ultimately if you're mixing a track mixing through mix buss compression and mixed batch EQ mix box mix buss limiting that's not really a good thing because it's not making the not making the song feel any bigger it's just compressing it more and sometimes that's that's a cool feature but I know really it's not gonna do what I wanted to do so one of these ways that we could adjust the output is to use the plug-in itself so as you can see we're printing pretty hot we're close to mastering level here each plug-in has a different way of automating but this one in for instance we could come along and we could go okay here's the l2 let's go to the ceiling slider the output ceiling and hit OK and go in Pro Tools to the slider ceiling which is the moment is set to zero and just turn it down turn it down like st. it's say a DB all over then when we come to that last chorus there I wanted to come up that tackle after after the fill on the way out and then I can just literally pinpoint it there and turn that up and so we'll get this Cerre left just a DB left but it's nice now great mastering engineers like gavin Larssen particular will do this when they master i know rick rubin when he goes to all the different mastering engineers he uses gets people to do this as well I've heard that story from many mastering engineers so you could get there and automate just doing that I've seen people describe it by having multiple buses and then speed this and do that and blardy blar that's a lot of stuff to do when really you can just go to your output ceiling on whatever your last plugin is and do that turn it up and down half a DB so let's just say we went through the song and now we're turning up and down you know choruses and bringing down sections that's such a quick and easy way of doing it so now if we want to do some fun stuff there's some really really cool things firstly of course just using this traditional method here you can look to a compressor that also has a sidechain high-pass filter so that is a nice technique for letting some of those lows travel through so it's have a listen it's already here on the mix being users have a listen seventy-six husband what's happening what's happening is all of that low-end is really loud and it's compressing first it is like slamming my compressor now if I default it or bring it back to where it was at 76 the low-end is passing through and the compression is starting to happen above 76 Hertz so it's letting so much more low-end breathe now after that of course we've got an l2 a limiter at the end controlling so if you have compressors on your master buss that have a sidechain high-pass filter just try it it can completely revolutionize your mix it's huge it's huge what it does it really does it allows that low-end to breathe let's try some other fun things we're gonna turn off all of these plugins on our master bus we're gonna leave the master bus completely as it is okey-dokey so let us go and highlight everything that would have been going to one and two so these are all of the outputs there either auxiliaries or their actual you know buses or the tracks themselves that are going straight to the master bus so now I've got all of those what I'm going to do so the moment I've got 17 18 and I'm also going to select 15 16 so I'm giving myself to different auxilary outputs you're going to see why now so here you see an auxilary 15 16 I'll call this I'll call this parallel I call this two parallel bus now I'm going to create another one 17 18 and I'm going to call this sidechain bus okay both of those are feeding the master section so we're going to do a couple of different things here so the parallel bus the sidechain bus oh and just for one more we'll call this just for the heck of it we'll call this the clean bus so what's a clean bus well you guessed it everything goes through clean [Music] that's nothing on the main master bus there everything's clean now the parallel bus we can have some fun with we can go absolutely nuts and the other thing about the parallel bus is you can remove things from it as well but for the moment we're gonna put the whole mix through it okay so let's go in and hmm what can we do well let's go in and use something like a Fairchild a 670 [Music] it's really destroyed isn't it the great thing about parallel buses we can do whatever we like we can introduce saturation in there and then we can bring it up underneath you name it we can do it I will always set that to one which is the fastest fastest release time we're gonna get it's interesting it's bringing out some of the transients [Music] but it's also quite frankly annihilating everything I mean we could go absolutely nuts on that you know maybe we will why don't we try and hmm why don't we go and do as I was suggesting put a little bit of let's think yeah you guessed it [Music] [Applause] [Music] terrible okay turn it off clean bus two together for a song like this it's pretty nice I had I had a song a few years ago that was a classic rock artist people don't like it when I say Who the classic rock artists is they'll be like it's your name dropping by anyway I was working with this big classic rock artist and we had a song for Amnesty International and they wanted it to be a single so what we did is we mixed it and when the classic rock artist heard her he's like it sounds so good it sounds too good and I ended up using what's it called the culture vulture and just destroying it in a parallel way on a console and bringing it up underneath so the same principle I mean on its own that is just just awful it's cool it's not gonna win any awards there it just dreadful back check it out so you can see what we doing we've got these two buses and what's great about them is that's adding tiny amounts of energy we can put all of our stuff back on we have before it's nasty mutant back on it's just great I mean I think the thing to do with stuff like this is be fearless have some fun I mean I have no problem with doing that I mean it just sounds really really cool so we just added some extra energy in there what was nice about it as well is its mid-range and exciting I didn't really boost any lows it destroys the low-end so we're not getting that competing we don't necessarily have to high-pass it if you want you could put a multiband on it and control it but I liked it like roundabout here it's pretty quiet it's adding some dirt what a lot of people like about analog was all the wrongness you know when people talk about like analog sounds better than digital what I spent my life between the two you know I have a tape machine I have SSL but I also have twelve point eight point whatever and mixing in the box and mixing hybrids so the reality is is that you can get the best of all worlds and if you're in full digital like guys like Neal Avron like Mark n dirt who have some of the biggest records they're not that these guys are working all the time you know I getting mark to do an interview with me was like pulling teeth you know in some ways because the guy's so freaking busy and Neal everyone is so busy do that twenty one pilots record I mean he's killing it and these guys mix in the box so here's a fun one let's change out our compressor I'm going to put it over there and leave it bypassed I'm gonna go in I'm gonna hum what should we go what what would be pretty clean you know not necessarily have too much of a personality in a good way I think probably an Archon [Music] so sidechaining you've we just demonstrated a compressor the t-rex one that had the sidechain built-in this is a waives our comp it's a pretty neutral compressor we can get like you know the usual kind of like two or three D beers go to a ratio [Music] the output up a little bit okay alright so we're using there's a gentle compressor but getting like you know one or two DB beautiful and we've got a low end coming in here as we turn all that low-end so cool so what's happening well that lovely t-rex you know vintage EQ the pol tech you know I've got like a couple of DB even it says three it's about one 1/2 DB of sixty Hertz feeding that compressor like oops what's happening well we're getting too much compression now we're getting a little bit too much hmm so what can we do well we're gonna do this we've got our sidechain bus down here okay so let's go to our side chain bus and let's find an EQ let's find an r eq - something else pretty neutral let's go up to I don't know let's go back to that 76 because we liked it ok what am i doing you know what about 80 now I'm high passing it he's high passing it ok and what am I going to do well I am going to send that out pick a number any number 19 we're going to send it out of 19 you're guessing where I'm going I'm going back to my our comp and I'm now gonna yes you guessed it set it to none and in a 19 so what's happening well now the compressor is only being controlled by the sidechain bus and the side chambers has had 80 Hertz and below gently wiped off not like full-blown so now that is controlling the compressor you just invented your own sidechain bus so maybe you don't have a compressor that has it but you don't need it because courtesy of that shucks whether I have my whole tech emulation on or not still going through mute it by facet still compressing about 2 or 3 dB but in fact 1 again 2 it really didn't change at all all that beautiful boost that we did with that 60 it's allowed to pass through because the compressor is only being controlled by the sidechain bus which doesn't allow that coming through so fun so you can build your own sidechain buses it's really very simple to do you can parallel you can sidechain you can run automation on your limiter or your compressor whatever is last in your chain and of course you have a clean bus where everything passes through and you can do all kinds of fun things you can re address the balance of your parallel and your clean so this section here highlight it so you see that section there we can go on to our clean bus and turn it down I don't know 15 dB go back up and bring it up [Music] bit too much but maybe like this [Music] [Music] totally crazy [Applause] love it all the guitars has got trashy and distorted you know just gave a whole different field just for that section the point is when you have a parallel bus you can have so much fun with it so one thing that's really fun to know is that because all the plugins on your master bus happen to be post fade ie when you turn the fader up and down you get more or less compression you'll get hotter signal passing through the plugins they may respond better to that if their analog emulation sometimes they do sound better if they're hit a little bit harder it really depends because you know they add a certain grit and Distortion I know marking that was specifically talking about that about getting his gain structure just right so the plugins the immolations he was using actually sounded like the real things he knows that world really well so it's a a great illustration so one thing that's important when you are thinking about it in terms like that is well for instance if we have a listen here we've got the sidechain compressor is being fed from from this button so if we turn it off the great thing about it is there's no compression so it does kind of mess around with this whole principle because here we are if we now got the l2 if we if we go back to volume on that for instance so you see it may not affect the the compressor because that's still being controlled the compression amount still being controlled by that side chamber see still being come so that's really nice so a couple of things you could do is also use your sidechain buss to control your limiter and your eq's and everything now this particular limiter doesn't have that option but if you wanted to you could easily create that kind of stuff but it's a nice trick to choose how you want to do things I think we've limiting in particular I might go to a different section of a song like you know this go to that second chord my mix is pretty even I'll be honest so here you're seeing about two DB's worth to gain reduction you go the first verse it's pretty even now what will happen sometimes when you get mixes where you get an enormous amount of guitars and basses you know the bass gets fatter and more distorted couple of extra guitars come in the keyboards come in the choruses will get significantly louder and denser so don't be afraid also to automate your threshold I've done that a lot of times where I oughta make the threshold so it isn't compressing as hard you know it's it's all about thinking like a mastering engineer does quite often thinking that way because you don't want to over destroy there's to me you know there's to bus mix that you've got going on so for instance it's it's difficult because my mix is actually very even that was the whole point of doing this mix and showing people how to bit see here I've got 1 2 D B's worth of gain in a loud section of the song if I go to a verse same amount of game reduction however if for instance I didn't want that much game reduction there I could do this I could go in and I could get my threshold slider and come down to threshold and automate it let's just say on the vs. and we do a quick dumb one let's just say I want to bring it up I don't know 1/5 an extra DB it's more open but I think in general what you'll end up wanting to do is taking choruses which in this instance aren't being limited that heavily at all just by the way I voted the way I mixed it but let's just say I did want to open that up and make it feel lousy still I could bring it up that whole DB on a chorus and you'll get this getting like 1 or 2 dB it's not limiting at all that you kind of nice so there you go don't be afraid to automate your plugins there I am automating the threshold and the chorus got louder because it wasn't being hit as hard however you might like what the limiting is doing so if you do like what the limiting is doing go back to the first idea where you adjust your output ceiling or do both there are so many ways we can treat our master bus that's why there's like for me it was like I wanted to get into like lots of detail kind of ideas because also you can automate your EQ one of the very common tricks that a lot of guys do is this so this will be our last little trick let's go to our pre-chorus here you can bring it down a little bit in volume that's an easy trick a lot of people do this is an even simpler one let us just final area here I'm moving my l2 to a different place still got all the automation written on it but before I hit the l2 I am going to add an EQ and I'll go to I'll go to an req - because it's pretty straightforward and I'm just gonna do a little high pass and I'm not gonna go too crazy but I'm gonna go it like where the kick sits at like 60 so this is it off the low end change it so much sounds like he's playing a little lighter on his foot now that's pretty drastic I think we could probably come up a little bit more here another thing we could do that's kind of fun is maybe turn this off for a second maybe go to like you know some of the thumping kind of low and like 110 for instance and pull that out okay [Music] she was doing very very subtle that's a whole 2 DB your mastering engineer might dislike you for that maybe if we come down a DB like 1.2 DB just a little tiny bit and literally just automate it so it's bypassed so if I go now do I req it's in bypass at the moment now it's on now have a listen come out of the verse pre-chorus [Music] so that girth came back in all of those kind of like low lows but it wasn't too drastic it wasn't that drastic as I'm down at 1.2 dB at 110 Hertz and you know mastering engineers will do tricks like this themselves you know I I know guys that will do [Applause] [Music] for instance guys might do something like here we got this crazy thing we did here [Applause] we did that there we could go see there would be a nice place to do it that Glac called Blackwell so why don't we come up here and turn it on here you know if I change this for instance to an req for a 4-band eq I could go even crazier could maybe do something like that and now let's just go in here turn on the master bypass again [Music] so here did you do open that up not quite so quick it's all mid-range no low lows so it's subtle its but it's pretty aggressive [Applause] quite silly quite silly indeed I like the way that sounded I do think the top could probably be opened up a little bit more doesn't need to be quite so drastic but it really made the low-end come in you could also continue the trashed out parallel sound up until there as well but you see all of the different ways we can have fun doing things on our master buss these days is so much easier to be so much more creative than it ever was before and we we have to be fearless we have to have fun with this these are the kind of things that all of the really great guys that I talk to all of those incredible the sheliak Isis and and and the Jack Douglass's and these are the guys that were always doing these kind of things and they were doing them in any way shape or form now the guy that comes to mind is Royce - Carla look him up he would do stuff with John Lennon like a mind games with delays and all kinds of weird phasing effects and all kinds of craziness that just sounds so unique and they were doing it on analog gear and on consoles and now we can have some fun with this kind of stuff anyway as ever please subscribe hit the notifications bell and you'll be notified thank you ever so much for watching that was a lot of fun I really really enjoyed doing these and please leave a bunch of comments and questions below and also give me ideas of what you do on your mix bus have a marvelous time [Music]

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 281,791

Keywords: warren huart, produce like a pro, home studio, home recording, recording audio, music production, record producer, recording studio, master bus, mixing with master bus, master bus tricks, master bus mixing tricks, how to mix with master bus, using master bus

Id: g9McdQrolxc

Length: 30min 18sec (1818 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2018