Automations & Transitions: Take Your Mix to the Next Level - Marc Daniel Nelson

[Music] hi guys happy new year mark daniel nelson here with make my music today i want to talk to you about automation and transitions now i feel like this topic's been talked about a handful of times over the last few years on youtube the one thing i'm not seeing is a really good example of an a and a b a before and after of what it's really doing so today i want to offer you a multi-track session of an album i produced a few years back and right now i have the mix going pretty much where i like it but i feel like it still needs some movement some feelings some transitions some motivation to kind of take it up another step in the choruses stuff like that so the project i have here is by the artist todd kessler the song is old-fashioned way i have a print mix called non-automation and then we're going to do the automation on the whole project here and print that so you can hear the two differences and maybe follow along with your own mix and try to beat it because that's the whole point isn't it now for me i know that there are automation plugins vocal writers and bass writers and stuff like that but i don't really gel with those because the whole point of automation is the humanizing movement you're you know giving the artist or pulling out of the artist to try to make it stand out better than what it is now that can be in drums that can be in piano or guitar solo saxophone and then usually mainly the vocals and with the vocals i was lucky enough to learn a really specific trick which was one of my most important tricks i've learned in 20 years and it was through my time when i worked under bill shnay and the one thing he showed me out of everything i've learned from him was the emotional connection with a vocalist and how to get that how to sustain a vocalist just with automation with a line basically so the secret is in the sauce in my opinion this is one of the biggest tricks and everyone talks about it but the biggest thing is you can't really put it into words without seeing an a and b of what it's really doing so that's what i'm going to do today i'm going to go from a completely good mix and take it up even more of a step to an automated mix and print both mixes and you can hear both let's dive in now i'm going to play the song real fast just to show you what we have here from the start and talk a little bit about what i would hear and what i would do differently to make it even better dragon metronome of typoratic keys a simple thought brings you to me and i'm thankful every day it's a really decent balance but i feel like it still needs some kind of movement that's going to be transitioning each part first thing i hear is it's pretty solid as is the balance is good the mix sounds great you're listening to what todd is singing about and it's working but how do you better it now let's first talk about the automation and then we can talk about transitioning between verses and choruses and bridges so for automation what i'm hearing is and the vocalist in the drums and the guitars the acoustics mainly and not even at the drums yet because i probably won't touch the drums until the first chorus but everything behind that so the guitars and the vocalists mainly i feel like i need to hear a little bit of movement now when you think about like an orchestra and what it's doing and how each element is going up and down and the volumes are coming in and out and the dynamic the velocities are enhancing your emotional connection in a band obviously back in the day vocal technique and the way that bands played were a little more in tune to what was happening as a band the balance was there people were listening in one room and it just felt like you could control yourself a little differently based off that people weren't monitoring with headphones all these little things now we're stepping into the world of in the computer in the bedroom how do you make records that are human sounding and emotional even if you play all the instruments and a lot of that is balance dynamics velocity automation so i'm going to just show you a little bit of a trick i learned with the guitars now i have here in my template that everything is set up and on that it's going into my eight channels of my d command now you don't have to have obviously a d command you can get a fader port by presonus you can use the artist mix that's an avid box any kind of digital automation fader is obviously going to be fine now here i have eight channels i can fool around with but you can do everything in one in fact i've done it for years on just a fader port i would just start with just knowing that you don't have to have the best faders to make it make sense it could be easy enough to have one fader and it's all about understanding the emotion that you're doing going in and out of an element let's pull up the guitars i'm going to automate the guitar from the top i'm going to start from the top and i'm going to write it and let's follow along with it and just listen [Music] jagged metronome of typoratic keys a simple thought brings you to me and i'm thankful every day [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old fashioned way [Music] in a time when we wanted all [Music] everything's so fast right it takes no time to call [Music] to slow [Music] i'm down glad i found you the old-fashioned way [Music] i'll write to you we think from a [Music] feel the weight as the words now the first thing i like to do when i get an automation set i always go back and i bring it down just a little bit because honestly when you're in the heat of the motion and trying to get the sound you're trying to get sometimes it goes a little over the top so instinctively i'd like to pull it down maybe 3.3 you know that way that's the 10 rule that i kind of follow by but what do i hear on this so obviously there's some nicks and stuff really neat licks that are played by rand jackson that ended up needing to come out and by doing that on multiple levels of tracks you're going to hear it and what it does to add and build so the song will start the vocals will come in the bass will come up and then before we even get into transitions it'll all be set up in a way that will create movement and that is your depth really and then when we get everything together then we put the transitions in between the verses and courses and i'll use the master fader for that and then after that's all set i will do the vocal automation which is the crucial part when it's a song like this and the message is important the movement of the drums is just essentially just kind of like the vocal kind of like the guitar there's going to be some life coming in and out like breathing because that's what music is it's about breathing and that's kind of how i relate to it it reminds me of breathing in and out and everything comes slowly [Music] feel the weight as the words sink in [Music] my mind moves too fast for my hands i need to tell you this while i still can [Music] bring it down again we're gonna raise it right up for the second verse [Music] bring it down for the tag again i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way now up again on the chorus groovy baby so what do i hear here the drums are doing one cool thing now i'm going to do the 10 obviously because i felt like i got a little radical so that's set let me save that let's move down to the piano now the piano on this probably has some licks and stuff that i want to hear so i'm going to just listen to the piano on its own and listen to see what we got very noisy piano we tracked this at new monkey studios which was elliott smith's studio in los angeles and a range council fairchilds this amazing old upright piano that was elliot's miss has an incredible amount of vibe a lot of chords a lot of noise i'm going to leave it out for right now bass notes come in [Music] let's do that i'm going to focus directly on the track here because i don't want to touch anything else i want to just automate my piano [Music] feel the weight as the words just underneath my mind [Music] [Music] same place on this same course [Music] stain it feel the weight [Music] my mind moves too [Music] i need to tell you this while i still can now it looks like here there's a couple riff parts that also on the track so i'm going to assign those as well and then just really focus on what we have because these are the noodle parts that are going in between the lines of the vocal which i think are really important let's hear it [Music] pretty cool let's pull that back do the same part and ride this in [Music] try it again [Music] pretty good it's a little hot let me take that down to half db and move on to the next buggers [Music] like that one [Music] as of right now we've got the drums we have the acoustic guitars and some of the fun instruments like the piano and the roads and stuff now with the bass i usually like to go off the bus as well just because it's easy and it's handy and i can focus on that for the bass guitar i don't hear a ton of movement but i actually want to raise it with the drums so the drums don't feel like they're getting too loud so by doing that it creates the same movement as the drums and the guitar and everything kind of goes in harmony versus it bringing in and out now it's that breathing pattern you're gonna end up hearing and it'll probably only be at the very most like a 0.7 db change so let's take it from the top in a time when we want it all everything's so fast right it takes no time to call [Music] to slow down oh i pray [Music] i'm so glad i found the old-fashioned way first chorus [Music] i need to tell you this while i still can bring it down [Music] dark and warm summer night i much prefer it to the bright blue light i feel the need to say [Music] [Music] coming up to the chorus [Music] feel the weight as the words [Music] my mind moves too fast for my hair i need to tell you this while i still can and the first thing i want to do is talk a little bit about what i was doing here now i feel like relative wise that it's creating this hug now the song is breathing in and out slowly but the drums are starting to lift the bass is lifting the acoustic guitar is lifting the movement it's alive that's basically the most important thing in a mix is not being static we don't want to be static we want it to be alive we want it to sound alive so when you're playing by yourself you can create these little elements of aliveness that will create space because you'll come in you'll bring this in you'll pull this out and then you'll transition between verse to chorus what this is allowing me to do is create a glue without having to add a bunch of plug-ins that sonically aren't going to help you now the problem with a lot of people you put on plug-ins thinking you're going to need to change the sound when in reality you don't need to you're just trying to glue the mix somehow so you put a compressor on it or a tape saturator and that's fine but if you don't want that that artifact then you can just really dive in and focus on automation so by practicing and trying to create the breathing aspect of an automation approach you're gonna really really dive in and get your mixes to sound a lot more alive before we jump in the vocal i want to look at the electric guitar now i already did an automation point on the send so what you see here now is an automation point i've already done with the guitar delay send now the guitar is hard left and i'm trying to create some kind of movement on the right so i put a delay with a ton of feedback tape delay with a ton of feedback that's creating this really cool kind of spacious sound and i'm automating that so if you look here let's just take this here i'm going to play this section alone with and without the automation that i put in here so this is without [Music] put the automation back in and i'm gonna bring it up a little bit feel the weight as the words sink in [Music] my mind moves too fast for my hair [Music] i need to tell you this while i still can [Music] now you saw that that what that did was create a lot of depth in the delay by ducking it and coming up and down now this is a perfect time to talk about transitions and this is how we can transition to the transition talk after that part it goes into the breakdown and in the breakdown there is an element that i felt that just ended up kind of making everything flat sounding so how do i transition from a guitar epic spatial thing to a smaller thing without just taking off reverb and turning down stuff panning so what i did here for the transition was i threw the guitar delay to the right to match where it was at on the track because the guitar itself was playing left and i wanted to take the delay and take it and sweep it over so we ended up doing an automation here if you see without it it goes like this [Music] it stays over with the acoustic guitar which makes you not really [Music] it just doesn't make you really lean in and kind of what's happening here you're kind of just focusing on the guitar and the delay gets lost in that so if i take that off if i put this back in watch how the delay just goes and shifts over to this side [Music] super subtle stuff and that's actually important because you don't want things to be so drastic that they become annoying or aggressive so your little subtle stuff you start adding up 30 subtle things and it becomes a really cool big deal a melting pot of subtleness you know let's move into the next part of the transitions with me i like to do some sub hits on the choruses of the ones on the drums just to get some kind of hit and sometimes that's more for the low end hit and sometimes it's for the distortion artifact that the limiter imparts on stuff that has 30 hertz and that actually adds a little bit of energy too so i'm going to duplicate the kick here and i'm going to minimize only the ones on the courses there's only two courses for this song so it should be pretty easy so here's the whole drum set so you hear that what it's doing [Music] now without now let's flop the phase [Music] same part of the second part let's hear it in the [Music] i'll track to you with ink from a pen [Music] feel the weight as the words now we're coming up to the second part of the course [Music] great now those are my transitions for the choruses and now i want to do my volume automation on my master bus now for here for this demonstration i'm just going to use my pre print track master fader and bring down everything so everything is going to be set at zero the chorus loudest is going to be obviously zero and the verses i'm going to bring down just a little bit behind it [Music] i'm so glad i found oh this is going to transition going in from verse to chorus [Music] hearing it now it's opening up a bit i'm going to take this down again for the verse [Music] let's just bring it down 0.5 and i'm going to slope it to the chorus again to the bright blue light i feel the need to say [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way coming into the last chorus do a little slower where it's going to center it middle of this breakdown and then come up again [Music] [Music] i'm so glad i found [Music] very subtle but it's actually creating the element now before i jump into the vocals i want to you know give you a little background of my epiphany when i was working under bill schneid the biggest thing i learned from him was this approach of vocals always sitting forward and leaning forward and the sustain of specific words going into the next phrase and being able to create this incredible vocal performance that wasn't there before it was there at the end of phrases he was able to grab vocals really cool where they were just leaning in and how he did that was kind of every phrase he would just dip up and sustain the last note [Music] here we go [Music] jagged metronome of typoradic keys a simple thought brings you to me and i'm thankful every day [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way [Music] in a time when we wanted all [Music] [Music] [Music] to slow down all i pray [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way [Music] feel the weight as the words sink in [Music] my mind moves too fast for my hands i need to tell you this while i still can into the second verse i feel the need to say i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way [Music] i'll write to you it [Music] i'll write to you with ink from a pen [Music] i'll write to you with ink from a pen [Music] feel the weight as the words [Music] my mind moves my mind moves too fast for my head [Music] i need to tell you this while i still can jagged metronome [Music] jagged metronome of typewriter keys another page done my soul readies and i'm thankful for [Music] and i'm thankful every day [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way all right 10 percent rule so what's going on here what exactly was i learning what am i seeing when i was watching bill schnee he was lifting dynamic automation at the end of lines to kind of extend them and in a way he was playing the instrument as a mixer which i think is an incredibly smart move and after you do that after you process it with compression and stuff you want to add a life again back to it so it doesn't sound so flat you're creating your own version of what you hear the vocalist coming in and out of the performance and he's lifting each phrase at the end to sustain these lines and what it does is it creates this magical automation vortex where everything has depth and it's moving and it's breathing and it just sounds freaking awesome so now that we have the mix kind of ready and set i want to actually just do a quick print of both and then do a quick a b playback of one without automation and one with automation i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way [Music] i'll write to [Music] same place and here is now the automated mix going from the verse into the chorus [Music] [Music] [Music] back to the non-automation [Music] [Music] i need to tell you this while i still can [Music] back to non-automation [Music] jagged metronome of type key automation another page done my soul [Music] [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way now with automation and transitions they're really subtle what you're doing is db moves up and down not really anything when it comes to anything aggressive you're sustaining vocals you're bringing up licks you're bringing up drum hits you're creating transitions with panning elements automation of whole areas down lifting whole areas like courses up and it makes a huge difference i'm going to include both of these in the multi-tracks here you can mix the song have fun create your own mix but listen to the non-automated version and the automated version all the way through and just hear what it's doing because it's not just volume it's the breathing aspect of what it's creating it's not the fact that the vocals are louder because if you hear it so is the guitars at times so is the drums at times the bass licks that are coming in and out are louder it's a huge difference in fact it's one of the biggest secrets i know and it's the most well-known secret out there automation is king just a lot of people don't really understand how to create that sort of build so i figured this is a perfect way to showcase that without having to go in and worry about anything but the automation the mix was there it sounded great before it but how do we take it up another step in the box enjoy it i'm going to take it from the verse going into the course again and just again listen to how it's motivating you to feel like it's an alive mix thanks for watching [Music] i'm so glad i found you the old-fashioned way write to you

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 80,706

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio

Id: 123mrzYiBj8

Length: 38min 42sec (2322 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021