How Sermons are Mixed at Elevation Church

come on brace him in this moment God inhabits the praises of his people he dwells in the midst of grace he dwells in the midst of hallelujah he dwell come on brace him in this moment god inhabits the praises of his people he dwells in the midst of race he dwells in the midst of hallelujah hear the difference let's dig into that hello my name is Ryan monnet I am a post-production audio engineer for elevation Church in Charlotte North Carolina and for the past several years one of my main responsibilities on staff has been mixing every single sermon that elevation Church has made available to watch and/or listen to on our podcast online and TV now what will I be sharing well at the beginning of this video you saw and heard a short clip of a sermon that actually transitioned from a captured front-of-house mix into my post-production mix showing you the difference that can be made when you mix for broadcasts and so with that the intent of this video is to show you how I make sermons or live events for broadcast but mainly my thought process behind the decisions that I make now real quick before we start mixing I want to share with you the vision behind this video this video is not intended to be a you should fill in the blank where I'm telling you you should do this and you should do this no not at all this video is me saying hey this is how I fill in the blank but mainly expressing my thought process behind the decisions that I make when mixing for broadcast so I really hope that this video inspires you gives you some food for thought some fresh perspective and new ideas when you're mixing sermons or live events for broadcast oh and one more thing really quickly before we dive into mixing I know you're curious about gear what do we use to capture edit and mix so I'm gonna go through that really really quickly just to give you context before we start mixing we capture our sermons at our broadcast campus on a Mac Pro computer with a maddie interface running Pro Tools and the real secret sauce to our capture r8a are short for audience response microphones scattered throughout the auditorium now when I edit I'm back in my office at our central location on a Mac Pro computer with folk a solo six monitors an Apollo duo audio interface I edit and mix in Pro Tools and help with automation I use an avid artist control and mix and the plugins that I primarily use our waves fabfilter in iZotope now I breeze by all of that really quickly because the principles in this video can still apply to whatever computer audio interface D aw plugins that you have whatever you have it's great don't let the gear that you do or don't have crippled you this video is not about the what but about the how and the why you have what it takes now let's get mixing alright so what I've just opened up is a template that I have created to help me streamline the process when I mix sermons so this template is already laid out with all the tracks that I need all the plugins that I need that I typically use and all the settings are for the most part dialed in depending on if Pastor uses a headset or handheld pastor will primarily use a handheld microphone so all the plugins are set for that but if he uses a headset I can just make a few tweaks and whatnot and it's pretty simple to do but I have this template created which really helps me streamline the process and get everything going so we're gonna dive into this template that I've created I'll get into how I've routed everything how I've organized everything the plugins that I use and the thought process behind all of what I use so let's get started with my process of after I open up the template so I'm in the template here the first thing you might notice right up here is the timecode with my playhead all the way at the beginning of the session you'll notice it's at 7 hours the reason for this is at our broadcast location our Ballentine campus we record to timecode and normally on a Sunday we'll have a run-through before our 9:30 experience so this session is created so that if anything is recorded when I spot the clips to their to their timecode where they belong in the session so everything lines up that way I just don't have nine hours of empty space before the content that I'm mixing so it just helps me keep this session tidy one other thing you might notice if I scroll up here is I have these blank AR channels which is where I'll put the AR that I've record for the weekend that'll go there but up here these are some samples that we have pre-recorded from our last live recording in the same auditorium so it they have a very similar sound to something that might happen on the weekend and the reason for this I can get into a little bit later but these are not to add any false applause or something that isn't there no these are just to help supplement what is there sometimes I may have to automate the actual AR down if pastor's getting really loud and it's overbearing in the room that's when I'll use these samples to kind of fill in that gap where I may have to duck the actual AR so it just supplements it and fills it in in a nice way it's just very tasteful and I have several samples here going from light applause to average applause to very aggressive applause and to even more of a war or cheer so I had those at my disposal to use as supplementation when I'm mixing alright now the first thing I'll do after I've opened this template is I will import the files the audio files that I need to mix primarily this is the AR channels pastures mic a mix - and drum mix and just to go over that real quick I'm what we call mix - is basically the wet mix what our web engineer is mixing - for the live broadcast as the experience happens to be online that is his mix - any vocals or anything vocal loop related that way I can have just the band underneath pasture where pasture is talking in the band is still there padding or at the end of the sermon where the sermon climb is and the band is really hyping up I have a mix - and a drum track because our our drums are separate from the the rest of the instrumentation here on the mix - track just because of certain routing things that we needed to do at our broadcast location for the web engineer so these are primarily the tracks that I'm going to need the AR faster mix- and drum so I've already copied those files from our Valentine recording computer here to my local computer so what I like to do if I go if I go into finder here this is how I like to organize my folders and whatnot I have a folder right here this w/e 1711 that is the actual weekend this the 11th week of 2017 and what I like to do is I like to copy all the audio files that I need into their own folder this way if I need to reference them for later for archival reasons they're there in their own folder and so what I'll do is I'll just grab all the track's that I need and I'll just simply just drag them into the session right here alright so as you can see these are in here they're below that this master right here so what I'll do is I'll just take these a are channels a1 through d2 just drag them on up to their respected AR tracks that I've created in the template the mix - - the mix - track pass her to his respected track I'll take the what we call web drums and those will go here on the drum track and get rid of these tracks these empty tracks that we don't need now everything's in its designated spot but the next step of the process is you'll notice I just randomly threw them up in their tracks and I mean even if you take a glance here you'll see like I've got gaps things aren't lined up well that's where like I mentioned before we record - timecode so if I go into spot mode here and I click I've got all my er groups so if I just click them I have the option here to spot these two the original time stamp so that's what I'll do I'll click this arrow right here it'll make their start time where they were recorded on the timeline OOP there they go and I'll do that with everything else so everything here is now aligned to where it was recorded so everything is in sync I don't have to worry about anything about the band being out of sync with pastor or pastor with the audience Mike's everything now is in see the next step that I'll do in the process here is also at our broadcast location while they record to help me when I mix the recording engineer at our broadcast location we'll add markers such as that to parts of the sermon where there might be applause like right here or you can see there might be some applause right here or right here in this AR mics that that guy right there you can hear that applause so to help me streamline my process of mixing and editing the recording engineer will add markers where little a our samples happen where people laugh or clap so the next step of the process for me is to import those markers from session data on that recording session so I'll go into record session data and I'll navigate to that computer and import those markers right now I have it already set up that I have them on a different session so I'll just take tutorial markers import this what I do is I do not want to import any actual audio files but just the markers so that's what I'll do I'll select that and look at that those markers appear right where I need them in relation again because everything's locked a timecode and spotted those markers are where they need to be so you'll see a good example here so this L stands for laughter you can see a little bump right here in the waveform so if I listen there's some laughter so that helps me go through when I'm editing when I'm going from left to right here in the sermon working my way through it I can know where to jump so I can automate and so I don't have to listen to the entire thing and take excessive amount of hours just to look for listen to spots in the sermon and try and hunt these down I can already know where they're at and it really helps streamline the process now the next step in the process for me if you've ever listened to our sermons you know that the sermons just kind of jump in right when Pastor starts his message and then we end as soon as he's done but this recording you'll notice right here there's a lot a lot of nothing right there and nothing right here but that's because this entire read is the whole experience so I will go through and find where the sermon actually starts let's say I've already determined that I'll go through and just kind of clean up my session here and get rid of everything that I don't need so I'll set what we call in and out points again I'm just doing this very quickly so we'll just arbitrarily say that's what our sermon looks like and I also get these approved with someone who is over this and that way when I export this and send it to our video team there's no hesitation between teams like where the in and out point is this is a termined by me and then approved by a supervisor saying ok yes those are good in and out points and then the mix that I export sending to video they will base their video in and out points based off of what they get from me so I'll add some fades to the beginning and end that's the next part of the process also the next part of the process I would go through and kind of clean up the mix - in the drums here so I might go through and and solo these and and listen like obviously hear that there's no band there so any of this bleed that we might be getting from the audience in some drum mics or we have an organ any bleed that we might get in there I just want to go through and clean that up and see maybe where things are being played so so you can see that was pastor coming through so I'll go through and clean all this stuff up clean up any bleed just to help make it tight here's some organ right there and right there but it's also we have something like audience bleed right there so I'll go through things like this and just tidy it up now that fade may have sounded aggressive but in the context of the mix you won't even notice it so I'll go through and do that and that'll be the first steps of the process when it comes to editing so after I've got the mix - and the drums cleaned up now I'll go through and actually start editing and for me the editing process is the lengthiest process because what I will do is I'll start at the beginning here I'll start at the beginning and I'll just work my way to the right and the timeline and just go through these markers basically and see where I need to automate automation is is the bulk of the work here you can already add a glance and you've probably noticed this before see this waveform and see okay here's an average pastor talking level maybe a little bit lower here but still pretty average same right here but then we've got these moments right here where that dynamic range is incredibly huge and different so the bulk of my work will be going through and automating this what I like to do is clip gain moments like this maybe drag a whole thing down kind of even it out something like this and I'm doing this clip gaining as opposed to just relying on compressors before I start editing why don't I go ahead and show you some of my routing here so showing you where all of these tracks are going and all these tracks are going you may have noticed that I've got some busses here and what what are all of these tracks right here what is this what are these guys so I'm gonna go through that and then along with that I'm gonna go through the plugins that I use before I actually start editing to give you some context here so as I mentioned before I have this session already laid out and already set to go with the plugins that I like to use and I'm just gonna work my way from left to right here showing you what's what where everything's going why I have things going in certain directions the plugins that I use why I use them and again remember this is just how I do things there is no right or wrong way to do this you may see something like here on pastor's channel and say like okay I got a compressor here a compressor here another compressor here why are using so many compressors why are using so many Q's again this is just something that I like to do it's something that works for me there is no right or wrong it's just whatever works for you and your situation your circumstance and this is what I found works for me these AR samples here they are a through AR I are going to a bus where they just hold all the samples as a stereo track basically you can see right here their outputs are AR Sampath to the input of a or Sam go into AR and this AR output is a basically a master AR bus where it holds all the AR okay so and these the AR 1 through 8 those are these tracks right here so remember we have the actual live recording and then we have these samples up here to supplement areas where there might be applause where I have to automate down because pasture is extremely loud again I can get into that later when I'm actually mixing you'll notice too that I just have all these AR mics panhard left and right so this would be something that a are one for example would be on audience left AR two would be audience right and these are positions from front to back of the auditorium - AR one through six are actually all on the stage AR 7 & 8 are at front-of-house pointing backwards to the rear of the room with the line array behind so out of the polar pattern range and speaking of range and what might be picking up in the air mics let's go through so these first a AR mics or the only AAR mics are going to this AR bus you can see they're going to a our mics air mic sits right here and then this will be going to our AR master I have just some slight processing here on these AR tracks I start with just a glorified pretty much high-pass filter and then ducking out so the some of these mid range areas where pastors body might be just ducking them out of of those audience mics I have the high-pass set at 300 with an aggressive slope why because in your audience mics you don't need any of that information the majority of the content you're getting are just some of the the room reverb but mainly you're getting applause and laughter none of that happens down here so we don't need any of that there's no use in wasting that energy next I have some more EQ I'm just knocking out some areas where pastor's voice may be present in the AR mics I'll touch on this a lot but pastor specifically has a very heightened sibilance range right around 4k almost a kind of whistle if you will and so that's an area where I pay special attention to really kind of duck out there in the AR mics and then later in his channel as well next I'll go through and speaking of sibilance I'll D s just a hair on these AR mics where pastors SS might poke through just a little bit excessively it's very subtle next I also have a limiter this is just to protect me from clipping but I use it mainly as a gain stage here to kind of to bump up this these AR mics to a level that blends well with pastor's mic now we we like going for a live sound I always like to have the listener feel like they are immersed in the experience so for me that involves having the listener feel like they're in the room and if I had the AR mics very low and the majority of the content that you heard was just pastor's voice it would sound very isolated and not immersive it it would kind of remove you so for me blending into AR so that I get this natural room reverb really helps immerse you in the experience making you feel like you're there okay so next all of these AR go to this AR master right here where I have the waves Center plug-in and a stereo imager this is two in the center I just kind of duck out the center here to make space in the stereo spectrum for pastors vocal to be just right I saved the Center for pastors vocal you can see here on his channel and on his auxiliary channel I have it pan straight up the middle that's just for the stereo spectrum to help pastor poke through the middle and have everything else kind of just like wrapped around the sides and save that energy for pastor for the middle and everything else elsewhere so stereo imager I just widened that that audience spectrum just a little bit nothing crazy again another limiter just for precaution in case anything is getting close to zero it it doesn't often but it's just there just as a precaution okay you'll notice here too on a couple of these tracks such as they are all sermon and band I have here in the common stem what we like to do because a lot of our our content gets used for videos but not only just a sermon podcast or TV show we use sermon clips in other sorts of videos as well sometimes we may have a video that uses sermon content in an area where a pastor is really loud and there's a band behind him but in the video we have a music track and if we just use the stereo mix of the sermon it'll have the band in it and that will clash with the background music of whatever video is being produced so we like to export stems when I when I export the mix I export stems as well that's a feature you can do in Pro Tools where you export your mix and then you can also mix export the certain outputs so what I do is is I had things routed to these to these tracks to these buses and when I export I will export from their inputs so a our sermon and band when I export from the monitor left and right the stereo mix I'll also include these three as well so that way our our video editors have options if they do end up editing some video with some sermon content where there might be something that they just want pastor's mic but its treated as well instead of just grabbing the raw audio it's already treated already mixed yes so that that is the reasoning behind that that is how I have everything routed and while I'm at it you'll notice these three tracks are going to what I call the premix this is basically where I just do some some somewhat mastering ish type of processing last minute before I just go to the master fader monaster basically alright let's move into pasture we'll spend some time here the first thing I usually do is just start off with a glorified high-pass filter nothing too high it's not a vocal in a mix with a band or a song so I don't have it set too high because this is spoken audio this is mainly just dialogue and audience mics so I don't want to suck out too much of the low-end energy we like to have a nice full sound for pastures voice so that's the reasoning behind that again do whatever is required with your mix this is just what I do for our purposes now next I'll compress nothing too crazy here a middle attack nothing too fast or too slow the released is very fast though so you don't hear letting go a note with any like waves analog type plugins unless you're mixing music and it's a style you're going for I will typically always turn the analog feature off because that just produces unnecessary noise some line noise or hiss and I don't really want that in this type of of scenario next part of the process for me is some EQ again just notching out some of those areas that are undesirable moving on down I'll do some more compression that's this guy right here again not a crazy fast attack but a fast release I do add some make up gain here just to just to bring it up just a hair nothing crazy you'll see it's what 4 dB yeah nothing crazy and speaking of 4 dB I had this threshold set so that at its loudest I'm not compressing more than 4 dB it's very subtle compression the most amount of compression will come from this first compressor but as I'm clip gaining I won't allow more than minus 10 DB of compression that's the reasoning for the clip gaining so you'll notice in an area like this where it's really loud on the cross that's where my second guessing and second giving set guys going crazy but if you look over here where I already did some clip gaining I need somebody who travels 6 hours or more to know so that helps it for me sound a little bit more true and you're not relying solely on a compressor you have more control on what you want to do so an area like this where it this so I might do something like like this where it's more gradual you don't hear it coming but does like this you see the difference there so that's that's what I'll spend the majority of my time again going through this entire sermon clip gaining pastor's track and then I'll get into it later but along with that I'll go through and automate the AR as well and how I do that so now going back to our mix page just working our way down again I will des pastor because he does have that somewhat harsh sibilance I love the fabfilter proteus it is a very great Deezer plugin next I'll use a multiband compressor to hone in on some certain areas and compress them a little bit differently you'll notice I have somewhat of a shape here based off of this yellow line I do like to boost this low-end just to here 1 and a 1/2 DB is nothing like you can hardly hear that but for me it helps kind of boost up just a little bit of that like low body energy we like to have pastor's voice sounding very full so this kind of helps with that but I'm also taming it with this compressor guy they thought this is it but heaven is watching and saying so you can see how I'm compressing here with a somewhat fast but mild attack just taming it so it's not all excessively just low-end wolf enos and I'll do that specifically for each band as well then I also have these narrower bands where I'll hone in on certain areas and treat them specifically so I love the multiband compressor I love the c6 I'll use that for something else later on that I can get into right here you'll notice this one has a sidechain on it ooh what is that I'll get into that here in a minute we're going my way through I love the waves noise suppressor this is to help in areas such as where there might be gaps like right here where nothing's happening but some AR but what I like to do is select this area right here where it might be quiet I might solo pasture out here and just kind of play it and loop it and this is where I will kind of adjust these settings right here so that these thresholds for these certain frequencies kind of line up too with the noise floor so this is just some general like hiss some line noise maybe some air in the auditorium I'll kind of tweak that and then for me I'll find an area where a pastor may be at is quietest and play that and that's where all injustice is confusing this threshold is not supposed in like this so that it opens up and the cross is confusing because so that it opens up where pastor maybe at is quietest so we're not missing any content I usually have just a dis me control here I have it right in the middle just to help it's not fast it's not quick it's not super slow it's right in the middle that's just the way that I like to have it again this is just how I do things but I'm letting you know the reasoning behind it so I'll use this noise suppressor to just clean up some just a little bit of that hiss I'm going back to our mix window working our way down just some more EQ again just getting maybe a little bit more specific I love the pro q2 by a fab filter again just more EQ notches here and there you'll notice all of my EQ is subtractive this is very intentional I don't like to add anything with the EQ with the exception of that c6 where I'm added just a hair on the low end but all of my EQ is all subtractive I'm just getting rid of the information that I don't want that is harsh I'm just getting rid of it next I'll have a limiter this is where I might bring pasteur up just a little bit 6 dB this will be a little bit more important when I get into loudness that is when we start to get into this loudness meter here I'll get into that here in a moment working my way to the right I have passed you're going to a bus I have this pan just straight up the middle it is a it is a stereo track but I'm treating it as mono here's where I might have some more Processing's again that 4k range is very harsh so I'll treat it just to hear more I can get a little OCD and go down a rabbit trail of frequencies that I hear that stand out to me and at a certain point I just need to to let go and say okay the sound sounds great but then I might hear one thing and then just oh gosh chase it down the rabbit trail some very slight compression again not a fast super fast attack hardly any any makeup gained 2 dB at most this is hardly doing anything it's very subtle the key is subtlety here again we're not relying on our compressors so much as we are clip gaining these louder areas kind of averaging out our level here so that when we're not relying solely on the compressor it gives it a more natural sound for me now I've got some bus here I'm sending to bus seven which is going to a side chain here in the band I can get into that when we get to that track but I'm also sending to a verb I'm actually sending to two reverbs here so again like I talked about earlier I do want the listener to feel immersed in the experience so for me that is adding just a hair you know you'll notice like this one I have down seven DB this one down two DB they're very subtle but it's to just bridge some of those gaps where maybe some of the noise suppression might be taking something out of pastor's mic or when I have to automate our AR mics down in louder moments such as such as here I may have to automate this AR down because you can see a lot of pastors content in our audience mics so I might have to automate this track down and with that you'll you notice applause right here but if I have it down right here it's not gonna sound natural so again that is where those AR samples come into place oh gosh you know I might use something like like this guy right here kind of put them in this gap so gab do it subtly so so it blends nicely eh again I'm just rushing through this but to give you a general idea but again so that just adds AR but this dip right here removes some of that room reverb that natural reverb so I kind of make it up here with these two guys we have two different reverbs that I like this one's more of a arena type vibe where it's got some lower frequency content and I do kind of dip some of that out but it gives it a nice full reverb with a very long tail much like I did with our AR I'm also widening it the same amount so that it blends well with our AR mics the stereo spectrum I've got this stereo imager on both of these reverbs moving on to this next reverb this reverb right here is more true to the actual sound of our auditorium it's it's a little bit shorter you can see then this first one so it sounds a little bit more true to the actual room reverb that we're recording and this does help with areas like this where it's filling in kind of those gaps where I may be dipping the AR down moving on next is the sermon master bus again just like this AR master bus this is to help with exporting stems I have a limiter here just as safety just as insurance for the peace of mind next we have our mix - and the the drum mix here which are these two guys that I showed you earlier you can see them right there I'm not doing anything on those because I had them going to this band band Z because that's hip right that was lame I'm sorry - this band bus and the reason why I have I'm not taking a stem off this band bus is because I'm doing so much processing on it and when I take a stem for a bus I'm taking the input every everything that's going so I need this band to go to a separate track where there's not any processing because if I were to take a stem of this track it would be from this end point because if I sent if I didn't have this master bus for the band if I took that this output this output would be the premix and then it would be this including all this stuff going into the premix does that make sense I hope so so that is why I had the routing the way it is because if I took this input I would be missing all of this processing that I'm doing here on these two mix - tracks I have some subtle EQ just dipping this range where pastor's body might be so it doesn't clash with the band I'm doing somewhat of subtle mastering to the band nothing too aggressive maybe just dipping this range here in the band adding a little bit of air here nothing huge with this like look a DB and a half of gain reduction possible so nothing crazy very subtle this attack time is very slow so again very subtle I do some buss compression again very subtle slow attack automatic release I do add some make up gain here nothing crazy no more than 4 DB and I'm not compressing anything more than 4 DB it's very subtle compression next I like to use iZotope final mix Rx final mix this helps as the preset says space for dialogue so right here it'll it won't just notch out like an EQ but it'll compress the this area of the mix - in this range where dialogue might be present so that way pastor can sit in this frequency spectrum and the band can live nice and full down here where pastor's voice won't be anything below 100 and add some air - maybe like the cymbals or anything up there now next we can get into this c6 sidechain this is what I was talking to earlier about this bus right here that's coming from pastures to track his dialogue bus you'll notice here something very different between this c6 and this c6 it's a little bit more specific with just these two specific ranges and you'll notice right here at the bottom this setting right here next to sidechain is set to external if you look right here this key input is set to buss 7 so the content sending out of this bus on pastures track is triggering this multiband compressor in these 2 bands which are set to external looking at this key input so basically this multi band on my mix - my band here this will compress in these ranges where pastors voice is a little bit present much like what this file mix is doing except it is triggered by pastor's voice so only when Pastor is caucuses that's a little excessive because I have yet to click gain this area but you can see maybe an area where the bands not playing oh said if there's any comfort from being United with Christ what she's drawn across how that is compressing based off of what pastor is doing so this this is a a way in a trick for me that I can get into in another tutorial where I teach how I like to mix voiceover with a music bed this is a little trick that I use to notch out areas in the music better backing tract where the vocal may be present but it's not ich Ewing it out so it's out permanently it's only out when the dialogue is happening it's a little trick I like to do and generally I'll have a very fast attack and and fast release so we don't hear it happening so that is what that is and again that is right here on our band master next I like to do just what I did for this AR track right here I like to use the center plugin to dip out no more than 3 and 1/2 DB from the center maybe put some low-end energy just a hair out on the side same with the highs and punch just tuck it out to the sides so that we save the center content for pastors actual dialogue and we can send everything to the side so we have this nice wide spectrum but nothing's clashing and again I'll use this stereo the s1 imager this is even more subtle than they are at 1.15 just to widen it just a hair next I'll have this limiter not doing much at all maybe just honing this in so that it blends well with where pastors dialog is sitting at and again just this out ceiling at minus point 1 just as insurance so nothing clips nothing's hitting the red and then that is going to this band master here which is what I use for the stem and that is going to our premix to where I am doing some somewhat mastering the overall mix this EQ right here on the overall mix I have my mix routed to not only my vocal speakers here in my office but I also can switch it so that I listen to my mix on a TV because I know that eventually this sermon will find its way on TV and because of that I like to hear it from a TV what the the viewers will be hearing it on typically so I had this routed to the TV and these are some of those areas that might poke out on just a generic TV speaker set so I'll just gradually notch those out look at a DB and a half nothing crazy again everything on this premix track right here is going to be very subtle this compression right here the threshold is super low it's it's maybe not even compressing more than 2 or 3 dB no make up gain a very subtle attack an automatic release and again just like every analog type plug-in I have the analog off to get rid of any of that gear noise that it's trying to simulate alright now I can get into this wlm meter which is on pastor's sermon as well like I just mentioned I'm gonna bring this down right now this is the waves loudness meter as I just mentioned I know that this sermon will eventually find its way on TV and if you've ever mixed for TV you will know that TV has very strict loudness regulations not level not not DB but loudness perceived loudness is very different than dbfs which is what I'm metering at right here but this is perceived loudness very different so I will have these up you notice I brought it down from another screen I have another screen open to where I can always monitor these things because I know that this mix will eventually find its way on TV so I typically want to mix to where my overall loudness is somewhat close to the specifications that are needed for TV which is generally a long-term of minus 24 l KF s he really is who he says he is so you can see how can he be that's right around to die that area you can see in the short short term that's right around that area the road when the one who say you can see I'm an averaging side them approximately where I the nose would be at this minus 24 that I mention see there's a green check the wrong so I just like to keep an eye on that wallet mixing now for this actual sermon mix while I am keeping an eye on it I will not be crazy strict because I know when I mix TV I'll have a separate session for that and that's where I can be a little bit more strict but because I know this is going to go on YouTube and an audio podcast or video podcast as well I am okay with it being a little bit more dynamic for those purposes because for YouTube or an audio podcast you are okay with being close to 0 dbfs and getting away with it and it sounding great but this is also to help me just like have an idea and see where my average loudness is you know it might be very different at a moment like this as opposed to a moment like this I mean you can see that again I haven't clip gained or automated this at all yet so again that's just the general idea behind what this plug-in is doing for me just so I can have a general idea of where my loudness is sitting at so it can be approximately in a close range to when I eventually do touch this up for TV in a separate session the last two things here on this premix are in l2 where I am because of this loudness meter right here the the average loudness around that minus 24 range won't have you'll see here if I look at this band so this premix is after this limiter and you'll notice here that the band the level there is quite lower than it is here so this band is feeding this loudness meter before it's going into this limiter and you can see it's pretty close to the the this average for TV but because this is going to be used online and for a podcast I do want to have my overall mix if I were to unsolo this be it's time for me to tell you that I do want to have this close to 0 dbfs and to do that I will need to bring it up a little bit usually around 7 DB is what I've found in in these mixes so I'll use this this l2 to not only be a final like protection limiter but also gain it up so that I'm a little closer to this target range for mixing for web and then finally I have another final mix now I kind of tweaked a template that they had called laptop again I'm that a lot of people are going to be listening to this on a laptop on on a computer or also on iPhone or iPod earbuds and so because of that specific frequency range right in this middle here might be a little harsh much like it was when I'm tweaked this EQ for the TV so this final mix here is doing a similar thing to that EQ but again just compressing those areas as opposed to notching it out like an EQ I have it set subtly so that it's not too crazy and then I add a hair of make up gain where it is notching those out and then this again is a very very final limiter so that nothing will peak over half a DB from there the premix is done and it's just going to our our master this l2 is again more insurance because I'm paranoid so that is how everything is laid out so that you know now I can get to editing so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna as I've already kind of expressed with you how I go through from left to right and I'll work my way through and clip gain pasture and I'll automatically artists mix mainly for automating specifically automate they are as I did here I don't like to add nodes by hand and automate a are because that'll sound a little bit artificial what I like to do is if I go into my you control settings here I can assign this fader specifically for this AR track so if I go back now the Pro Tools this AR track will be controlled by this artist mix right here and the fader that I assigned it to if you notice my layout here I'm I'm using my mouse with my right hand here that's this fader right here right next to my hand so I can move very quick I'll go through edit and if I'm on a spot like this and want to just go through an automated quick I can just grab this finger looking at Luke 24 these two people you can see how it automated so I'll go through a moment let's find a spot of applause right here where pasture is pretty average this will be kind of what it looks like what I'm doing I'll be going through if there was something that they got grabbed as Vader there get from you write it up just like that gradually bring down the pain so you can see there that's what I've done to make it sound a little bit more natural as opposed to something like this where it's that it just wouldn't feel right again the key here to mixing is subtlety and I don't want to take you out of the experience so I don't want anything to catch your ear in a bad way anything that's jarring so I do things very subtly and I like to do it by hand by touch by feel to give it that intimate and personal feeling to it so here's what our session looks like right now I'm gonna cut and then we're gonna come back to what the session will look like when I'm done mixing and editing three hours later all right and here we are with a completed sermon edit and mix you'll notice as I mentioned I worked my way through from left to right beginning to end of the sermon automating pastors clip gain I did that by hand by creating little nodes here and dragging them down in the heightened areas in ways that sound natural again I just came Devery thing a little bit so it wasn't too excessive and so the compressor wasn't working too hard I oughta mated the AR up in areas where God is people may say Amen or clap or laugh in Hebrew and these little snippets right here are the organ that I was talking about and all my downs that was very subtle let me find something here here we go I believe Joseph's Angels such that little organ hit and remember how I mentioned that Fane might have sounded aggressive by itself but in context of legions of angels just blends right in so nice you can hear great stereo imaging here with the AR and one thing I'd like to touch on real quick is that subtlety that I mentioned so you'll notice that I have these AR samples here supplementing where I had to dip the AR down but if I mute this AR if I let this play and I'll toggle the mute for this AR you'll hear just how subtle it is I'm not relying on these samples I'm just using it to fill in those little gaps [Applause] feel something happening in your heart right now that's just so it's subtle it could be more subtle in some areas and more helpful in some areas where pastors really digging into it and because I have the AR Solo in in this bus I need to make up for it a little bit up here do you believe that can you receive this this is a hard thing so you could hear the natural AR but then this kind of filled in those gaps to make it feel a little bit more lively in full where I had to duck it out so again that's the purpose behind these samples I'm not adding them anywhere where there isn't applause I'm not making you think people are getting hyper crazy when they're not know it's just supplementing what's already there and again the way I automated the AR is by hand by the fader by the artist mix there's plenty of fader controllers that you can buy for cheap that are just one fader I like to do it but I mean you don't even have to do it this way you can you can you can drag this guy in right here and if you're playing you can you can grab the fader on what happened on the cross write it that way to give it that feel see I'm an see it I just did that right there so again I like to just do it by touch it makes it feel great I've got the band here mixed in with pastor you can see how far I have everything dipped in the AR and with pastor so I had these AR samples here to blend it let's take a listen to this spot complete me I am complete cross of Jesus Christ where England is still flowing today and is flowing through me come on give him 60 seconds to praise falling drop [Music] so there you can hear a lot of what I talked about in practice I'll even show you what this sidechain is doing right here this moment I am complete Jesus you can't even hear the band ducking in this moment but it's helping Pastor pop just a little bit and then lastly before I wrap this up again I just want to express the importance of when I'm mixing of just referencing a loudness meter again I don't make myself stick to it so strictly when I'm mixing initially this sermon because I know it's gonna go on again online in podcast and all of those platforms but for TV I want to have it generally close enough well years ago with my dad and somebody gave me good advice I said don't tell a lot of people what you're going through so again I'm not allowing myself to be too strict but you can see generally how it's right around this average level and I can't stress the importance of this enough let me give you a scenario why so before I was on staff at elevation I would listen to the podcast in my car as I was driving to work and there would be moments where pastors whispering and I'd have to turn the the the level up on my car radio but then he'd start screaming and then I'd have to turn it down and that pulled me out of the experience that distracted me because now I was distracted with where my radio knob was that it was pulling me out of something that I could have gotten from this sermon that I may have missed because I was thinking about a knob now imagine the the the the the single mother who's at home taking care of her kid who may have this on TV while she's doing the dishes or something like that if there's a moment where pastor's quiet or something she may miss something life-changing so for me the importance of where levels are and the perceived loudness is crucial because especially in sermon content there could be something so minut that could be so life-changing that if you miss because you're distracted it can make a world of difference so that is the importance on why I I really like to pay attention to loudness all right and lastly now since we are done editing we are done mixing this is good to go all we have to do is export so I'll select a region that's complete what I like to do is give myself just a a bit of space before and a little bit of space after just some breathing room some handles here now when I export you'll see in my template I basically have these already set to go but you can you can always add more or whatever but you'll notice I had this bounce source I have my master Mysterio master I have that sermon stem that AR stem and the band stem so those are all good to go once i export i just need to label it choose where I want to bounce it's already going to this bounces folder that I've created we like to export always in wave 24:48 the video standard because this will be used for video and then all all I have to do is bounce I'm okay with offline bounce it's still gonna take a while because it's a long sermon and there's a lot of processing but when I export I will have that stereo final mix and all of these stems ready to go all right battle about do it thank you so much for watching now remember this video is not how you should video but I really hope that you seeing my thought processes behind the decisions that I make has inspires you and gave you new approaches to mixing sermons or live events or broadcast now you're done stop watching me get out there start mixing and take care bye you

Channel: Ryan Monette

Views: 31,956

Rating: 4.9669032 out of 5

Keywords: Elevation Church, Sermon, Mixing, Audio, Recording, Audio Recording, Studio Mixing, Waves, Izotope, FabFilter, Sermons, Broadcast, Tutorial, Pro Tools, Church, Steven Furtick, Post Production, Podcast, TV, YouTube, Worship, Mix, Elevation Worship, Avid, Universal Audio

Id: 2x96TQUn8OI

Length: 56min 17sec (3377 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 16 2018